Representing ordinary people: experiential interview fragments in CCTV News
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Debing Feng received his PhD in linguistics (English) from the University of Macau and is currently Lecturer at the Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics. His research interests include sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and media studies. His most recent publications are “Identifying the participants: Reference in television news” in
Visual Communication 15 (2) (2016) and “Doing ‘authentic’ news: Voices, forms, and strategies in presenting television news” inInternational Journal of Communication 10 (2016).
Abstract
The television news interview has been widely studied in the field of Conversation Analysis. Few researchers, however, have paid attention to the interview fragments that often occur in news bulletin programs. This article applies Conversation Analysis and the notion of recontextualization to the analysis of experiential interview fragments deployed in CCTV News. It is shown that this type of fragments enjoys a relatively fixed sequence structure: introduction–fragment, where the fragment consists of (question+) answer turns. The introduction may be designed to raise a question, offer background information or summarize key points. The fragment itself, unlike a complete interview, is often selected and designed to achieve particular communicative purposes. In CCTV News, for example, the fragments tend to be employed to represent ordinary people’s experience, beneficiary identity and positive image, among others.
About the author
Debing Feng received his PhD in linguistics (English) from the University of Macau and is currently Lecturer at the Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics. His research interests include sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and media studies. His most recent publications are “Identifying the participants: Reference in television news” in Visual Communication 15(2) (2016) and “Doing ‘authentic’ news: Voices, forms, and strategies in presenting television news” in International Journal of Communication 10 (2016).
Acknowledgments
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the China Scholarship Council and that of Jiangxi Provincial Department of Education (through Project No. 15WX328). Special thanks go to Professor Martin Montgomery, journal editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Appendix. Transcription conventions
- (it is)
Indicates additional information that the author uses to clarify the messages uttered by the speaker
- (.)
Untimed pause with less than half a second
- ↑
Indicates a rising tone
- ↓
Indicates a falling tone
- oa
Stands for on-camera address
- PR
Stands for news presenter
- RR
Stands for news reporter
- vo
Stands for voice-over
- [BE]
Stands for copula be
- [CAN]
Stands for modal verb can
- [IF]
Stands for suppositive if
- [MAY]
Stands for modal verb may
- [MUS]
Stands for modal verb must
- [NEG]
Stands for negation not
- [PAS]
Stands for past tense
- [WIL]
Stands for future tense
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©2017 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Invisible minimalism
- Representing ordinary people: experiential interview fragments in CCTV News
- Who is the victim? When the addresser of the echoed utterance and the target of the irony differ
- Patient participation in action: patients’ interactional initiatives during interdisciplinary goal-setting meetings in a rehabilitation clinic
- A rose is more than a rose … the diatextual constitution of subjects and objects
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Invisible minimalism
- Representing ordinary people: experiential interview fragments in CCTV News
- Who is the victim? When the addresser of the echoed utterance and the target of the irony differ
- Patient participation in action: patients’ interactional initiatives during interdisciplinary goal-setting meetings in a rehabilitation clinic
- A rose is more than a rose … the diatextual constitution of subjects and objects
