The discursive construction of the public and the private spheres in media debates: the case of television talk shows

Abstract

Within the framework of an interactionnist perspective on discourse analysis, this paper deals with the discursive construction of the public and private spheres in media debates. Focusing on the French media, one observes a current trend to mix up the construction of the public and the private spheres in the practice of media information and more generally a shift from civic information to pure spectacle. This state of affairs is particularly manifest in debates. We first discuss this issue and then define the discursive properties of three types of debates. One of these: the statement's talk show debate manifests best the blurring of boundaries between public and private domains. Finally, we analyze the discursive dimension of an excerpt of a well-known French program ("C'est mon choix": FR3 channel), which is representative of this genre. Our analysis focuses on the discursive performance of the hostess as it is essential to understand what is at stake with media debates.