i.iii)Defining “Genre” and “Political Discourse”

i.iii)Defining “Genre” and “Political Discourse”

Bhatia points out that “each genre is an instance of a successful achievement of a specific communication purpose using conventionalised knowledge of linguistic and discourse resources. Since each genre, in certain important respects, structures the narrow world of experience or reality in a particular way, the implication is that the same experience or reality will require a different way of structuring, if one were to operate in a different genre” (1993:16). Since political interview has specific communication goals, which are, first and foremost, to persuade and influence the audience, and it uses conventionalised ways of achieving them, this thesis understands political interview as a genre of political discourse. A similar view is taken by Johansson, who states: “The political interview is a genre in which the construction of meaning occurs at the intersection of two institutional discourses, both of which are culturally produced: the discourse of the media and that of politics” (2007:141).

Van Dijk (2001) draws attention to the fact that political discourse is sometimes incorrectly regarded as a genre, however, “it is not a genre, but a class of genres defined by a social domain, namely that of politics. [...] Thus, government deliberations, parliamentary debates, party programs, and speeches by politicians, are among the many genres that belong to the domain of politics” (2001:5).

When delimiting political discourse, it is important to stress that it takes the form of “institutional discourse” (Van Dijk 2001:6). This means that “only those discourses of politicians are considered that are produced in institutional settings, such as governments, parliaments or political parties. [...] The discourse must be produced by the speaker in her professional role of a politician and in an institutional setting” (2001:6). In addition, “discourse is political when it accomplishes a political act in a political institution, such as governing, legislation, electoral campaigning, and so on” (2001:6).

i.iv)Political Interview and Its Features

Political interviews take place in institutional settings, i.e. a TV or radio station. The interviewer is a professional journalist, the interviewee is a politician who represents his/her party. The role of interviewer is to control the dialogue, ask questions that are challenging and try to reveal negative details of political affairs. In addition, they “strive to deliver an up-to-date and interesting perspective on events and on their main protagonists” (Lauerbach 2007:1393). The interviewer should also focus on questions which the audience would like to be answered. “The result is a more or less adversarial interview which in one-on-one interviews is characterized by an argumentative structure where politicians defend their standpoints against the interviewers who take the perspective of a critical audience” (Lauerbach 2007:1394).

Politicians express their opinions and standpoints and present their arguments in order to influence and convince potential voters. They try to sound persuasive and look positive in front of their audience. As Wilson points out, “politicians use words and sentences in an emotive manner; it is part of their aim to create a feeling of solidarity, to arouse emotions such as fear, hate or joy” (1990:18-19). They use various linguistic means to modify the illocutionary force of their utterances so that they show involvement with their statements or detachment from them. In my corpus, linguistic means showing involvement of the speaker prevail over those of detachment, which will be shown in detail in the following sections of this thesis.

The skill of good argumentation is also important in political discourse. Argumentation is considered “as an interactionally organized activity and as social practice [...] Argumentation is both the process and product of an exchange of opposing positions by opposing co-participants whose goal is to find out whether arguments are acceptable, appropriate, true and sincere and to convince the other(s) of the validity of their argument” (Fetzer 2007:1345). Additionally, Fetzer states that in the genre of political interview “argumentation is neither employed primarily as a source of gaining knowledge, nor as a means of finding or proving the validity of an argument, but rather as a means of persuading a potential electorate represented by the second-frame audience to support a political position or to cast their votes for a political party” (2007:1350).

Lauerbach (2007) regards argumentation as an “essentially dialogic discourse practice” since “claim and challenge, claim and counterclaim are prototypically realised in dialogic form. In addition, challenges are prototypically realised as questions that expect satisfaction of the challenge in the answer” (2007:1390).

The relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee is asymmetrical as “the institutional power to organize the talk is held by the interviewer [...]. While the starting-point is based on questions, and the interviewee (IE) has a genre-specific constraint to answer them, s/he may have a certain freedom in answering and developing the topic - or s/he may seize it” (Johansson 2007:140). The topics discussed in political interviews are associated with current news events. As regards the audience, it may or may not be present in the studio. It depends on the kind of interview if the viewers are allowed to participate or not.