The management of disagreement between interviewees in Italian TV multi-interviewee interview shows

This paper focuses on the role of interviewer and interviewee in a corpus of Italian affairs interview shows, and aims to account for some of the typical turn and sequence structures in the organization and management of disagreement. The study identifies and discusses examples of disagreements in three contexts: following a co-interviewee’s turn, in the midst of a co-interviewee’s turn, and in extended sequences. The analysis points up similarities and differences between the management of disagreement in panel news interviews (as described by Greatbatch, e.g. 1992, and others) and in the presence of a studio audience (as in the Italian data). One important difference is that in the Italian data reviewers do not intervene in direct unmitigated disagreements between interviewees in order to manage an exit from them, but appear to emphasize the dispute rather than to seek reconciliation. The study suggests that this may be due to the presence of the studio audience in this format.