“In retrospect it’s really not love. See, control looks a lot like love sometimes it really does.”: How Responsibility of Domestic Abuse is Attributed and Managed in T.V. Interviews

Abstract

The topic of domestic abuse and intimate violence is an ongoing issue more and more seen in the media. Drawing on discursive psychology research, blame mitigation, intimate violence, victim blaming and the TV interview this paper describes some interactional discursive features found in public TV interviews with domestic abuse victims. The analytic interest lies in how blame is applied by interviewers, and then managed by the domestic abuse victim interviewees. It was found that blame was subtly placed by the interviewer, which they either discursively worked to alleviate, or place explicitly. It was found that the interviewee worked to discursively dissipate the placed blame by minimising the violence against them or emphasising a passive role in the relationship and abuse. Using the findings, it is proposed that the public TV interview is a place of discursive interest, for the interviewers drew on victim blaming culture and interviewees were manoeuvred into a situation where they must reassert their victimhood. Therefore, this research demonstrates the negotiating nature of blame in TV interviews, and how victim blaming culture is discursively managed and perpetuated in the public eye.