Orality and literacy in public discourse: An interview of Hannah Arendt

Abstract

Orality and literacy were investigated in a 1964 German television interview of Hannah Arendt by Günter Gaus and publications thereof. The interview itself was awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize (1964); and yet, the publications were extensively edited. This paradox raises the question: what was changed in this transition from successful oral performance to readable literate prose? Information regarding temporal organization was inevitably lost in the publications. Back channel signals, hesitations, contractions and elisions, and paralinguistic phenomena (e.g., laughter) were virtually eliminated. Turn-taking was regularized, and many discourse markers were removed. Comparisons with another prize-winning interview (Princess Diana with Martin Bashir; BBC, 1995) revealed optional, rather than prescriptive ways of being successful: although spoken syllables in both interviews were allocated to interviewers and interviewees in a 25% to 75% ratio, turns of both interviewer and interviewee were much longer in the Arendt than in the Princess Diana interview; Arendt spoke more slowly and used more hesitations than any other speaker; although both interviewers remained atypically off-camera, their styles were different. Gaus used frequent back-channeling, and Bashir none at all; Bashir articulated more slowly and less hesitantly, interrupted less frequently, and his pauses before taking his turns were twice as long as Gaus's. Characteristics of orality and literacy in excellent public discourse are discussed.