The video presents a short television interview on WDSU TV between the an-chor LaTonya Norton and the world Olympic champion Mo Farah after his course-record win. The event of interaction is a news interview. Participants contribute to this course of interaction on turn-by-turn basis.
The interviewer and the interviewee are situated in differ-ent places and are not communicating face to face. Therefore, we can observe two different settings. The first one represents the news studio where the anchor is located.She is the only one person captured by the camera and there are no other elements in the frame. The background behind her is blue.
The second one is the place where Mo Farah was captured – the New Orleans City Park, right next to the track where the race was held. The scene ac-cording to Latoya’s behavior and to the circumstances, in which she is at, seems to be more official, while Mo Farah tries to change it to more casual. There are two main participants who also appear to be the speaking persons in the in video – the interviewer LaToya and the interviewee Mo Farah.They both transfer the roles of speaker and listener in the conversation. However, there are other indirect participants (audience) - the operators, the news team, and the people who surround Farah in the park. The main objective of the interviewer was to discuss Farah’s achievement.
The other possible objective was gathering information about his future career plans. This is a mediated speech act. It has not been completely planned or rehearsed, it was live broadcast.The video starts with Farah’s greeting but LaToya has the leading role in the conversation. After congratulating him on his performance, she is asking Farah questions about the particular event and about his career, followed by his answers.
LaToya’s utterance was designed to achieve the previously defined objectives. Firstly, they are discussing details about the record. Farah describes how he feels about it. There was a moment of incompre-hension when the anchor asked Farah whether he has run before.
Farah’s speech act can be described as commissive (Farah is providing information about his future plans to train more and eventually to take part into a marathon – lines 32 -35) while in certain moments Latoya’s speech act is seen as assertive (lines 37-39) and expressive. Considering the fact this is a news interview, the tone and manner are serious, but some casual sounding elements are noted in the Farah’s speech. This is not a face to face but oral communication. The interview was recorded by the news crew.The manner of Latoya is formal.
Meanwhile Farah is more of a casual speaker, using jargon. The questions of the anchor are not precise and she is obviously not familiar with the situation. The status of the participants is not equal. The anchor is supposed to be polite to the inter-viewee.
The genre of the speech is news interview. It involves interactional form and subject matter. The discussion is managed through questions and answers and is related to the re-cent event.
