Yamaoka, Y., (2011) “The analysis of an interview on BBC breakfast: A comparative study with political interviews.”, Essex Student Journal 4(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.5526/esj120

Introduction

Since the study on talk in courtrooms by Atkinson and Drew (1979), ‘institutional talk’, talk-in-interaction in socially specialized settings such as news interviews and emergency calls has attracted the attention of conversation analysts. In particular, they attempt to inquire how the actions of participants function to demonstrate their identity and accomplish their tasks in the particular talk (Heritage and Clayman, 2010, p.17). These objects of the study are pursued with a certain notion of context in which interactions are accomplished.

Context of talk is sometimes perceived as a ‘bucket’ or ‘container’, as if it is predetermined before the interaction and has certain constraints on the talk (ibid., p.21; Hutchby and Wooffit, 2008, p.139). If this view is right, contexts are unchangeable regardless of what kind of talk it contains; however, it is questionable. Moreover, this view would prevent us from examining or accounting for those cases which happen to deviate from what is expected in the context ¹ . On the contrary, it is argued that contexts are not ‘buckets’ nor predetermined but are ‘created, maintained, or altered’ (Heritage and Clayman, 2010, p.22) as the participants in the conversation perform a course of actions or produce a set of utterances. This is the view which underlies studies on institutional talk, and which allows a closer examination of particular parts of the talk and distinguishes different types of institutional talk. Bearing this notion in mind, this report will examine a morning news interview. Although according to the classification of Heritage and Greatbatch (1991) these kinds of interviews can be classified as ‘formal’ institutional talk, along with evening news interviews, or political interviews, Clayman and Heritage (2002, p.67) recognise the difference between these two types of news interviews ² . Further comparative study will allow us to understand how the performance of participants in the talk will shape the context, and precisely what kind of elements make it ‘institutional’ and what kind of elements make it less ‘institutional’, if there are any. This report will be divided into three large sections: the opening part of the talk, the closing part, and the intermediate part. In each section, the morning news interview will be compared with political news interviews.

Data

The data employed in this study was broadcast as a part of BBC Breakfast ³ . The interview consists of two interviewers, Kate Silverton and Bill Turnbull, and an interviewee, Lady Gaga. As the main comparative material, the study on political interviews by Clayman and Heritage (2002) will be discussed.

Opening

The morning news interview collected for this study differs from the typical case of political interviews from the opening section. It is reported that in the latter interview there is an absence of three courses of actions, which are usually found in everyday conversation: ‘greetings’ such as good afternoon , ‘personal inquiries’ such as how are you?, a ‘preliminary process’ which indicates readiness for the talk such as second pair part of summons ⁴ , Yes and Hi (Clayman and Heritage, 2002, pp.65-66). Three reasons for these distinctive phenomena are suggested by Clayman and Heritage (ibid.). Firstly, since participants in interviews restrict themselves to question-answer based sequences, such exchanges listed above are not suitable for the aim. Secondly, the participants engage in the interview as ‘impersonal institutional roles’, interviewer and interviewee, so that ritual exchanges usually found in conversation among intimates are ‘disattended’ (ibid., p.67). Finally, the absence of such exchanges might be due to the preparation process; the participants might have met before the on-air interview, and setting up cameras and microphones facilitates the participants’ preparation to interact beforehand (ibid., p.68). However, these three actions are found in the morning news interview as can be seen in (1).

(1) B: Interviewer 1 (Bill Turnbull), K: Interviewer 2 (Kate Silverton),

L: Interviewee (Lady Gaga)

Firstly, just after the introduction of the interviewee has finished ⁵ , Bill (interviewer) greets Lady Gaga (interviewee), by saying ‘good morning’ (line 2). Having heard this as a first pair part of adjacency pair, she immediately produces the second pair part at line 3. Then, Bill moves onto a personal inquiry (line 4), which is said to be unusual in political interviews (Clayman and Hertiage, 2002, p.66). Although the second pair part of this inquiry is not produced (e.g. I am fine ), the interviewee initiates another conventional exchange: ‘nice to meet you’ (line 5), and receives a response: ‘we are lucky to have you’ (line 6). The occurrence of these rituals makes the interview different from typical political interviews; in particular it has a ‘more “personal” tone’, as is noted by Clayman and Heritage (2002, p.67) rather than an impersonal interaction.

Closing

The most distinctive feature of interaction in a news interview in comparison to ordinary conversation is the asymmetrical roles of the participants. In terms of the closing section, while any participant in an ordinary conversation can bring the talk to an end, it is always accomplished by interviewers in interviews (Clayman and Heritage, 2002, pp.72-73). Regarding this point, interviewers have two main responsibilities; they have to facilitate the development of the discussion and manage it under the constraints on time (ibid., p.73). This section will discuss how the interviewers accomplish successful closing under these constraints, and it will be compared with a morning news interview.

The terminal point of a news interview is reported to be very different from that of ordinary conversation in that participants do not exchange good byes as they are engaged in impersonal roles as interviewers and interviewees (ibid., pp.74-75). Instead, as the indication of termination, the interviewers typically express their appreciation to the interviewees for doing the interview, and the interviewees optionally respond to it (ibid.). Secondly, as well as the use of ‘well’, brief summary of the discussion and announcement on the necessity of ending for ‘winding down’ (pp.77-79), the interviewers sometimes ask a question about the interviewees’ future plans, and it is treated as the final question in its own right, without being explicitly expressed with phrases such as ‘the last question’ or ‘one more question’ (ibid., pp.81-82). Some of these features are also found in the morning news interview.

(2)

Observing the sequences before the closing part shown as (2), a ‘possible’ last question can be found. Arrow 1 indicates when one of the interviewers, Kate, asks the interviewee about her next plan. After the answer to this question, the other interviewer expresses his appreciation of having the interviewee (arrow 2). Although the interview itself does not end here, as the interviewer initiates another question (but a small one as opposed to the previous one about the future), this process enables the interviewee to prepare for the closing.

(3) Having asked about her cup’s whereabouts, the interviewer talks about

how famous the cup has become.

After the small question about the cup and the expanded talk that follows it, the interviewers move forwards to the termination. Therefore, one notable feature of this closing is that it is similar to that of political news interviews in that it is the interviewers who launch the closing. However, it is done so, again, in a ‘“personal” tone’ (Clayman and Heritage, 2002) with features which are usually not found in evening news interviews. Firstly Kate’s utterance ‘really good to meet you’ (line 222) is common in ordinary conversation and so is referring to the next meeting (lines 223 and 225). These performances make the interview itself very different from an ‘impersonal’ evening news interview.

Question and answer structure

Having discussed the opening and closing, the focus now turns to the structure of the main body. In ordinary conversation, the participants are entitled to take turns under the systematic rules; there are chances of speaker shift at each ‘transition-relevance place’ (TRP) (Sack et al., 1974, p.703), and the next speaker is either selected by the current speaker or self-selected by themselves (ibid., p.704). The turn-taking organization in interviews also follows this rule. However, it is constrained as the interviewers are engaged in asking questions and interviewees are engaged in answering them (Clayman and Heritage, 2002, pp.97-98). The notable point here is that this is done by their mutual contribution to constitute ‘interview talk’ (ibid., p.105). Schegloff (1988/89) demonstrates a case in which the interviewee refrains from obtaining a turn, or interrupting the interviewer until a question is produced ⁶ . Also, it is noted that other courses of action such as acknowledgements (e.g. yes and mhm ) are commonly absent (Clayman and Heritage, 2002, p.108). In earlier sections, we saw that the morning news interview is different in some ways. However, the basis of question-answer structure is maintained also in the interview. For instance, in (4) the interviewer firstly produces a statement (arrow1), secondly produces the evidential source for and the content of the upcoming question (arrow2), and then moves onto a question (arrow 3). While the interviewer formulates the question, the interviewee waits for the next appropriate turn, which is when to provide an answer.

(4)

This topic is less serious in comparison to the prior topics about the interviewee’s biographical history (shown in Appendix 1), and about whether her music is a source of pride (shown in excerpt 5). However, maintenance of ‘interview talk’ by adhering to the question-answer structure makes the interview different from a talk show ⁷ .

The tasks of interviewers

The previous section was concerned with the structural feature of news interviews and how the participants collaborate to conduct ‘interview talk’ (Clayman and Heritage, 2002, p.105). This section will bring a further focus on interviewers’ professional tasks. According to Clayman and Heritage (ibid., pp.119-120), interviewers generally have two tasks to maintain throughout the interview. Firstly, interviewers have to manage the interview, which is consistent with the concept that the talk in the interview is in principle aimed at the benefit of the audience. Secondly, they have to maintain their ‘“neutralistic” stance’ (ibid., p.120) as professional journalists. For instance, while interviewees are answering the questions, the interviewers tend to refrain from providing acknowledgements such as ‘mm hm’ and ‘oh’, which frequently occur in ordinary conversations (ibid.). This is because although the interviewers are the direct addressees of the interviewees’ talk, they treat the audience as the addressees for which the talk is aimed (Heritage, 1985, pp.99-100). It is also because such acknowledgements can be heard as demonstrating their stance on the interviewees’ side, which would not in accord with their neutralism (Clayman and Heritage, p.124) ⁸ . Also, regarding neutralism, interviewers inhibit themselves from expressing their opinions and from explicitly dis/affiliating with those of interviewees (ibid., p.126). If these actions were to be carried out they are embedded in the question-answer structure (ibid.); even though the stance of the interviewers was doubted, they can claim that they were merely asking a question (ibid., p.130). In addition, it is reported that interviewers sometimes assert facts in order to ask the question (ibid., pp.134-135), refer to the arguments or opinions of third persons (ibid., p.152) or display the questions as general concerns in order to maintain neutralism (ibid., p.171). The morning news interview also provides some remarks on these features.

(5)

Firstly, Kate asks a question (arrow1) with an assertion, which follows immediately (‘I guess it must be’) (arrow 2). Such ‘departures’ from the interviewer role of merely asking questions can be problematic as it interferes with the ‘“neutarlistic” stance’ of the interviewer; however, this can be mitigated (Clayman and Heritage, 2002, pp.132-133). In the case of this interview, it is done so when Kate provides evidence in order to ask the question and the assertion (‘you are a trained musician’ and ‘you write all your songs’) (arrow 3). These are the performances of the interviewer which contribute to constituting the conversation as an ‘interview’. However, in terms of the concept that the audience is the primary addressee, the interviewers’ acknowledgements are found relatively frequently throughout the interview; for instance, arrow 4 ⁹ . Thus it can be argued that on one hand the interviewers maintain the neutralism of the interview through the course of adherence to the role of asking questions, and otherwise mitigating their risks by providing facts, which is the same as the evening news interviews. On the other hand, they depart from the restricted interview style and make the interview itself slightly closer to ordinary conversation by acknowledging their understanding, or demonstrating themselves as the addressees.

Conclusion

This report has shown that the morning news interview examined here has both differences and similarities with political news interviews studied in the literature. The striking differences were that the interview starts with greetings and personal inquiry, and closes with ritual farewell greetings, which all indicate that the participants depart from the impersonal roles. Also, in the main part of interview the acknowledgements such as ‘mhm’ are often found in interviewers’ speeches, which makes them appear to be seen as the addressees of the interviewee’s talk. Clayman and Heritage (2002, p.121) mention that the frequent use of these tokens is found in ‘more “relaxed” interview settings’. Also Greatbatch’s (1988, pp.424-425) study shows that interviewers in celebrity and talk shows employ them to constitute the talk in which the interviewers or presenters are the primary addressees and audience are ‘eavesdroppers’. The morning news interview is definitely a ‘relaxed’ one due to the features mentioned above; however, it is distinct from talk shows. One of the main reasons that it can be recognised as an interview is that its characteristic is maintained by the contribution of the participants in two important ways; question-answer structure and neutralism. As discussed earlier, the context is constituted by the course of actions of the participants. The interviewers and the interviewee depart from the norm of news interviews by performing the talk in a ‘personal tone’, but at the same time maintain the question and answer structure to conduct ‘interview talk’. Further examinations such as comparative studies with other interviews with different topics or different interviewees with the same interviewers might support the view that this ‘relaxed’ but maintained ‘interview talk’ is created by the contributions of the participants.

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Appendix

Appendix 1: The transcription of the data

B= Bill Turnbull (Interviewer 1)

K= Kate Silverton (Interviewer 2)

L= Lady Gaga (Interviewee)

Appendix 2: The conventions employed for transcription

The interview data examined in this study is transcribed with the convention developed by Gail Jefferson. The indications I referred for transcribing are Liddicoat (2007, pp.13-50), Hutchby and Wooffitt (2008, x-xii; pp.69-87), Sidnell (2010, ix-x). I also referred to the course material from the last term (Clift, Autumn, 2010), especially for body movements. The detailed convention used for this study is as follows.

©Yukari Yamaoka. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY).