Abstract
The political television interview provides researchers a chance to explore the dynamism of intercultural communication as it is a highly structured speech event with norms of interaction and interpretation governed by sociolinguistic and discourse rules. During formal interviews, the interviewer and interviewee presumably cooperate and coordinate the activity of interaction to get across a message to the viewers. However, the interaction in a political television interview sometimes turns into an antagonistic scene due to the interviewer’s and interviewee’s conflicting discourses and cultural communicative styles. This chapter analyzes the interaction in a television interview conducted by Tim Sebastian, a world-renowned figure in media circles while interviewing an Arab scholar from the Institute of Islamic Thought in the UK, Dr. Azzam Al-Tamimi. The interviewer’s and interviewee’s communicative styles are interpreted with reference to the high-context culture and low-context culture as advocated by specialists in intercultural communication studies .This is an attempt to interpret the political TV interview interaction as essentially a sociocultural issue not just a purely linguistic conversational activity. The analysis utilizes a range of concepts from speech act theory, conversational analysis, pragmatics and discourse, including implicatures and shared assumptions. The findings of this study indicate that the differing communicative styles of the interactants lead to divisiveness among the viewers. Hence, the interview is not a venue for a factually objective dissemination of knowledge to the masses of viewers.
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Appendix
Appendix
BBC News 24 TV Program “HARDTALK”—Tuesday 2 November 2004 interview with Dr Azzam al-Tamimi. Institute of Islamic Political Thought
Tim Sebastian
As far as you’re concerned with Yasser Arafat, good riddance—you don’t want him back in the Palestinian territories and that goes for your friends in Hamas as well?
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
Not really. The last few weeks he spent in Ramallah his relationship with Hamas was actually improving They were doing very good business together.
Tim Sebastian
But you say today his group no longer speaks for the Palestinians—these are your words:
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
For some time they have not been speaking for the Palestinians Since they accepted Oslo and went along the path of peace-making in accordance with the terms of Israel and its supporters in America they had stopped speaking for the Palestinians.
Tim Sebastian
But they may have stopped speaking for you and they may have stopped speaking for Hamas but there’s plenty of popularity left among the Palestinians in the territories isn’t there?
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
Well they speak for a certain segment of the Palestinians undoubtedly. This is like a tnbe and Yasser Arafat was always the chief of the tribe
Tim Sebastian
Exactly. So your slogan isn’t exactly right is it when you say today his group no longer speaks for the Palestinians; he speaks for quite a lot of the Palestinians doesn’t he?
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
Quite a lot or a few—that really depends. I mean we haven’t had a (genuine] election and we cannot have general election because of the current situation but.
Tim Sebastian
No, but you have opinion polls don’t you?
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
… there are indications and the indications tell us that today it is Hamas that really represents what the Palestinians want. The Palestinians want freedom.
Tim Sebastian
Well you say that but that’s not backed up by the opinion polls. The poll conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Policy & Survey Research between September 23rd and 26th gives Hamas 22 % compared to, I think it’s the 26 % or more which is given to Fatah and the Independence.
They were asked/people were asked, Will you give your vole in the next local election to candidates from Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Independence and only 22.2 % said Hamas. … isn’t much of support is it?
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
I question the credibility of this Center and of the studies that it makes. What I would say is that, give the Palestinians the freedom of choice for a change and see what they choose....
Tim Sebastian
But you just don’t like the results—that’s the reason you reject this isn’t it?
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
No—there are many academics and many observers who have cast doubt on these centers which are funded by the USA and do research that serves the peace process and those who are involved in it.
Tim Sebastian
Why does it serve the peace process? There hasn’t been any peace process to serve, so it hasn’t served anything has it …?
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
Well the Israelis killed the peace process:
Tim Sebastian
… apart from getting the opinions of Palestinians which you don’t happen to like. The fact is, according to the polls, Hamas represents under a quarter of the population. That’s maybe an unpalatable fact to you but that happens to be borne out by the figures.
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
What Hamas represents today is actually what the Palestinians are hoping for. The Palestinians are hoping for freedom.
Tim Sebastian
Some … some Palestinians are hoping [for]:
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
The Palestinians, most of them want to go back home. The Oslo process, the peace process in which the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) embroiled itself gave away the rights of the Palestinians.
Tim Sebastian
When the Palestinian human-rights group did a survey of Palestinians and asked them whether they wanted to go home, the overwhelming majority said they didn’t and their offices were trashed; the offices of the Palestinian Human-Rights Monitoring Group were trashed as a result of it. So you don’t seem to like any results, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and people like that don’t seem to like any results that go against their own orthodoxy do they?
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
You see that’s nonsense. I as a Palestinian, I know many Palestinians around the world—I know my own family, I know my friends—we all want our homes back. Even if we live in villas, in palaces, we want our homes. Nobody has the right to steal our homes from us. Nobody has the right to bring people from outside and dump them on our land. Our land is our land.
Tim Sebastian
And for that, continuing violence—that’s what Hamas and your friends in Hamas speaks for?
Dr Azzam Al-Tamimi
We don’t call it ‘violence’. We call it ‘legitimate struggle’; we call it ‘jihad’...
Tim Sebastian
Well it doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s still murder isn’ it?
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Atari, O. (2015). The Political TV Interview, Tim Sebastian’s Interview with an Arab: A Venue for Reconciliation or Discord?. In: Raddawi, R. (eds) Intercultural Communication with Arabs. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-254-8_12
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