news and current affairs programmes broadcast on television or on the radio. Indeed, during election campaigns, politicians and candidates are expected to
submit themselves to regular televised interrogations from leading political jour- nalists and news interviewers. The majority of us, therefore, have some degree of
familiarity with the kinds of verbal activities which occur in news interviews.
Interaction in formal institutional settings
Drew and Heritage 1992b draw a distinction between two types of institutional settings: formal and informal. In formal settings we find that participation is
focused on particular tasks; that the order of participation is fairly rigid; and that the kind of turns expected of participants is limited, and to an extent pre-
allocated. This captures many of the features of interaction in news interviews.
News interviews have two kinds of participant: the interviewer and the interviewee hereafter the IR and IE, respectively. There is a clear ordering to
the interaction between the IR and the IE: they alternate turns at talk. Thus we can observe the following kind of pattern: the IR talks, then the IE, then the
IR and then the IE, and so on. Moreover, there is a clear difference in the kind of activity associated with each participant: so that we find IRs predominantly
tend to ask questions, and IEs predominantly tend to answer them. This IR–IE interaction can be characterised thus: question–answer–question–answer, and
so on. Immediately we can see that this is very different from ordinary con- versation, where there is much greater flexibility in both the ordering and
nature of participation.
What is interesting, however, is not merely that this is how interaction proceeds in news interviews, but that this is how participants tacitly
expect it to proceed. It is a normative arrangement which bestows obligations and
expectations on the participants in different ways. We can find evidence for this set of normative expectations if we consider some of the design features
of questions and answers. To illustrate, we will consider some properties of news interview interaction from Heritage and Greatbatch’s study.
Normative assumptions in news interview interaction
It is not uncommon to find that the IE’s questions will have two components: a preface, such as a statement of fact or what is offered as fact, and then a
question. So for example:
3.5 From Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991: 99
IR: ·hhh The . price being asked for these letters is . three thousand pou::nds.
Are you going to be able to raise it, 0.5
IE: At the moment it …
continues
METHOD AND CRITIQUE 57
Here there is a statement: ‘The . price being asked for these letters is . three thousand pou::nds.’, and then a question based on this statement ‘Are
you going to be able to raise it,’. The statement component of the turn is a complete turn construction unit;
at its completion, then, comes a transition relevance place: a location in which it would be appropriate for the IE to begin to speak. However, it is a routine
feature of news interviews that IEs will not begin to speak at the end of prefatory statements, but will wait until a question component has been delivered.
People invited to take part in news interviews understand that they are being asked because they have expertise in or opinions on particular issues, or
involvement in specific events or policies. It is often the case that the IEs will be precisely aware of the kinds of issues which will be raised during the inter-
view. It is therefore very likely that IEs can anticipate or will know in advance the topics which will come up during the interview. And a prefatory
statement will provide a clear signal as to the type of question which will be asked. But it is routinely the case that IEs will address the issue only when
a question has been formulated.
This tells us that IEs orient to the expectation that their contributions should be hearable as answers; and for that, they need a question to be delivered.
Furthermore, it tells us that there is an expectation that IRs should ask ques- tions. Moreover, that IEs do not initiate turns at the completion of prefatory
statements displays their understanding that a question is forthcoming.
What emerges, then, is a sense of the obligations and expectations attendant upon participation in a news interview. There is a normative framework which
sustains the distinctive kinds of contributions which IRs and IEs make. This normative framework explains why IEs are unlikely to address the topics
raised in prefatory statements directly after those statements they anticipate a forthcoming question. It also explains why IRs can design turns with non-
question components they share the normative understanding that IEs’ participation is contingent upon the production of a question.
This is a powerful normative framework, and it is relevant even when IEs are faced with prefatory statements which constitute significant challenges,
accusations and damaging characterisations, all of which are eventually disputed. Consider the following extract.
3.6 From Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991: 100
IR: ·hhh we What’s the difference between your
Marxism and Mister McGaehy’s Communism. IE:
er The difference is that it’s the press that constantly call me a Ma:rxist when I do not,
. and never have . er er given that description of myself.
hh I - IR:
But I ’ve heard you- I’ve heard you’d be very happy to: to:
58 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
关 兴
er ·hhhh er describe yourself as a Marxist. Could it be that with an election in the
offing you’re anxious to play down that you’re a Marx ist.
IE: er
Not at all Mister Da:y. =
And I’m . sorry to say I must disagree with you,
= you have
never heard me describe myself ·hhh er as a Ma:rxist.
= I have o:nly ...
continues
Heritage and Greatbatch observe that the IR has asked a question which assumes that the IE is a Marxist, and the IE has refuted this, claiming that it is
the press who have labelled him as a Marxist. However, the IR then makes a prefatory statement which takes issue with the IE’s response: ‘But I-’ve heard
you- I’ve heard you’d be very happy to: to: er ·hhhh er describe yourself as a Marxist’, and then asks a question: ‘Could it be that with an election in the
offing you’re anxious to play down that you’re a Marxist.’ This turn consti- tutes a potentially damaging challenge to the IE’s credibility, for several rea-
sons. First, the IE has claimed that he has never called himself a Marxist, which suggests that – at the very least – he has some reservations about Marxism; yet
the IR’s statement depicts the IE as sympathetic to the label and, by implica- tion, the views associated with it. Second, it offers an account for the IE’s resis-
tance to being called a Marxist: he is denying his true beliefs just to enhance his credibility with the electorate. Finally it suggests that at that moment in
the interview, the IE is being at best disingenuous, or worse, dishonest about his true political beliefs.
Perhaps the most damaging component of the IR’s turn is the claim that he personally has heard that the IE would welcome being called a Marxist. Yet
the IE does not attempt to address this at the transition relevance place at the end of the prefatory statement. Instead, he withholds participation until
a point when it is normatively appropriate for him to speak: after a question. And even here, the first component of the IE’s response deals albeit briefly
with the question component of the previous turn, not the more damaging prefatory statement. Only when the question has been addressed does the IE
go on to rebut the claim in the prefatory statement Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991: 123. So even when there are clear matters of some importance and
consequence, IEs will participate in normatively expected ways.
It is not only that participants in news interviews orient to the obligation to produce questions and answers; they orient to expectations about
the way those activities should be done. We will take the case of IE answers.
In the previous chapter, we discussed how turns at talk are built out of turn construction units; at the end of each one is a place where turn-transfer may
be initiated by a next speaker if a next speaker has not been identified by the current speaker. This means that extended turns – ones built from several
consecutive turn construction units – are not automatically available: they have to be designed so as to forestall possible other-initiated turns at transition
METHOD AND CRITIQUE 59
关 兴
