Affect, imagination, morality and norms as complex embodied entanglements in two TV interviews

In order to shed light on imagination, morality and norms as complex, affective-discursive (Wetherell 2013) issues of performance, I present a close analysis of two TV interview snippets from two different Nordic countries (Denmark and Finland) around the same period of time (2002 and 2001). The interviews come from a) a documentary and b) a live TV interview in a debate programme and they concern two different topics: a) transnational adoption and b) the 911 terrorist attack. I use multimodal interaction analysis and membership categorization analysis to scrutinize the embodied emotional work of the interviewees while they are recounting a) imagined future actions and b) actions they had imagined to do in the past. In doing this, they fit their multi-layered narrative both to the (co-)present situation with its material surroundings and participants and, at the same time, to the interview as a public occasion. Both the local and the larger situations come with certain accountabilities that become relevant in situ. In other words, various institutional norms are oriented to (and in b) also transgressed) while the interviewees constitute themselves as morally orderly persons. In doing this, the participants act not just as private persons with affective responses, but, at the same time, in a nuanced manner that the analysis reveals, as representatives (members) of various collections.
Wetherell, M. (2013) Affect and discourse – What’s the problem? From affect as excess to affective/discursive practice. Subjectivity, 6(4), 349–368.