Formulation questions and responses in Korean TV talk show interactions

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.