（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）从语用学角度看中国电视谈话节目主持人的语言得体性.pdf

v 从语用学角度看中国电视谈话节目主持人的语言得体性从语用学角度看中国电视谈话节目主持人的语言得体性 外国语学院 04级研究生：雷丹 导师:徐继旺教授 研究方向：语用学 内容摘要内容摘要 电视谈话节目在中国越来越受到观众的欢迎。谈话节目主持人的语言直接关系到节 目的质量和播出效果。因此，谈话节目主持人的言语表达能力极为关键。衡量节目主持 人言语表达能力高低的一个重要标准，就是语言是否得体。一些谈话节目主持人因为其 得体的语言表达在观众中享有很高的声誉。 得体性近年来成为语用学研究的一个热点问题，越来越多的研究人员把语用学的有 关原理借用到谈话节目主持人语言的研究上来。在这些研究中，对谈话节目主持人语言 得体性的探讨还相对较少。从语用学的角度研究谈话节目主持人语言的得体性，就是立 足于主持人的言语活动，对其言语活动过程中所涉及的语用得体性进行深入分析。本文 以我国优秀电视谈话节目主持人的语言为研究对象，以语用学中的语境、合作原则、礼 貌原则和面子论为主要的理论框架，分析电视谈话节目主持人语言的得体性。 本文首先简要介绍了电视谈话节目的定义、历史和类型，界定了谈话节目主持人语 言得体的定义。然后对电视谈话节目语境的构成因素、特点、对主持人语言的影响及谈 话节目主持人的言语主导地位进行了全面分析。接着通过列举具体的语料，采用理论探 索和个案分析相结合的方法，运用语用学和传播学相关理论重点讨论了会话中的合作原 则、礼貌原则和面子论与主持人语言得体性之间的关系，详细地阐述了主持人为了达到 语言得体性对合作原则、礼貌原则和面子论的遵守和运用: 数量原则要求说话人提供足够 但不多余的信息，主持人不能滔滔不绝地过多占用节目时间；质量原则要求主持人言语 诚恳，这也是他/她与观众交流的基础；关联原则要求主持人在交流过程中根据不同交谈 对象的不同身份使用得体的言语方式；方式原则要求主持人在节目中的语言必须谨慎。 礼貌原则和面子论则要求主持人充分考虑节目参与者的面子，正确使用礼貌的语句，让 参与者愿意听，乐于接受主持人的话语，从而使访谈顺利进行，获得良好的节目效果。 主持人对礼貌原则和面子论的遵守和运用主要体现在六个方面：称呼语、导言、提问、 回应、打断和句式。全文以具体的谈话节目内容为支撑，探讨主持人在实践过程中利用 会话原则提高语言活动质量，实现语言得体的途径。 本文通过对谈话节目主持人语言得体性的语用研究，能进一步深化语用学相关理论 的应用及研究,拓宽谈话节目主持人语言的研究领域，帮助发现谈话节目的传播规律，为 主持人提高语言运用能力寻求切实可行的途径。 关键词：关键词：得体性；主持人语言；语境；会话原则 vi the language appropriateness of chinese tv talk show hosts: a pragmatic perspective m.a. candidate: lei dan supervisor: pro. xu jiwang abstract tv talk shows are becoming increasingly popular with the audience in china. the language of program hosts directly influences the quality and broadcast effect of the program. therefore the hosts verbal ability is crucial to the program. one important standard for evaluating the level of the hosts verbal ability is the appropriateness of his or her language. some appealing hosts enjoy their fame for their appropriate language in the program. appropriateness has been a topic of interest in pragmatics in recent years. despite the vast number of scholarly outputs dedicated to appropriateness, it appears that little has been done on the language appropriateness of tv talk shows hosts. this thesis, taking the language of talk shows hosts as the object, attempts to probe into this largely neglected sector by examining the language appropriateness within the framework of context, cooperative principle, politeness principle and face theory. the thesis firstly gives a brief introduction to the definition, history and categories of chinese tv talk shows and defines what appropriateness is. then it analyzes the elements and characteristics of the tv talk shows context and their impacts on the hosts language. after that it moves to the illustration of the hosts leading status of speech in the program，and then discusses the relation between appropriateness and pragmatic principles like cooperative principle, politeness principle, and face theory. on this basis, the thesis discusses in detail how the host achieves language appropriateness by employing conversational principles. the maxim of quantity requires the speaker to offer abundant but not surplus information. the host can not speak unceasingly nor forcibly to occupy too much time in the program. the maxim of quality requires the host to be sincere, which is the foundation of communication with audiences. the maxim of relation requires the host to choose appropriate language forms according to different identities of different targets in the exchange of views. the maxim of manner demands for the hosts careful and rigorous language in the program. the politeness principle and face theory require the host to use courteous term correctly, fully consider the participants faces, and let audiences like to hear, like to accept what he/her says in order to make the communication go on smoothly and achieve good program effect. the hosts observation of politeness principle and vii face theory is mainly embodied in six aspects: the forms of address, introduction, questioning, making response, interrupting and sentence patterns. the pragmatic research of the hosts language appropriateness does not merely further promote the research and the application of relevant pragmatic theories; it broadens the research field of the hosts language, contributes to finding the broadcast law of talk shows and seeks the feasible way for the improvement of hosts verbal ability. key words: appropriateness; hosts language; context; cooperative principle; politeness principle; face theory iv acknowledgements first and foremost, i wish to express my greatest gratitude to my supervisor, professor xu jiwang, who provided me his excellent tutelage, thought-provoking indications and warm encouragement during my three years graduate study. he also offered me valuable guidance and suggestions throughout the process of working on this thesis. without his professional assistance and initiations, the completion of the thesis would not be possible. secondly, my heartfelt thanks go to all the respectable teachers in the college of foreign studies, guangxi normal university. i benefited a lot from their inspiring lectures. and finally i am deeply indebted to my family and friends for their never- fading love and support to me at the moment of my anxiety and confusion. 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 the rationale of the present study this thesis is an investigation into the appropriateness of hosts language in tv talk shows. the choice of this research topic is based on the following considerations: first, with the popularization of tv talk shows nowadays, more and more attention has been paid to the linguistic studies of these programs, especially in the fields of discourse analysis, conversational analysis, etc. as a media product and an ongoing talk-oriented process, tv talk shows undoubtedly provide unexhaustive and invaluable source of naturally-occurring data for linguistic research. the current studies, however, are not so complete. and fewer studies have been made on chinese talk shows especially from a pragmatic point of view. second, the selection of chinese tv talk shows as data makes it easier for us to understand linguistically and culturally, since talk shows are simultaneous in form and discursive in nature. and it is of great significance for us to apply theories from aboard to study chinese tv talk shows. third, the research of conversational principles has also long been the focus of the study on communicating competence and language use of human beings. the study of “appropriateness” is more of a major concern in this field, for the tact maxim has been considered as the supreme pragmatic principle. but seldom systematic study of the appropriateness of the hosts language has been made from the pragmatic point of view up to now. so, the current study, taking the characteristics of context of tv talk shows into account, tends to deepen the research of hosts language appropriateness based on cooperative principle, politeness principle and face theory. 1.2 objectives and significance of the present study the smooth flowing of tv talk shows is closely related to the hosts speaking skills and the quality of his or her language. in a talk show, the host is responsible for managing the whole program. he or she initiates discussions between guests, moderates interactions between programs participants, selects speakers, controls time and guides the understanding of the audience. therefore, the language of the program host directly influences the quality and broadcast effect of the program. pragmatics regards human beings concrete speech activity as the research object and studies all the key elements that are involved in language use. it offers theoretical support in studying the hosts language and contributes to the research of the rules of hosts language. the pragmatic in-depth exploration of the hosts language appropriateness is based on the hosts speech activity. the pragmatic research of the hosts language appropriateness does not merely further 2 promote the research and the application of relevant pragmatic theories; it broadens the research field of the hosts language, contributes to finding the broadcast law of talk shows and seeks the feasible way for the improvement of the hosts verbal ability. 1.3 data collection and methodology 1.3.1 data collection we choose three programs as the database for corpus. they are tell it like it is, dialogue and meet with lu yu for your stories. the former two are broadcast by cctv, one of the most authoritative media in china, and the last one is broadcast by phoenix television, which is also a famous medium. these programs represent the main styles of tv talk shows now prevalent in china. they differ in focal topics and thus their styles and target audience are different. tell it like it is covers social-life and hot topics, and its guests and audience are common people most of the time. dialogue usually invites the honored guests that have enriched knowledge relevant to the economic topics. the guests of meet with lu yu for your stories are often of notable fame in a specific area, especially in films, singing, politics, arts, literature, sports, journalism, etc. they are invited to the studio to converse with the host lu yu. so it can be regarded as a kind of story-oriented program. thus the data for the present study are gathered from the transcripts of twenty episodes of the three programs each. the chinese transcripts of each episode are available on the internet via cctvs and phoenix tvs home page. there are indeed some difficulties in studying chinese tv talk shows because of the need of translation, which may lead to certain degree of distortion in meaning. but this will not impair our study, for all the processing and analyzing of the data will be based on the original texts. english translations of some transcripts are to be carefully done so that they go as closely as possible with the original ones. 1.3.2 methodology the investigation of this thesis relies on the quantitative analysis of the data. it is conducted with the expectation to analyze how the host applies the conversational principles to make his/her speech appropriate. so the data which have been collected will be analyzed according to cooperative principle, politeness principle and face theory. 1.4 outline of the thesis the thesis will proceed from a theoretical review to a practical analysis, from inductive reasoning to deductive case study. 3 the thesis consists of six chapters: chapter one presents a brief introduction to rationale, objectives, significance, data collection, and methodology of the study. chapter two reviews the current studies made on both tv talk shows and appropriateness home and abroad. it is obvious that there has been scanty pragmatic analysis on the appropriate language of tv talk shows hosts. this chapter also introduces the background, categories and characteristics of chinese tv talk shows. in addition, it gives the definition of appropriateness and clarifies the status of appropriateness in pragmatics. chapter three sets up the theoretical basis for the study and clears the way by presenting the research preliminaries. chapter four and five are the core parts of the thesis. chapter four focuses on the composition and characteristics of the context of chinese tv talk shows, and seeks their impacts on hosts language. chapter five begins with describing the leading status of language of a host in the program, and then discusses the relation between appropriateness and pragmatic principles like cooperative principle, politeness principle, and face theory. finally we use some concrete examples to see how a host properly uses language with those pragmatic principles. chapter six summarizes the finding of this study, points out the implications, limitations of the thesis and the prospect for future studies. 4 chapter two literature review 2.1 about talk shows 2.1.1 brief history of tv talk shows talk show begins with western countries. it prevails and has strong influential power among those countries, especially in u.s.a. early tv talk show is transplanted over from the broadcast program. the first batch of real tv talk shows is a series of public service programs that appeared in u.s.a. in 1934, such as round table of chicago university, urban meeting in the sky in u.s.a., etc. the topics that these programs probed into and argued all concentrate on the fields of social concern and political issue mainly. in 1948, the large-scale show star in texas theater and star of small city, whose characteristics are interviews of the famous persons, appeared in u.s.a. then talk show with modern significance appeared formally and became one of the major forms in the tv programs. after 1980s, talk show became a whiff of enormous trends and had a great impact on society. in u.s.a., the david letterman show, jay leno show, oprah winfrey show, larry king live are very popular. since talk show is a most effective combination way of interpersonal media and mass media, it has a large number of audiences in the developed country. the development of tv talk shows in china can roughly be divided into the following several periods: 1. sprouting period. in 1960s to 1980s, cctv and some local tv stations organized audiences to discuss some social issues that everybody paid close attention to. although there was not the saying of “talk show” at that time, those programs bared no differences with todays talk shows in the way of broadcasting. 2. initial period. dragon live studio，which started broadcasting in shanghai dragon tv station in january, 1993 is the first real tv talk show in mainland china. the talk shows of cctv and several local tv stations appeared in succession afterwards. though talk shows have not formed the advantage yet in the whole hosts programs, they have already occupied an important part in tv. 3. prosperous period. at the end of the 1990s, cctvs talk show tell it like it is drew useful lessons from the form of “talk show” and combined the actual conditions in china. after the program broadcasted, tell it like it is and its host cui yongyuan gained a sudden fame. from then on, the talk shows of every tv station in the whole country surged forward, and the quantity of talk show increased sharplyincreasing from more than 80 in 2000 to 179 in 2001. at present, new talk shows are coming out constantly. but making a general survey of the talk shows of this period, we can see that good ones and bad ones are intermingled. some talk shows 5 are high-quality presented, such as cctvs dialogue, face to face, etc. but the cloning phenomenon of most talk shows is serious. the programs and their hosts are lacking in their own characteristics and glamour. so, tv talk shows in china have not been mature yet. 2.1.2 definition of talk shows “the content and form of talk show is conversation. in a broaden sense, every program, which concentrates on one topic and takes talking as its main content and form, can be regarded as talk show”(cao kefan, wang qun: 204). wu yu (2005:225-229) divides talk shows into broadly-defined and narrowly-defined talk shows while discussing the definition of talk shows. he thinks broadly-defined talk show is an “interview program” that people usually speak in a manner of discourse with two people or more. this kind of talk show aims at information sharing, common understanding of different views, and expressing emotions. narrowly-defined talk show is that “the host invites honored guest and audience, discussing the hot issues which the public generally pay close attention to, in an ease, harmonious, and equal atmosphere”. the talk shows that this thesis studies are more close to narrowly-defined talk shows, for narrowly-defined talk show emphasizes “equality”, “statement”, and “free discussion”. it is different from the “services” talk shows in which consulting officers or experts take the popularization of scientific or cultural knowledge, the propagation of the laws and regulations as their purpose; it is also different from those interview programs which have news party or authoritative experts as the honored guests while no audience participates in, mostly concerning with the honored guests explanation, narration, and authoritative analysis. narrowly-defined talk show pays more attention to the equal exchange of information, the multi-directional communication and mutual emotional interaction of the audience, and the hosts control of the whole program. certainly, a lot of talk shows have “interview” concurrently with the key element of “discussion”, such as people in the news of cctv. it adopts the form of interview sometimes, and sometimes adopts the form of “discussion” that the on-the-spot audiences participate in. in addition, it is necessary to talk about the concept of “talk show”. it stems from foreign countries, with the literal meaning of “the performance of talking”. it stresses the alert eloquence of its host and is more like a performance. although there are similarities in the classification between american talk shows and the chinese ones, many of them are quite different in nature. for the american talk shows, the audience rating and commercial benefits are always in the first place. thus many american talk shows degenerate to meet the base tastes of people by deliberately evoking conflicts, exploiting personal privacy, embarrassing participants or making partial and irresponsible comments on political, social and even tattoo topics. they are sometimes criticized as “television trash”. 6 on the contrary, chinese talk shows usually cherish good will and good taste. they cover those topics that concern the public most and hope to establish such social environment as to be more carefree, compassionate and communicative, and to provide a forum for the ordinary people to have their voices heard and to hear those people who are very much like themselves. 2.1.3 types of tv talk shows the types of tv talk shows mainly depend on