Introduction 227/350 Since his election as Labour leader in early September 2015, Jeremy Corbyn has often faced a fairly hostile media, with his actions and inactions judged at all turns (Media Reform Coalition 2015). The new Labour leader, already well known for his belief that politics should be conducted more politely, appears to have found television interviews to be somewhat of a minefield, with interviews with Krishan Guru-Murthy, on Channel 4 News (13/07/15) and with Andrew Marr on The Andrew Marr Show (17/01/06) both widely denounced as poor showings for the political leader, by both the news media and on social media. On September 30 2015, Jeremy Corbyn took part in another interview, with Eamonn Holmes, on Sky News. The criticism …show more content…
They use these interviews as a means to engage with the general public and to justify their performance, clearly aware of the impact of interviews on their credibility and trustworthiness (Andone 2013). As their images are vital to the continued trust of the public, politicians must protect their face needs, and those of their party perhaps more vigorously than the majority of people (Li 2008). In contrast, many interviewers wish to point out the weaknesses of political leaders, to make them prove themselves, and they often do so by means of impoliteness. This mix of politicians trying to project their image through politeness, and interviewers trying to provoke them into interesting viewing through impoliteness can lead to unusual patterns of communication and argumentation (Andone …show more content…
The interview was conducted live on air on Sky News, on the morning of September 30, 2015 and comprises of 12.15 minutes of data. I downloaded the data from the verified Sky News YouTube channel, and transcribed the interview according to the conventions of several authors (Bucholtz 2000, Crystal 2011, Lapadat & Lindsay 1999). The full transcript is available as Appendix A, and consists of 2577 words. For future reference for the transcript, and any figures, the letter J refers to Jeremy Corbyn, and the letter E refers to Eamonn Holmes I chose to analyse this particular interview as following its broadcast, several media outlets denounced the interview as unprofessional and rude (Fletcher 2015, Price 2015, Saul 2015). I am particularly interested in the politeness strategies used, and if this is perhaps part of the reason for the backlash against the interview. As all of the data is publically available, and in fact designed for public consumption, there are no significant ethical issues. Both Jeremy Corbyn and Eamonn Holmes can be considered public figures, and as they have spoken as themselves in a public forum, the data has not been anonymised. It should be noted that analysis will be based only on one interview between two participants, so the scope is fairly limited, however I believe that the results pertaining to this particular interaction will be