Publications
Publication details [#63589]
Feldman, Ofer and Ken Kinoshita. 2017. Do important questions demand respectful replies? Analyzing televised political interviews in Japan. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 27 (1) : 121–157.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/japc
Annotation
This paper examines the attributes of questions asked during televised political interviews in Japan. It details the type, style, and mode of questions posed during broadcast programs to national- and local-level politicians, and nonpoliticians, including experts in different areas. Based on data gathered during 2012–2013 from three interview programs, the paper provides criteria for identifying questions and distinguishing them from other expressions, differentiates the diverse types of questions, and proposes new criteria to analyze interviewers’ questions. Furthermore, the paper replicates and modifies the “Theory of Equivocation” to examine how Japanese interviewees cope with the communicative problems posed to them during televised political interviews and the effects of these questions on the interviewees’ replies.