Shin-Jung Ho

talk shows, pragmatics, conversation analysis, television images, institutional talk

This study examines high-grade assessment sequence (i.e., “great”, “wonderful” or “I love it”) in experts’ demonstrations in lifestyle talk shows. The purpose is to illustrate meanings as TV editing practices and images guide the audience to experience these high-grade assessment events. When images orient high-grade assessment as objective assessment, TV images display the characteristics and attributes of the assessed object or subject. When images orient high-grade assessment as subject assessment, TV images display the individuals who engage in the act of assessing and their facial expressions and responses. The findings demonstrate that when guests initiate high assessment sequences, TV images mostly stay and orient to the assessed items throughout the talk. Images being cut to the assessing participant may occur during the end or at the second or the third high assessment utterance and in this way, cutting would not interrupt the understanding and viewing of the displayed merchandise, experts’ demonstrations or the model. Moreover, the TV host and experts are more likely to receive exclusive shots displaying their subjective and psychological responses towards the assessed items. Third, images and shots collaborate in creating ways in which the audience experiences TV demonstrations as embodied activity and the visual organization of both objective and subjective assessment shots enables to distribute epistemically accessible attributes of the product.