النظام اللغوي للمحادثة في المؤتمرات الصحفية اليومية لمستجدات فيروس كورونا

Abstract EN

The systematical conversation in press conferences has been analyzed extensively in non-Arabic research, by examining its turn-taking system, speakers’ interactions, question-answer structures, and related issues such as power, politeness, and aggressiveness.

Press conferences and their conversational structures, however, in their Arabic and Saudi context specifically, have not been much analyzed.

Since the corona pandemic appeared, the Government Communication Center has held its daily press conference, where governmental officials meet journalists to answer their questions related to the pandemic, a new discourse that was not familiar in the past.

Governmental officials used to appear more in media interviews on TV channels, while facing the local press conferences is a new trend in the Saudi context.

Relying on tools of Conversation Analysis and its method, this paper attempts to reveal the conversational system in this new discourse, and compare it to previous findings in non-Arabic research to see the similarities and differences.

After collecting and analyzing data, the paper found some differences: more space is given for opening remarks than journalists’ questions, and questions are written then delivered through a middleman who might attempt to re-produce the questions, which all reduce the journalists’ space and encourage the official’s power to choose questions, not only questioners.

These findings might help us understand this new discourse by comparing it to normal practices in other press conferences, and open the door for improvement as the new press conferences are still new in the local context, and they might become more popular in the foreseeable future.