Political Interviews Research Articles

Effects of the interpreter’s political awareness on pronoun shifts in political interviews

Abstract This paper investigates the critical role of the interpreter’s political awareness in interpreting high-level political interviews in China, and its effects on pronoun shifts. Using former Chinese Premier Zhu’s debut press conference in 1998 as a case study, the study examines in detail the pronoun shifts of a China’s Foreign Ministry senior interpreter prompted by her political awareness. It identifies four types of pronoun shifts: (1) from first-person singular pronoun (“I”) to first-person plural pronoun (“we”); (2) from active voice with first-person plural pronoun as subject to passive voice; (3) from pronoun to a third-party noun; and (4) replacement of a noun with an interactant pronoun. The paper considers implications of these findings in relation to relevant studies and to the macro-social institutional context in which the political interpreting is conducted. The paper argues that this type of political awareness is a form of socio-institutional cognition inculcated and developed through the interpreter’s diplomatic identity, their understanding of socio-institutional requirements, strict training and a large quantity of supervised practice.

Argumentation in Political Interview: Critical Discourse Analysis of Abdurrahman Wahid’s Controversial Regime

Abdurrahman Wahid (Gus Dur) was dismissed as a president in 2001 due to his controversial acts. Australia Corporation (2001) conducted political interview to talk about his dismissal and the parliament, which against him. This article observes microstructure analysis in Abdurrahman Wahid interview. It presents a new way to analyse the Microstructures by providing the reader with illocutionary act analysis as well to support the ‘Action’ of the discourse (Wahid’s utterances). Humanism thought, which underlies his positive actions towards his dismissal, is used. Six values of Wahid are divinity, humanity, justice, equality, liberty, and local wisdom . Then, his leadership is worth appreciating as a charismatic leadership due to his positive (humanism) actions. Findings show that Wahid uses the positive acts toward his dismissal and people who against him. This article suggests for the future researchers to discuss more detail about the whole theory of Teun Van Dijk (Macrostructures, Microstructures and Superstructures).

Análise de estratégias de argumentação e polidez verbal no gênero entrevista televisiva

Este artigo tem por objetivo avaliar as estratégias de argumentação e de polidez verbal envolvidas em uma interação face a face a fim de observar como se relacionam esses procedimentos em um contexto coercitivo aos interagentes, a saber, uma entrevista televisiva de teor político. Efetuaremos esse estudo à luz das teorias da argumentação propostas pela nova retórica de Chaïm Perelman e Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca (1970) e, no que tange à polidez verbal, nos basearemos em pesquisas de Brown e Levinson (1978, 1987), complementadas posteriormente por Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1996), no intuito de melhor compreender como se configura o processo de argumentação e de preservação de face no decorrer da interação. Como procedimentos metodológicos, realizaremos a transcrição do corpus selecionado conforme o modelo proposto pelo projeto NURC/SP. A argumentação e os mecanismos de polidez parecem se entrelaçar para que se cumpra na interação o papel comunicativo e social da linguagem.

Grammatical Forms and Functions in Selected Political Interviews of Nigerian Presidential Aspirants in 2015 General Elections

<p><em>Political interviews are one of the ways by which political office-seekers in Nigeria sell themselves to the electorates. Extant studies have examined the discourse of political interviews from conversational, philosophical, rhetorical, stylistic and pragmatic perspectives with insufficient attention paid to grammatical forms and communicative intentions of the interviews granted by the two presidential aspirants in 2015 Nigerian General election. This study therefore fills this scholarly gap with the aim of unmasking their grammatical forms and communicative styles, intention and credibility. The paper adopts Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar specifically interpersonal function coupled with Searle’s model of Speech Acts Theory as theoretical framework. A total of six interviews granted by the two presidential aspirants in media serve as the source of our data. It is discovered that, in most cases, politicians’ communicative intention is to “pull down” their political opponents. While declaratives and interrogatives are simple, direct and straightforward, the intention is to condemn, lambast and castigate their opponents. This communicative style does not allow the general populace to decipher the political manifestoes of the political aspirants and the party they represent. The paper recommends that before Nigeria can boast of any sustainable growth and development, there is the need for her political office-seekers to adopt effective communication strategies and styles to unveil their intention and manifestoes so that electorates can evaluate their performance after their tenure of office.</em></p>

Hedging in political interviewing

Abstract This study presents an analysis of hedging strategies employed by the former president of the United States, Barack Obama, in political interviewing. Using a discourse-analytic procedure, the study investigates a corpus of 22 press interviews and verifies the presence of hedging-related discursive strategies in the President’s responses. It also identifies four specific interrelated discourse moves: ‘Reformulating the interviewer’s question’, ‘Expanding the scope of the original question sequence’, ‘Switching the time frame of the question context’, ‘Recasting the question reference from specific to general terms’. It is suggested that President Obama manages to avoid explicit responses to questions about controversial issues through hedging strategies, which shift the focus of the interviewer’s question to different interrogative formats, time frames and reference perspectives.

An integrated approach to non-verbal performance in the Hybrid Political Interview

During the National Policy Institute's (NPI) 2016 annual conference, Director Richard Spencer gave a speech in praise of the election victory of President Donald Trump. Spencer concluded his address proclaiming, “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail Victory!” after which several audience members were recorded performing Nazi salutes. Three days after the conference speech, Spencer was an invited guest on the NewsOne Now programme where he participated in a 32-min televised interview with black journalist, host and managing editor of the programme Roland Martin. Using the Martin/Spencer interview as a case study, this article draws from Ekman's (2004) taxonomy of non-verbal behavior to examine the contribution of non-verbal performance to the Hybrid Political Interview (HPI) (Hutchby, 2011, 2017). While the linguistic properties of the HPI have been detailed, the attention given to the non-verbal performance of the participants has been underwhelming even though most HPIs are televised events. Our analysis focuses upon three specific action-opposition sequences in which Martin and Spencer cycle back-and-forth between interview and argument conventions. Within these sequences we demonstrate how non-verbal performance provides an additional layer of analysis and understanding as part of an integrated approach alongside the linguistic features of the HPI.

The construction of political journalism: A microanalytic approach

In this article, the construction of political journalism is analysed from the perspective of microanalysis. Four published studies are reviewed, based on two specific journalistic contexts: broadcast political interviews (Bull, 2003; Bull and Elliott, 1998; Elliott and Bull, 1996), and news bulletins (Bull et al., 2014). In addition, a further illustrative example is presented, based on a previously unpublished analysis of a television interview with the current British Prime Minister (PM), Theresa May. In the study of the television news, editing techniques of de-contextualization and re-contextualization are identified and discussed in the context of interpretive journalism. All the analyses of interviews are focused specifically on how equivocal responses by politicians occur in response to interviewer questions, which create communicative conflicts through threats to face. From this perspective, equivocal and evasive discourse in political interviews needs to be understood in the broader context of questioning techniques as utilised by political journalists, not simply ascribed to the intrinsic slipperiness of individual politicians. Hence, these studies are of particular relevance to one of the main themes of this special issue, to “journalistic ways of contesting and reclaiming representations of facts”.

Когнітивно-комунікативні аспекти стратегії введення в оману адресата (на матеріалі політичного інтерв’ю з Д. Трампом)

Когнітивно-комунікативні аспекти стратегії введення в оману адресата (на матеріалі політичного інтерв’ю з Д. Трампом)

СТРУКТУРНО-ЖАНРОВАЯ СПЕЦИФИКА АМЕРИКАНСКОГО ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОГО ИНТЕРВЬЮ: АРГУМЕНТАТИВНО-РИТОРИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ

The article examines the structure of a political interview genre from the viewpoint of rhetoric and argumentation by the material of the American pre-election interviews. The analysis allowed the author to identify three stages of an interview: an opening stage, a key stage - discussion and a final stage. The specificity of these stages is described considering their structure, functioning, typical strategies and speech stereotypes. Moreover, the author identifies the type of an entertaining political interview which is characterized by deviations from the established parameters.

社交网络媒体的批评性话语研究——以YouTube上的一则中英政论访谈节目为例

社交网络媒体的批评性话语研究——以YouTube上的一则中英政论访谈节目为例

The accountability interview revisited: De-constructing anti-abortion discourse in Spain

This paper adopts a case study approach to the investigation of the genre of the accountability interview. It zooms in on one particular political interview that was broadcast on Spanish television...

Corpus Evidence for Evidentials in English and Serbian Political Interviews

Corpus Evidence for Evidentials in English and Serbian Political Interviews

The question of politeness in political interviews

Abstract This paper examines the question of politeness in political interviews, looking particularly at the use of loaded questions. Comparison is made between the two principal paradigms of politeness, Locher and Watts (2005) and Brown and Levinson (1987). The paper focuses on the interviewing style of Steven Sackur (HARDtalk, BBC) who employs loaded questions in his political interviews in keeping with the analysis of Walton (1991) who argues that loaded questions can function as a ‘reasonable’ means to constrain the response of an interviewee and in turn further discourse. Sackur employs loaded questions selectively to convey and reinforce a presupposition to which an interviewee is not committed. In so doing, he is able to constrain the contribution of his interviewee. Loaded questions are a linguistic means of (im)politeness used strategically by Sackur to further the discourse of his interviews.

What does ‘emergency’ mean?

Abstract This article analyzes political interviews, focusing on the corrections made by the interviewees in their answers, from a comparative perspective. The data included both Romanian and Italian language interviews, published in print and online media. Two criteria for the classification of corrections have been identified, one regarding the target of the correction and one regarding the form in which the correction is made. The results show that content-oriented corrections are the most frequent type in both corpora, while mitigated corrections appeared more often in the Italian corpus than in the Romanian one. The politicians interviewed use corrections in order to reject the interviewer’s stance and to demonstrate a better understanding or knowledge of the topic discussed.

Manipulative uses of pragmatic markers in political discourse

Pragmatic markers comprise a functional class of linguistic items that do not typically change the propositional meaning of an utterance but are essential for the organization and structuring of discourse, for marking the speaker’s attitudes to the proposition being expressed as well as for facilitating processes of pragmatic inferences. Pragmatic marker research has been characterised by descriptive approaches: even case studies that take their data from political discourse tend to focus on linguistic patterns of co-occurrence and sequentiality rather than social-institutional norms or broader societal concerns. The novelty of this article is, therefore, in linking pragmatic marker research, a primarily discourse analytical, language-oriented field to the broader field of Discourse Studies with a focus on manipulative social practices and their manifestations in discursive strategies. This article analyses evidential markers, general extenders, quotation markers and markers of (un)certainty1 in political interviews broadcasted by the BBC, CNN and Hungarian ATV. After a short overview of the formal and functional characteristics of pragmatic markers and their relevance to Discourse Studies in general and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) research in particular, characteristics of the political interview as political discourse, institutional discourse and media(tised) discourse are discussed. In the second part, the results of previous (primarily descriptive and genre analytical) research are reconsidered from the perspective of CDA and particular pragmatic markers are associated with manifestations of manipulative intent, such as suppression, polarization, recontextualising, conversationalisation and intended ambiguity. An important finding of this study is that a single pragmatic marker can serve several manipulative functions, while a given manipulative strategy is potentially realized by a variety of pragmatic items. Potential manipulative uses are exemplified with a view to applying the heuristic to the analysis of representations of particular political events and happenings, which is a direction for further research.

Do important questions demand respectful replies?

Abstract This paper examines the attributes of questions asked during televised political interviews in Japan. It details the type, style, and mode of questions posed during broadcast programs to national- and local-level politicians, and nonpoliticians, including experts in different areas. Based on data gathered during 2012–2013 from three interview programs, the paper provides criteria for identifying questions and distinguishing them from other expressions, differentiates the diverse types of questions, and proposes new criteria to analyze interviewers’ questions. Furthermore, the paper replicates and modifies the “Theory of Equivocation” to examine how Japanese interviewees cope with the communicative problems posed to them during televised political interviews and the effects of these questions on the interviewees’ replies.

Impoliteness and Thematic Variation in Spanish Television Interviews

This paper analyses Spanish television interviews and presents a contrast between the impolite argumentative strategies employed by the interviewer to attack the image of the interviewee in interviews with politicians and celebrities. It aims to demonstrate how the topic addressed and the subtype of interview influence the strategies employed and degree of impoliteness shown by the interviewer. The analysis of our corpus has shown that the current television interview differs from the traditional format of this genre in a number of respects. Impoliteness is used in Spanish interviews in order to attract the audience and to build the journalist’s face in political interviews as participants in ideological confrontation. Nevertheless, the detailed study of the impoliteness strategies employed by the interviewer has shown that the modification of features largely depends on the subtype examined. We observed in television celebrity interviews a wider range of strategies of verbal impoliteness, which are absent from political interviews. This explains why a variationist perspective has been adopted in the analysis of verbal impoliteness.

Failures in Leadership

Abstract This paper examines how Japanese leading politicians deal with the communicative problems posed to them during broadcast political interviews. Based on data gathered during 14-month period in 2012–2013, the paper replicates and modifies the “Theory of Equivocation” to explore the extent to which national and local level politicians endeavor to affect the content of information distributed to the public and to influence the way people perceive events that take place in the public domain. Differentiating among selected groups of politicians, i.e., ruling and opposition parties’ members, Cabinet ministers and prime ministers, and local level politicians, the paper focuses on the ways Japanese politicians (and for comparison also nonpoliticians) equivocate during televised programs and the conditions underlying this equivocation, thereby also assesses the significance of these talk shows in the broader context of political communication in Japan.

Entertainment, Intelligent, or Hybrid Programming? An Automated Content Analysis of 12 Years of Political Satire Interviews

ABSTRACTThe research considers the balance of intellectual versus entertainment-oriented individuals appearing as interview guests on political satire programs. Specifically, the analysis employs semi-supervised learning to categorize the occupations of individuals appearing on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report between 2003 and 2014 (N = 3,507). The results confirm that satire programs have become an important outlet for politicians and journalists looking to connect with a younger audience. More often than not, these guest appearances privilege a newsworthy and intellectually oriented discussion of contemporary issues and ideas as opposed to the promotion of entertainment content. Important to note, the data set represents the largest body of political satire content analyzed to date and the results confirm the value of applying automated and semi-supervised learning coding within communication research. We conclude by discussing the methodological contributions of our coding process, future directions for political comedy research, and the scalable potential of automated coding efforts.

A PRAGMATIC STUDY OF STRATEGIC MANEUVERING IN SELECTED POLITICAL INTERVIEWS

This study deals with strategic maneuvering in selected political interviews from the pragmatic point of view represented by two interviews with: Cheney and Obama. It falls in five sections; section one is an introduction, section two provides a literature review on strategic maneuvering and the related pragmatic theories to the current study, section three is to develop a model for the process of strategic maneuvering analysis, section four is about the analysis of the data, and section five sums up the conclusions. The study attempts to investigate strategic maneuvering strategies and stages. To achieve such aims, a model is developed for the analysis of strategic maneuvering in the selected political interviews. The findings of the analysis verify the hypotheses represented by the process of strategic maneuvering stages, and strategies in the two selected political interviews.