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home). I will look at Goffman’s work (1967, 1981) on studying interaction. More
particularly the interactional move of footing is significant in how panel members on the
program must use certain interactional maneuvers to align with the audience or each
other in the discussion. Panel members do this both explicitly and implicitly. Goffman’s
(1981) concept of footing will be the theoretical foundation for much of this work, but I
will also draw from previous work by scholars on television talk shows both in America
and abroad. According to Goffman (1967), interactants invoke the concept of footing
each time they change alignment and begin to alter the production of a comment. The
method of analysis will be largely focused on Potter and Edwards (2001) work in
discursive social psychology because of the good fit of this method with image concerns.
Both Goffman’s work and the work in discursive social psychology combine nicely to
examine the means by which people address changing footing. It is important to closely
examine how looking at talk television through the lens of discourse analysis contributes
to an understanding as new genres develop, as they will continue to evolve.
Discourse analysis and television talk
Tolson (2001) defines broadcast talk as “a conversational practice, institutionally
located and always ‘double articulated’ both to the immediate situation and to the
overhearing audience” (p. 30). Studying broadcast talk is a particularly good place to get
a sense of the larger society. As Carbaugh (1988) articulates extraordinarily well:
“Just as we have learned about Roman society by studying orations in the
Assembly, and Colonial society by studying negotiations in the town hall, so we
should learn much about contemporary American society by studying the kind of
talk that is heard on Donahue” (p. 4).
Convention