Discourse representation in political interviews: The construction of identities and relations through voicing and ventriloquizing

This paper studies the construction of identities and relations through the representation of discourse. After introducing a distinction between voicing and ventriloquizing, interviews with politicians of the British Conservative and Labour Parties by BBC and ITV television during their election night specials of 1997 are analyzed. Interviewer practices differed with respect to the politicians of the two major British parties: The losing Conservatives were presented with critical and controversial voices from within their own party, so that an inner-party debate was constructed, portraying the party as deeply divided. In the absence of dissent within the winning Labour Party, Labour politicians were confronted with ventriloquisms about what they themselves might fear, think and plan about sensitive issues of policy, so that doubt was cast on Labour's united front, and future inner-party debates and their issues were foreshadowed. Beyond the construction of debate and dispute, the practices of voicing and ventriloquizing also had the effect of personalizing and dramatizing political discourse and, in the interplay between interviewer and interviewee, implicitly constructing identities and relations. The practice of ventriloquizing in particular, normally used with babies and pets, was used in the data for women, particularly heavy losers, the socially deprived – and Labour.