The Use of Designedly Incomplete Utterance in TV Talk Shows

Abstract

Media discourse has been attracting numerous conversation analysts’ attention within the past one or two decades (e.g., Clayman & Heritage, 2002; Hutchby, 2006). TV talk shows, as a “semi-institutional” context which contains coexisting features of both daily conversation and institutional language (Ilie, 2001), has particularly aroused many scholars’ interest. In talk shows, hosts exploit various interactional practices to elicit their guests’ responses. This paper uses a conversation analytic framework to examine one specific interviewer practice—the designedly incomplete utterance (DIU) (Koshik, 2002)—in the context of TV talk shows. Three uses of DIUs by talk show hosts are identified: (1) to facilitate a (more extended) response (2) to initiate collaborative turn completion, and (3) to avoid repeating questions that have already been asked in prior turns.