Two communicative levels and twofold illocutionary force in televised political debates

Abstract

The paper offers a proposal of a new classification of hearer roles in media discourse represented by political debates. It is posited that broadcast talk operates on distinct, yet mutually dependent, communicative levels, entailing different hearers: listening interlocutors, recipients in the studio as well as TV recipients. Secondly, it is argued that Speech Act Theory, which is anchored in the dyadic model, must be extended to account for multi-party interactions, notably mediated ones. This is best appreciated on the basis of the problem of a twofold illocutionary intention underlying utterances in political broadcast talk. Such utterances are illustrated with jibes deployed in Polish PM preelection debates with a view to deprecating the addressee and, simultaneously, entertaining the audience.

Stranger than Fiction? A Few Methodological Notes on Linguistic Research in Film Discourse

“…Goffman 1981;Bell 1984;Scannell 1991;Fetzer 2006;O'Keeffe 2006;Hutchby 2006;Lorenzo-Dus 2009, cf. Dynel 2000b, 2011c. Similarly, viewers of film (and drama) discourse can also be deemed as ratified hearers (e.g.…”

“…Burger 1984Burger , 1991Bell 1991;Scannell 1991;Fetzer 2006) argue that media talk inherently rests on what is here called two levels of communication or communicative levels, entailing different hearers. Those can be dichotomised into listeners shown on the screen and viewers, for whose benefit televised interactions take place (Dynel 2010a(Dynel , 2011b(Dynel , 2011c. in essence, in televised programmes, interactants communicate with one another, assuming that they are constructing discourse for viewers' benefit, and sometimes even addressing the latter (Goffman 1981, Fetzer 2006, O'Keeffe 2006.…”