| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 語言學研究所 === 102 === This study compared how the judges in singing contest shows gave comments (including compliments and criticisms) to the contestants in “The Voice of China” (中國好聲音) in Mainland China and “Million Star” (華人星光大道) in Taiwan. A discourse analysis based on the theoretical frameworks of ethnography of communication and interactive sociolinguistics was adopted to analyze selected episodes of the two shows to investigate (1) how the judges gave the contestants comments, (2) how the contestants responded to the judges’ comments, and (3) the differences between comments made by judges in Mainland China and Taiwan.
First, there were six patterns of comments that judges gave to the contestants: compliment followed by criticism, direct compliment, direct criticism, indirect criticism, criticism followed by compliment, and others. Besides, when receiving compliments and criticisms, saying “thank you,” nodding head, and keeping silent were three common response strategies adopted by contestants. Contestants also just laughed or took a bow to respond to judges’ compliments. When facing criticisms, making consents or showing embarrassment were the strategies adopted. Finally, it was found that most of the judges in “The Voice of China” tended to give contestants encouragement, whereas the judges in “Million Star” gave direct criticisms more often. Also, the judges in Mainland China preferred to explicitly express their emotion, whereas judges in Taiwan tended to give rational comments and implicit criticisms.
This study regards singing contest shows as a speech situation. In the speech event of making comments, both the judges’ compliments and criticisms were examined as speech acts. Pragmatic differences between Mainland China and Taiwan will be explained and interpreted from the perspective of intercultural communication.
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