Should You Be Persuaded - Testimonies in Phone Hacking Inquiry (News of the World case in the summer of 2011)

KATRŇÁKOVÁ, Hana. Should You Be Persuaded - Testimonies in Phone Hacking Inquiry (News of the World case in the summer of 2011). In The 6th Conference on Translation, Interpreting and Comparative Legilinguistics, Poznan (Poland). 2012.

Basic information

• Original name: Should You Be Persuaded - Testimonies in Phone Hacking Inquiry (News of the World case in the summer of 2011)
• Authors: KATRŇÁKOVÁ, Hana (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution).
• Edition: The 6th Conference on Translation, Interpreting and Comparative Legilinguistics, Poznan (Poland), 2012.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60200 6.2 Languages and Literature
• Country of publisher: Poland
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14640/12:00064694
• Organization unit: Language Centre
• Keywords in English: interview; formality; persuasion; social actors; modality; discourse analysis and conversation analysis

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to look at conversation management of interviewers - members of the Parliamentary Committee and strategies used by witnesses, who were assumed to have some awareness of bad practices and thus possibly breaching the law. The PEACE method of interviewing was adopted; interviewers seemed to be aware of the Code of Practice used in England and Wales, which defines the interview as "the questioning of a person regarding their involvement or suspected involvement in a criminal offence or offences"(Home Office 2008:37). Although the people invited for the interview to give evidence were called witnesses, there was a suspicion that they might have had some awareness of improper practices, which is illustrated in the linguistic analysis. Transcripts of highly formal televised interrogation were used to analyse strategies of individual speakers. The analysis did not work with recordings so no implications were made regarding phonological analysis. The paper uses for the analysis transcripts from oral evidence given by James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and Sir Paul Stephenson before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the UK Parliament. Full transcripts are freely accessible from the internet. The linguistic analysis included discourse analysis and conversation analysis, pragmatic analysis and the analysis of Hallidayan Social Actors and modality.