19
themselves from a comment or series of comments, change topics within the conversation
or establish themselves as competent and effective performers. These actions can occur
simultaneously as well as independent of each other. Each action interplays among one
another throughout the course of an episode of Politically Incorrect while participants
navigate between the two roles.
Distance self from comment. As Tracy and Anderson (1999) found in their study of 911
callers, people linguistically distance themselves from situations in a number of ways for
many reasons. The situation here is no different. In excerpt 4, an extension of the earlier
excerpt 1, above JF gave an example of this.
Excerpt 4:
DJ:
She can keep going, if she come back she love what
1
she left. So don’t say nothing about the beating
2
they love it (.) when it’s going down=
3
Aud: ((sporadic laughter))
4
DJ:
=You got husbands that beat they wives you got
5
girlfriends, why all of them haven’t left? What’s
6
wrong [with the world
7
JF:
[that’s what I’m talking about ((turns to
8
audience))
9
Aud: ((Laughter ))
10
DJ:
You think just the pimp’s fight
11
BM:
Don’t be on his side. He- he beats [women ( )
12
DJ:
[Oh oh]
13
AH:
[What] is he
14
do:ing?
15
In the above excerpt JF uses “that’s what I’m talking about” in line 9 while facing the
panel then turns to the audience and makes a face. Although the facial expression cannot
be made out from the camera, the audiences response of laughter leads one to believe it
Convention