Cover not available
Article published In:
Language and Dialogue
Vol. 8:3 (2018) ► pp.390–413

Interviewing for accountability

Ideological framing and argumentation

 | Future University Hakodate (Japan)
 | University of Sydney (Australia)
During the National Policy Institute’s national conference in Washington D.C. on Saturday November 19th, 2016, Richard Spencer delivered a speech in praise of the election victory of President Donald Trump. Shortly after the conference, Spencer was an invited guest on the News One Now programme in which he participated in a 32-minute interview with black journalist, host and managing editor Roland Martin. Drawing attention to the ideological aspects of the Martin/Spencer interview performance, we adopt the analytical lens of the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Musolff 2014; Reisigl and Wodak 2009; Wodak 2001, 2009) to explore argumentation as a discursive strategy through topoi or argumentative warrants (Reisigl and Wodak 2009; Wodak 2009, 2011, 2015; Wodak and Boukala 2015).
Keywords: accountability, argumentation, news interview, topoi
Article outline
  • 1.Preamble
  • 2.The news media as source of opinionated fact
  • 3.The news interview as ideological confrontation
  • 4.Approaches to argumentation
  • 5.Methods
    • 5.1Pre-interview framing
    • 5.2Interview analysis
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00023.riv
References (51)
References
Amossy, Ruth. 2009. “The New Rhetoric’s Inheritance: Argumentation and Discourse Analysis.” Argumentation 231: 313–324. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Borschel, Audrey. 2009. Preaching Prophetically when the News Disturbs. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press.Google Scholar
Boukala, Salomi. 2016. “Rethinking Topos in the Discourse Historical Approach: Endoxon seeking and Argumentation in Greek Media Discourses on ‘Islamist Terrorism’.” Discourse Studies 18(3): 249–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bull, Peter and Anita Fetzer. 2006. “Who are we and who are you? The Strategic use of Forms of Address in Political Interviews.” Text & Talk 26(1): 3–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan. 2014. Analysing Political Speeches: Rhetoric, Discourse and Metaphor. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven. 1988. “Displaying Neutrality in Television News Interviews.” Social Problems 351: 474–492. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven and John Heritage. 2002. The News Interview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coleman, Renita and Stephen Banning. 2006. “Network TV News’ Affective Framing of the Presidential Candidates: Evidence for a Second-Level Agenda-Setting Effect through Visual Framing.” J&MC Quarterly 831: 313–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ekström, Mats. 2001 “Frågor, svar och icke-svar i politiska intervjuer: En samtalsanalys” [“Questions and Answers in Political Interviews”]. Nordicom Information 23(3): 57–74.Google Scholar
. 2009. “Announced Refusal to Answer: A Study of Norms and Accountability in Broadcast Political Interviews.” Discourse Studies 11(6): 681–702. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ekström, Mats and Marianna Patronas. 2011. Talking Politics in Broadcast News. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farr, Robert. 1984. “Interviewing: An Introduction to the Social Psychology of the Interview.” In Psychology for Managers, ed. by Peter Cooper and Cary Makin, 176–194. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita. 2006. “‘Minister, we will see how the public judges you’”: Media References in Political Interviews.” Journal of Pragmatics 38(2): 180–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fowler, Roger. 1991. Language in the News. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gill, Ann and Karen Whedbee. 1997. “Rhetoric.” In Discourse as Structure and Process, ed. by Teun van Dijk, 157–184. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Greatbatch, David. 1988. “A Turn-taking System for British News Interviews.” Language in Society 171: 401–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grue, Jan. 2009. “Critical Discourse Analysis, Topoi and Mystification: Disability Policy Documents from a Norwegian NGO.” Discourse Studies 11(3): 285–308. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hall, Stuart. 1977. “Culture, the Media and the ‘Ideological’ Effect.” In Mass Communication and Society, ed. by James Curran, Michael Gurevitch, and Janet Woollacott, 315–348. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Harris, Sandra. 1991. “Evasive Action: How Politicians Respond to Questions in Political Interviews.” In Broadcast Talk, ed. by Paddy Scannell, 76–99. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Harsin, Jayson. 2015. “Regimes of Posttruth, Postpolitics and Attention Economies.” Communication, Culture & Critique 81: 327–333. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John. 1985. “Analyzing News Interviews: Aspects of the Production of Talk for an Overhearing Audience.” In Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Teun van Dijk, 95–117. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hess-Lüttich, Ernest. 2007. “(Pseudo-) Argumentation in TV-Debates.” Journal of Pragmatics 391: 1360–1370. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hutchby, Ian. 2011. “Non-Neutrality and Argument in the Hybrid Political Interview.” Discourse Studies 13 (3): 349–365. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jutel, Olivier. 2013. “American Populism and the New Political Economy of the Media Field.” Political Economy of Communication 11: 26–42.Google Scholar
Kienpointner, Manfred. 2011. “Rhetoric.” In Pragmatics in Practice, ed. by Jan-Ola Ostman and Jef Verschueren, 264–277. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lauerbach, Gerda. 2007. “Argumentation in Political Talk Show Interviews.” Journal of Pragmatics 39 (8): 1388–1419. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lauerbach, Gerda and Karin Aijmer. 2007. “Argumentation in Dialogic Media Genres: Talk Shows and Interviews.” Journal of Pragmatics 39 (8): 1333–1341. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Luginbühl, Martin. 2007. “Conversational Violence in Political TV Debates: Forms and Functions.” Journal of Pragmatics 39 (8): 1371–1387. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNair, Brian. 2000. Journalism and Democracy: An Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Meehan, Eileen. 2005. Why TV is Not Our Fault: Television Programming, Viewers and Who’s Really in Control. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Montgomery, Martin. 2007. “The Discourse of the Broadcast News Interview: A Typology.” Journalism Studies 9(2): 260–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moulton, Janice. 1983. “A Paradigm of Philosophy: The Adversary Method.” In Discovering Reality, ed. by Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka, 149–64. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Musolff, Andreas. 2014. “Metaphor in the Discourse-Historical Approach.” In Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, ed. by Christopher Hart and Piotr Cap, 45–66. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
National Policy Institute. 2017. [URL]
Oxford Dictionaries. 2016. “Word of the Year 2016.” [URL].
ProPublica. 2017. “About Us.” [URL].
Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak. 2001. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2009. “The Discourse-Historical Approach.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Introducing Qualitative Methods, ed. by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, 87–121. 2nd ed. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Rivers, Damian J. and Andrew S. Ross. 2018. “An Integrated Approach to Non-Verbal Performance in the Hybrid Political Interview.” Journal of Pragmatics 1321: 59–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toulmin, Stephen. 1958/2003. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
van Rees, M. Agnes. 2007. “Discourse Analysis and Argumentation Theory: The Case of Television Talk.” Journal of Pragmatics 39 (8): 1454–1463. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walton, Douglas. 1996. Argumentation Schemes for Presumptive Reasoning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Weigand, Edda. 2006. “Argumentation: The Mixed Game.” Argumentation 201: 59–87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Willard, Charles Arthur. 1989. A Theory of Argumentation. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2001. “The Discourse-Historical Approach.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (1st edition), ed. by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, 63–95. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. The Discourse of Politics in Action. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
. 2011. The Discourse of Politics in Action, 2nd edition. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
. 2015. “Critical Discourse Analysis, Discourse-Historical Approach.” The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, 1–14.Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth and Salomi Boukala. 2015. “European Identities and the Revival of Nationalism in the European Union: A Discourse Historical Approach.” Journal of Language and Politics 14(1): 87–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar