TV interview participant profiles from a multimodal perspective

Abstract

The study presented in this paper attempts to provide evidence about prominent features in the interactional behavior of TV interview participants that could lead to testable predictions about their communicative profiles. Based on a multimodally annotated interview corpus, we explore the behavior of two groups representing the two basic discursive roles of this domain, namely the interviewers and the interviewees. We describe the profile of the speakers as outlined by their non-verbal activity, in terms of preferred modalities employed as well as the specific goals and functions that they aim to accomplish through the use of non-verbal expressions (gestures, facial expressions, torso movements). From this perspective, we aim to discover possible patterns of non-verbal behavior that are in line with the communicative actions that each role is supposed to perform, as well as significant differences or distinctive features attested in the behavior of each group. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.