ABSTRACT

The Oprah Winfrey Show is a very successful TV talk show, which was famous all over the world. During its broadcast time(1986-2011), Oprah not only interviewed the celebrities, but also invited some ordinary people to participate in the show. The corpus come from three sets of the show, which respectively are interviews of statesman, pop stars and the discussion of hot issues. The theory base comes from the study of Sacks. Through the research, it’s found that the conversations between the host and the guest conform to the basic rules in the turn-taking system. The host mainly uses the turn-yielding strategy and the guests are used to adopting the turn-holing strategy. But they seldom adopt the turn-claiming strategy. These are concerned with the characteristics of the TV show. As the leader of the program, the host has to make sure that the program is interesting and that the rhythm is appropriate. Oprah must use more turn-yielding strategies to encourage the guests to share more stories with the audience. The guests are the main characters of the program, and they tend to use more turn-holing strategies to make their performance more outstanding.

From the research, we can learn the rules of a successful TV show and observe the interaction model between the host and the guests. After learning the rules, we can better understand the TV show in China and it is beneficial to our daily conversations. 

Key words：Oprah Winfrey; talk show; turn-taking

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-1

1.1 Need for the Present Study-1

1.2 Objective of the Present Study-2

1.3 Significance of the Study-2

1.4 Overview of the Thesis-2

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 Studies on Talk Show-3

2.1.1 Definitions of Talk Show-3

2.1.2 Development of Talk Show-3

2.2 Studies on Turn-taking Pattern-3

2.2.1 Definitions of turn-taking-3

2.2.2 Studies of Turn-taking Pattern-4

Chapter Three METHODOLOGY-5

3.1 Research Questions-5

3.2 Data Collection and Description-5

3.3 Theoretical Framework-6

Chapter Four RESULTS AND DISCUSSION-7

4.1 Results-7

4.2 Discussion-7

4.2.1 Turn- claiming Strategy-7

4.2.2 Turn- holding Strategy-10

4.2.3 Turn-yielding Strategy-12

CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION-14

REFERENCES-16