Communication crosstalk

Traditional Crosstalk and Interpersonal Communication in Public Places

03 radio and television news major

Qi Yunfei

"Crosstalk, pay attention to learning and teasing. One person said it was stand-up crosstalk, and the other two said it was counterpart crosstalk. " You see, I'm standing on the stage alone today. This is not a stand-up comedy. Not everyone can speak stand-up comedy. Today, let's discuss traditional cross talk.

Crosstalk is a traditional art form of Chinese Quyi. Actors mainly tell jokes, supplemented by opera, singing, martial arts and other art forms to "amuse" and try their best to make the audience laugh.

Crosstalk originated from the roadside. Simply put, street performers make a living, and actors stand down on the street or overpass, or fall to the ground, which is slightly different from the performance of singers singing in underground tunnels today. The crosstalk performer waited until the audience gathered around before telling jokes. This form seems to be very similar to street speeches in western countries, but the purpose of cross talk actors is different. At that time, of course, it was "please hold a money field."

Later, crosstalk gradually became "elegant". Actors perform in teahouses and theaters. The scale of the performance venue is not too large, and the actors and the audience are very close. After liberation, especially after the reform and opening-up, cross talk began to break away from the performance directly facing the audience on the stage and turned to television and radio on a large scale. Only a few places can still see the "live" performance of traditional cross talk. This paper mainly discusses cross talk performances outside radio and television, and the cross talk texts used are all traditional jokes.

1. Interpersonal communication or mass communication

In order to analyze the interpersonal communication elements of traditional cross talk more accurately, we must first define the communication attributes of traditional cross talk. According to Guo's Communication Course, "interpersonal communication is an information communication activity between individuals, and it is also a new information communication system composed of two individual systems." ; And "mass communication is a large-scale information production and communication activity aimed at the general public by specialized media organizations using advanced communication technology and industrialization means." .

Interpersonal communication is a multi-channel and multi-meaning communication mode, with strong two-way, timely feedback, high interaction and non-institutionalization; The disseminators of mass communication are generally specialized media, using advanced media to spread, the audience is the general public in society, and the communication is particularly one-way.

Traditional cross talk is between mass communication and interpersonal communication in communication mode, which is absolutely close to formal interpersonal communication.

The venue of traditional cross talk is random, and there is face-to-face communication between performers and audiences. During the performance, you can directly get feedback from the audience (applause, laughter, applause, boos), and you can make corresponding adjustments in time according to the feedback (this will be discussed later). The audience of crosstalk performance is generally northerners, or more accurately, people who are interested in the art of rap. The audience who are willing to spend money to listen to crosstalk in the "venue" is relatively fixed and relatively "small". In this way, traditional cross talk is closer to the style of interpersonal communication.

The traditional cross talk is obviously a "one-to-many" way of communication, which does not meet the general requirements of interpersonal communication: face-to-face communication between individuals. In my opinion, it can be understood that traditional cross talk constitutes a special kind of interpersonal communication in public places, and the communicator in public places and every "listener" constitute interpersonal communication, forming a collection of interpersonal communication in the whole public place.

After crosstalk entered the mass media (radio and television), the interpersonal communication relationship of traditional crosstalk was consumed by the mass media and gradually confused with other stage art forms, which became a way of mass communication.

2. Traditional crosstalk and communication

The performance of traditional cross talk is essentially a kind of communication or exchange between actors and audiences. Actors try to establish communication channels with the audience through their own performances (language), so that the audience can be "persuaded" to present a state of expectation (laughter or applause).

In the book Effective Communication, the author thinks that "communication is any process in which people share information, thoughts and emotions. This process includes not only spoken and written language, but also body language, personal habits and methods, physical environment-anything that gives meaning to information. "

From this definition, communication is a process of sharing, and traditional cross talk is also such a process of communication and sharing. Actors share the feelings of characters in cross talk with the audience by creating a temporary virtual situation. At the same time, communication is a process of mutual communication. In this process, the two sides of communication have completed the mutual exchange of some or more social resources. Crosstalk actors make the audience laugh, the audience laughs happily, and the actors get the signal that the performance is successful and confirm that their performance is correct.

As a way of interactive communication, the performance of traditional cross talk must conform to three principles of interactive communication:

First, people who communicate constantly send out messages simultaneously. In the process of cross talk performance, cross talk actors constantly convey information to the audience, and the audience constantly gives feedback-whether it is positive encouragement or silent disapproval;

Second, all communication has a past, a future and a present. The impression of the past gave the audience recognition of the actor's identity, but also gave the audience recognition of the actor's identity; In the dimension of "now", the audience and the actors depend on each other to complete the whole performance together; In the sense of "future", the audience expects or no longer expects the actor's next performance, while the actor is full of or loses confidence in the future;

Third, all communicators play a role. In cross talk performance, there is no doubt that the audience is standing or sitting under the stage, the actors are still or moving on the stage, and the roles have been naturally divided.

There are five common types of communication, namely internal communication, interpersonal communication, group communication, public communication and mass communication. As mentioned above, traditional cross talk should belong to public communication. In public communication, "sender-receiver (speaker) sends information to the audience". In traditional cross talk, actors convey a kind of information (performance content) to the audience in public communication (street, theater, teahouse, theater, etc.). ), this is an extended interpersonal communication or interpersonal communication.

3. Traditional crosstalk and communication in public places

This part of the analysis comes from the content of the crosstalk performance itself. Unfortunately, there is no directly available hand-in-hand theory to analyze this part. The existing communication theory regards speech or propaganda as the direct application of communication in public places, and the performance mode of cross talk is not included in the existing theory. Because we can't find the corresponding theory in the existing communication mode in public places for a complete matching analysis, we will use other theories of communication research and combine the text characteristics of traditional crosstalk to analyze it.

First of all, it should be clear that all the elements in the cross talk performance are to attract the attention of the audience and make the audience laugh.

(1) fixed field poetry-get attention

Traditional crosstalk performances, like storytelling, all begin with fixed poems. Set a poem, "It is a common habit to say stand-up crosstalk. When you enter the stage, you should say a few' opening remarks' first. Sometimes, I also say a few words of' Dingtian Poetry', which is also called' Shuyan'. Just like singing the immortal, coming to power first is a' fork'; Still pingtan, sing an' opening' first. " Now the cross talk we hear on TV and radio has no design of scenery-fixing poems.

Whether in the street or in the theater, the audience can't always be quiet before the actors begin to perform. Needless to say, there are tea seeds in the theater, which is not a quiet environment, and the audience is distracted and has no concentrated focus. Before the actor starts, he "speaks" a poem with a fixed scene, which directly plays a role in attracting attention and eyeballs. Corresponding to its function, scenery-fixing poems are light and humorous, which makes people laugh, but they may not be directly related to cross talk works. For example:

"Huang Xuan universe muddy heaven and earth, one year on August 15th met with spring.

What happened that year was so strange that it was scary to mention it.

Eggplants are planted with garlic, and old watermelons become gold nuggets.

Yabajie Youchun rode a bicycle, looked at Nandian, smiled, but burst into tears.

She cried with one eye, smiled with the other, and cried, Cheng Jin Yao, the husband of beautiful boy!

You died miserably, just because of the big sky. Liu Bowen killed you.

Angry at Mrs. Huang San, I shouldn't have killed Pan Qiaoyun with a Grenade.

At sixes and sevens hodgepodge, below, three halls gather together-Doulton! "

(2) Contrary to common sense-the source of humor

In daily life, there are many potential laws in the application of language. For example, "According to Grice's implicature theory, when people use language to communicate effectively, they are consciously or unconsciously observing a principle, that is, the cooperative principle, in order to achieve mutual understanding and cooperation, so as to achieve the purpose of conversation." However, in the process of cross talk performance, cross talk actors, or characters or plots described by cross talk actors, often violate the existing principles to cause special artistic effects.

For example:

"A: I was riding a pole and holding a cow. I shouted, good thief! What a thief!

B: Huh? Riding a pole and leading a cow? "

Another example is:

"Good thief! Good thief! I'll drop my weapon and spare me!

B: Huh? Surrender before fighting? "

(3) Repeated emphasis-creating a mimicry environment

Lippmann believes that the emergence of mass media has changed the way people know the world, and they have created a mimetic environment between people and the world for the audience. In this imitation environment, the media has the right to speak. Traditional crosstalk is between interpersonal communication and mass communication, and it also has some mass communication effects. Traditional crosstalk attempts to create a story-like mimicry environment for the audience during the performance. The actor's role change and the continuous strengthening of language make the audience gradually fully integrate into the plot, thus making the actor finally "flip three times and flip four times" and "shake the burden".

For example, in the cross talk "Meat Rotten in the Pot", the comedian never forgets to say "Meat Rotten in the Pot" from beginning to end to emphasize the mimicry environment created by the actor.

The above is only a brief analysis of the communication mode of traditional cross talk. We can see that traditional crosstalk, as a means of interpersonal communication in public places, has successfully induced interpersonal communication through various unconventional means, making the audience laugh. The interpersonal communication and mass communication methods used in traditional cross talk can be fully applied to interpersonal communication in public places for other purposes. In other words, traditional cross talk deals with audiences or problems in public. In addition, crosstalk is moving towards modernization and mass media, which actually loses some unique communication means or skills in the past. The gradual decline of cross talk is inevitable before the art of cross talk is updated and more suitable for mass media.