Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing - Volume 37, Issue 3, 2015

News video clips in political interviews in TV talk shows. A conversation analysis of the effects of the screening of a film on the first question-answer sequence

This contribution deals with the effects of the increasing use of video clips on television interviews with politicians, in particular concerning the realisation of question-answer sequences after the screening of a video clip. It investigates how these clips support interviewers to achieve their main goal: to solicit newsworthy information in a manner that is comprehensible and attractive to TV viewers. A corpus of interview excerpts with video clips in a Dutch daily late-night talk show demonstrates that video clips can be an addition to or even a substitution of verbal options to fulfil five functions of political interviewer talk. It is shown how video clips are able to establish and disclose shared knowledge (common ground), secure topical focus, help maintain interviewer-neutralism, amplify the ‘liveliness’ of the interview and prevent politicians from being evasive in adversarial cases.

Advertising utterances make abundant use of rhetorical figures, of creative, deviant ways of communicating an ad message, such as rhyme, wordplay and metaphor. Ample research has been conducted on the effects of rhetorical figures. However, an unanswered question deals with the motives of advertising agency personnel (such as the creative team) for using rhetorical figures. Previous studies only examined the plausible motives of advertisers. In this study, ten half-structured interviews were carried out to reveal their actual motives, using the advertisers’ own ads. These interviews showed that the advertisers often create rhetorical figures with the assumed effects of these rhetorical figures in mind. Attracting consumers’ attention, challenging them to think and gaining their appreciation were the most mentioned effects. Other motives included product and brand fit, the competition’s utterances, and design pleasure. This study brings to light how the advertisers’ motives fit scholars’ findings on the identity and functioning of rhetorical figures.

The formalisation of critical discussion in preparation of automated argumentation analysis

In contribution to the research on the intersection of argumentation theory and computer science, in this paper a formal approximation is developed of the discussion model that is at the core of the pragma-dialectical analytical method. The aim of the project is to prepare a foundation for the development of software to support the pragma-dialectical analysis of texts. The formal approximation takes the form of a dialogue game for critical discussion. The dialogue game is systematically developed by starting from a simplified foundation to which more complexity is cumulatively added. In the current paper a basic dialogue game for critical discussion is presented to serve as the simplified foundation. After an introduction of the overarching research project, the simplifications are explained that form the starting point of the basic dialogue game. Next, the dialogue game rules for starting and ending a dialogue are specified, as well as the rules for the available moves, the sequences in which these can be made, and the resulting commitments. Finally, the dynamics of the basic dialogue game are illustrated by visualising the sequential structure, and by discussing an example dialogue in accordance with the rules.