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“I love homosexuals like I love gangsters”: epistemics and evidentiality in a Brazilian hybrid television news interview

2017; De Gruyter; Volume: 37; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1515/text-2017-0019

1860-7349

Edvan P. Brito,

Media Studies and Communication

Abstract This paper analyzes how interlocutors express evidentiality (Chafe 1986), epistemic stance and epistemic status (Heritage 2012) in their moment-by-moment interactional moves (Goffman 1981) in order to set the grounds for the argumentative dialogue they have during a hybrid television news interview. The data were extracted from an episode of the Brazilian television show De Frente Com Gabi ‘Facing Gabi’, which featured a discussion on religion and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) rights, focusing on adoption. In looking at the progression of the epistemic devices used by the participants, the analysis takes into account not only the sources or domains of knowledge presented by them but also issues related to access and rights to this knowledge. The analysis of the data shows that the interaction in question does not meet the expectations of a news interview discourse, in which interlocutors usually perform their roles as questioners and answerers according to a set of pre-established institutional norms. With this in mind, this study highlights the importance of viewing institutional discourse as a dynamic type of interaction that can be adapted by interactants in order for them to meet both institutional and interactional goals.