Political TV call-in shows in Taiwan: Animating crisis discourses through reported speech (China)

This dissertation investigates how political TV call-in show participants use reported speech to animate and negotiate “crisis” readings of program topics as well as to recreate and perpetuate dominant “crisis” discourses in Taiwan's sociopolitical arena. As an interdisciplinary study, I build upon previous research on reported speech in the areas of ethnography of speaking, conversation analysis, communication studies, and Taiwan studies. Through detailed analysis of call-in show verbal interactions, I argue that speech reporting offers speakers a flexible and powerful linguistic device to animate and negotiate controversial sociopolitical issues and events including cross-straits tensions between Taiwan and China, ethno-political conflicts between benshengren (Taiwanese) and waishengren (Mainlanders), as well as gendered political roles. In examining two call-in show speech events—“reconciliation talk” and “saliva wars” or verbal sparring—I demonstrate that participants use reported speech to playfully perform and index these crisis topics.; My analysis of call-in participants' speech reporting practices also demonstrates that direct reported speech should be more accurately described as “constructed dialogue” or “hypothetical reported speech.” Furthermore, participants' use of hypothetical reported speech provides them with an effective and efficient linguistic resource to ascribe utterances to other speakers in ways that index locally recognizable identities and sociopolitical crisis discourses in Taiwan. I illustrate that this linguistic device allows speakers to distance themselves from sensitive issues by framing their responses through the words of another, while also providing them the means to hypothesize various interpretations or outcomes. In addition, my investigation reveals that entitlement claims to reported speech cannot be automatically assumed and asserted by reporters, but rather constitutes a mutually engineered process between speakers. Overall, the dissertation explores call-in show “ways of reporting,” and specifically, how this linguistic device maintains the call-in show's crisis frame as well as perpetuates Taiwan's sociopolitical crisis discourses.