TV 토크쇼에서 나타나는 진행자의 담화 전략 분석

Discourse Strategies of Hosts with Bald Faced Questions in TV Talk Shows

Interactions in TV talk shows have some characteristics driven by both semi-institutional and institutional conversations. The former is the case that TV talk shows seemingly follow conversations in daily routines. For the latter, the basic setting of a TV talk show assumes or assigns specific roles of host or guest to each participant. Unlike daily conversation, institutional discourse in mass media, especially for talk show conversations, has one ultimate goal: infotainment (Penz 1996:1). Interviewers or talk show hosts keep seeking information from guests for the sake of the audience's and viewers' entertainment. This paper focuses on TV talk shows with celebrities as guests to observe what kind of strategies hosts implement in their questions to obtain information that stimulates the curiosity of viewers and satisfies their interest in the private lives of celebrities. The results of the research reveal that hosts in TV talk shows utilize different questioning strategies, which can be divided into four major categories: third-party reported speech, presuppositions, vague expressions and topic narrowing-down. By citing or quoting third-party reported speech, the question initiated by a host is justified and neutralized. Presupposition and vague expression are both useful tools that allow the host to initiate topics about sensitive issues while avoiding any direct mention of the issue. Topic narrowing-down has an effect of distracting the guest from the intended topic and making a detour to the topic. Hosts not only use one of these strategies to achieve the goals of their questions but also make questions more dynamic by employing different types of strategies simultaneously.