MECHANISMS OF EXPRESSION OF IMPOLITENESS IN A POLITICAL TALK SHOW

Abstract

The article presents some findings of a extensive study of functioning of verbal impoliteness in Spanish political talk shows broadcast on radio and television. In particular, in addition to confirming that the political theme is not an obstacle to the occurrence of impolite speech acts, the researcher seeks to trace the influence of factors such as environment, gender, or the role of the speaker on the use of verbal impoliteness. Analysis of a corpus consisting of a set of scripts spanning twenty-four hours of recording allows to confirm the presence of three types of impolite speech acts common to talk shows, such as interruption, disagreement, and disqualification. In terms of differences based on the role and gender of the speaker, the study concluded that, on the one hand, male talk show hosts are expected to produce more impolite speech acts than male moderators, and, on the other hand, the results obtained by female talk show hosts in using impoliteness exceed, in cases of interruption and disagreement, the results obtained by male talk show hosts.