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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 17:3 (2018) ► pp.405–427

Morality, loyalty and eloquence

Conversational challenges and resources in a televised confrontational dialogue

| Bar Ilan University |
| The David Yellin College of Education |

The new dialogic, conversational nature of television broadcast news (Hamo, 2009) poses a challenge to traditional commentators, who are forced to move from an authoritative monologue to a confrontational dialogue that requires additional flexibility and conversational skills. The paper focuses on an Israeli case study which presents a confrontational dialogue in which one of the discussants is an experienced military correspondent and commentator. We demonstrate the various resources he uses in order to cope with a complex discursive challenge by using multimodal tools, both verbal and visual (Kress 2010; Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001; Jewitt and Oyama 2001).

Besides interrupting his interlocutor’s eloquent discourse in any possible way, demonstrating his well-known direct and involved television persona, the military correspondent employs institutional discursive resources such as using authoritative voice and taking the role of the mediator. Concession structures (Anscombre 1985) reflect his inner moral conflict toward the issue (Livnat 2012).

Keywords: televised confrontational dialogue, conversational challenges, conversational resources, military commentator, multimodal analysis
Article outline
  • 1.The Israeli context
  • 2.The case
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Part A
    • 3.2Part B
    • 3.3Part C
  • 4.Discursive challenges in a multi-conflictual confrontation
    • 4.1Professionalism
    • 4.2Morality and loyalty
    • 4.3Eloquence
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.17001.liv
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