Communication Strategies Employed by Korean Guests of the Arirang TV Talk-Show Heart to Heart

Interlocutors usually adopt communication strategies to get their intended meaning across when they face communication breakdowns. This study examines the characteristics of these strategies employed by fourteen Korean guests in a TV talkshow. A total of 286 instances of the nineteen communication strategies out of the thirty-three strategies listed in Dörnyei & Scott's (1997) taxonomy was identified in the first five minutes of the show. The most frequently observed strategy was the use of fillers, followed by repetitions, restructuring, self-repair, use of all-purpose words, and so on. The dominant use of the indirect strategies such as filler and repetitions might be related to the guests' affective domain, which means that it could be a reflection of the guests' anxiety or nervousness. On the contrary, the use of direct strategies which have a linkage to resource deficit was not popular. Even if a nature of talk-show should accompany the active interaction between host and guest, the less adoption of interactional strategies on the part of the guests was also observed. The overall results reflected the nature of the peculiar discourse setting, a recorded TV talk show in which the guests were informed of what to be asked and prepared it with possible lexical items in advance.