Address terms in the service of other actions: The case of news interview talk

Abstract

In broadcast news interviews, interviewees will occasionally address the interviewer by name. As a method of establishing the directionality of talk, address terms are redundant in this institutional context because the normative question/answer activity structure and associated participation framework make the direction of address transparent and knowable in advance. But address terms can be deployed in the service of a variety of actions beyond addressing per se. Some of these involve disaligning actions such as topic shifts, non-conforming responses, and disagreements. Others involve the presentation of views as particularly significant or sincere. Address terms are thus a resource for managing certain expressive properties of talk, as well as its disalignment from prior talk.