This focused multimodal presentation presents studies done on post-match interviews with male professional football players in German, English as a Lingua Franca and English. The studies show how the structural, linguistic and interactional features of the interviews contribute to the media social function of this media ritual.
This focused multimodal presentation presents a body of studies done on post-match interviews with male professional football players in German, English as a Lingua Franca and English. The aim of these studies is to characterise the post-match interview with respect to its structural, linguistic and interactional features and to determine how those features contribute to the media social function of those interviews. Using an ethnographic conversation analytic approach and based on three data subsets of German, ELF and English interviews collected from news platforms, social media channels as well as club websites, the studies reveal that the post-match interview shows several characteristics that justify its categorisation as a media ritual, such as distinct patterns of repetitions and uptakes and the frequent use of formulaic language. Furthermore, the studies show that the central role of evaluation in post-match interviews is closely related to the establishment and maintenance of an epistemic gradient between the interviewer and the player. Essentially, the interviews need to provide the space for the player to present an evaluation of the match from his perspective which is expected not to be seriously challenged by the interviewer. Thus, the player is foregrounded as an expert of his own experience, making this experience collectively accessible for a community brought together by the media and not primarily by physical co-presence. Maintaining an epistemic gradient is therefore essential for the smooth and unproblematic progression of the interview (Wilton 2017, 2019) Wilton, Antje. “The interactional construction of evaluation in post-match football interviews.” The Discourses of Sport: Analyses from Social Linguistics, edited by David Caldwell, John Walsh, Elaine Vine and Jon Jureidini, Routledge, 2017, London, 92-112. Wilton, Antje. “Formulaic language and repetition in post-match football interviews: Applied linguistic perspectives on a media ritual.” Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 12, 2, 2019, 2012-239.
