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Prof. Paul Sudnik

Munich University of Applied Sciences, Germany

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Home > Archive > 2026 > Volume 16, Number 2, 2026
IJSSH 2026 Vol.16(2): 80-83
doi: 10.18178/ijssh.2026.16.2.1282

An Analysis of Interruption in an Interview from the Perspective of Conversation Analysis

Yueqi Ma and Yi Zhang *
School of Foreign Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, Shanxi, China
Email: 1427851172@qq.com (Y.Y.); yizhang@nwpu.edu.cn (Y.Z.)
*Corresponding author

Manuscript received November 26, 2025; accepted February 13, 2026; published May 19, 2026.

Abstract—As a very natural and common language phenomenon, conversation interruption appears to disrupt the complete turn-taking structure. However, the use of interruption can also promote the smooth progress of conversations in some special conversation situations. This paper is aimed to analyze the interruption modes adopted by the host in an interview, and ultimately summarize the interruption strategies applied in the interview based on conversation analysis to explore turn design and sequential organization. The corpus of this paper is from a well-known CNN interview program Larry King Special on March 28, 2000. The 40 minutes and 35 seconds interview video was transcribed into a total of 525 turns and 32 interruptions. The analysis indicates that the interruption modes adopted by the host are inquiry, assistance, guidance, and dominance, and the interruption strategies applied in the interview are assuasive, direct, and reminder interruption, and also proper timing. In addition, through this study, it is expected to contribute from a linguistic perspective to effectively enhancing the effectiveness of such interview programs.

Keywords—conversation analysis, interruption modes, interruption strategies

Cite: Yueqi Ma and Yi Zhang*, "An Analysis of Interruption in an Interview from the Perspective of Conversation Analysis," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 80-83, 2026.


Copyright © 2026 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
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