Assessments and actions: Instances from Arabic broadcast political interviews

Abstract

This paper examines the role of assessments in the design of questions and answers in news interview settings on two Arabic networks. It employs a conversation analytic approach to observe what actions assessments perform and which are the most frequently accomplished. The data consist of 28 h of recorded Arab news interviews from four shows: ‘Special Interview’ and ‘Without Bounds’ on Aljazeera and ‘Point of Order’ and ‘Special Interview’ on Al-Arabiya. The findings show that assessments are a prolific interactional resource that can be used in the service of achieving diverse actions that are relevant to the interactional activity of providing questions and introducing answers in news interview settings. Interviewers provide a controversial style of questioning by proffering assessments to perform several actions, such as displaying criticism, introducing accusations and eliciting socio-political positioning, whereas interviewees produce them to provide defence against criticism, divert accountability and display socio-political positioning.