A Case Study Of Chinese Television Talk Show Hosts' Turn

Investigations on turn-taking have been conducted under two situations: in mundane settings and institutional contexts.However,previous studies scarcely conduct a general survey on turn-taking mechanism between two hosts with differing institutional rights.Moreover,few studies examined non-verbal interactions between the hosts.Lastly,conversational studies on China's talk shows have been scarce,let alone from the turn-taking viewpoint.As television talk shows have been burgeoning in China in recent years,topics involved begin to cover almost all areas of people's daily life.Research on the hosts' conversation mechanism merits scholarly attention.For these reasons,the present study focuses on Jin Xing Show and explores the overall turn-taking features of the major host Jin Xing and the minor host/assistant Shen Nan.It is designed to explore the different features of Jin Xing and Shen Nan's taking turns to talk concerning turn-constructional components(syntactic and non-verbal interactions),turn-allocation components,and turn control strategies(turn-claiming strategies,turn-holding strategies).The narrative section with verbal and non-verbal interactions mutually done by Jin Xing and Shen Nan in ten episodes with the highest popularity rating and the variety of topic from 2015-2017 is chosen to transcribe from video to text.It is found that in this talk show Jin Xing and Shen Nan do have striking differences especially concerning turn construction units: Jin Xing tends to adopt the above-the-sentence level of turn units,while Shen Nan prefers below-the-sentence-level of turn units.Also,Jin Xing customarily keeps the turn floor to herself and seldom hands over the speakership to the potential speaker Shen Nan.During the exchange,narrative is mainly used to present the segment of stories;non-verbal interactions like facial expressions and body gestures help attract the audience's attention and facilitate the realisation of the narrative.On the other hand,Shen Nan takes the initiative to interrupt the Jin Xing's turns via questions,evaluations,suggestions,and descriptions.It is also found that there is no significant difference between both the host and the assistant in the use of non-verbal resources.The present study presents an overall picture of the turn-taking mechanism by hosts with disproportionate institutional power in one of the most famous TV talk shows in China.In so doing,it is hoped to enrich conversation analysis by revising turn-constructional components in Chinese corpora and the conversational interruption mechanism.Furthermore,it is our goal that talk show hosts,at home or abroad,can borrow ideas from the verbal and non-verbal interactions between two hosts in order to draw the audience's attention and liven up the studio atmosphere.