Impoliteness in US/UK talent shows: a diachronic study of the evolution of a genre

Abstract

Reality television (RTV) has been under considerable scrutiny within the academic fields of media/cultural studies and, to a lesser extent, linguistics. Here, and within the context of ‘exploitative reality shows’, research has focused on impoliteness by lay participants (for example, Bousfield 2007, 2008; Culpeper 1996; Culpeper, Bousfield & Wichmann 2003) and ‘experts’, ranging from forthright property and lifestyle gurus and no-nonsense courtroom judges to draconian entrepreneurs, and offensively witty quiz presenters or judges (Culpeper 2005; Garces-Conejos Blitvich et al. 2013; Lorenzo-Dus, 2006a, 2006b, 2008, 2009a, 2009b). These shows, moreover, are seen as representative of a ‘rise of spectacular incivility’ in the media, that is, of a rise of incivility as spectacle or as conscious performance for the purposes of entertainment (Lorenzo-Dus 2009a). RTV has arguably experienced increasing levels of, predominantly, verbal conflict and aggression over time (Coyne et al. 2010; Crook et al. 2004; Culpeper 2005; Holmes 2004; Redden 2008; Turner 2010). Yet, to our knowledge, no empirical analysis has been conducted of levels of impoliteness over time in these shows, despite the proven links between (i) verbal conflict and impoliteness in the media (see, for example, Lorenzo-Dus 2007) and (ii) verbal conflict and the evolution of media genres such as the talk show (Hess-Luttich 2007) and the news interview (Garces-Conejos Blitvich 2009).