Politicians at Night

This book studies the interactions between presidential candidates and hosts on broadcast late-night talk shows in the United States. Using Discourse Analysis, we develop a comprehensive understanding of the Entertainment-Political Interview as a cultural, interactional, and ideological genre.

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Politicians at Night: Interaction and Discourse on the Entertainment-Political Interview studies the exchanges between presidential candidates and talk show hosts on broadcast late-night shows in the United States. Gonen Dori-Hacohen; Eean Grimshaw and Menno H. Reijven use various language and social interaction frameworks, including membership categorization analysis, conversation analysis, narrative analysis, and semiotics. They develop a broad understanding of the Entertainment-Political Interview (EPI) and cultural role. They discuss how politicians use pronouns to achieve inclusion and exclusion. Similarly, the authors demonstrate how and why the hosts ask softball questions. Unlike these two elements that create politics, the authors demonstrate how politicians use stories to present themselves like celebrities. They then demonstrate how politicians intersect with entertainment when they analyze one specific segment called "Slow Jam the News," on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.The linking of the politician to entertainment is part of the final argument of the book, where the authors critically examine the EPI as part of a myth since it vacates the politics of its original form while maintaining a façade of politics.EPI promotes a capitalist neoliberal ideology that is at the root of both entertainment and politics in the U.S.