NEWS INTERVIEWS: A PRAGMALINGUISTIC ANALYSIS -- Editorial page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- TABLE OF CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- TRANSCRIPTION NOTATIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS -- 1.INTRODUCTION -- 1.1 Aim and Scope -- 1.2 The Corpus -- 1.3 Problems of Definition -- 1.3.1 Medium -- 1.3.2 Participants -- 1.3.3 Topic-coherence -- 1.3.4 Form -- 1.4 Four Methods of Analysis -- 1.4.1 Speech act theory -- 1.4.2 Ethnomethodology -- 1.4.3 Theory of speech act sequencing -- 1.4.4 Conversational inference -- 2. ASPECTS OF DURATION -- 2.1 Quantificational Studies of Conversation -- 2.2 The "Matarazzo Effect" in News Interviews -- 2.2.1 Statistical procedure -- 2.2.2 Duration of utterance -- 2.2.3 Reaction time latency -- 2.2.4 Channel of communication -- 2.3 Summary -- 3. THE STRUCTURE OF INTERVIEWS -- 3.1 Flow-Chart Representation of the Structure of Interviews -- 3.1.1 The opening sequence -- 3.1.2 The main sequence -- 3.1.3 Final sequence -- 3.2 Limitations of a Structural Model -- 3.2.1 The concept of hierarchy -- 3.2.2 Form-function relationship -- 3.2.3 Unfalsifiability of the model -- 4. CONVERSATIONAL INFERENCE -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Pragmatic Principles -- 4.2.1 Grice's Cooperative Principle -- 4.2.2 Leech's Politeness Principle -- 4.2.3 Face Threatening Acts (FTAs) -- 4.3 Pragmatic Scales in News Interviews -- 4.3.1 The weightiness of interview questions -- 4.3.2 13 ways of threatening the interviewee's face -- 4.3.2.1 "Commit yourself to do something" -- 4.3.2.2 "State your opinion" -- 4.3.2.3 "Confirm your opinion (presupposing that it is demeaning)" -- 4.3.2.4 "Accept discrepancy between your opinion and your actions" -- 4.3.2.5 "Accept discrepancy between your opinion and reality" -- 4.3.2.6 "Accept that the reason for doing the action is demeaning" -- 4.3.2.7 "State that the action is demeaning" -- 4.3.2.8 "Confirm the action".

4.3.2.9 "Take responsibility for the action" -- 4.3.2.10 ''Justify the action" -- 4.3.2.11 "Take action against something" -- 4.3.2.12 "State that other1 s face is demeaning" -- 4.3.2.13 "State that your face is demeaning" -- 4.3.3 Relative importance of the FT As -- 5. THE FORCE OF QUESTIONS -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 Syntactic Means of Force Reduction -- 5.2.1 Prefaced questions -- 5.2.1.1 Preface relating to the interviewee's opinion -- 5.2.1.2 Preface relating to what the interviewee has said -- 5.2.1.3 Preface relating to the speech act required of the interviewee -- 5.2.1.4 Preface relating to the speech act performed by the interviewer -- 5.2.1.5 Preface relating to the truth conditional status of the proposition -- 5.2.2 Non-prefaced questions -- 5.2.2.1 Interrogatives -- 5.2.2.2 Declaratives -- 5.2.2.3 Imperative and moodless questions -- 5.2.2.4 Summary -- 5.3 Discourse Particles -- 5.3.1 "Well", "now" and "well now" -- 5.3.2 "But" -- 5.3.3 "And" and "so" -- 5.4 Cohesion between Questions and Preceding Answers -- 5.4.1 "Topical Shift" -- 5.4.2 "Topic Extension" -- 5.4.3 "Reformulation" -- 5.4.4 "Challenge" -- 5.4.5 Summary -- 5.5 Pragmatic Means of Weight Reduction -- 5.5.1 Quotation of critics -- 5.5.2 Accounts -- 5.5.3 Summary -- 6. THE VAGUENESS OF ANSWERS -- 6.1 Explicit or Vague -- 6.2 Parenthetical Verbs -- 6.3 "Well" as a Qualifier -- 6.3.1 "WeZZ" in answers to yes-no questions -- 6.3.2 "Well" in answers to wh-questions -- 6.3.3 "Well" in answers to non-interrogative questions -- 7.CONCLUSION -- Appendix A. 4 SAMPLE INTERVIEWS -- Appendix B. PREFACES OF INTERVIEW QUESTIONS -- NOTES -- REFERENCES.