Implementation of the Provocation Communication Tactic in Portrait Interviews: Main Scenarios of the Addressee’s Speech Behavior (Based on the Material of the German Press)

This article discusses the provocation tactic in order to determine the effectiveness of its implementation in the portrait interview. The latter is an institutional type of a public dialogue widely used in the German print press and its electronic issues. Provocation as a speech communication phenomenon is often considered from the position of its initiator in a communicative act, whereas the success of this tactic should be judged about on the basis of specific patterns of the addressee’s communicative behavior. The aim of this work is to identify some scenarios of the addressee’s speech behavior in situations of successful/unsuccessful uses of the provocation tactic, which allows evaluating the effectiveness of its functioning in the genre of portrait interview. In relation to the portrait interview, the provocation tactic is defined as a deliberate, conscious and manipulative method of speech influence which has a negative connotation and is used to obtain some “hidden”, “undesirable”, “unplanned” information about interviewees against the background of their psychological destabilization. The method of contextual analysis made it possible to identify certain semantic types of journalists’ phrases which most often have a provocative subtext. The provocative intention is presented indirectly and comes out of a communicative situation. Pragmatic interpretation of statements and conversation analysis were used to scrutinize the addressee’s responses to the journalist’s provocation. It has been found that the addressee’s communicative behavior in response to provocation may develop according to three main scenarios: (1) the addressee ignores provocation and gives a truthful answer without any emotional reaction (the failure of provocation); (2) the addressee evades giving “desirable” information, some emotional reactions may take place (the partial success of provocation); (3) the addressee demonstrates some negative reaction and gives “desirable” information against the background of acute emotional reaction (the complete success of provocation). Each scenario of speech behavior is represented by the corresponding types of the addressee’s responses which are based on two fundamental principles - cooperation or conflict. At the same time, the successful implementation of the provocation tactic in a certain segment of an interview is always associated with the emergence of communicative failures and can lead to conflict interaction. According to the results of the study, the provocation tactic proved to be unsuccessful in 51% of cases, while journalists achieved partial or complete success in 23% and 26% of cases, respectively. The quantitative data allows coming to the conclusion that the effectiveness of the provocation tactic in the portrait interview is on average less than 50%. Specific features of the portrait interview organization, emotional and psychological characteristics of the interviewee’s personality, as well as the ways of expressing journalist’s provocative intention, are the primary factors influencing the success of provocation. Taking into account these factors can improve the effectiveness of the provocation tactic not only in the portrait interview, but also in other types of interviews.

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