"Catherine, you're wasting your time": Address terms within the Australian political interview

Analysis of the political news interview in the lead-up to the Australian 2004 federal election shows that both journalists and politicians address their co-participant by name. However, there are differences both in choice of address term and in the positioning of address terms within the news interview. Journalists tend to use pre-positioned address terms when addressing politicians either by their institutional role (e.g. Prime Minister) or by title plus last name (e.g. Mr Howard). Politicians, on the other hand, always address journalists by first name (e.g. Catherine) and have more flexibility in terms of where they position the address term. In addition, whereas journalists tend to use address terms as a technique for managing the organisational aspects of the political news interview, politicians tend to use address terms within adversarial environments, as a resource for taking the turn, for resolving overlapping talk, or for delaying a dispreferred response. The aim of this paper is, using conversation analysis, to show the multiple interactional uses of address terms within the context of the Australian political news interview.