General trends in the actualization of phatic speech tools in Russian, German and English TV interviews

Abstract

The article discusses the phatic speech means of one of the genres of media discourse — the genre of television interview. A brief description of the media discourse is given, the structure of the television interview is described, some of its linguistic and extralinguistic features are clarified, including a high degree of generalization and depersonalization of the sender-interviewer and individualization of the sender-interviewee, a high degree of depersonalization of the recipient, assimilation of the styles of public and everyday communication of communicants, diverse conditionality and interdiscursivity of the message. Particular attention is paid to the implementation of the phatic component of a television interview, including in accordance with the realized speech roles of the sender, with the need to accentuate individual components of the communicative situation in particular and accentuate the interaction of the sender and recipient in general. In line with the communicative-discursive research paradigm, the meaningful components of the ritualized communicative situation of the “TV interview” are illustrated: greeting, presentation, discussion, summing up, gratitude, farewell. The general trends of actualization of phatic speech means in the Russian, German and English languages corresponding to these content components are outlined. The phatic component correlates with other components of the TV interview: informative, influencing and regulatory. As illustrative material, we use stereotypically actualized by the senders phatic speech means from the current TV interviews of the TV channels RT (Russia Today), Deutsche Welle* and BBC. The categories forming the basis of the communicative and discursive analysis of TV interviews are outlined. Conclusions are formulated and prospects for further research of the actualization of phatic speech means in Russian-, German- and Englishlanguage TV interviews are outlined, including the study of the actualization of phatic speech means focused on the perception of diverse potential recipients of TV interviews.