Pragmatics of assessing statements in TV-shows (basing on the material of a Russian TV-show “The Voice”)
Oxana Isser
Anastasia Gerasimova
Saint-Petersburg University of Management Technologies and Economics, Russia
The study analyses how assessing statements in a TV-discourse affect the addressee. In terms of a TV-show, assessment functions not only as an axiological component, it also helps to develop the plot and turns into a peculiar communicative strategy. The global aim of the strategy is to express the coaches’ agreement or refusal in a situation of a vocal competition. The strategy also helps to minimize miscommunication and safe the coaches’ image in case they use negative assessing statements.
Apart from the direct addressee – the competitor on the stage – any TV-show has viewers involved into the sphere of strategy influence. Therefore, the coaches’ image and their effective communicative behavior become dominating in the project and play an important role of mass auditory attraction. The models of communicative behavior of the coaches are presented as sequences of verbal and non-verbal actions in public communication complicated by the factor of a “double” addressee.
The material of the study was assessing statements of the coaches of a Russian TV-show “The Voice”. There were analysed 12 programs of “Blind Auditions”. The material was classified according to two basic communicative situations (agreement or refusal to choose the artist). The assessment strategy was actualized in various communicative tactics.
The results of the study show basic communicative schemes of providing public agreement or refusal. These schemes form a kind of a communicative and pragmatic syntax conditioned by the diverse tasks the speakers have: to assess the performance, to build trusting relations between the artist and the coaching panel, to attract the mass viewers. In the speech behavior of the coaches this communicative and pragmatic syntax is represented by the dynamic change of tactical maneuvers. For example, the situation of agreement may include such a scheme: admiration tactic Þ self-presentation tactic Þ praising tactic Þ compliment tactic; and the situation of refusal may have: self-justification tactic Þ refusal explanation tactic Þ consolation tactic. The material showed 4 typical communicative and pragmatic models of agreement and 5 models of refusal.
Description of communicative behavior in the aspect of tactic sequence provides a deeper analysis of the speakers’ intentions, demonstrates communicative risks and gives an opportunity to create optimal models of effective communication. Similar study can also be based on other socio-cultural material which may help to reveal national-cultural peculiarities of communicative behavior in similar situations in another country.