Investigating Media Discourse

Taking a closer look at spoken interactions in the media, including chat shows, interviews with celebrities, political interviews and radio phone-ins, this book draws upon radio and television extracts from around the English-speaking world, including high profile interviews with Tony Blair and George W. Bush.The main theoretical framework used in the book is influenced by Erving Goffman, where the media encounter is viewed as a three-way participation framework involving the broadcaster, interviewee and audience, all of whom shape the interaction. From this viewpoint, the interactions are analyzed to illustrate how interactions are managed, how pseudo relationships are established and maintained and how 'others' are created.Bringing together the methodologies of discourse analysis, conversation analysis and corpus linguistics, this book looks at the media extracts from a variety of perspectives in a practical way. The result is a wide range of sources, looked at using an eclectic range of methodologies and leading to numerous insights that any one of the methods could not have achieved alone.

Anne O'Keeffe is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the Department of English Language and Literature, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland

Acknowledgements

ix

Note on transcription conventions

x

1 Introduction

1

(13)

1.0 Introduction: media discourse

1

(2)

1.1 Media interactions and casual conversation

3

(7)

1.2 Overview of the book

10

(4)

2 A framework for analysing media discourse

14

(18)

2.0 Introduction

14

(1)

2.1 Towards a model for dyadic communication

15

(4)

2.2 Media interactions, institutionalized generic structure and genre

19

(2)

2.3 Utterance, genres and generic blends

21

(3)

2.4 Towards a working definition of genre for investigating media discourse

24

(3)

2.5 Generic activity, intertextuality and interdiscursivity

27

(1)

2.6 Media discourse as a generic structure with a socially binding forum

28

(2)

2.7 Conclusion

30

(2)

3 Review of methodologies for analysing media discourse

32

(30)

3.0 Introduction

32

(1)

3.1 Categorizing media interactions

32

(2)

3.2 Conversation analysis

34

(3)

3.3 Interactions with unknown personae

37

(7)

3.4 Interactions with known personae

44

(2)

3.5 Political interviews

46

(3)

3.6 A corpus-based approach

49

(5)

3.7 Integrating approaches

54

(6)

3.8 Conclusion

60

(2)

4 Managing the discourse

62

(28)

4.0 Introduction

62

(1)

4.1 The discoursal roles and personae of the media presenter

62

(3)

4.2 The media presenter within the participation framework

65

(4)

4.3 Responsibility common ground

69

(3)

4.4 Institutional power roles and questioning

72

(12)

4.5 Management and control: within and beyond syntax

84

(5)

4.6 Conclusion

89

(1)

5 Creating and sustaining pseudo–relationships

90

(37)

5.0 Introduction

90

(1)

5.1 Simulating intimacy between strangers in media discourse

90

(7)

5.2 Markers of pseudo-intimacy in media discourse

97

(28)

5.3 Conclusion

125

(2)

6 Creating identities

127

(29)

6.0 Introduction

127

(2)

6.1 Vague categorization as indices of shared knowledge

129

(5)

6.2 Pronouns as indices of audience identity

134

(21)

6.3 Self-reference 143 6.4 Conclusion

155

(1)

7 Conclusion

156

(4)

7.0 Introduction

156

(1)

7.1 Media interactions take place within a participation framework

156

(1)

7.2 Media interactions require an eclectic approach

157

(1)

7.3 Media interactions are not homogeneous

158

(2)

Notes

160

(2)

Bibliography

162

(14)

Index

176

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Investigating Media Discourse

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials