On Discourse Struggle Between The Host And The Job-hunters In Job-hunting Reality TV Show: A Case Study Of Only You

Due to the imbalanced supply-demand relationship and the challenging employmentoutlook, Only You (fei ni mo shu), a job-hunting reality TV show, has become dramaticallypopular with televiewers.This paper, based on van Leeuwen's “recontextualization theory” and usingConversation Analysis theory and Cooperative Principle, analyses the discourse strugglebetween the host and the job-hunters by making a case study of Only You from a CriticalDiscourse Analysis perspective. It aims to gain an insight to examine the role of discoursein job-hunting reality TV show.The linguistic material of this thesis is collected from12episodes of Only You aired in2011,2012and2013respectively in which12job-hunters are included. First the programvideos are downloaded from the Internet. Then the recordings are transcribed according totranscription conventions.The paper first tries to define “discourse struggle” based on van Leeuwen'srecontextualization theory. Van Leeuwen (2008) sees discourse as “the recontextualizationof social practice.” Based on this, it is found that it is not the event itself that stirs thestruggle between the host and the job-hunters, but the different meaning interpretations bytheir different discourses. Thus discourse struggle is defined in this research as the conflictof different meaning interpretations by different discourses. Secondly, with the aid ofConversation Analysis theory and Cooperative Principle, the paper found that both the hostand the job-hunters utilizes intentionally some discourse control and anti-control strategies,in order to make their own discursive interpretations more persuasive to the Boss. We findthat the host Zhang Shaogang mainly employs the following discursive strategies in thediscourse struggle:(1) turn control;(2) topic manipulation;(3) question design. And thejob-hunters also use some anti-control strategies in the discourse struggle:(1) flouting thequality maxim;(2) flouting the quantity maxim;(3) flouting the maxim of relevance;(4)flouting the maxim of manner. Lastly, the research explains and interprets the discoursestruggle as rooted in the conflict of their different values and cognition caused by theirdifferent social status, background, roles and experience.