The landscape of broadcast news media is constantly changing, partly under the influence of changing technology but also due to changes in the social role of television journalism. The Political Interview: Broadcast Talk in the Interactional Combat Zone takes a sociological and linguistic approach to examining these changes, focusing on the discourse practices that are associated with them. Tracing contemporary developments in the ways that interviews with politicians are conducted in a range of televised formats, Ian Hutchby analyzes increasing tendencies toward conflictual interactions that may fundamentally impact the nature of political communication and the role of news interviews in the democratic process. Training the sharp analytical lens of conversation analysis on the actual discourse of live broadcast news, Hutchby’s book is both timely—addressing academic and populist concerns about infotainment, dumbing down, and political mistrust among the electorate—and relevant to a range of specialists in sociolinguistics, communication studies, political studies, journalism and media studies, and sociology.

Interviews are a frequent and important part of empirical research in political science, but graduate programs rarely offer discipline-specific training in selecting interviewees, conducting interviews, and using the data thus collected. Interview Research in Political Science addresses this vital need, offering hard-won advice for both graduate students and faculty members. The contributors to this book have worked in a variety of field locations and settings and have interviewed a wide array of informants, from government officials to members of rebel movements and victims of wartime violence, from lobbyists and corporate executives to workers and trade unionists. The authors encourage scholars from all subfields of political science to use interviews in their research, and they provide a set of lessons and tools for doing so. The book addresses how to construct a sample of interviewees; how to collect and report interview data; and how to address ethical considerations and the Institutional Review Board process. Other chapters discuss how to link interview-based evidence with causal claims; how to use proxy interviews or an interpreter to improve access; and how to structure interview questions. A useful appendix contains examples of consent documents, semistructured interview prompts, and interview protocols.

In Argumentation in Political Interviews Corina Andone uses the pragma-dialectical concept of strategic maneuvering to gain a better understanding of political interviews as argumentative practices. She analyzes and evaluates the way in which politicians react in political interviews to the accusation that the position they currently hold is inconsistent with a position they advanced before. The politicians’ responses to such charges are examined for their strategic function by concentrating on a number of concrete cases and explaining how the arguers try to enhance their chances of winning the discussion. In addition, the soundness criteria are formulated for judging properly when the politicians’ responses are indeed reasonable.This book is important to argumentation theorists, discourse analysts, communication scholars and all other researchers and students interested in the way in which language is used for the purpose of persuasion in a political context. Corina Andone is Assistant Professor of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

For decades veteran journalist Tom Plate, the author of the ‘Giants of Asia’ series, has been engineering headline-making interviews with presidents to prime ministers to mob figures. Some were easy to deal with; others were complicated challenges. In this revealing book — part manual, part memoir — Plate offers a candid and comprehensive view of how to conduct the VIP interview. Is the Banderilla approach wise? What’s a ‘Viagra question’? Is there an interview etiquette? Detailed tips provide an insider’s perspective on what happens when the doors close, the interview pad comes out, and the political conversation begins. An important, revealing and entertaining book – half manual, half memoir and all true.

In 1997, Tony Blair won the biggest Labour victory in history to sweep the party to power and end 18 years of Conservative government. He has been one of the most dynamic leaders of modern times; few British prime ministers have shaped the nation's course as profoundly as Blair during his ten years in power, and his achievements and his legacy will be debated for years to come. Now his memoirs reveal in intimate detail this unique political and personal journey, providing an insight into the man, the politician and the statesman, and charting successes, controversies and disappointments with an extraordinary candour.

The story of tobacco’s fortunes seems simple: science triumphed over addiction and profit. Yet the reality is more complicated—and more political. Historically it was not just bad habits but also the state that lifted the tobacco industry. What brought about change was not medical advice but organized pressure: a movement for nonsmoker’s rights.

Ken Clarke needs no introduction. One of the genuine 'Big Beasts' of the political scene, during his forty-six years as the Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire he has been at the very heart of government under three prime ministers. He is a political obsessive with a personal hinterland, as well known as a Tory Wet with Europhile views as for his love of cricket, Nottingham Forest Football Club and jazz. In Kind of Blue, Clarke charts his remarkable progress from working-class scholarship boy in Nottinghamshire to high political office and the upper echelons of both his party and of government. But Clarke is not a straightforward Conservative politician. His position on the left of the party often led Margaret Thatcher to question his true blue credentials and his passionate commitment to the European project has led many fellow Conservatives to regard him with suspicion – and cost him the leadership on no less than three occasions. Clarke has had a ringside seat in British politics for four decades and his trenchant observations and candid account of life both in and out of government will enthral readers of all political persuasions. Vivid, witty and forthright, and taking its title not only from his politics but from his beloved Miles Davis, Kind of Blue is political memoir at its very best.

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1,3, University of Duisburg-Essen (Department of Anglophone Studies), course: Spoken English, language: English, abstract: One of the more neglected fields in linguistics is the field of questions and their functions, although questions play an important role not only in casual conversation but in political discourse in particular. Therefore this paper will deal with one specific type of political discourse, namely political interviews (van Dijk 1995: 18). When it comes to political interviews, which have become more and more influential for political debate in the last few decades (Chilton 2004: 69), questions by the interviewer are the central elements leading and guiding the discourse. Thus the aim of this paper is to examine the questions and their functions in political interviews. Considering that firstly a brief look at what makes an interview a political one will be required and secondly there will be a section on what an interviewer intends. Examining the functions of questions is another way of asking why or with what intention a question is used. Thus knowing about an interviewers general intention in a political interview will later in the analysis help to understand what the use of questions is and why they are posed in the one way or the other. Thirdly it has to be clarified what a question is and what types of questions there are. These preliminary explanations will be followed by the main analysis on the basis of the transcriptions of two political interviews, one conducted by Andrew Marr in the Andrew Marr Show broadcast on BBC One on 21st July 2013 and the other conducted by Sir David Frost in the Show Frost over the World broadcast on AlJazeera on 10th September 2011. This analysis will focus on questions and attempt to provide answers to the following questions: What types of questions do the interviewers employ and how do they use them in order to succeed in their intentions? I.e. what are the particular functions of the interviewers’ questions to the interviewee (who in both interviews is the British Prime Minister David Cameron)? This second question is based on the assumption that there is (especially in political discourse) always one basic function of questions which then (according to the type and content of the question) further subdivides into more specific and individual functions. Exemplary analyses of question forms typical for the two interviews will illustrate how the particular functions are fulfilled.

Beckett's Political Imagination uncovers Beckett's lifelong engagement with political thought and political history, showing how this concern informed his work as fiction author, dramatist, critic and translator. This radically new account will appeal to students, researchers and Beckett lovers alike.

"Thoughtful, fair-minded, and learned, Cadava's eye-opening book will teach experts on American politics things they didn't even know they didn't know." — Rick Perlstein, bestselling author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge “Geraldo Cadava’s history...provides a unique vantage point on US politics; on the shifting terrains of foreign policy, labor, and religion; and on the changing nature of specific states, as well as on deeper ideological fights over the soul of the country: is it to be an inclusive nation of immigrants, or, as the nativists today say, a country founded on white supremacy? An excellent, insightful study.” — Greg Grandin, professor of history at Yale University and author of The End of the Myth “Geraldo Cadava offers a fascinating examination of the socioeconomic interests and foreign policy concerns that have drawn Hispanics/Latinos into a rapidly changing Republican Party. If readers harbor the mistaken idea that Hispanics are a monolithic voting bloc, this book should dispel this idea once and for all. Though the work is written for a general audience, even experts on Hispanic politics and voting behavior will find much that is new and surprising in these chapters.” — María Cristina García, author of The Refugee Challenge in Post–Cold War America