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The publicalisation of the private: Talkshow Genres and Role Assignment

Helmut Gruber/ Johanna Lalouschek 1 Introduction The inflationary increase in the number of talk shows on public and private TV-channels during the last decade has led to what could be called a "publicalisation" of the private sphere. By this term we mean that more and more areas of peoples' private spheres have become publicly discussed topics of media programs (Sennett, 1996)1

In the first part of our paper we present a comparison of two apparently very different talk show formats, the Austrian late night discussion talk show "Club 2" and the German daytime health-information talk "Gesundheit!", with particular regard to role assignment practices of talk show hosts. In the second part we demonstrate in two case studies how the above mentioned tension between "public" and "private" becomes visible in certain cases when talk show participants are unable or unwilling to submit to the situational requirements.

. This phenomenon creates not only a tension between the institutional forces of mass media organisations and the world of people's private lives ("Lebenswelten", Habermas, 1981), but in the case of medical or political talk shows has also blended aspects of different public institutions (e.g. health system, political organisations). On the discourse level publicalisation creates a new discourse with typical structural properties which also reflects features of the underlying registers (private, medical, political etc.). Of course this intertextuality does not allow a clear cut distinction between underlying and actual registers. The more the borders of public and private discourse are blurred, the more the manifestations of the above-mentioned tension become indirect. In our paper we shall show that this aspect establishes a rather close relation between talk show subgenres which seem, at first sight, to be rather unrelated .

2 Generic features of the broadcast formats

2.1 The “Club 2" talk show

The “Club 2", a very popular late night talk show of the Austrian public broadcasting service (ORF), was an open ended live program where 6- 8 people discussed a topic of current social, political or cultural interest. It existed for more then 10 years. To establish the most “natural” 1 Thus, publicalisation covers a wider range of phenomena than Fairclough's concept of "conversationalisation"

(Fairclough/ Mauranen, 1997).

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atmosphere the discussion took place in a lounge-like furnished studio without an audience; discussants were seated on sofas and armchairs round a coffee table and soft drinks and snacks were available. The TV cameras were remote-controlled so that even participants with extensive media experience would not know which camera was transmitting at a certain moment. The shows were not called “discussions” but “conversations”, and the moderator was the “host”. The choice of participants was guided by two major principles: discussants were expected to have different opinions about the topic, and not only “specialists” but also “ordinary” people should be present2

Participants were expected to give their opinions (i.e. to present a certain position) about the topic of talk, but they were also supposed to present themselves “as they were”, i.e. as persons. Of course, the discussants’ principle way of meeting (or not meeting) these expectations was in their verbal and nonverbal situational behavior (and - to a lesser degree - their appearance, cf. below). However, these two basic principles of the program created an inherent role conflict for discussants: as representatives of a certain position they were expected to air opinions and values which they shared with a group of the TV-audience, while as persons they were expected to behave in a “unique” way which would distinguish them from the other discussants as well as from the audience. In most discussions this tension did not result in factual problems, because the displayed personal “uniqueness” of the participants remained within the boundaries of commonly shared and accepted norms and values. If, however, participants’ personal “uniqueness” violated basic social norms and values, the underlying role conflict became visible.

, all of them having equal status in the situation (i.e. all of them being “guests” of the “host”).

2.2 The health talk “Gesundheit!"

The programme "Gesundheit!" has been broadcast by the German television channel ‘ZDF’ since 1996, four times a week for half an hour in the early afternoon. It covers the whole range of topics on health and diseases, dealing with a single topic each day. Unlike traditional health information programmes and health magazines the health programme "Gesundheit!" seeks to convey health information in a talk-show like manner. Therefore, the guests are medical or psychological experts as well as (lay-) people who are (or have been) afflicted with the particular disease or health problem under discussion. It is important to note that the host is a general practitioner. He presents himself as the "ZDF's family doctor" and is known

2 I owe all background information about this program to Dr. Peter Huemer who was editor

responsible for this program for many years.

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to the viewers from other health programmes, especially from phone-in programmes. So the special feature of "Gesundheit!” is that lay people and experts communicate with each other about health topics in a public situation.

As a programme on health information it is subject to the structural conditions of Public Health Policy, which aims to establish a concern for health problems as a public priority, to increase knowledge about diagnosis, treatment practices and prevention, to change beliefs that impede the adoption of health-promoting attitudes and behaviour, and to motivate change by demonstrating the personal and social benefits, leading ultimately to broad changes in perceived social norms (Lupton 1996, 108). As a television programme it is subject to the structural conditions of media production, that is, the production of entertaining information or info-tainment (Göpfert 1992, Klemm 1996). One entertaining element is the presentation of illness, especially the public presentation of spectacular diseases, of suffering and pain or live operations. Another entertaining element is the presentation and public appearance of people afflicted with particular health problems. The idea behind this is that the viewers may be more attracted to listen to "real" people's first-person narratives than to watch rather abstract filmclips or expert interviews. These two sets of influencing conditions create role problems for participants which are quite similar to the "Club 2" show.

According to the structural framework of public health policy the people afflicted are invited as "medical cases" in order to represent the different forms, symptoms and treatments of a particular health problem. They are not primarily invited as sick individuals. The health information they are asked to convey should enable the viewers to recognize appropriately their own bodily conditions as healthy or sick, and to act accordingly, e.g. visit their doctors or change inappropriate health behaviour. Therefore the single presentations should always be of general relevance for the audience, and at the same time they should be personal enough to remain entertaining and to attract attention. These rather contradictory conditions lead to a complicated exercise: in the health programme the people afflicted should provide a first-person narrative about their health problem, which at the same time should not become too personal, so that it can remain sufficiently typical and general.

3 Role assignment in the “Club 2" The “Club 2" was intended as a talk show in which discussions should develop as naturally as possible (an aim which was generally met: Frei-Borer, 1991; Löffler, 1989), and so the moderators did not inhibit the flow of discussion in most cases. However, the introductory phase of the discussions revealed the stage-managed character of the talk. In this phase the moderator introduces the participants to the TV-audience. By presenting their names and

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information about their professions, relations towards the topic, offices, and personal experiences etc., s/he implicitly assigns different positional roles to them3

3.1 A “guest” becomes a “case”

. Thus, the first phase of the “Club 2" is characterized by two features: (a) the moderators perform a more active role than in other phases of the discussion, and (b) the positional roles of the participants are established. Their individuality usually becomes manifest in the subsequent discussion through their discursive behaviour. However, these processes did not always run as smoothly as described above. The following analysis provides an example of a moderator’s deviant practice of role assignment.

The following excerpts come from a Club 2 discussion titled “Beat ‘em up! - Youth and violence” (23.6.88, ORF 2), which was occasioned by several cases of skinhead violence in Vienna during the preceding. One of the discussants was Alex Slezak, a 16-year old skinhead who had been involved in one of the fights which had led to the talk show. The “host” was Rudolf Nagiller, a well known Austrian TV-journalist and frequent moderator of the Club 2.

As mentioned above, Nagiller introduces his guests in the first phase of the discussion, mainly by mentioning their profession or office (e.g. “Professor Hacker, psychiatrist ... Professor Hacker has dealt with the topic for years”; “Günter Bögl, head of the Vienna police department”, etc.) in order to reveal their relation to the topic and to assign their positional role. However, in Alex’s case he applies a different procedure of introduction: in a first, short introductory statement he introduces him as “Mr. Alex Slezak, adolescent, 16 years old, a so-called skinhead”. Apart from the name and the exact age this statement does not reveal any new information about Alex, neither for the other discussants nor for the TV-audience - it is obvious for anybody that he is very young and a skinhead.

Immediately after this first introductory phase Nagiller continues with what could be called a “presentation phase”, in which he does not present Alex as a representative of a position but rather as a bundle of external features which together “stand for” a skinhead. The following excerpts illustrate this presentation and also Alex’s (unsuccessful) attempts to build up a position for which he stands.

3 The moderators did not always present the information actively but rather stimulated participants

through questions to provide relevant bits of information about themselves. For an account of the discursive moves used by moderators to assign roles to participants cf. Gruber, 1992.

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Excerpt 1: 48 N: Gradually I’m becoming bald ... it’s no catastrophe but involuntarily 49 You sort of volunteered to be bald you had your hair cut to be bald 50 A: (yes) 51 N: why? 52 A: Well, because my philosophy of life is skinhead...4

In (48) Nagiller introduces the first “feature” of a skinhead (the bald head) and asks Alex for the reason for this “voluntary baldness”. Alex’s answer in (52) could be seen as a first attempt to build up and present a position but the term “philosophy of life” seems to be too vague to satisfy Nagiller. As a consequence he reformulates his question in 54f (not represented here). So far Nagiller’s activities could be viewed as an attempt to get Alex to verbalize his values and thus to establish a comprehensible connection between his appearance and his position. However, this first attempt is unsuccessful, but the second one seems to work better.

Excerpt 2:

59 A: ...the issue with the bald head has to do with how the whole thing 60 started. 61 N: How is it? Or - better - how was it? 62 A: yeah 63 A: It was hmm well approximately nineteen-hundred and sixty-nine I mean it’s 64 A: not exactly known, I mean I don’t know it really exactly 65 N: in England I 66 N: think, right? 67 A: In England, yes, 68 A: and there was the worker’s movement, who were not able to keep up with 69 the other people (well) they couldn’t afford a suit and all these 70 things - 71 they said okay we wear our working boots present day Doc Martins, I 72 I mean then they were Doc Martins too, the jeans they had for work 73 N: the 74 shoes I think belong/ it’s relevant what the shoes look like,

4 Alex speaks with a strong Viennese dialect (with dialectal features not only on the phonological but also on the morphological and syntactical levels) which disadvantages him, and makes his statements appear very clumsy in the context of rather elaborate speakers. However, this feature of his oral performance is not relevant for the following analyses, and so his contributions are translated into standard English.

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75 could/could you show them? Put’em, put’em up there a bit <encourages 76 Alex to put his shoes on the table> that we can see them, they are 77 laced shoes, laced boots (59) represents the last clause of Alex’ answer to Nagiller’s recycled question why skinheads are bald. This time Nagiller uses an open question (61) to encourage Alex to tell “how the whole thing started”. From (63) on, Alex produces an account of the history of the skinhead movement which displays the first stages of a narration (cf. Labov/ Waletzky, 1969); in (63-67) he presents the setting of the story, i.e. time and place of the origin of the skinhead movement; in (68-70) Alex introduces the complication (“working class people could not afford expensive clothing”); and finally in (71-75) he tells about the solution (“they wore their working clothes”). Of course, this narrative account is not a “real” story. The actor is a rather abstract entity (“the worker’s movement”) and there is no explicit temporal development5

But notice Nagiller’s discursive acitivities during this narrative: Nagiller’s activities in (65-66) and (73-74) are not mere backchannel signals but “minor contributions” of a “secondary speaker” (Bublitz, 1988: 153ff), who adds information (65-66) and comments (73-74) on the primary speakers’ major contribution. In (65-66) he adds an aspect of the setting (the location) which Alex had not yet mentioned and in (73-77) Nagiller interrupts him entirely to focus on one aspect of clothing (“Doc Martins” boots) Alex had mentioned immediately before

, but it presents the historical and social forces which motivated the skinheads’ appearance and is thus a first step in building up a position.

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5 Although there is the implicit temporal order which is the logic of any story: the complication has to

be prior to the solution.

. His contributions refer only to descriptive items in Alex’s narrative (location and an aspect of the skinheads’ appearance) and not to the social forces and motives Alex presents. Thus Nagiller displays a marked interest in the “factual” aspects of Alex’s contribution, but not in the values and motives behind these facts which might constitute a position. Furthermore, Nagiller’s second intervention continues in (75-77), where he switches to a much more active role, inviting Alex to show his boots to the audience and describing them. In (75-77) Nagiller introduces a question-answer sequence by an indirect imperative

6 It might be disputed whether Nagiller’s intervention in (73) does occur at a TRP or not, but in my opinion there are more arguments against this view than in favour of it: although Nagiller starts his turn at the end of a clause in Alex’s contribution, Alex seems not to have finished his turn. As mentioned above (71-72) comprise the solution for the “workers’ movement’s” problem of having not enough money for fancy clothes. But the whole narrative is Alex’ response to Nagiller’s question for the reason of the skinheads’ bald heads and that up to (73) Alex did not yet mention the baldness of the skins but rather other aspects of their appearance. Thus, it seems to be justified to view Nagiller’s intervention in (73) as an interruption.

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(introduced by a “hedged performative”, (Fraser, 1975). During this sequence he asks Alex about various details of the skinheads’ outfit (shoes, jeans, shirt), thereby “presenting” him as the (passive) bearer of certain “features”. Through this presentation (which is linguistically marked by Nagiller’s change from open to closed questions and even imperatives) Nagiller prevents Alex from building up a personal role as well as a position: Alex is continuously prevented from verbalizing those norms which might be relevant for the skinheads, and his appearance is not viewed as an aspect of his individuality, but rather as the direct expression of his value system. Although Alex eventually succeeds in continuing and finishing his narrative (93ff, not represented here), Nagiller’s presentation strategy has consequences for the whole discussion. Alex is not treated as an equal partner in the discussion, but as a case to be talked about.

In general the transcripts and analyses reveal the basic tension of the programme’s concept: Alex, as a member of a group which explicitly does not share the norms and values of the majority, is presented as a “specimen” of a skinhead. The features of his appearance are viewed as intrinsically related to his values. Therefore he is neither allowed to develop an individuality nor is it possible for him to build up a position which is not exclusively traced back to the attributes of his appearance. Thus, the “introduction of a guest” parallels the “presentation” of a medical case.

4 Role assignment in "Gesundheit!"

The issue of the programme "Gesundheit!" analyzed here deals with the topic "headaches and migraine" (15.10.1996, ZDF), the two main forms of chronic headache. The presenter Dr. Gerhardt (G) introduces the people present, whom he also calls his "guests". In doing so he is strongly oriented towards the medical topic:

10 G: as always I have invited some guests who can tell me something about 11 G: headaches' migraine' - first Mrs. Sabine Herrmann' she has suffered from 12 G: migraine for SEVENteen years' Mr. Rolf Denker' headaches for 13 G: FIFteen years at least' a:nd doctor Jan Brand' he is the head of a - 14 G: migraine clinic in – Koenigstein' welcome.

Dr. Gerhardt starts by introducing the two persons afflicted by their names, and then he proceeds to indicate the duration of suffering and classifying them according to one of the

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symptomalogies (tension headaches or migraine respectively). These two different forms of headaches have to be distinguished and treated in different ways, when diagnosed by a doctor. So the role assigned to both of them is "person afflicted with chronic headaches". As they are only distinguished by their symptomatologies (tension headaches vs. migraine) they are presented as medical cases. In contrast, the introduction of the medical expert is constructed in the following way: the host mentions his title and his high status professional function. This proves him to be a highly qualified expert. This mode of introduction and role assignment is the default form in this programme.

The intrinsic ambivalence between television info-tainment and public health information mentioned above manifests itself in the presenter's utterances. As the presenter of a (health) talkshow he has invited his guests, who are expected to tell him something about chronic suffering, be it entertaining, be it pitiable. This suggests that the persons invited might be quite free in planning and communicating their personal narratives. As a medical doctor he pins them down to their role as medical cases, as various symptomatic forms made public as living examples (Lalouschek 1999). The viewers may expect that in the following programme both kinds of headaches will be presented and discussed according to symptoms, causes and treatment possibilities.

This introduction also shows the ideological background of this programme, the traditional and dominant medical model. In this technological model the focus of attention is directed to the symptom and the affected organ, its diagnosis and its mostly chemical treatment. It is not directed towards the human being in his bio-psycho-social wholeness. This is the difference between a medical case and a person. Just like the medical system the programme also shows that it pays attention to maintaining the hierarchy between lay or sick people and medical experts.

4.1 A "case" trying to become a "person"

Following the introduction the presenter asks Mr. Denker (D) to describe how his headaches started fifteen years ago:

16 G: Mr. Denker, - fifteen years, - that's quite some time, isn't it. 17 how did it feel when these headaches started for the first time, did 18 it come slowly' or did it start suddenly? 19 D: no, right as you said just 20 before' it came quite slowly' and in the beginning uh you think, 21 maybe you made a night of it o:r some other incident where you may

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22 G: yeah 23 D: say' okay that's where you get a headache from. and uh some time 24 later you realize, no, that wasn't the reason, and then you start 25 thinking, uh perhaps there could be another reason for it, and uh 26 usually a headache comes and goes again soon. but THIS one didn't 27 go again.

Mr. Denker confirms that his chronic headache started very slowly (19/20). At this point the presenter's background knowledge that he uses to control the interaction process mixes with the characteristic symptom of this form of headache ("did it come slowly or did it start suddenly" (18)) – in contrast to migraine that may start suddenly from one day to the next. It becomes obvious that the initial question is motivated by the principles of health information for the viewers, not by a special interest in Mr. Denker’s personal experiences of that time. Mr. Denker describes that he – also quite typically – thought these headaches to be a "usual" headache after a heavy night (21-23). Finally he names the main feature of tension headaches, their permanence (26/27). Up to this point it seems that Mr. Denker is acting in accordance with his role as a medical example of tension headache.

The presenter continues by asking Mr. Denker to describe the kind of pain he experienced:

27 go again. 28 G: well, could you try and describe these headaches? 29 D: well, they 30 stayed for a longer and longer period of time, so that I got sceptical' 31 as I said before' a NORmal headache' that's gone sometime the next

day 32 G: yes 33 D: this time it took two, three days.

The presenter asks a rather technical question, to describe the particular pains (28). Mr. Denker responds, but only on the interaction level ("well (29). On the level of content he proceeds with his narrative of "how it all started": the headaches stayed for a ‘longer and longer’ period of time (30-33). At the beginning of his account he mentioned that he had started to think about reasons other than the "usual" ones for this (26), in (32) he points out that he became sceptical. In the context of narrations about illness and health problems, such often vague formulations always function as hints of some quality of experience, important to the individual, or a psychosocial or emotional context, and can easily become topics through enquiry or exploration (Lalouschek 1995). Mr. Denker then uses interactive strategies like

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continuing his narrative and hinting at emotional qualities, to locate himself individually as a person not only afflicted by these headaches but also personally affected by them. So he tries to get rid of the role of mere medical case without personal history. One might conclude that for his self-perception and his identity, the fact that (with the onset of his headaches) he became a chronically sick and suffering person is far more important for him than the technical aspect of his headaches, i.e. the special qualitity of the different sorts of pain. It becomes clear that the problem of headaches can be viewed from two aspects: from a technical one, preferred by the presenter (and the traditional medical model), and from the aspect of personal experience, preferred by the narrator.

The presenter does not pursue Mr. Denker's hints. Instead he reformulates his question from (28). This time, Mr. Denker responds according to the role assigned to him (and according to the typical tension headaches):

34 G: Mr.Denker, did your head hurt as a whole' or did it pull up from your back' or 35 D: no. it mostly was one-sided' because it really came out of/ from the shoulders, and then 36 I always said' it's like a circuit line' that runs along that side of the head, and then right 37 over to the forehead. Not surprising, this interplay to establish one of the two aspects, the technical or the personal one, will turn up in every further sequence between the presenter and Mr. Denker.

5 Conclusion The above analyses show the basic tension in the format of the “Club 2" programme: in the default case participants, as representatives of abstract positions, are required to verbalize the norms and values which make up these positions. The discursive way of establishing them contributes to the individuality they are also supposed to display, and their appearance is another (minor) aspect of their individuality. Alex, as a member of a group whose position, and also appearance, deviates from the vast majority of society, does not fit into this scheme: his deviant appearance and dress is taken as a direct representation of his position, and by the presentation of his different external features he is reduced to a “case”. His own attempts to build up a coherent position (to say nothing of his attempts to present himself as an individual) are systematically neglected by the moderator.

The analysis of sequences drawn from the health talk programme "Gesundheit!" shows how the underlying concept of providing general health information through personal accounts can be realized. The persons afflicted by a health problem are expected to tell their personal stories (or better, to pretend they will tell their story), and at the same time they are required

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to submit completely to the presenter's interactive control. They are expected to remain "typical" of their disease and not become too individual, especially if not asked to do so. The presenter functions as a disciplining element, fulfilling the task of fitting his guests into the roles they have been assigned. Of course it is no coincidence that these measures of discipline are well-known from doctor-patient interactions.

These mechanisms would not be surprising in a medical talk show, but the above analysis of the "Club 2" interaction reveals that in dealing with extremely marginalized groups the liberal enlightenment ideology of the "Club 2" programme also changes to the authoritarian attitude of medical case presentations. Thus, both analyses show the harsh functionalising of humans and their individuality for specific media purposes, and so they confirm Pierre Bourdieu's observation (1998) of television as a means of growing symbolic oppression.

6 References

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Fraser, Bruce (1975): Hedged Performatives. In: Peter Cole/ Jerry Morgan (eds): Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 3, Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 187-210.

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Lšffler, Heinrich (1989). Fernsehgespräche im Vergleich: Gibt es kultur- oder programmspezifische Gesprächsstile? In W. Holly/ P. Kühn/ U. Püschel (eds), Redeshows. Fernsehdiskussionen in der Diskussion, 92-116. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

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