Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22210/suvlin.2023.095.04
Comparative analysis of conversational strategy of interruption and disfluency in political interviews conducted in Croatian and English
Gordana Varošanec-Škarić
orcid.org/0000-0002-0864-4252
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Iva Bašić
orcid.org/0000-0002-2171-9300
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Branka Šegvić
; ABM Prijevodi, Split
Abstract
The genre of political interview includes informational and communicative persuasive strategy, as
each interlocutor wants to establish their dominance. The desire for dominance results in frequent
interruptions and speech overlaps, which can also be associated with speech fluency. A comparative
analysis was used to examine the discourse strategy of negative interruptions and overlaps in relation to other parameters of fluency in the television genre of political interview in the pre–election
period, between Croatian and British journalists and politicians. In total, 24 speakers, evenly represented by language, occupation and gender, were analysed based on 12 news programmes for each
language. Th e analysis revealed that journalists tend to interrupt and overlap politicians in a more
conflicting way. Men tend to interrupt and overlap interlocutors more than women, and statistically,
Croatian speakers do it more often. Moreover, Croatian journalists interrupt politicians more than
their British peers. An interesting piece of research data reveals that women interrupt women and
men to the same extent. Based on the overall data, it can be concluded that English speakers were
more fluent, and that British journalists used fewer negative interruptions than Croatian.
Keywords
interruption; overlapping; disfluency; political interview; comparative analysis; Croatian; English
Hrčak ID:
306427
URI
Publication date:
23.7.2023.
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