Cross cultural variation of questioning in news interviews – A case of post-question elaboration in Chinese news interviews

Abstract

Questioning practice in news interviews has long been a central concern in the current studies of media discourse analysis in terms of its role in maintaining journalistic neutralism. Questions are usually structured into two forms: simple and complex one. In western news interviews, prefatory statements in complex questions are sufficiently examined in previous studies. Drawing on Conversation Analysis as methodology, this paper examines the questioning practice of English news interviews (i.e., Dialogue) aired in Chinese context and captures the post-question elaboration as a noticeable variant particularity in questioning practice in Chinese news interviews. Post-question elaborations are recognized in terms of the formal features in question design and their functions in the interviewer-interviewee interaction and further categorized into three types: first, post-question elaboration being evaded; second, post-question elaboration being answered along with the question; third, post-question elaboration being answered with question itself being evaded. This analysis reveals that post-question elaborations appear mostly to be associated with the informational contents negatively implicated in the question design and serve not only to contextualize the question itself but also to justify the act of questioning on the part of the interviewer.