Affiliative Other Initiated Repeats (AOIRs) in Arabic broadcast news interviews: The case of Aljazeera's "The Opposite Direction".

This paper investigates how the interviewer (IR) employs repeats of his interviewees' (IEs') prior turns to further their (IEs') agenda and stance in Aljazeera's al-itijaah al-mu'akis ('The Opposite Direction', hereafter). 'The Opposite Direction' is a weekly news interview program that broadcasts live in Arabic on Aljazeera. The show hosts two guests with opposing political views. Twenty, 50 min episodes were studied and transcribed following Conversation Analysis as my analytic method. This paper argues that the IR uses a specific questioning practice with those interviewees whom he favors, I refer to them as interviewees in the f avorable position (IEFs), allowing them to further their agenda against the other's. The paper shows how the IR's actions of agenda furthering is achieved by repeating his IEFs' previous turns in a question format which allows IEFs an opportunity to confirm and highlight a previous turn for the overhearing audience. I refer to this IR practice as the Affiliative Other Initiated Repeats (AOIRs). This study has implications that are multidisciplinary for Conversation Analysis, Arabic linguistics, cross cultural studies, and Arabic media studies. • Repeats of previous talk can be done affiliatively in broadcast news interviews. • AOIRs allow certain guests a chance to repeat and highlight a previous point. • Repeats are arguably done for the overhearing audience. • AOIRs are used with guests whose political views are in sync with the IR's. • Claims of impartiality and neutrality by the IR are challenged in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]