Analyzing discourses of emotion management on Survivor , using micro- and macro-analytic discourse perspectives

In this paper, we study discourses of emotion management on the reality television show Survivor. We analyze segments of the program that feature emotionally charged interactional moments and examine how these interactions are interwoven with contestants’ confessional interviews and framed by the na...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Pragmatics and society 2014-01, Vol.5 (1), p.50-75
Main Authors: Wingard, Leah, Lovaas, Karen E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Discourse analysis
Emotions
Social identity
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Summary:In this paper, we study discourses of emotion management on the reality television show Survivor. We analyze segments of the program that feature emotionally charged interactional moments and examine how these interactions are interwoven with contestants’ confessional interviews and framed by the narrator’s introductions of the segments. In a two part analysis, we first analyze the talk produced by the contestants and the host as individual texts, using a discourse analytic perspective that focuses on the details of the talk itself. We then consider the ways the talk constitutes a series of layered texts and analyze these texts, using a discourse analytic approach that attends to macro-level and critical perspectives. We conclude that Survivor largely reinforces dominant cultural discourses of emotion management as strategic interactional practice that allow a person to be competitive. Furthermore, the analysis links performances of emotion management to representations of specific aspects of contestants’ social identities.
ISSN:1878-9714
1878-9722
DOI:10.1075/ps.5.1.03win