Co-constructing knowledge in news interviews: An application of Hardy and Palmer’s (1998) discourse model

This article builds on previous research which suggests that news interviews represent a special form of dialogue, in which discourse is co-constructed between the interviewer and one or more interviewees, and aims to present for critical discussion, an analytic framework that could provide insight into the nature of such co-constructions. More specifically, Hardy and Palmer’s (1998) discourse model is applied to a corpus of news interviews, in order to investigate the negotiation of meaning in political interviews, and the subsequent construction of a platform on which audiences are encourage to accept or reject the knowledge that emerges from this process of negotiation. The analyses reported here, focus on televised interviews about contemporary political events.Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2012, 30(4): 497–50