A Comparative Analysis Of Turn-control Strategy In Chinese And American Talk Shows

With the increasing diversification of entertainment programs,talk show has been increasingly welcomed by audiences.The conversation between a host and a guest has also become the pillar of this kind of program.Great efforts have been made by discourse analysts to demystify the language charm of host and guest.However,few scholars have made a comparative study on turn-taking strategy from the cross-cultural perspective.This thesis selects two of the most well-received entertainment talk shows for a comparative case study.They are Ellen Show in the United States and the Jin Xing show in China.The material is manually transcribed and sorted out by the author.The turn-taking and steps are analyzed by executing the DOS command in software FindStr.In order to explore how the Chinese and American hosts use turn-control strategy and what the same and different program effects brought by turn-taking strategy,this thesis adopts two research methods: quantitative and qualitative.Starting from the three aspect of turn-claiming,turn-holding and turn-yielding,this thesis analyzes the specific language forms of turn-control strategies by the two hosts and conducts a comparative analysis of the two programs.The similarities are:First of all,the Chinese and American hosts both prefer to use the adversatives like‘but’‘但’and‘但是’as the discourse markers of turn-claiming;Secondly,in terms of turn-holding,both Chinese and the US hosts prefer the strategies of conversation repair,discourse markers,backchannels and Space-making.They are used to using the colloquial words like‘I know’‘I mean’‘没错’‘是(的)’.And they use‘并且’‘而且’‘and’‘so’as a marker for turn-holding;Thirdly,as to the turn-yielding,the hosts of both countries prefer an approach to adjacency pairs.Differences found in the study include: American host prefer to use turn-yielding and turn-holding and the guests’ turn length is longer.The host has a relative low degree of enthusiasm,while the guest’s enthusiasm for participation is relatively explicit.Moreover,the power relation in the host and the guest is not apparent,and even a guest can have the talking initiative.Chinese talk shows tend to be a high involvement style and display obvious power relations,with both the guest and the host having shorter turn.That is,the host is in a dominant position,while the guest is in a relatively passive position.In addition,during the interview,Chinese hosts attach importance to the communication between guests and audiences,while American hosts pay more attention to the communication between themselves and guests.On the basis of the aforementioned research results,this thesis endeavors to discuss the reasons for the differences in turn-taking strategies from the perspectives of institutional and cultural differences,social functional differences,and puts forward some suggestions on the language strategies of talk shows.