Levelling, differentiation and structure of feeling: Address and interlocutor reference in Indonesian political interviews

Abstract

This article discusses the ways in which participants in Indonesian political interviews address and refer to each other. Drawing on Raymond Williams’s concept ‘structures of feeling’, it proposes levelling and differentiation as mechanisms by which interview participants orient to a common feeling. Levelling and differentiation form a dialectical process characterised by tension that emerges through positioning of the self and the addressee relative to social categories and social orders. Such positioning involves exploiting the semantic contrast between kin terms, which denote relationality, and pronouns, which individuate, in addition to mobilising other linguistic resources including names and titles. The article suggests that the differentiation made between how those in the highest office and politicians below them are addressed and referred to is indexical of a shared consciousness about the relevance of rank.