Character, intimacy, and issues in a presidential campaign : a rhetorical analysis of the PresiTentti interview series, Finland

Abstract

The study explores oral politics via a TV interview series in the midst of the Finnish presidential campaign in 1994. The PresiTentti series, in which each of the eleven candidates was interviewed, provides the material for the political and conversational analysis. The study concentrates on three issues. First, it discusses the concept of political face and the intimate conditions of political interviews. Secondly, the study describes the nature of political narratives under the conditions of political conversations. In addition, the study examines the way in which the political character is founded on political narratives given by politicians. Finally, the issues raised by the candidates will be discussed. Of these, the analysis deals with the main line of the agenda building, namely questions of national and we-identifications. Such identifications are closely linked with politicians' political characters. The analysis is based on a case study of a single interview series. Apart from other reasons, this solution is motivated by a firm assurance that politics basically consists of oral utterances in conversation. Therefore, an important oral event not only represents the campaign as a whole but also provides valuable material for theoretical considerations as well.