Abstract |
Our initial research highlighted that during TV interviews there are certain reactions from interviewers (IRs) towards interviewees (IEs)' responses that differ from those in news interviews. For inst...ance, in news interviews IRs refrain from using any "receipt tokens" ( e.g. "mhm") or supportive actions, such as producing "continuers" (e.g. "hai", "un", "ee", etc.) or nodding. Conversely, in TV interviews, during IEs' responses, IRs not only produce "continuers", which have no substantive contents, but also initiate short and quick utterances, which do have substantive contents. By using a conversation analytic method, this paper examines the reasons why IRs initiate these utterances during IEs' responses, how IRs' utterances function both in relation to the production of responses by IEs, as well as in the process of interviews, and how the distinctive institutional characteristics of TV interviews influence the interaction between IRs and IEs. We observe that IRs' utterances are indeed used to facilitate both the production of IEs' responses and the process of interviews, but that occasionally these utterances also hinder the process. In addition, IRs behave as active listeners who are highly involved in interviews and have a significant role in constructing TV interviews as a form of institutional discourse.show more
|