The accountability interview revisited: De-constructing anti-abortion discourse in Spain

Abstract

This paper adopts a case study approach to the investigation of the genre of the accountability interview. It zooms in on one particular political interview that was broadcast on Spanish television in 2012. The interview, with Spain’s former minister of Justice, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, addresses the bill on abortion that he intended to present to parliament later that year. We have selected this particular interview because it sheds light on the complexity of the interactional configuration of the news interview and inherent shifts in alignment around one of the most contentious topics in politics today. Detailed analysis of the data, focussing on (1) changes in footing and grammatical person, (2) the representation of women and (3) lexical and argumentational features of ideological construction, shows that although, on the surface, the inrerview displays many of the features of the prototypical accountability interview (Montgomery, 2008), the journalist and Gallardón collude to groom the audience into accepting their shared ideologies. These results prompt us to suggest a refinement of Montgomery’s typology.

Keywords

• accountability interview
• abortion discourse
• speaker roles
• footing
• social actors
• political discourse
• tv
• social practices