Introduction

Abstract

Planning for this book started in 2011, as we organized a specialist panel at the 12th International Pragmatics Association Conference on ‘The discourse of reality television: Multidisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches’. The rationale behind this panel was our belief that, although reality television (RTV) has been under considerable scrutiny within the broad academic fields of sociology and cultural and media studies (e.g. Bonner 2003; Hill 2005, 2007), considerably less work has been conducted on its discourse features. The same rationale — and need for linguistic scholarship into RTV — has inspired this book. To our knowledge, Real Talk: Reality Television and Discourse Analysis in Action provides the first systematic attempt at bringing together key debates, challenges and opportunities in the analysis of the discourse — indeed the discourse practices — of RTV. Our aim is thus to shed fresh light on current understanding of this important media phenomenon through close examination of its multiple discourse realizations.