Differentiating Winners and Losers Through Question Structures in Post-Competition Televised Media Interviews

This conversation analytic study examines how interviewers initiate initial questions to non-winning athletes in post-game media interviews. Although an increasing number of studies in conversation analysis（CA） has investigated interaction in news interviews with public officials and experts, the CA method has rarely been applied to analyze other types of media talk, such as interviews with athletes in relation to sporting events. This study explores how interviewers initiate interviews with non-winners of figure skating competitions and compares them with winnersʼ interviews. The data come from 52 recorded interviews at major figure skating competitions. Analysis of non-winnersʼ interviews revealed that while interviewers attempted to maintain objectivity and neutrality, some presuppositions of the athletes being non-winners actually emerged in the interviewersʼ question designs.