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Part of
Questioning and Answering Practices across Contexts and Cultures
Edited by Cornelia Ilie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 323] 2021
► pp. 193–226

Formulation questions and responses in Korean TV talk show interactions

ORCID logo | Kyung Hee University
| Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

This chapter examines the sequence-organizational role of the host’s formulation questions and the guest’s responses in entertainment-oriented Korean talk-shows. Constructed as a ‘follow-up’ re-presenting the upshot of the guest’s response on the host’s terms, the host’s formulation questions mediate sequence expansion through which an ‘information-oriented’ sequence is transited to an ‘affectively-loaded’ assessment sequence. This transition, contingent on the guest’s confirmation, is co-constructively accomplished; the host’s enticement of the guest’s confirmation is embodied in the turn-design features of formulation questions rendering an ‘obvious’ gist of the guest’s response, or indexing the host’s agentivity and empathic stance. The host’s move to implicate the guest in his/her ‘master-sequential’ transition may be resisted, with the guest, through disconfirmation, promoting a master narrative of his/her own.

Keywords: Korean talk-show, conversation analysis, formulation, sequence, turn design, assessment, confirmation, disconfirmation, master narrative
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background: Formulation questions
  • 3.Organization of formulation sequences
    • 3.1Formulation question as preliminary action
    • 3.2Post-expansion into assessment sequence
  • 4.Turn design of formulation questions
    • 4.1Mundane character of formulation questions
    • 4.2Indexing high agentivity
  • 5.Guest’s disconfirmation: Competing agendas in organizing master narratives
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 26 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.323.07kim
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