The Study of Conversation Analysis on the Spoken Interaction Between the Host and the Guest in Oprah Winfrey Show

Abstract

This study deals with the analysis of initiating acts and responding acts produced by the host and the guest in conversational strategies in Oprah Winfrey Show. The study indicates the incoherence on Rowling’s replying strategies. She expresses some irrelevant responses to Winfrey’s initiations. There are some irrelevant responses that are produced by Rowling, such as, an initiation question that should be responded by answer, but Rowling’s response is reply instead. The purpose of this study is to know the conversation’s relevance and irrelevance in Winfrey and Rowling’s propositions in the talk show program. To find out these relevancies, the dimension of conversational strategies, initiating acts and responding acts by Stenstrom theory (1994) are applied. Through sequential responses, the utterances in the conversation the guest are analyzed by looking at the preferred and dispreferred responses by Bloomer (2006) are also applied. This research is classified as qualitative research. The data are obtained by selecting the utterances in the talk show from the host and the guest. There are 21 selected utterances in Oprah Winfrey Show spoken by the host and the guest that represent initiating acts and responding acts. After selecting the data, the data are transcribed following the transcription notation and coded using Preferred (P), Dispreferred (D) and based on the sequential response analysis. The result of this study shows that the guest produces more irrelevant responses than the host. It is proven by the number of responding acts performed by the guest based on the data. There are totally 21 responding acts performed, 12 preferred and 9 dispreferred. Whereas, there are 21 initiating acts performed by the host, while in the response, there is no preferred and dispreferred response found. It is because the guest’s utterances are the initiation utterance. The reasons affecting the use of response by the guest are to avoid talking about personal matter, to get attention and to have chance for forgiveness, to show empathy, to help accomplishing her to do list as an expression of appreciation, disappointment, and denial. This study concludes that there is a different position between the host and the guest in the talk show conversation regarding to the interactional strategies. The most irrelevant utterances are from the guest. However, in the interactional strategies dimension, the difference is very clear that the host tries to investigate the guest by giving what she wants to initiate Rowling’s responses, thus,the guest tends to show refusal response and attitude. These factors definitely influence how the host becomes more successful than the guest in interactional strategies in the talk show program.