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Dialogic interactions on radio

Studs Terkel’s literary interviews
  • Jarmila Mildorf
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Dialogue across Media
This chapter is in the book Dialogue across Media

Abstract

This paper focuses on a sub-category of journalistic interviews, namely the so-called “literary interview,” where writers are interviewed about their lives and works. More specifically, the paper investigates the dynamics of literary interviews as radio broadcasts and therefore emphasizes their conversational and medial side, paying attention to turn-taking mechanisms and the use of voice quality and prosody in the authors’ multimodal self-presentations. Key linguistic concepts in this regard are interviewees’ “audience design,” and also participants’ speech accommodation and verbal “duetting,” which point to the collaborative nature of these interviews. The case studies are drawn from American radio journalist Studs Terkel’s interviews with Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.

Abstract

This paper focuses on a sub-category of journalistic interviews, namely the so-called “literary interview,” where writers are interviewed about their lives and works. More specifically, the paper investigates the dynamics of literary interviews as radio broadcasts and therefore emphasizes their conversational and medial side, paying attention to turn-taking mechanisms and the use of voice quality and prosody in the authors’ multimodal self-presentations. Key linguistic concepts in this regard are interviewees’ “audience design,” and also participants’ speech accommodation and verbal “duetting,” which point to the collaborative nature of these interviews. The case studies are drawn from American radio journalist Studs Terkel’s interviews with Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Part I. Creating characters through dialogue
  6. Pragmatic stylistics and dramatic dialogue 19
  7. Dialogue and character in 21st century TV drama 37
  8. Look who’s talking 55
  9. All talk 77
  10. Part II. Involvement, audience design and social interaction
  11. Studying everyday conversation 95
  12. Dialogic interactions on radio 117
  13. Dialogism in journalistic discourse 137
  14. Friends and followers ‘in the know’ 155
  15. Dialogue with computers 179
  16. Part III. Playfulness and narrative functions of dialogue
  17. Dialogue in Audiophonic Fiction 205
  18. Dialogue in comics 225
  19. Dialogue in video games 251
  20. Dialogue and interaction in role-playing games 271
  21. Index 291
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.28.07mil

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Introduction 1
  5. Part I. Creating characters through dialogue
  6. Pragmatic stylistics and dramatic dialogue 19
  7. Dialogue and character in 21st century TV drama 37
  8. Look who’s talking 55
  9. All talk 77
  10. Part II. Involvement, audience design and social interaction
  11. Studying everyday conversation 95
  12. Dialogic interactions on radio 117
  13. Dialogism in journalistic discourse 137
  14. Friends and followers ‘in the know’ 155
  15. Dialogue with computers 179
  16. Part III. Playfulness and narrative functions of dialogue
  17. Dialogue in Audiophonic Fiction 205
  18. Dialogue in comics 225
  19. Dialogue in video games 251
  20. Dialogue and interaction in role-playing games 271
  21. Index 291
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