Interview as way of creating image

The article is devoted to the analysis of the interview genre, finding out its types, features, forms of realization in the aspect of imagology: the interview is considered as a way of creating the image. There are many definitions of the notion ''interview''. It is connected with different approaches to it, mainly methodological and genre ones. The first one considers the interview as an instrument of getting knowledge; the second one - as a method of text organization with its original structure and form-building features. Nowadays the interview is one of the main journalistic genres. On the one hand, in the modern world the stream of information is so fast, that modern journalism is aimed at its transformation to the audience, not at its deep analysis. On the other hand, the interview attracts readers, listeners and viewers with the topicality of its themes, simplicity and operability. All these facts have lead to the widening of the interview usage scales. So, in the aspect of imagology the interview can be characterized as a multi-functional journalistic genre that performs the conversation of one or more journalists with one or more socially influential persons on urgent topics and serves as a way of creating the image. Means of image creating are different and depend on its presentation form. The key means is speech, which builds the verbal image. If a conversation is accepted aurally, acoustic features of the speaker's speech are important. In the video presentation of the interview there are other elements influencing the image: appearance, furniture, gestures, mimics, etc. The interview is an efficient way of realization of definite image roles. As the image is considered to be a stereotype of a person, all image roles have a stereotypical character existing in the mind of people (''patriot'', ''excellent family man'', ''wise man'', and so on). Everyone tries to create a unique image underlining his best features in image roles. The interview as a genre practicing different forms of organization, representation methods and standardization levels can model an image for subjects of different kinds. For example, to create an image for politicians interview-dialogues, interview-polylogues of different standardization levels are used. Basing on the interview classification by the aim, it is important to underline interview-portraits as the main way to form the image of politicians, because in this case all attention is paid to the interviewed person. However, interviews made at press-conferences or briefings influence the perception of politicians as well. So, one of the most important features of the interview is that it is a multi-functional genre. Particularly, the interview is an efficient way of creating the image and a reliable source for studying the features of the speech behavior, image roles, image structure and mean for modeling the image.

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