Stretching the Phone Lines: Ideology in Radio Talk Show Hosts’ Advice-Giving

Mei-ching Ho

Linguistics and Applied Language Studies

The Pennsylvania State University

 

 

Through a discourse analysis approach, this paper examines the conversations in two call-in radio shows, focusing on the advice-giving interaction between two American radio psychologists and their callers. Unlike regular radio broadcasts, which involve only the hosts and the audience, the multi-party participants in call-in shows reflect the complicated nature and dynamics of both host-caller and host-overhearing audience interactions (Hutchby, 1991, p. 119). This study contributes to the research on the analysis of the discourse and interaction in call-in radio shows in two important ways. First, many investigations of the discussions in call-in radio shows have looked at the organization, linguistics features and accommodations, and interaction patterns such as callers’ contribution and multiple addressing (Al-Khatib, 1995; Hutchby, 1991, 1995, 1998; Shaapuni, 1989). Few examine how hosts’ and callers’ ideologies affect the interaction and how those ideologies are conceptualized in the conversation. Second, there has been little documentation of the interaction in the call-in shows that frames callers’ private issues as the center of discussion and entertainment. This study looks at how ideology of participants in call-in shows affects interaction by comparing the turns of two hosts in popular radio call-in shows. In the particular call-in shows examined in this study, callers’ problems and personal affairs are usually the center of the talk. Topics are related to things that could happen in everyday lives, such as marriage crises, sibling quarrels, and rebellious teenagers.

The data collected for this study were from two radio call-in shows, Dr. Laura and Dr. Joy Browne, on WBTZ, The Talk Station, in south Florida. One host, Laura Schlessigner, is a licensed marriage, family and child counselor with a Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University, and the other host, Dr. Joy Browne, is a licensed clinical psychologist. Both shows are broadcast and webcast live, and run for three hours every weekday. The data analyzed here were webcast on October 11, 2002 with one show webcast in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Both shows were audio taped, and the first ninety minutes of each show was transcribed for analysis, following the transcription conventions used in Atkinson and Heritage (1984). The transcripts of both data sets were composed of conversations between the host and thirteen callers in Dr. Laura’s show and conversations between the host and ten callers in Dr. Joy Browne’s show.

           In any public discourse, the representations of texts, spoken and written alike, are interwoven with certain ideological meanings, which “are generally implicit rather than explicit,” and “are embedded in ways of using language” (Fairclough, 1995, p. 397-398). Belonging to the categories of public discourse, the hosts’ words in call-in radio shows usually reflect their own ideologies. In the two particular call-in radio shows analyzed in this study, both explicit and implicit ideological meanings seemed to appear in the hosts’ extended turns, in which the hosts usually exaggerated the callers’ problems or created imagined or inferred scenarios in order to convince callers. Since the hosts have to develop an interpretation of, and viewpoints toward, each caller’s questions or problems, it is hypothesized that the hosts tend to convince or lead callers in certain directions based on their ideologies or judgments. This paper will focus on the analysis of the hosts’ extended turns where their ideology usually comes through. In addition, the discourse structure of these two call-in shows will also be examined, and implications will be drawn.