The news radio interview as verbal fencing: structure and function of confrontation talk episodes

Abstract

According to Martin (1985) genre is a structured activity, oriented to a goal which speakers as members of a particular culture aim to. Therefore, the news interview presents its own structure: a question/answer interaction between a journalist and an interviewed public figure. The content of the interview is predictable: the journalist proposes current affairs subjects which may interest the audience. Precisely, the fact that the interview is some kind of show for an audience that causes not only the interviewer but also the interviewed to use strategies with particular aims, in order too build both their faces. This activity is developed especially in disagreement chunks. In this paper, different aspects of the news interview are determined focusing on confrontation talk episodes registered in twenty-three cases from different broadcast radio programs.