Copyright by Alice Ruth Chu 2003
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Copyright by Alice Ruth Chu 2003 The Dissertation Committee for Alice Ruth Chu Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Political TV Call-in Shows in Taiwan: Animating Crisis Discourses through Reported Speech Committee: Joel F. Sherzer, Co-Supervisor Elizabeth L. Keating, Co-Supervisor Avron A. Boretz Roderick P. Hart Keith Walters Qing Zhang Political TV Call-in Shows in Taiwan: Animating Crisis Discourses through Reported Speech by Alice Ruth Chu, B.S., B.S., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2003 Dedication To my father and life-long mentor, James Chi-ying Chu. To my mother and role model on how to do it all, Ruth Lin Chu. Acknowledgements I have many dissertation guardian angels and muses to thank who have contributed their time, energy, and encouragement in helping me complete this project. First, I want to thank my parents, Ruth Lin Chu and James C. Y. Chu, for their emotional and financial support throughout my academic career. From the proofreading to the fact checking that my father provided as well as the care packages of mantou (饅頭) and rousong (肉鬆) my mother mailed me in the final stages of writing the dissertation, their dedication to my academic goals pervade this dissertation. To my sister, Elaine, and my brother-in-law, Tristan, thank you for the timely care package you sent the last week of the revising process; it was greatly appreciated and all the more so because it was from the two of you. In addition, I have “Grandma” Phyllis Bush to thank for being my first role model and for helping me realize that women can and do earn Ph.D’s, have families, participate in community activities, and mentor “grandchildren” in the process. At the impressionable age of ten, you inspired me to join that special group and pursue that the academic lifestyle. As for the long but and rewarding dissertation path that started with the first day of graduate school and culminated with my defense, I wish to thank my advisors, Dr. Joel Sherzer and Dr. Elizabeth Keating, for sharing their expertise and knowledge throughout my graduate career at UT-Austin. Joel, I am blessed to have experienced and reaped the benefits of your enthusiasm towards your students and the linguistic anthropology program—from SALSA to fellowship v applications to the defense—I am grateful to have been your mentee. Without your assistance, the funding and writing of this project would have been that much more difficult. Elizabeth, your detailed readings and comments on each draft were especially helpful and greatly appreciated. You kept the dissertation from wandering down too many tangential paths and my work is all the better for it. Thank you, Dr. Keith Walters, for convincing me to pursue my graduate studies at UT. The walk and conversation we shared from the anthropology to the linguistics department during my first campus visit in the spring of 1994 left such an impression on me that the choice was clear which program I wanted to be a part of, for which I am extremely grateful. I cherish what I have learned from your amazingly thorough and always engaging courses and aspire to achieve the same balance in my own career one day. Most of all, I thank you for being my “Zen master.” Namely, you’ve shown me how to appreciate learning in its various forms, from the academic to the popular, and from the big picture to the minute details. To Dr. Avron Boretz, thank you for keeping my fieldwork on track simply by sharing your own experiences during a brief but invaluable conversation over lunch at a restaurant on Hsinhai Road (辛亥路) across the street from ICLP (a.k.a. Stanford Center) mid-way through my Taiwan sojourn. I especially valued your practical and wise advice that ranged from ethnographic field methods to language learning to daily survival skills. Your wealth of knowledge about almost anything and everything written on Taiwan has made this dissertation all the more rigorous. I have so much more to I learn! Thank you, Dr. Roderick Hart, for introducing me to the compelling world of political language and for inspiring me to find a way to link my ethnographic- based research with the field of communication studies. I am extremely grateful to vi have experienced your contagious enthusiasm for teaching and research. Most of all, thank you for reminding me why I entered graduate school and why I enjoy academia. To Dr. Qing Zhang, thank you for joining my dissertation committee at the 11th hour. I appreciate your insightful feedback on the dissertation and, most of all, for your timely arrival at UT when I most needed your knowledge and expertise. I also wish to extend my appreciation to Dr. Sharon Jarvis for inviting me to her graduate seminar to present my preliminary research findings. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to suggest dissertation outlines and to direct me toward talk show literature in the dissertation’s early stages. The collaborative nature of this dissertation, however, is best captured by my incomparable and amazing dissertation group (a.k.a. “Chapter Three”), which include my intrepid cohorts: Chris Labuski, Liz Lilliott, Jessica Montalvo, Apen Ruiz, and Guha Shankar. As my writing companions, each of you unflaggingly encouraged me through half-written drafts and countless writing blocks. Your diverse talents as tarot card readers, massage therapists, gourmet chefs, do-it-all scholar-moms, and interpretive dancers also helped me realize (and appreciate) that we are truly more than the sum of our parts. It was/is your collective joie de vivre, inspired sense of humor, and overall esprit de corps during our “work” meetings that made the dissertation writing experience so memorable and priceless. Our 2002 AAA panel in New Orleans epitomized it all. To my other writing companions, I thank Elaine Chun, Chantal Tetreault, and Kristen Wilkerson for their assistance and feedback at various stages of this project. I particularly thank Mary Beltrán for her personal counsel regarding dissertation writing and post-dissertation life during our Town Lake walk-and-talk sessions, not to mention her professional editing assistance on several chapters. Each of you contributed to the dissertation by writing with me at CC’s or JP’s vii Java, being my writing therapists over long phone calls, reading half-written chapters, and enjoying pizza and jazz at Cipollina. Thank you, my “writing muses.” To my dear friends around the world, each of you have witnessed various stages of this project and supported me in your own way. To my Taipei ICLP colleagues, thank you Kara Britt, Shu-yuan Chen, Bianca Locsin, Madhavi Swamy-Peters, and Betsy Tao for sharing the language learning experience, and afterwards, your witty emails and phone calls on things scholarly and then some. To my Austin friends who helped this Northern Californian embrace Central Texas as one of my many “homes,” thank you Anna Abbey-Diver, Nesta Anderson, Denni Blum, Wai-fong Chiang, Huang Hoon Chng, Eric Dwyer, Risako Ide, Javier Léon, Heng-rue Lin, Cassandra Moore, Hari Kanta Ogren, Kieu Phan, Yukako Sunaoshi, Chiho Sunakawa, and MJ Wetherhead for accompanying me in my eclectic Austin pursuits from taking UT fitness classes, making blueberry pancake runs to Kerbey Lane, trying new restaurants, watching movies like Harry Potter, and running road races from the Capital 10K to the Motorola Marathon. I also thank Sergio Acosta, Javier León, David McBride, Katie Sosnoff, and Mark Westmoreland, who provided invaluable technological assistance towards the end of the dissertation in helping me capture, subtitle, and format video clips from my call-in show data as well as rendering this missive into an electronic format. I also thank Lauren Wagner for taping my dissertation defense, for which I will truly appreciate one day far into the future. To Dr. Mark Zetner, thank you for listening to my trials and tribulations as well as commenting when needed. Through our meetings I’ve learned that writing a dissertation and taking care of oneself are inextricably interrelated. Of course, there wouldn’t have been any call-in shows to observe or write about without the assistance and cooperation of the staff and participants of 2100: viii All People Open Talk and 8 o’clock Loud and Soft Voices. I particularly wish to thank Mr. Lee Tao and Mr. Yü Fu for welcoming me into their studios and offices as well as their production staffs for involving me in their daily routines while I conducted my fieldwork. I am eternally grateful for the unprecedented experience I had in having access to this truly remarkable group of people. I also wish to thank the staff at Always Speak Your Mind (有話老實講), Everybody Let’s Deliberate (大家來審判), Face-to-Face Debate (相對論), and Final Decision 2000 (決戰 2000) for allowing me to observe their call-in programs early in my research process. In closing, I thank my best friend, Tim Johnson (江天), for keeping me focused on my academic and personal goals by teaching me the art of multi- tasking. Our transnational vacations provided much needed respite from the dissertation as well as inspiration for finishing this project. From rallying me when my spirits were flagging during my fieldwork in Taipei to sustaining my motivation when I returned to Austin, thank you for your consistent confidence in me from the moment we met.