Hutchby1999

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Hutchby1999
BibType ARTICLE
Key Hutchby1999
Author(s) Ian Hutchby
Title Rhetorical strategies in audience participation debates on radio and TV
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Conversation Analysis, Participation, Debates, Radio, TV, Audience, Rhetorical Strategies
Publisher
Year 1999
Language
City
Month
Journal Research on Language and Social Interaction
Volume 32
Number 3
Pages 243–267
URL Link
DOI 10.1207/S15327973RL320302
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

In this article I analyze the talk of lay contributors in TV and radio variants of audience participation shows. Lay contributors use their initial occupancy of the floor to produce turns in which they take up positions, or argue with others’ positions, on an issue. I explore some key rhetorical devices and strategies (understood as techniques of “artifice or finesse”) used by lay contributors in making their cases. I discuss the ways in which a particular set of rhetorical forms functions as a format for achieving completeness in an extended audience-directed utterance, and thereby help to coordinate lay contributors’ points and the studio audience’s response to what has been said. I show that ordinary citizens speaking in the situations provided by audience participation debate shows can be just as adept at using effective rhetorical devices as are more seasoned public speakers, and moreover, that they are able to do so in improvised, rather than previously written, discourse.

Notes