This paper investigates how political subjectivity is framed and expressed through language use in television political interviews. The paper argues that Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field provide a useful framework for analyses of political subjectivity in news media interviews, but it also argues that the more sociological emphasis of Bourdieu’s theory cannot sufficiently account for the constitutive importance of discourse in the agency of the habitus and the boundaries and authority of different fields. As such, the analysis also draws on critical discourse analysis to demonstrate how Prime Ministerial discourse involves negotiations of different constitutive features of an individual subjectivity, and also negotiations between a particular habitus and the exigencies of the journalistic and political fields. Through an analysis of interviews of former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on influential Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) programmes, Insiders and the 7.30 Report, it is argued that the Prime Minister attempts to exercise political authority through an ensemble of discourses, initiating different relations with the interviewers, political colleagues and opponents, leading public figures in other fields, and the Australian public.
Alexander, Jeffrey. (1995). Fin de Siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason. London: Verso.
Ankersmit, Frank. 2003. “Democracy’s Inner Voice: Political Style as Unintended Consequence of Political Action.” In Media and the Restyling of Politics, ed. by John Corner, and Dick Pels, 19–40. London: Sage.
Barnett, Clive. (2003). Culture and Democracy: Media, Space and Representation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Bennett, W. Lance, and Robert M. Entman (eds). (2001). Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benson, Rodney. 1999. “Field Theory in Comparative Context: A New Paradigm for Media Studies.”Theory and Society 28 (3): 463–498. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1006982529917.
Benson, Rodney, and Eric Neveu. 2005. “Introduction: Field Theory as a Work in Progress.” In Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, ed. by Rodney Benson, and Erik Neveu, 1–25. Malden, MA: Polity.
Blondel, Jeanet al.. (2010). Political Leadership, Parties and Citizens: The personalisataion of Leadership. London: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Oxford: Polity.
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1998). On Television. New York: New Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. “Habitus.” In Habitus: A Sense of Place, ed. by Jean Hillier, and Emma Rooksby, 27–36. Ashgate: Aldershot.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2005. “The Political Field, the Social Science Field, and the Journalistic Field.” In Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, ed. by Rodney Benson, and Erik Neveu, 29–47. Malden, MA: Polity.
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. (2005). Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Chilton, Paul. (2004). Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge.
Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Norman Fairclough. (1999). Discourse in Late Modernity: Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Clayman, Steven. 2004. “Arenas of Interaction in the Mediated Public Sphere.”Poetics 321: 29–49.
Clayman, Steven, and John Heritage. (2002). The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures on the Air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Corner, John. 2003. “Mediated Persona and Political Culture.” In Media and the Restyling of Politics, ed. by John Corner, and Dick Pels, 67–84. London: Sage.
Corner, John, and Dick Pels (eds). (2003). Media and the Restyling of Politics. London: Sage.
Crabb, Annabel. 2009. “Is Kevin the new Barry McKenzie?” smh.co.au. June 13, Accessed February 5, 2010, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/is-kevin-the-new-barry-mckenzie-20090612-c61u.html.
Craig, Geoffrey. (2004). The Media, Politics and Public Life. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Craig, Geoffrey. 2008. “Kevin Rudd and the Framing of Politics and Political Leadership in News Media Interviews.”Communication, Politics & Culture 41 (2): 84–99.
Craig, Geoffrey. 2010a. Dialogue and Dissemination in News Media Interviews. Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 11 (1): 75–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1464884909349582.
Crossley, Nick. 2001. “The Phenomenological Habitus and its Construction.”Theory and Society 30 (1): 81–120.
Darras, Eric. 2005. “Media Consecration of the Political Order.” In Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, ed. by Rodney Benson, and Erik Neveu, 156–173. Malden, MA: Polity.
Davis, Aeron, and Emily Seymour. 2010. “Generating Forms of Media Capital Inside and Outside a Field: The Strange Case of David Cameron in the UK Political Field.”Media, Culture & Society 32 (5): 739–759. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163443710373951.
Ekström, Mats. 2001. “Politicians Interviewed on Television News.”Discourse and Society 12 (5): 563–584.
Fairclough, Norman. (1995). Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.
Fetzer, Anita. 2006. “‘Minister, We Will See How the Public Judges You.’ Media References in Political Interviews.”Journal of Pragmatics 381: 180–195.
Horton, Donald, and Richard Wohl. 1993. “Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction.” In Communication Studies: An Introductory Reader, 4th edn, ed. by John Corner, and Jeremy Hawthorn, 156–164. London: Arnold.
Hutchby, Ian. 2005. “News Talk: Interaction in the Broadcast News Interview.” In Journalism: Critical Issues, ed. by Stuart Allan, 210–223. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Kenny, Mark. 2009. “Kevin Rudd Discovers a New Language – Strine.” Couriermail.com.au. June 9, Accessed February 5, 2010, www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25614313–23272,00.html.
Marshall, P. David. (1997). Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Miller, Barbara. 2009. “Ruddisms and Shaky Language Under Scrutiny.”The World Today. June 11, Accessed February 5, 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2595423.htm.
Noble, Greg, and Megan Watkins. 2003. “So, How Did Bourdieu Learn to Play Tennis? Habitus, Consciousness and Habituation.”Cultural Studies 17 (3/4): 520–538. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950238032000083926.
Northhouse, Peter G. 2001. Leadership Theory and Practice, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Pels, Dick. 2003. “Aesthetic Representation and Political Style: Re-balancing Identity and Difference in Media Democracy.” In Media and the Restyling of Politics, ed. by John Corner, and Dick Pels, 41–66. London: Sage.
Probyn, Elspeth. 2004. “Shame in the Habitus.”The Editorial Board of the Sociological Review 521: 224–248.
Reisigl, Martin. 2008. “Rhetoric of Political Speeches.” In Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Veronika Koller, 243–269. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Reisigl, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. 2001. “Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism.” London: Routledge.
Schudson, Michael. 2005. “Autonomy from What?” In Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, ed. by Rodney Benson, and Erik Neveu, 214–223. Malden, MA: Polity.
Street, John. 2003. “The Celebrity Politician: Political Style and Popular Culture.” In Media and the Restyling of Politics, ed. by John Corner, and Dick Pels, 85–98. London: Sage.
Thompson, John. 1991. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Language and Symbolic Power, ed. by Pierre Bourdieu, 1–31. Oxford: Polity.
Thompson, John. (1995). The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge: Polity.
Thompson, John. (2000). Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age. Cambridge: Polity.
Toohey Brian. 2009. “How Many Kevin Rudds Are Out There?” Canberratimes.com.au. 15 June, Accessed February 5, 2010, http://www.canberratimes.com.au/blogs/brian-toohey/how-many-kevin-rudds-are-out-there/1540745.aspx?storypage=1#.
Washbourne, Neil. (2010). Mediating Politics: Newspapers, Radio, Television and the Internet. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Webb, Jen, Tony Schirato, and Geoff Danaher. (2002). Understanding Bourdieu. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Wodak, Ruth. (2011). The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Wodak, Ruth, and Veronika Koller (eds). (2008). Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Wodak, Ruth, Winston Kwon, and Ian Clarke. 2011. “‘Getting People on Board’: Discursive Leadership for Consensus Building in Team Meetings.”Discourse & Society 22 (5): 592–644.
Wren, J. Thomas. (2007). Inventing Leadership: The Challenge of Democracy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Collado-Campaña, Francisco, José Francisco Jiménez-Díaz & Francisco Entrena-Durán
2016. El liderazgo político en las democracias representativas: propuesta de análisis desde el constructivismo estructuralista. Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales 61:228 ► pp. 57 ff.
Donnelly, Susie
2016. Sins of the father: unravelling moral authority in the Irish Catholic Church. Irish Journal of Sociology 24:3 ► pp. 315 ff.
Willig, Ida
2016. Field Theory and Media Production: A Bridge-Building Strategy. In Advancing Media Production Research, ► pp. 53 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.