Introduction

This study describes some features of particular media discourse in Ethiopia—a health radio phone-in program. To study media discourse is to work to make sense of a great deal of what makes up our world. This is because media are found to have an indispensable role in the lives of human beings (Fairclough, 1995; Scannell, 1991; Thornborrow, 2015; Tolson, 2006). Of the different types of mass media, radio phone-ins tend to have a profound impact on the lives of the public at large mainly because they are not only means of getting access to information but also are assumed to create an opportunity for the audience to involve in the production work quite regardless of the audience’s literacy level (Rubino, 2016) as in print media. Radio phone-in is one kind of radio program whereby the audience is invited to call into the radio studio and participate in a discussion on a variety of issues with the program host and sometimes with the host along with a guest or expert (Dori-Hacohen, 2014; Jautz, 2014; Matwick and Matwick, 2018; O’Keeffe, 2006; Thornborrow, 2015).

Since the 1990s different genres of radio phone-ins have been the focus of analysis in different countries (Hutchby, 1991, 2006; O’Keeffe, 2006; Thornborrow, 2015; Tolson, 2006), with health radio phone-ins in Sub-Saharan Africa receiving little attention. The contribution of health radio phone-in talk shows in creating a platform for public participation in some public health matters is widely acknowledged (Nyirenda et al., 2018; Radoff et al., 2013). However, discourse features that characterize the talk show in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa remain less addressed. Taking the case of Ethiopia, one of the countries in the region, this study aims to demonstrate how participants in a health radio phone-in program accomplish ‘topical talk’ (a social action central to the organization of radio phone-in program, see the section “Organization of interaction”) on issues of public health drawing on successes of related previous studies. By doing so, it seeks to contribute to the literature on radio phone-in studies.

Related studies

The analysis of radio phone-in discourse has been an area of interest among media researchers (e.g., Dori-Hacohen, 2014; Hutchby, 1996, 2006; Jautz, 2014; Matwick and Matwick 2018; O’Keeffe, 2006; Rubino, 2016; Thornborrow, 2001a, 2002, 2015; Tolson, 2006). The studies tended to mainly focus on analyzing such different genres of radio phone-ins as current affairs or political issues (Dori-Hacohen, 2014; Housley and Fitzgerald, 2002; Hutchby, 1991, 1996; O’Keeffe, 2006), food (Matwick and Matwick 2018), advice giving (Hutchby, 1995; Thornborow, 2015), sports (Tolson, 2006) with an emphasis on the organizational structure of talks (Dori-Hacohen, 2014; Hutchby, 1991; O’Keeffe, 2006; Thornborrow, 2001a) accomplishment of pseudo-intimacy (Matwick and Matwick, 2018; O’Keeffe, 2006; Rubino, 2016), power in arguments (Hutchby, 1996), among others.

A considerable number of studies on the discourse of radio phone-in constitute the practice in the western context. For example, Hutchby (1991, 1996, 1999, 2006) examined features and accomplishments of radio phone-in interactions using data from UK-based phone-in programs. Grounding her analysis primarily on the methodological frameworks of conversation analysis and participation frameworks, Thornborrow (2001a, 2002) has also examined the organization of talk-in interaction in the context of radio phone-in programs in the UK. Fitzgerald and Housley (2002) studied the radio phone-in talks in more detail documenting a variety of categorial and sequential resources, both routine and specialized, used and relied upon by participants when offering their opinions and debating a topic in the context of the UK too. Tolson (2006) also paid attention to the analysis of radio phone-in programs on ‘sports talk’ in a similar context. In addition, Dori-Hacohen (2014) describes the differing overall structural organization of public affairs or political radio phone-in interactions in Isra el and the USA. Also, Bücker (2013), taking the example of a German radio phone-in talk program, discusses the forms and functions of “position offerings”. Moreover, Matwick and Matwick (2018) explore the construction of pseudo-intimacy in the interactional dynamics of an American food call-in radio program. Likewise, using a corpus of radio and television extracts from around the English-speaking world, O’Keeffe (2006) focused on illustrating how ‘pseudo-relationships’ are established and maintained, and how ‘others’ are created. Furthermore, focusing on the topic of terrorism on talk radio, Kilby and Horowitz (2013) examined the sequencing and membership categorization work that is accomplished during the call openings. Their study illustrated local manifestations of discursive power allied to the ‘host’ role, along with the data-driven distinction of ‘lay’ and ‘elite’ callers. Their analysis also demonstrated the empowering versus disempowering consequences of sequential turn allocation and identity categorization.

While several kinds of research on radio phone-in focus on analyzing the accomplishment of current affairs or political radio phone-in programs, of some relation with the present study’s area of emphasis are studies that have made their analytical focus on the discourse of advice-giving and taking in radio phone-in programs. There have been studies dealing with the phenomenon of broadcast advice across a range of different programs—particularly call-in radio programs that are either dedicated to a specific topic or that feature more general helplines for emotional or social problem-solving. For example, in their study of advice-giving on radio phone-in in the USA, DeCapua and Dunham (1993, p. 528), cited in Thornborrow (2015, p. 158), observed that a basic similarity among all radio talk shows is that the interactions taking place are not occurring merely for the benefit of the participants in the interactions, but are instead serving as entertainment and sources of information for a wider listening audience’. Hutchby (1995) has also dealt with advice-giving in a public context—calls to a radio advice line. Hutchby has too demonstrated analytically how experts formulated the advice to make it relevant to both the caller and others in the overhearing audience.

Another related study worth mentioning is Thornborrow’s (2015). Making a comparative analysis of advice-giving radio phone-in programs with relatively different participation frameworks (e.g. from gardening to personal issues), Thornborrow has revealed that the local interactional context plays an indispensable role in both the development of the advice-giving sequence and the design of advice-giving turns. Based on the comparative analysis, Thornborrow has found that the participatory frameworks and the interactional identities of the participants play an important part in shaping the local design and delivery of the advice that is offered in each program. According to Thornborrow (2015), there are features that advice-giving radio phone-in programs share as well as differ in. For instance, in phone-ins where callers are seeking advice about problems such as relationship breakdown or other complex social issues, unlike in advice on gardening, the problem has to be first established before the expert suggests what the caller should do about it. The role of the caller in such a show is, thus, to recount their problem, sometimes in the form of a narrative, while the role of the host is to elicit the background to the story and arrive at a clear identification of the problem, based on which the expert provides advice (Thornborrow, 2015). Overall, the analytical foci of many of these studies have mainly been examining how experts and hosts design their advice turns to make it relevant to both the immediate caller and audience on different topics.

In sum, radio phone-in shows have received considerable attention from media researchers, but the increasing tendency to produce such shows in a range of sub-genres across countries hints at the need to undertake further examination as analytical results can neither be similar for each sub-genre nor programs (Thornborrow, 2015) from contexts with a distinct linguistic and socio-cultural background. Thus, this study purports to add to the world of knowledge broadly on media discourse and specifically on radio phone-in shows by analyzing the discourse of a health radio phone-in in the context of Ethiopia. It aims to do so by seeking an answer to a basic question: How do participants in a health radio phone-in in Ethiopia accomplish topical talk on matters of public health, and such intertwined specific questions as how are topical talk about public health issues developed, and how are callers’ theme or topic related experience elicited and drawn upon in the course of the interaction?

Theoretical and analytical frameworks

Conversation analysis

Conversation analysis is a theoretical and methodological framework widely used in the effort to uncover the collaborative accomplishment of participants in talk-in-interaction both in the context of institutional as well as mundane conversations (Drew and Heritage, 1992; Heritage and Clayman, 2010; Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998). Conversation Analysis (henceforth CA) approaches discourse analysis with a focus on the activity of language use, ‘investigating the to-and-from of interactions’ and looking for patterns in what language users (speakers) do (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998). Conversation analysis (CA) has been the widely used analytical framework in the study of spoken media discourse. These include broadcast news programs (Greatbatch, 1988); organizational structure of radio phone-in (Dori-Hacohen, 2014; Hutchby, 1991, O’Keeffe, 2006); turn sequentiality of openings in a talk show (Hutchby, 1991, 1996); openings, closing and turn-taking (Hutchby, 1991); the sequential and categorial flow of identity (Fitzgerald and Housley 2002); questions, control and the organization of talk (Thornborrow, 2001a, 2001b); participants’ use of and display of identity within public access media events (Hutchby, 2001; Thornborrow, 2001b) and pseudo-intimacy (Matwick and Matwick, 2018; Rubino, 2016), among others. CA focuses on how conversations are structured and organized locally turn by turn, and from this, it makes inductive comments about social organization. As Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998) point out, this field offers the possibility of fine-grained descriptions of how participants orient themselves towards mutual goals and negotiate their way forward in highly specific situations.

The approach of CA has made a significant contribution to research on radio phone-in interactions. In particular, it has focused on the social organization of talk in radio phone-in settings (Dori-Hacohen, 2014; Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Hutchby, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2006; Rubino, 2016; Thornborrow, 2001a, 2015). These studies have shown that the participants of a radio phone-in use a recognizable sequential organization in the orderly production and social organization of a public access media event. The approach adopted for this analysis uses the analytic methods of conversation analysis (CA) in combination with membership categorization analysis.

Membership categorization analysis

Membership Categorization Analysis (henceforth ‘MCA’), like CA, is an ethnomethodological method for analyzing interactional practices (Stokoe, 2012). Originating from the work of Harvey Sacks in the 1960s, Membership Categorization Analysis (henceforth MCA) is an approach to examining methods of social categorization as a display of and accomplishment of people’s or ‘members” local reasoning practices (Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Kilby and Horowitz, 2013; Stokoe, 2012). MCA investigates how participants in talk-in-interaction actively engage in everyday identity categories such as familial roles, gender, or profession, and considers how context-bound category membership affords participants certain interactional resources. The methodology of MCA has also been applied and found insightful in studies of broadcast talks (Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Kilby and Horowitz, 2013; Myer, 2004; and O’Keeffe, 2006).

CA and MCA, in combination, have been employed in various studies of radio phone-in shows. For example, Fitzgerald and Housley (2002) demonstrate how radio phone-in participants’ identities can be uncovered through reliance on the sequential and categorical organization of their talk-in-interaction. Fitzgerald and Housley (2002, p. 580) suggest that the development and contingencies utilized within the organization of a radio phone-in are demonstrably a matter of categorial and sequential resources in combination and that by taking both aspects into account it is possible and fruitful to approach them as Silverman (1997) suggests ‘as two sides of the same coin’. Kilby and Horowitz (2013) also employ a combined CA/MCA approach to analyze the unfolding moral business of talk radio discourse on the topic of terrorism.

The present article builds on previous studies of radio phone-ins which combine analysis of the more CA-focused sequential features of talk with a more MCA categorical focus (e.g. Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Kilby and Horowitz, 2013). Such a combined analytic approach presents a real space for achieving the aims of both ethnomethodologically rooted approaches, as Kilby and Horowitz (2013, p. 738) put it.

From an MCA angle, introducing sequential features as part of the category analysis highlights that categories are an integral, reflexive part of talk-in-interaction and that separating the analysis of category membership from such local deployment is liable to result in a severely impoverished account. Meanwhile, from a CA perspective, bringing in the analysis of category membership features as part of the sequential analysis highlights that the local organization of the talk-in-interaction is steeped in membership work.

The data

The data for this study were collected by audio recording verbal interactions held on the health radio phone-in program of FM Addis 97.1. FM Addis 97.1 is a radio station in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Established in 2000 by the Ethiopian National Radio Service Agency, FM 97.1 is recognized as the first FM radio station in the nation. Broadcasting its programs in Amharic, the station currently operates 24 h a day among others with programs such as talk, music, and news formats. The health radio phone-in program is produced once a week, i.e., every Sunday from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. It usually is conducted based on a pre-identified public health issue and held between the talk hosts and callers to the program. The talk show also brings an expert to the studio to reflect and send what is commonly known as ‘social behavior change’ (SBC) messages on points raised (usually ones that seek experts’ voice) during the discussion between the host and callers in the last 30 min or so of the fourth episode. In the particular radio phone-in show, discussion on a pre-set topic lasts for four episodes, an episode consisting of nearly two hours of talk. The programs recorded and transcribed for analysis involved participants’ (primarily talk hosts and callers) discussions relating to HIV/AIDS. More specifically, the radio phone-in programs produced on the themes titled: ‘Blood Testing Experience for HIV-antibody’ and ‘Challenges in (to) being Faithful’, which were selected randomly, constituted the corpus for the present study’s analysis. Overall, the talk data considered for analysis comprised about eight hours of talk recordings. The written representation of the talk data was done by adapting from the Jeffersonian transcription convention. Below is a key to the transcript notations and symbols used in this study.

H: Host

C: Caller

[…]   previous or subsequent omitted talk at the beginning or end

    of a turn

(.)    a short pause of less than (0.5) of a second

(1.5)   timed pause in seconds

[]    overlapping talk [marks onset of overlap,] marks end of

     overlap

hello=

  =hello latching (no hearable gap) between the end of one turn to

    the beginning of the next

(xxx)   indecipherable talk

?

     rising tone

.

     falling tone

           (adapted from Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998)

The presentation of the data consists of two lines: a line for the transcribed Amharic utterance and another line for the English translation. The Amharic utterance is written in the first line in italics whereas its corresponding English translation is placed in the second line. The analysis was carried out primarily based on the Amharic utterance. The English version does not follow the conventions of English composition writing as the aim is just to provide a corresponding translation of the Amharic utterance.

Analysis

This article seeks to illustrate how topical talk about public health issues is accomplished in the context of a health radio phone-in program in Ethiopia. Before moving on to the examination of this subject, it would be helpful to provide background relating to how talk-in-interaction in the target radio phone-in program is structured sequentially. Giving an overview of this issue also helps us to identify what is and counts to be ‘topical talk’—the central analytical subject of this article. We shall, thus, begin by describing stages in the organization of interaction in the radio phone-in show in focus.

Organization of interaction

The organization of participation in the radio phone-in show in focus can be described as a form of production that is primarily conducted with the active participation of the hosts and the callers. Positioned in the institutional role of the program manager, the hosts appear to engage in doing, among others, such actions as introducing the (theme of the) program, bringing callers on air, managing interaction with the callers, and organizing the transition from one caller to the next. The callers tend to be positioned as primarily having the role of sharing what they have on the theme-based discussion in the on-air talk. Fitzgerald and Housley (2002, p. 583) argue that the categories ‘host’ and ‘caller’ represent a primary layer of categorization in the talk radio context, which they label ‘program-relevant categories’. In their account of this category layer, Fitzgerald and Housley (2002) draw on Sacks’s (1995) notion of omni-relevance and describe the category of ‘host’ and ‘caller’ as omni-relevant in the organization of the radio phone-in program. They demonstrate that the omni-relevant category ‘host’ makes a significant contribution both to the ongoing sequential interaction and to the organizational/institutional structure underlying the sequencing of interaction.

The overall structural organization of interaction in the health radio phone-in analyzed comprises three stages: opening, topical talk, and closing. The opening sequence involves interaction moves that mainly serve such functions as announcing to the audience that the host–caller exchange is due, signaling the line is open for the caller, and exchanging greetings. The ‘topical talk’ (Dori-Hacohen, 2014) sequence can be described as one involving verbal interaction between the host and the caller on a pre-identified topic. The speech exchange at this stage, as will be demonstrated through analytical examples in the section “Management of topic-related talk ”, is found to have a direct bearing on the accomplishment of the program’s purpose. The closing sequence, in most cases, entails pre-closing and terminating moves. The following extract illustrates how interaction is structured in the radio phone-in program analyzed. While the turns in lines 1–4 mark the opening sequence, lines 5 and 6 illustrate the topical talk sequence, and lines 7 and 8 show the closing sequence.

Extract (1)

1 H: admach mesmerachin lay endegeba eyetenegeregn new helo (.)

  I am being told that a participant is on air hello

2 C: helo

  hello

3 H: tena yistelign

  good evening

4 C: abro yistelign

  good evening

5 H: silemewesen fetenawoch eyaweran new

  we are talking about the challenges of being faithful

{turns between these have been excluded}

6 C: ene yegetemegn (.) eyewulish min meselesh […]

  what I have experienced (.) was […]

{turns between these have been excluded}

7 H: silezih endaw bemenegager wust yebelete lemasamen memokeru yeteshale

  yimesilegnal (.) admachachin engidih betam adrgen enamesegnalen leloch

  admachch yemilutin degimo eski ensemalen

  so I think it might be better to talk about and attempt to convince (.)

  we thank you very much our participant let us listen to what other participants will be

  saying

8 C: enem ameseginalehu (.) ameseginalehu chaw

  I thank you too (.) thank you Bye

As can be seen in this extract, in her first turn, the host commences by announcing the incoming of a caller on air (line 1) before proceeding to the greetings exchanges (lines 3–4). The host here designs her turn to serve two purposes: the fact that callers have to interact with a person(s) with a different category membership whose category-bound activities may involve receiving calls and doing some ‘screening’ before connecting to the host (admach mesmerachin lay endegeba eyetenegeregn new) and informing the listening audience that a participant with a membership category of the caller is getting on the air and of course welcoming as well as readying the caller who is on air to contribute to the program (helo). The caller in his turn uses the same expression in line 2 (helo) marking that he is on air and is about to contribute to the discussion. In these turns, the participants are seen co-constructing a ‘call-relevant identity’ (Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002). The host and the caller then use their next turns (lines 3–4) to exchange greetings using ‘tena yistelign’ and ‘abro yistelign’—adjacency pairs (Drew and Heritage, 1992; Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998) common in Amharic. In the corpus analyzed, once the greetings are over, it marks that the participants are done with the opening sequence (first phase) and move on to the second phase in the organization of interaction—the stage where topical talk is organized. The turns in lines 5 and 6 briefly show how topical talk is co-constructed by the interactants. In line 5, the host constructs her turn to initiate topical talk to which the caller responded (follow-up turns are excluded in this extract). In line 6, the caller previews that he has first-hand experience to share. As the purpose here is to simply demonstrate how talk-in-interaction in the target radio phone-in is structured in different stages, extended turns of the topical talk are excluded. A detailed analysis of the accomplishment of the topical talk will be made in the next section. Lines 7 and 8 illustrate how the interaction is brought to a close. Mostly this is cued by prefacing a conclusive utterance with ‘silezih’, which means ‘so' followed by a thanking remark presented using adjacency pairs (lines 7 and 8) and sometimes with just the host’s thanking remark. What is common in the closing phase also is the host’s remark inviting the outgoing callers to stay tuned (line 7) and the listening audience to participate in the discussion. Such a pattern characterizes the routine organization of talk in the radio phone-in program analyzed. With this background about the organization of interaction in the radio phone-in program in mind, let us now turn to the analysis of how topical talk—the core of the talk show—gets accomplished by the participants.

Management of topic-related talk

In this section, how the hosts and callers sequentially organize a topical talk on public health issues and how they collaborate to making topic based categorical information available, and how such categorical information is in turn mobilized to build up the interaction and in a way constitutes the central feature of interaction in the health radio phone-in will be illustrated. The organization of topic-related talk in the corpus of the health radio phone-in mainly comprises two interrelated moves that are developed sequentially. The first one involves initiating theme-related talk and the second one, which builds upon the first, comprises mobilizing theme-related categorical information to do topic-related talk.

Initiating theme/topic-related talk

This is, as stated earlier, the second phase in the organization of host–caller interaction in the radio phone-in program. It is at this stage in the sequential development of the interaction where callers’ reason for calling and/or position concerning the topic is made available usually following (or in response to) hosts’ theme/topic-related talk initiatory turns and at times by callers’ turn constructions. By making their position available the callers can be seen to move into and personally occupy what we may call a ‘theme-opinion category’ or in Fitzgerald and Housley’s (2002) terms ‘topic-opinion category’. In what follows we will see how this is accomplished through talk initiatory resources.

As seen earlier, the omni-relevant affordances of the host category underpin the conventional norms of interactively positioning the callers to the topic set for discussion. The recurrent interaction resources deployed by the hosts to initiate callers’ ‘theme/topic-related talk’ or opinion can be categorized into three types. One of the resources the hosts rely on is reminding callers of the theme of the session’s talk, usually in statement form.

Extract (2)

1 H: → selemewesen fetenawoch eyetenegagern new yalenew

   We are talking about ‘challenges in being faithful’

2 C  awo (.) eyesemahu new

   Yes (.) I have been listening

As can be seen in the exemplar, following the greetings sequence, the host invites the caller to give his accounts relating to the topic set for discussion through a reminder of the theme (see line 1). This kind of hosts’ interaction device can be seen as being consequential in controlling the callers not to digress from what has been prefaced, which is one of the characterizing features of institutional talk (Drew and Heritage, 1992; Thornborrow, 2002). Such a form of talk initiator is usually followed by the callers’ confirmatory turn. As can be seen in the turn designs in line 2, the caller appears to depict confirmation via ‘awo’, which means ‘yes’. In addition to framing the nature of opinions, callers are supposed to air out in their upcoming turns, such kind of hosts’ talk initiatory resource offers a preview as to the nature and direction of the talk to the audiences.

The second interaction resource the hosts draw on to initiate callers’ opinions is by posing a question that (directly) relates to the theme of the talk. The hosts’ turn constructions in the following extracts illustrate these features.

Extract (3)

1 H: → eskahun altemeremernem=

   Haven’t you been tested yet?

2 C: =temeremerenal (.)

   I have been tested

Extract (4)

1 H: → temeremerek yafet

   Have you been tested, Yafet?

2 C:  awo betedegagami temeremeriyalehu

   Yes I have been tested repeatedly

This interaction resource has been relied on to a greater extent in the corpus analyzed. It takes mainly two forms. One entails using the question in the impersonal pronoun (general sense) (see line 1 in extract 3) whereas the other involves using a personal pronoun (see line 1 in extract 4). While the former is of wider application in the program, the latter is put to use only in instances where identification work is in place in the opening sequence. Creating a sense of inclusion and intimacy respectively is what underlies the choice of the former over the latter.

Unlike the first resource, this talk initiatory device enables the hosts to elicit callers’ theme-related category so quickly, mostly in one turn (as in extract 3). The use of this resource might, hence, be seen as offering a good opportunity for the hosts to assess the callers’ sense of belief and practice and so to tailor the later discussion accordingly. The difficulty it might create for the hosts to design turns that allow them to hit the target of the program can, however, be seen as its shortcoming.

The third interaction resource the hosts employ to initiate callers’ opinions is by using ‘eshi’, which means ‘ok’ or ‘go on’ (sharing your opinion), or ‘eshi’ succeeded by a chunk(s) of utterance in the form of a statement or interrogative (or ‘eshi’-prefaced turn designs). Such talk initiation practices can be observed in the following extracts. The host’s opinion initiating turn in line 1 of extract (5) is constructed using ‘eshi’ while the host’s opinion initiating turn in line 1 of extract (6) is designed using ‘eshi’ followed by an interrogative.

Extract (5)

1 H: → eshi

   Ok

2C:  ene yezare soset amet akababi temermerialehu […]

   I was tested three years or so before […]

Extract (6)

1 H: → eshi (.) temeremerende

   Ok (.) have you been tested? (indirect)

2 C:  e: (0.5) temermere(.)nal awo

   e: (0.5) I(.) have been tested yes (indirect)

The caller’s turn construction in line 2 of extract 5 demonstrates that the device ‘eshi’ alone enables the host not just to initiate talk but also elicit the caller’s theme-related category. In contrast, in extract 6 the host has to design his turn in such a way that the device ‘eshi’ is deployed along with an interrogative form. In the host’s opinion initiating turn design differences in these extracts, it might be inferred that the ‘eshi’ followed by an interrogative is put to use whenever the hosts see the deployment of ‘eshi’ as insufficient to elicit talk from the callers. In line 1 of extract (6), the pause that precedes the host’s interrogative seems to indicate that the host ends his turn thereby positioning the caller to be in a role of a ‘ratified’ speaker (Goffman, 1981), or with a ‘call-relevant identity’ (Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002); the host’s utterance succeeding the pause (i.e., the interrogative) might be seen as an enactment of ‘repair’ work (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998) as a result of the caller’s ‘failure’ to understand the discursive function of the host’s pause. In the corpus examined, it appears that hosts deploy the device ‘eshi’ alone and succeed in initiating and in turn eliciting theme-related talk when using the device after having interaction on the topic of discussion with several callers whereas the interaction resource ‘eshi’ is followed up with either interrogative or statement form towards the beginning of the program.

From the examples we have seen thus far, the talk initiators used by the hosts might be observed as having both merits and demerits. The open-ended forms of the talk initiating moves (i.e., those which appear to commence with ‘representation of the theme’ and ‘eshi’) seem to give relatively better space for the callers to frame their talk production in a way they understand and like whereas it adds to the complexity to frame the talk into the manner whereby the production’s goal is easily realized. It particularly makes it demanding for the hosts to tune into the direction that the production’s goal is easily attained. In contrast, despite their constraining impact on the part of the callers to flexibly organize their talk, the close-ended forms of talk initiators (i.e., those that appear to draw on ‘interrogatives’) tend to assist the hosts to easily attain the target. These different ways of talk initiation, however, appear to serve to achieve one thing in common. This is a categorization activity.

The participants in their respective institutional category in the role of questioner and answerer, or more specifically talk initiator and one that responds to the talk initiating the move, work towards unpacking the callers’ membership of a certain category. The hosts’ questions posed at this stage seem to serve mainly the elicitation of the callers’ theme-related category, in consistency with Thornborrow’s (2001b, p. 470) ‘relevant participatory status’ and Fitzgerald and Housley’s (2002, p. 596) ‘topic-relevant identity’ into the talk. As Fitzgerald and Housley (2002) observe, the host-managed talk initiations avail the host an uninterrupted opportunity to both construct a call-relevant identity for the caller, and to make germane particular topic-relevant identities. They propose that topic-relevant identity involves callers invoking topic-relevant aspects of their experience in connection with the opinion being expressed and laying claim to some form of personal relatedness to the topic set for discussion. This is manifest in the present data, too. The extracts that follow illustrate how participants collaboratively accomplish membership categorization through their talk initiatory turn constructions. In these examples, the callers are seen choosing one of the two possible categories (‘I have got my blood tested for HIV-antibody’, or the opposite) relating to the theme set for discussion: ‘blood testing for HIV-antibody’.

Extract (7)

1 H: → temeremerek yafet

   Have you been tested, Yafet?

2 C:  awo betedegagami temeremeriyalehu

   Yes I have been tested repeatedly

Extract (8)

1 H: → eshi (.) temeremeren

   Ok (.) have you been tested? (indirect)

2 C:  awo temermerialehu yeneberegnen yemermera agatami

   lenegereh new

   Yes I have been tested and I am about to tell you my experience

Extract (9)

1 H: → eshi (.) temeremeren

   Ok (.) Have you been tested?

2 C:  eh ene ay (.) altemeremerekum

   eh me no (.) I have not been tested

As can be seen in these examples, the callers in extracts 7 and 8 invoke their membership of the category of ‘ones who have been tested for HIV antibody in their turn constructions in lines 2 in both examples to the host’s talk initiatory turn, whereas the caller in example 9 invokes his category membership of ‘ones who have not been tested for HIV-antibody’. As will be demonstrated in the section that follows, such jointly accomplished categorization determines the subsequent action of the participants as the talk unfolds.

The examples thus far highlight the importance of displaying and utilizing an opinion category on a particular topic for the flow of the calls. Although routinely such categories are made readily available to the host by callers, when such categories are absent or difficult to obtain the flow of the call may become disrupted or suspended whilst this category information is sought (Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002). The display and use of opinion categories can, thus, be seen as an integral part of this type of program and one which informs and shapes the organizational flow of the program. To highlight the importance of this orientation to topic-opinion categories by the host, it will be helpful to additionally see the following excerpt, in which the caller’s opinion category is not made available in the caller’s response to the host’s talk initiatory move.

Extract (10)

1 H: mendenew yanchi hasab

  What is your opinion?

2 C: e: (.) yene hasab memeremer teru new new emelew

  e: (.) my opinion I say getting tested is good

3 H: → yememeremer teru (.) mehon alemehon aydelem ahun

   yezih yewuyeyetachen matentegna (.) teyake new yanesanew

   esekahun aletemeremerenem yemil teyake

   It is not about whether testing is good (.) or not

   that the discussion focuses on (.) we rather

   raised a question ‘Haven’t we been tested yet?’

4 C:  ok esekahun awo ene temeremeriyalehu

   Ok up to now yes I have been tested

In this example, unlike in the earlier ones, the host’s talk initiatory turn in line 1 is not followed up with the caller’s turn construction (line 2) which makes her membership of one of the two categories. The host’s reliance on a talk initiatory turn that inquires about one’s opinion more broadly led the caller not to make her membership in a particular category readily available. The host then, in search of the opinion category of the caller, has framed his next turn (line 3) in a way that orients the caller to the specific topic focused in the discussion, to which the caller responded making her membership of the category ‘ones whose blood have been tested for HIV-antibody’ overt (line 4). This example further shows how participants talk initiatory exchanges are primarily geared towards unpacking the callers’ category information, which will in turn be drawn on to develop topical discussion in the program.

We have seen thus far how callers, in the phone-in program in focus, reveal, on the one hand, an orientation to their situated role in the achievement of the program’s feature, and on the other hand, that their participation is relevant. The collaboration of both the hosts and the callers, as has been observed, allowed the program to get the feature it has. Their collaborative efforts tend to be realized in their turn constructions that further the interaction to unfold. In the corpus of my data, no single case has been observed where the host’s talk-initiating moves are not followed by the callers’ productions. It is also commonplace that the callers’ response tokens are in turn succeeded by the host’s follow-up talk elicitation moves. Callers’ way of organizing their response to the hosts’ talk initiating turns, as will be demonstrated in the following section, is also observed to have bearing on the conduct of the ensuing talk.

The pursuit of callers’ topic-related accounts

In the corpus of the radio phone-in data examined, it is a recurrent feature that a caller’s opinion on a theme is placed within a further layer of categorization work in which the caller claims a membership of topical categories in the course of the talk. It is through the use of topic-relevant categories, which claim a personal and valid experiential connection to the topic, that callers may reinforce or ground their topic-opinion category (Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Hutchby, 2001; Thornborrow, 2001b). To elicit callers’ experiential accounts, hosts, then, usually rely on such a major device: narrowing the focus of the talk toward the callers’ first-hand experience. This corresponds with what Hutchby (2001) calls ‘witnessing’. Witnessing is a term that refers to “a range of actions associated with making claims to personal knowledge, personal experience, direct perceptual access, or categorical membership in respect of an event or topic under discussion” (Hutchby, 2001, p. 485). We will now turn to see how this is drawn upon and collaboratively accomplished in the course of the participants’ topical talk with illustrative examples. The following extracts show how hosts design their turns to elicit callers’ first-hand experience.

Extract (11)

1 H: […] eshi temeremerek

  […] ok have you got tested

2 C: awo

  yes

(turns between these excluded)

3 H: → mejemeriya lay yeneberewun neger esti enastawusew

   Let us talk about the condition in that first moment

4 C:  yaw mejemeriya lay […]

   Just firstly […]

Extract (12)

1 H:  […] men hasab mendenew yersewo hasab

   bewuyeyet re’esachen lay

   […] what opinion what is your opinion on the

   theme of the discussion

2 C:  eh yene hasab ene yetemeremerekut behuletshiand new

   eh my opinion I was tested in 2008

(turns between these excluded)

3 H: → eshi yane yeneberewun semet enawuraw

   Ok let’s talk about the state (condition) you had been in then (indirect)

4 C:  yane yeneberewun (.)

   My experience then (.)

These examples illustrate how categorical information is made available via talk initiatory turns (see lines 1 and 2 in each excerpt) and are mobilized to develop topical discussion. As can be seen in these extracts, callers make apparent that they belong to a category of ones whose blood got tested for HIV-antibody. Callers’ turns here have two interactional functions. First, they serve to authenticate or legitimize (Hutchby, 2001; Thornborrow, 2001b) their participation in and contribution to the topical discussion as relevant, or to what Fitzgerald and Housley (2002) described as one having a ‘topic–relevant identity. Secondly, they enable them to hint at their willingness and/or readiness to share their first-hand experiential accounts in the talk show as no caller, in the corpus of data examined, is found refraining from doing so. These can be understood in the turn constructions of both the hosts and callers in lines 3 and 4 in the extracts. In line 3 of the extracts, the host’s turn designs attest that the callers are found to have a topic-relevant identity, or are ratified as ones who have the experience to share (Hutchby, 2001; Thornborrow, 2001b) relating to the subject of discussion. The callers’ follow-up turn constructions in lines 4 in each example, in turn, affirm our observation. By designing their turns in such a manner the participants collaboratively pursue their topical discussion on matters relating to public health in the radio phone-in show examined.

Thus far we have seen how follow-up talks in the organization of the target radio phone-in program are accomplished by primarily focusing on the elicitation of callers’ first-hand experience and knowledge. The valuation of recourse to the elicitation of callers’ experiential accounts as a central device in the accomplishment of topical talk in the program can also be noticed in the hosts’ tendency to mobilize callers’ knowledge of/about the issue as an alternative interaction resource in the absence of first-hand experience.

Extract (13)

1 H: […] chegeroch wuset honek metamenen

  letaferesebet yederese agatami neber

  […] has there been an incident that made your

  effort in staying faithful in trouble

2 C: (.) eh yelem ene enkuan esekahun alafekerekum

  endezih ayenet negerem enten alalekum

  (.) eh no For I have not yet been in love/ relationship

  I have not also encountered such kind of thing

3 H: → guadegnocheh sileyayu temeleketaleh adel weyem degemo [

   You witness your friends dumping, don’t you or [

4 C:  [betam]

   [(yes I do) very much]

As can be seen in this extract, the caller’s response (line 2) to the host’s talk initiatory move (line 1) makes evident that the caller belongs to the category membership of ‘ones who have not experienced challenges in/to being faithful’. The host then frames her next turn (line 3) in a way that inquires the caller if he has something to share based on what he might have heard of or seen others experiencing the problem in a discussion. The host’s preference to design her turn in such a way could be seen as capitalizing on the centrality of one’s experiential account in the making up of the radio phone-in show. The fact that the hosts pursue the discursive accomplishment of authenticating the callers’ talk via experiential accounts and/or knowledge-eliciting devices seems to imply that such warranties are expectable on these occasions (Hutchby, 2001; Thornborrow, 2001b). In the corpus of the radio phone-in data examined, consistent with observations in previous studies of radio phone-ins (Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Hutchby, 2006), either when the discursive work of grounding the callers’ talk was not produced in the earlier phase, or contrarily when it went on digression, then the hosts work either to establish those grounds or frame them.

Another feature worth paying attention to in the accomplishment of topical discussion is how callers manage to avoid disclosing particulars on what might be counted as a ‘delicate’ issue (Silverman, 1997). Although callers’ turn constructions to the hosts’ talk eliciting moves in interaction on topical talk are characterized by ones that manifest alignment in the majority of the cases, there also are instances that illustrate deviation from such a recurrent practice. The following example demonstrates an instance where a caller shows disprefernce to a host’s talk elicitation move on what might be seen as a ‘delicate’ issue and manages to redirect a question (which routinely is forwarded to callers in the particular day’s phone-in program) to the host.

Extract (14)

1 H: eskahun altemeremerenem eyalen new

  We are saying haven’t you been tested yet (indirect)

2 C: eh eh awo altemeremerekum

  eh eh yes I have not been tested

(turns between have been excluded)

6 C: ena altemeremerkum (.) yaw eferalehugn mefrat new

  eh (1.5) lela (.) yesemal aydel

  So I have not been tested (.) I am fearful of it

  eh (1.5) (no) other (.) it is audible isn’t it

7 H: awo yesemal yesemagnal

  Yes it is audible I can listen

8 C: ena ya new gudayu (.) mefrat new=

  So it is because of that (.) it is because of fright

9 H: = mendenew emiyasferah

  What terrifies you

10 C: (1.0) memermeru (.) betam new emiyaseferaw (2.0)

   The testing (.) it is highly frightening

11 H: eko memermeru menu new ahun kememermeru wust

   So what of the testing which aspect of the testing

12 C: eh

   eh

13 H: kememeremeru wuset demeh siwesed merfew (.)

   emifeterebeh semet new emiyaseferaw (.) balemuyawochu

   endet new negeru belew siyawaruh new emeteferaw

   wutetu linegereh sil yalew part new emiyaseferah

   > yetu new <>mendenew <emiyaseferah

   In the testing procedure, is it the feeling that results

   from the needle when your blood is taken that frightens

   you Is it when the counselors talk to you that you

   become frightened Is it the part where the test result

   is told that makes you feel afraid >which one<

   >what frightens< you

14 C: ehh (xxx) gen and teyake leteyekeh echelalehu

   ehh (xxx) but can I ask you one question

15 H: betekekel techelaleh

   Exactly you can

16 C: yekereta gen ante temeremereh takaleh

   Excuse me, but have you ever been tested

17 H: yekereta ayasefelegewum betam temermeriyalehu

   No need to ask for an apology

   I have been tested (very much)

18 C: ({laughs})

   ({laughs})

19 H: yemeren new

   I am serious (not kidding)

20 C: eh

   eh

21 H: yemere new yehe endewum yekereta ayasefelegewum

   ene endewum yerasen tenagere neber

   mejemer yeneberebegn wuyeyeten

   I am serious this does not require asking for an apology

   I should have instead opened up the discussion

   by narrating my experience

In this extract, to the host’s talk initiatory move constructed through a reminder of the theme of the program, the caller discloses that he has not been tested. In line 6, the caller repeats his position against the issue raised for the discussion prefacing it with ‘ena’ (which means ‘so’) and with a pause following. Although the pause was meant to mark he is done sharing his theme-related opinion and it is up to the host to construct a follow-up turn, the caller, realizing the absence of the host’s follow-up turn, continues presenting his reason for not getting his blood tested for HIV-antibody. The caller again pauses, waiting for the host to come in. Again after a long pause, the caller resumes airing his same reason. He then makes a pause and inquires the host whether he is listening to him. The caller repeats his reason (line 8) as the host in his turn (line 7) raises no topical issue other than confirmation of his listening. It is following the caller’s statement of reason, presented this time in a manner of conclusion, (line 8) that the host constructs a turn based on the sequentially developed categorical information the caller made available. The caller stresses again fear as the cause for not getting tested using the qualifier ‘betam’ (which means ‘highly’ or ‘very’) with pauses preceding and succeeding his utterance (line 10). The host then designs his turn to inquire the caller to point out the particular cause for his high level of fear. Recognizing the caller’s dispreference to specify the reason for the fear, the host avails a list of possible causes for the caller to select in line 13. The caller’s dispreference to go into the particulars is made evident in his turn design in line 14. The caller, instead of specifying his source of fear from the list provided by the host, uses his turn to request whether it is possible to ask the host a question, to which the host responded affirmatively in line 15. Once he makes sure the willingness of the host to be questioned, the caller raises a question prefaced with an apologetic remark (line 16).

In this example, the caller seems to display his disaffiliation to the host’s specifications seeking turns via delaying the talk about his particulars relying on hesitation marker, preface use, and silence, all of which are widely acknowledged as canonical markers of dispreferred responses (Heritage et al., 1992; Silverman, 1997). By avoiding giving a response to the host’s question set to elicit a reason attributable to his fearfulness (lines 9–13), the caller instead constructed a turn that enables him to ask whether or not the host had been tested for HIV-antibody (line 16). The way he constructs his turn, however, is implicative of his orientation to their institutionally inscribed identities, or what Fitzgerald and Housley (2002) called ‘program-relevant identity’. The caller makes this evident via his ‘yikerta gin’, which is to mean ‘but excuse me’ (line 16), and ‘gin and teyake leteyekeh?’, which means ‘but shall I ask you one question?’ (line 14). Both of these interaction moves imply either that it would be inappropriate (or it is not the norm) for the caller to question the host or it is not appropriate to address a question relating to the issue in focus to the host as the omni-relevance of the ‘caller’ category affords to answer a question(s) by the omni-relevant category of ‘host’ (Fitzgerald and Housley, 2002; Kilby and Horowitz, 2013). In their effort to demonstrate how membership in the categories of ‘host’ and ‘caller’ in a radio phone-in show has an omnirelevance for the conversations, Fitzgerald and Housley (2002) contend that within the actual business of the call (discussing issues/topics), other categories and actions are invoked and ‘layered’ over the background omnirelevant categories. According to Fitzgerald and Housley (2002), while the categories of host and caller have ongoing relevance for the course of the calls, these are seen to be displayed and prioritized in the sequences before and after the work of presenting opinions.

As can be observed in the example we have seen thus far, the accomplishment of the interaction that focuses on the pursuit of callers’ accounts that particularly lead them to talk about delicate matters is demanding. What adds to this difficulty is the demand on the participants to engage in the joint achievement of preserving self-esteem and social solidarity. As has been shown, for example, in extract 14, the caller’s indirect resistance to disclosing his particulars (see lines 6, 8, and 10) depicts the pressure on the participants to create an environment in which they can seek to reaffirm social solidarity without directly acknowledging the occurrence of a disagreement. Likewise, the host’s insistence on designing his turns in a preferred manner (see lines 15, 17, and 21) is implicative of the demand to accomplish the communication practice with such orientation. It can, thus, be observed that the participants in talk-in-interaction on the radio phone-in examined work collaboratively in doing what counts as topical talk.

Conclusions

This article has described some discourse features of an Ethiopian health radio phone-in program broadcast in Amharic. Building on previous studies which use CA/MCA, we have demonstrated how the radio phone-in program is organized and how hosts and callers in the radio phone-in program collaborate to accomplish topical talk warrantied by callers’ first-hand experience and/or knowledge. Structurally, the radio phone-in program was organized broadly into three phases: openings, topical talk, and closings. The opening sequence involved interaction moves that mainly serve such functions as announcing to the audience that the host–caller conversation is due, signaling the line is open for the caller and exchanging greetings. The topical talk sequence comprised verbal interaction between the host and the caller on a pre-identified topic. The closing sequence marked the phase where the topical talk was brought to closure. The closing sequence consisted of pre-closing and terminating moves.

Within the organization of the radio phone-in, the host and caller were the two categories central to the production. These categories were observed as ‘omni-relevant’ in that they could be seen to operate at both an immediate and organizational level. Within the program, these categories were found to have actions attributable to them. As has been shown analytically, the hosts, for instance, performed, among others, such category-bound actions as introducing a topic of discussion, inviting callers to speak, discussing issues on the theme set with the callers, and managing caller transition. Similarly, we have seen category-bound activities for the callers. These included: phoning to the program, waiting for the host’s invitation to take part in the on-air talk, and offering opinions/views on the topic set for discussion.

In the organization of interaction on the radio phone-in show analyzed, once the opening sequence was over, the caller would be provided space to offer an opinion relating to the theme, placing her/him in a theme-opinion category. The opinion advanced within that turn (construction) was found to display implicitly, or more often explicitly, the position of the caller on the theme. Such positioning was observed to categorize callers concerning the theme. In the data examined, for example, the theme-opinion category was observed to place the callers either to ‘ones who have got their blood tested for HIV-antibody’ or ‘ones who have not got their blood tested for HIV-antibody’. By offering such a position the callers were found to move into and personally occupy a theme-opinion category in which their opinion situated them on either one side or the other. In the radio phone-in program, once the callers offered their theme-related opinion, consistent with observations in previous studies (Fitzgerald and Housley’s 2002; Hutchby, 2001; Kilby and Horowitz, 2013), the hosts were observed to construct turns that either challenged the callers’ opinion or elicit responses that add to the development of the talk.

This article has also demonstrated how topical talk was accomplished. We have shown this by mainly focusing on interaction moves the participants draw on to open up and pursue topical talk. We have unpacked major interaction resources hosts deploy to embark upon theme/topic-related talk. These include: reminding the caller of the theme of the session’s talk, usually in statement form; posing a question that (directly) relates to the theme of the talk; and using ‘eshi’, which means ‘ok’, or ‘eshi’ succeeded by a chunk(s) of utterance in the form of a statement or interrogative (or ‘eshi’-prefaced turn designs). We have shown how hosts, drawing on these resources, manage to initiate theme-related talk as well as elicit callers’ theme-related category membership. We have further illustrated how the hosts in turn utilize the callers’ category information made available to initiate a sequential maneuver. Our analysis revealed that central to the organization of topical talk on public health concerns is that of callers’ experiential accounts. We have demonstrated how hosts elicit such experiential accounts by narrowing the focus of the discussion toward the callers’ first-hand experience. While it was commonplace in the data examined that callers make this readily available, at times, they tended to refrain from sharing the particulars, especially when the hosts’ move turns out to elicit the callers’ account on ‘delicate’ issues. Based on our analytical observations it can, thus, be argued that the accomplishment of the topical talk involves a reflexive combination of categorial and sequential methods through which layers of background context are built and drawn upon.

By demonstrating how topical talk on radio phone-ins about public health issues in the context of Ethiopia is locally produced and developed through category and sequence work, we hope to contribute to existing work in the field. A more in-depth analysis of features in the accomplishment of topical talk can reveal still more. For example, how the participants’ topical discussion of a public health issue leads to an advice sequence and how this sequence is constituted and managed. This and other related concerns could be fertile ground for future studies of the management of topical talk in radio phone-in programs about public health issues.