| This thesis examines Russian agreement and disagreement strategies in the context of the radio news interview following the methodology of Conversation Analysis. As a reference point, styles and patterns of English agreement and disagreement are outlined first. In the analysis section agreement and disagreement in four Russian news interviews are studied. It was found that in Russian strong agreement forms outnumbered weak forms 31 to 21; the weak variety being used predominantly by the interviewee, and the strong variety used by both interviewer and interviewee. Disagreement was less common than agreement, and within that, weak disagreement outnumbered strong agreement 25 to 16. In the discussion section a method of classifying news interviews based on the four interaction patterns of Affiliation, Manipulation, Moderate Dispute and Intense Dispute is created and developed. These four patterns are discussed individually, as well as in terms of spanning a continuum ranging from Collaboration to Opposition. |
