Talking broadcast talk into being through questions and answers
Event details
The Centre for Advanced Studies in Language and Communication at the University of York is delighted to continue our tradition of inviting successful PGRs from CASLC to present some of their PhD research as part of the CASLC seminar programme. Dr Matthew Butler completed his PhD in Sociology at York in August last year and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leicester.
This talk presents Conversation Analytic work into a collection of interrelatedminteractional phenomena discovered in broadcast talk. We focus firstly on question design, exploring a novel practice that news interviewers adopt to simultaneously block potential responses an interviewee may produce, while also talking aspects of the broadcast talk social institution into being (e.g., legal constraints or social norms) prior to issuing a question.
Our attention then turns to response design, where we explore a puzzling phenomenon involving interviewees issuing two contrastive responses to a question. Here, we show that the choice of response design enables interviewees to display alternate ways they have heard the question which producing a single response cannot achieve.
The presentation demonstrates the ubiquity of question and response design as an integral resource for news interviewers and interviewees to ‘do’ aspects of their job while managing context-specific concerns and constraints they face because the interaction takes place for an overhearing audience.
How to register: The event will take place on Zoom. If you’re on the CASLC or CASLC-guest mailing list, you will receive a zoom link via google calendar. If you’re not on our mailing list, you can register by filling in this form. If you’re unable to use the online registration form, please contact: merran.toerien@york.ac.uk.
About the speaker
Dr Matthew Butler
Matthew Butler completed his PhD in Sociology at University of York in 2025. His thesis is entitled, Managing, enacting and overcoming the norms and constraints related to Broadcast Talk: a conversation analytic study. He is interested in the role of conversation in shaping aspects of a social institution. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at University of Leicester, where he uses Conversation Analytic methods to Study team communication and safety in endoscopy procedures.