ACCOMPLISHING COHERENCE IN TALK SHOWS: A COMPARISON BETWEEN ENGLISH AND INDONESIAN

This paper tried to show how conversational coherence is achieved within talk shows, what strategies used by both host and interviewee to achieve coherence collaboratively. It was shown that in both English and Indonesian talk shows, conversational activity of asking questions can be employed to measure a coherence of a stretch of conversation. Question-answer adjacency pairs can provide the framework through which coherence is achieved, and they have two possibilities to be agreed or disagreed with. This is clear from the English talk show instead of the Indonesian one. The way speakers taking turn and the occurrence of overlap within the sequence of conversation can also determine mutual understanding among the participants. However, the Indonesian talk show offers a longer answer pair compared with the English one. Both talk shows, in fact, share the similar indicators and use similar strategies in order to achieve coherence across the talk show sessions. Speaker’s hesitation is found more in the Indonesian talk show instead of the English one. Another marker of coherence, overlap onset, also occurs a lot in both talk shows. The way speakers (host and interviewee) maintain the topic throughout the talk supports the notion that mutual understanding is successfully achieved. Meanwhile, culture is considered not too influential in determining different ways of maintaining the flow of the talk. Both talk shows use similar patterns with no significant difference in terms of culture. They differ only in the level of conversational devices used which is related to language use instead of cultural background.