This thesis describes the understudied interactional practice of Reported Speech (RS) in the formal setting of the television programme BBC Hardtalk. Launched in March 1997, ‘Hardtalk’ is a television and radio programme about the British and international affairs broadcast on the BBC News channel and the BBC World Service. ‘Hardtalk’ furnishes detailed interviews addressing critical subjects. Televised interviews are regulated by specific rules and institutional principles and standards are expected to be maintained and respected throughout by both the interviewer and the interviewee. Some of these standards are: the construction of legitimate information and reliability and validation of the two parties, the organisation of credibility and political accountability, the management of credibility and ideological coherence, and the maintenance of neutrality, objectivity and accountability. It is crucial to bear in mind that the special nature of TV communication in which interviews are intended for the audience and the two parties talk not just between them but to pass on information to the viewers. Within this context, this research has shown how RS becomes particularly relevant to respect and endorse these principles and standards. The data consists of three BBC Hardtalk formal interviews in which the speakers employ the interactional and stylistic device of RS for a variety of purposes. The results show 77 different instances of RS, Reported Writing, Summaries, Hypothetical, Ventriloquism, Reported Thought, and some accounts of actions and opinions. Conversation Analysis is the framework to interpret the sequential and relational organisation of the practice of RS in the data. In these interviews, the roles are very precisely defined: the interviewer (IR) commences, organises and completes the exchange, and the interviewee (IE) answers the questions. This research analyses how through RS, the interviewer and/or the interviewee highlights the transfer from the ‘here-and-now’ moment to the ‘dislocated world’, real or fictional (Clark, 2016), and how the speakers’ contributions are appropriated to further the current course of action. The study analyses the lexico-grammatical and prosodic resources through which RS is constructed. The management of these resources in the responsive turns that entail the deployment of RS is susceptible, in terms of addressing various epistemic entitlements and agency. The investigation of the situated deployment of RS in each interview suggests that these instances of RS make substantial contribution to the organisation, development and completion of the exchanges on the one hand and play a decisive role in the execution and accomplishment of many institutional tasks within them. In expressing their stance, the interviewees are found to accommodate to interviewer’s RS, and/or extend it, although in some cases they employ completely different RS. The current study found that RS as a strategy contributes to the process of association and/or disassociation. In this process, social identities lead to the interactive and local negotiation and management of values and attributes. The findings of this research corroborate the current research on the uses and functions of RS in political interviews (Lauerbach, 2003, 2006; Johansson, 2002, 2007; Fetzer, 2006, 2015, 2020), and Prime Minister’s Questions in British Parliament (Antaki and Lauder, 2001; Fetzer and Reber 2015; Fetzer and Bull, 2019). In particular, according with Matoesian’s (2000) findings the deployment of RS in these interviews has shown that social identities created in such political interviews are not structurally determined and static, but interactionally emergent and contextually situated.
| Date of Award | 15 Dec 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Tom Devlin (Main Supervisor) |
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