Politeness Strategies In Media Interrogation: Analyzing The Interviewer’s Role In The Jeffrey Dahmer Interview

Abstract

Media interviews shape public perception, especially in criminal cases. This study analyzes the politeness strategies the interviewer employed in the interview with Jeffrey Dahmer using Brown and Levinson's politeness theory as applied to 1987. The qualitative discourse analysis established how the interviewer utilized bald-on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record strategies to confront face-threatening acts, control conversation patterns, and play with audience perception. It has been established that courtesy strategies can strike a balance between neutrality and insistence; this enables the interviewer to extract information while keeping his or her professionalism intact. Apart from that, sociological factors- power, social distance, and rank of imposition - dictate how the interviewer approaches a situation. This research confirms that an interviewer plays a very important role in framing media narratives while simultaneously reinforcing the impact of linguistic choices in journalistic discourse. All these studies say strategic politeness is important in interviews with controversial figures for media discourse analysis, forensic linguistics, and journalism ethics.