Volume 25, Issue 2

This paper demonstrates how a call-on-hold is used to accomplish some delicate interactional work involving a talk-show host, a co-host, and a guest expert. In particular, it shows how a proscribed topic is reanimated. The caller herself plays a passive role; it is the call rather than the caller that is crucial. The call is used ‘subversively’, to create a false sense of what is going on. The paper aims to illuminate both some general properties of calls-on-hold and special functions of such calls as they occur on call-in talk shows. In order to understand how the call-on-hold is being used in the instance under consideration, it was necessary to examine call-openings as they occur on this show and, in particular, the common occurrence of the ‘second summons’, as well as a variety of other matters (e.g., story prefaces, self-interruption) of sequential import.

Despite growing evidence of its social and rhetorical aspects, research writing still has a reputation for impersonal neutrality and ‘facelessness'. This study revisits that neutrality by investigating expression of moral obligation—deontic modals and related expressions—in 105 research articles in three disciplines: Forestry, Social Psychology, Urban Geography. In all three disciplines, deontics express obligation to pursue knowledge, these expressions composing disciplined cohorts of researchers. In all three disciplines, but with varying frequency, deontics express obligations to take action in the world, these expressions imagining arenas of professional and public responsibility to act on research-attested knowledge. Urban Geography is unique in quoting, in some cases, deontically modalized statements from worldly sources and thereby implicating rather than directly prescribing action. Modal mergers—pragmatic blends of deontic and dynamic modality—found in Forestry and Social Psychology are described as epitomizing the reciprocity of research-attested knowledge and ratified action. Deontic expressions appear to be a discursive resource for representing knowledge and orienting it to social sectors—research communities and public systems. Findings are interpreted as evidence for the cooperation of neutrality and sociality in research writing—a modern basis for conscientious action.

Little discourse-analytic work has been conducted on the changing forms of discourse in interactive media systems. In this study, a sample of teleshopping discourse was analyzed and five sets of strategies were identified. Teleshopping discourse constructed the appearance of trusting relationships with viewers through expressions of praise and friendliness and disclosures of personal views and emotions. Teleshopping discourse also displayed attempts to discover viewers' needs and desires and advocate the specific bene fits and uses of products. The discourse also displayed attempts to create coherent realities for products through product descriptions, explanations, history, education, demonstrations, testimonials, and endorsements, all of which were designed to be even more impressive with vivid descriptions, cognitive participation, and narrative. Finally, teleshopping discourse appeared designed to facilitate behavioral commitment by invoking choice heuristics, countering viewer objections, and using personal value appeals. These findings extend previous explanations of teleshopping that focus solely on parasocial interaction, and show that teleshopping discourse is distinctive because it involves lamination, the use of multiple forms of a persuasive strategy across different media or presentation forms.

Taking Hunston's (1994) model of evaluation in written academic discourse as a point of departure, this paper explores the ways in which experts in Greek television studio discussion programs evaluate the ‘status’ of their statements on-line in terms of the truth and reliability ascribed to them. Analytically, the evaluation of status is examined by studying the type of statements (factual vs. nonfactual) and modal elements (absent, high, low) used in expert turns. Through both qualitative analysis and quantitative findings, it is shown that experts modulate the factuality and modality design of their talk so as to attend to an important aspect of the mediated context at hand: the institutional goals of communication aimed at by different programs. More specifically, in the adversarial context of debates, experts recurrently draw on factual statements, specific types of nonfactual statements, and high modality, thus constructing credible versions of reality and shaping their identity as authoritative and knowledgeable public speakers. By contrast, in informational discussions, experts use nonfactual statements and low modal elements much more often and, in this way, orient to the supportive environment of talk and the preference for consensus.

Previous research on oppositional discourse has pointed out the need in the turn-by-turn analysis of conflict and disagreements. Work on cros-scultural disagreements and conflict is also imperative in the current age of globalization and international movement. This paper examines the negotiation of disagreements and differences between three generations of Greek-Australian women during their participation in interview-narratives. The paper first discusses the structural ways with which the women build their disagreements and negotiate their arguments in an interview setting and how they turn the interview into a place of dispute. Three disagreement strategies are discussed in this section: the participants' questioning the opponent's arguments, appealing to logic, and calling for defense. This paper also discusses the function of the disagreements in intergenerational conflict. Through the disagreements, participants display their cross-cultural and intergenerational differences. It is also revealed that disagreements are a means for the women to display and account for their competence as mothers and daughters in the presence of the interviewer and for the ‘record of the interview’. The study of disagreements provides useful insight into the areas of cross-cultural communication and intergenerational interaction.