Verbal and nonverbal Strategies of Political Discourse

Abstract

The study of televised interviews is a quite fruitful and interesting area of research and proof of this is the vast amount of literature that exists about it (Bull and Elliot 1998; Clayman 1993; and Greatbatch 1992). In this paper we attempt to analyse the relationship between verbal and nonverbal strategies in political interviews. Nonverbal elements play a very important role in communication in general, and in televised interviews in particular because of the impact of the Media. Two different types of nonverbal devices will be distinguished: those performed consciously and those performed unconsciously. Whereas conscious devices are closely related to what the politician wants to transmit, unconscious devices encode a message sometimes far away from the politician’s purposes. The politician is only in control of conscious mechanisms but not of unconscious ones. With this purpose in mind, we have selected a televised interview with the ex-President of the United States, Bill Clinton, which took place in June 22nd 2004