Journal
Papers of the Linguistic Society of Belgium, vol. 16 (2022)
Author(s)
Martina Temmerman (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Abstract
Print media question-answer interviews in the Dutch-speaking press in Belgium show a formal characteristic which is not widely spread in other languages: in the interviewee’s answers, often side comments made by the interviewer are incorporated between brackets. These comments are forms of metadiscourse (Hyland 2019) and we can consider them to be ‘asides’ in the sense Goffman (1981) assigned to the term. This study describes the different forms these asides take in question-answer interviews in two Flemish popular magazines and analyzes their discursive functions. Interviewers who integrate asides in their texts, stage themselves and the readers as participants in the conversation. The analysis of the asides shows that written interviews should be considered as a form of discourse in which three participating parties are involved and in which communication in different directions takes place, rather than as an account in written form of a conversation between interviewer and interviewee.