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A turn-taking system for British news interviews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

David Greatbatch
David Greatbatch
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Warwick
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Abstract

The British news interview turn-taking system operates through a simple form of turn-type preallocation. This article shows that a large number of the systematic differences between the news interview and mundane conversation are a product of these constraints on the production of types of turns. It then explores the relationship of turn-type preallocation in news interviews to the background legal and institutional restrictions on British broadcast journalists. In so doing, it notes how the organisation of turn-taking in two other types of broadcast interview can differ from that in the news interview due to differences between the institutionalized footings that the interviewers are conventionally required to maintain within them. (Conversation analysis, mass communication, British speech, turn-taking systems, institutional talk)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 401 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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