Morality, loyalty and eloquence

Conversational challenges and resources in a televised confrontational dialogue

Bibliographic Data

ID6084591
AuthorsZohar Livnat (0000-0001-6689-6709), Ayelet Kohn (0000-0002-0871-4492, David Yellin College of Education)
Year2018
Volume17
Issue3
Pages405-427
Publication date2018-07-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Language and Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1569-2159 • E-ISSN: 1569-9862
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/jlp.17001.liv
OpenAlexW2783409498
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited22

The new dialogic, conversational nature of television broadcast news (Hamo, 2009) poses a challenge to traditional commentators, who are forced to move from an authoritative monologue to a confrontational dialogue that requires additional flexibility and conversational skills. The paper focuses on an Israeli case study which presents a confrontational dialogue in which one of the discussants is an experienced military correspondent and commentator. We demonstrate the various resources he uses in order to cope with a complex discursive challenge by using multimodal tools, both verbal and visual (Kress 2010; Kress and Van Leeuwen 2001; Jewitt and Oyama 2001). Besides interrupting his interlocutor’s eloquent discourse in any possible way, demonstrating his well-known direct and involved television persona, the military correspondent employs institutional discursive resources such as using authoritative voice and taking the role of the mediator. Concession structures (Anscombre 1985) reflect his inner moral conflict toward the issue (Livnat 2012

Dialogic · Flexibility (engineering · Humanities · Linguistics · Loyalty · Morality · Order (exchange · Pedagogy · Persona · Political science · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Philosophy