Interview from the Perspective of a Journalistic Genre

The survey was conducted on print and electronic newspaper interviews, and it is hoped that the thesis will provide a comprehensive picture of politeness in press interviews.

1.2. THEORETICAL BASIS

1.2.1. Overview of interview communication

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1.2.1.1. Interview from the perspective of a journalistic genre

a. Concept and characteristics of interview genre

Interview is a word of Chinese origin. According to the character, interview means to visit, to investigate by asking. If understood in the usual sense, interview has a rather broad meaning. A conversation asking each other about health, work, plans... between two friends is an interview. The question

– The interview between a doctor and a patient, between an employer and a candidate, or between an applicant and a candidate is also an interview. An interview, in the first sense, is a form of social communication between one person and another about an issue that interests them.

In the field of journalism, the term interview also has two meanings:

Firstly, interviewing is one of the methods of collecting information as material for an article. This is the most popular method, used by all journalists in the world. According to Maria Lukina, "American researchers calculate that interviews consume 80-90% of their work" [42; p. 13]. In journalism, interviewing is an indispensable job. Based on the information collected from interviews, journalists have the "bricks" to build other genres such as news, reports, investigations, etc.

Second, interview is considered as an independent journalism genre, a research object of journalism theory and science, and at the same time a popular and effective method in journalism practice. The term "interview" used in this thesis is understood in this second way.

Interview – as a genre is classified in the group of news journalism ( Journalistic works of Ta Ngoc Tan – Nguyen Tien Hai [69]; Journalistic reports of Duc Dung [9]; Genres of political and artistic journalism [63] of Duong Xuan Son; Genres of radio journalism [84] of VV Xmirnop). The group of news journalism includes: news, interviews, reports, etc. The strength of this group is the ability to report news quickly and promptly. Being a popular and public-attracting genre, interview is a research subject of journalism science. Just the definition of interview alone has many different views. We choose the following understanding, which is considered relatively complete and concise about interviews: "Press interviews are one of the genres in the group of news journalism genres, in which a conversation between a journalist and one or a group of people is presented about an issue that society is interested in, with certain political and social significance, published and broadcast on mass media" [36; p. 57]

Although closely related to other genres of journalism, interviews still have their own characteristics in the way they organize their work, approach and process information. Interviews are most easily recognized due to the following basic characteristics:

In terms of form: An interview in a printed or online newspaper usually has the following elements: a photo of the respondent, a headline, a sapo (lead), questions, answers, acknowledgments, and time of the interview.

About the interviewer: In theory, the interviewer can be anyone, but in reality, in order for the interview to provide valuable and weighty information, journalists often choose people with authority, reputation, and social status to ask.

The information in the interview is not provided by the reporter but by the partner. Therefore, when publishing, the journalist or the editorial office cannot make the decision on their own but must have the cooperation of the interviewee.

b. Interview forms

There are many ways to classify and name interview forms based on different criteria, which can be based on: the number of witnesses participating in answering; the number of questions and the length of the article, the form of reflecting the documents; the interview topic; the content of the interview. We accept the division based on the purpose of the interview by Maria Lukia in the book Interview Technology. We consider this classification to be the most suitable for the thesis topic:

1. Informational interview: to collect documents for news. This type of interview is high intensity due to strict time regulations. The content of the interview is often hot current issues that have just happened. (For example: interviewing people who witnessed a major fire in the city that just happened)

2. Flexible interview: is also a form of informational interview but more concise. In addition to the content of an informational interview, you can also add a flexible statement from an expert in a certain field.

3. Investigative interview: conducted with the purpose of further research on an event or issue. The subject of the investigation can be complex and contradictory.

4. Portrait interview: also known as personal interview, focuses on only one character. The character of the interview can be a person who has shown himself in some aspect of other social life and attracted public attention.

The survey materials of the thesis are the newspapers: Tien Phong (printed newspaper) and the electronic newspapers Dan Tri , Vnexpress . Through statistical results, the three most commonly used forms in Tien Phong , Dan Tri and Vnexpress newspapers are: portrait interview, flexible interview, investigative interview.

1.2.1.2. Interview from a conversational perspective

From a pragmatic perspective, each interview is considered a conversation. It can be a dialogue (shown in the form of a question-and-answer session between a journalist and an interviewee) or a polylogue (shown in a question-and-answer session between a journalist and many people, such as in talk shows or game shows on television, etc.). The research materials of the thesis are interviews in print and electronic newspapers, so the main form of communication is dialogue. As a conversation, the elements of the conversation such as the communicators, the interpersonal relationships between the communicators, the purpose of the conversation, and the situation of the conversation all affect the choice of strategies and means of expressing politeness.

a. Character communication in the interview

In an interview, the direct participants in the communication are the journalist - the questioner and the interviewee - the respondent. In addition to the two communication characters above, in an interview communication there is a third character, although not appearing directly in the conversation but equally important, which is the public (audience, listener, reader). The journalist raises questions based on the needs of the public and the respondent also explains and comments to satisfy the needs of the public. Ilie´s (2001) when defining communication in a talk show on television affirmed: it is a communication that is "controlled by the host, shaped by the participants and evaluated by the audience" (host-controlled, participant-shaped and audience-evaluated speech event) [110; p. 210]. This is not only a unique characteristic of talk shows but also common to many genres of journalism, including interviews. The relationship between these three characters can be described by the following model:

Journalist (SP1)

Interviewee (SP2)

Public

Figure 1.1: Characters communicating in the interview

In the above model, the journalist and the interviewee are considered direct participants in the conversation, while the public is the indirect audience. The direct participants SP1 and SP2 must be aware of the conventions of taking the floor, keeping the floor, and yielding the floor in the conversation as well as exploiting the implications of the conversation. Although the public does not participate directly, it has a certain influence on SP1 and SP2. SP1 and SP2 not only save face for each other but also have to respect the public and save face before the public. The presence of the public makes the interviewers more cautious when making statements.

b. Communication roles in interviews and interpersonal relationships between interviewees

In a normal communication, there is a division of roles as follows: the role of the speaker (SP1) and the role of the receiver (SP2). These two roles often rotate, after SP1 finishes speaking, it changes to the role of the listener (SP2) and vice versa. However, due to the nature of interview communication, the journalist is always the one who actively asks questions and the one who answers is the interviewee. The communicating characters do not rotate roles as in normal communication. The journalist has the right to proactively raise questions and lead the interviewee according to a predetermined plan.

Interpersonal relationships govern the entire communication process, both the content and form of the communication. Politeness is the principle of how to maintain harmonious interpersonal relationships. In order for communication to go well, learning politeness cannot help but pay attention to interpersonal relationships.

Interpersonal relationships between communicators are shown on two axes: the vertical axis (social status axis or authority axis) and the horizontal axis (distance axis or intimacy axis). The guests directly participating in the interview have different characteristics in terms of social status. In theory, the interviewees can be anyone, ordinary people, famous people, people with high status, people with profound influence on society or experts in all fields. However, because the interview content is often directed towards current issues and to make the information more convincing, journalists often interview politicians or celebrities. The survey data of the thesis includes 345 interviews with officials, 392 interviews with celebrities and 113 interviews with other subjects. In terms of the authority axis, the interviewees have a high position compared to journalists if they are officials, and have an equal position with journalists if they are artists and ordinary people.

Interview communication is formal communication, so in terms of intimacy, the relationship between the journalist and the interviewee is a distant relationship. However, between groups of subjects, this distance can be relatively different. For example, when the interviewee is an official, the distance will be farther than when the interviewee is an artist or an ordinary person.

In addition to social status, it is necessary to pay attention to the communication status of the characters participating in the interview conversation. The interviewer may have a higher social status than the journalist, but when participating in the interview, the strong communication status belongs to the journalist. Because according to Do Huu Chau: "The person who takes the initiative to raise the topic of discourse, steers the conversation in his direction, and controls the speech of the

“The person who communicates with you… is in a strong communication position” [6; p. 18]. The characters participating in the interview have predetermined roles and these roles do not change throughout the conversation, just like the roles of teachers and students in the classroom. If a participant tries to control the interview by asking the journalist back, he has broken the rules of the conversation and is judged as uncooperative. The relationship between the participants in the interview is asymmetrical.

The strong communicative position is shown in the fact that the reporter has the privilege to create questioning and controlling statements. According to author Duong Xuan Son (2011), “when conducting an interview, the interviewer must always maintain the role of “a knight holding the reins” and cannot let himself be a “horse being led by the nose” [65; p. 168]. The interview of a journalist with a character is not simply an exchange of information but also aims to create an information product that is urgent, has social significance and is intended for publication. The journalist does not ask for himself, asks for information but asks for a third party – the public. Here, the journalist plays an active role, through the way of asking questions, directing the respondent to the information content that needs to be provided to the reader. The interviewee is passive in opening the dialogue, leading, maintaining and ending the conversation.

The overwhelming strength in the communication position of journalists is also shown in the fact that for the purpose of exploiting information, they have the right to ask highly imposing questions to the interviewee, even questions that make the participant feel "lost face".

Thus, due to the characteristics of the interview genre, strong or weak communication positions, although not explicitly stated, are clearly understood. However, in many cases, the interviewee changes his or her communication position to some extent. Specifically, in their answers, they can provide information to "push" the conversation away from the interviewer's original direction.

However, in general, the dialogue in an interview is still governed by the journalist's pre-drafted script.

c. Purpose of communication

The communicative purpose is the most important factor in communication, it determines the content, means and methods of communication. This is also a factor that affects the choice of politeness strategies, the way of using means and verbal actions to show politeness. In interviews, especially investigative interviews, it seems that the purpose of respecting the face of the communication partner is not the primary concern, but the more important purpose is the purpose of seeking the truth. Journalists sometimes have to ask questions that are highly threatening to the face, point out contradictions, and even attribute responsibility to relevant leaders. Journalists will face tension in their behavior because they have to both threaten the face of the interviewer (to exploit valuable information), and not let the audience think that it is an inappropriate "aggressive" behavior. This tension will manifest itself through the use of a series of hedges and words to reduce the threat to face.

d. Communication situation

The concept of communication context can be understood as broad communication context and narrow communication context (dialogue field). “Broad communication context includes knowledge about the physical, physiological, psychological, social, cultural, religious world, history of science, art, etc. at the time and space in which communication is taking place” [6; p. 23]. Broad communication context has a certain influence on the standards for evaluating whether a statement is polite or not as well as how to use strategies and means of expressing politeness. For example, in the last century, compliments about a woman's sexy appearance could be considered highly threatening to face, but now, due to the influence of Western ideology, this issue can be viewed more openly. In the interview,

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