Abstract

This article addresses the conversational process taking place during a TV interview in which the contrast shows up between the canonical procedure overseeing the succession and nature of conversational roles and turn-takings in contemporary media contexts and the preservation of an atavistic attitude tied to a traditional culture, Albanian tradition of oda. The discourse in these chambers is a revered phenomenon in the Albanian culture. The interviewee uses the traditional code of oral communication in the oda as a strategy for saving his honour in public, while the interviewer uses another code, the language of investigative journalism. In this paper, a detailed analysis of this interview shows how the sequences built on a basic adjacency pair operate to allow the interviewee to attempt to save face in a compromising situation. We see how the oda structures override normal turn-taking rules and how the face-work process (Goffman Interaction ritual. Essays on the face-to-face behavior, Doubleday, New York, 1967) is reflected in expanded sequences. We consider this topic as an extension of a potential CA analysis when describing how cultural forms with different procedural rules affect general turn-taking.