Chapter 2. Political interviews in context

The genre of the broadcast political interview is examined from a compositional methodological approach, drawing on ethnomethodological conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, sociopragmatics, social psychology and media studies. A distinction is proposed between the default and non-default political interview. In the prototypical (default) interview, there is the journalist as interviewer, who asks political questions, and the politician as interviewee, who answers political questions by giving political answers. In the non-default interview, this one-dimensional setting becomes blurred: in the employment of different semiotic codes and socio-cultural practices; in the inclusion of both public and private discourse identities; and in explicit accommodation to the audience’s needs. To capture the inherent dynamics of the genre, it proposed that political interviews be conceptualized as a hybrid genre, accommodating the constraints and requirements of both media communication and professional discourse.