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The following article applies both quantitative and qualitative methods of research to markers of perspective in a TV interview of Colin Powell on the CNN LARRY KING LIVE program from November 26, 2001. Perspective is well established in phenomenology and social psychology; its starting point is the conviction that every utterance expresses a point of view. From previous research, we accept the dialogical nature of perspective (see O’Connell & Kowal 1998) and further argue that perspective can be observed through measures of orality and literacy and through referencing (name and pronoun reference). The following measures of orality and literacy are examined: Back channeling hesitations, interruptions, contractions and elisions, first person singular pronominals, interjections and tag questions, and turn transitions from interviewer to interviewee and vice versa. We argue further that Colin Powell’s perspective stresses the division between “we” and “they” with regard to the then imminent involvement in Iraq. Theoretical implications are discussed.

The goal of this study is to examine the ways in which dialogue and peace are promoted and mobilized through a Facebook page in the protracted, ethnopolitical conflict between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. A thematic qualitative text analysis based on the grounded theory approach was conducted on posts and comments that were published on the Facebook page of the Israeli grassroots movement Women Wage Peace (WWP), created by the Jewish and Arab women that participate in this movement. Our findings point to three major mechanisms through which attempts to mobilize peace were performed: building solidarity, maintaining engagement, and calling for action, thus contributing to our understanding of social media as a dialogue-provoking platform that enables users from different gender and ethnopolitical groups in divided and conflicted societies to perform peacebuilding actions. However, the findings indicate that at the same time, the page also constitutes a space for blatant expressions of hostility, hatred, and sexism that convey a backlash against the initiative and activity of WWP.

Eight debates on Al-Jazeera specifically, on the Arabic language, highlight the divergent and convergent discourses about the status of the language and its use today in the Arab world. All address the issue of the weakness of the Arabic language, both internally between formal and dialect, and externally in the face of globalizing English. The participants also link the Arabic language to issues of identity and who the Arabs ‘are’ during this era of globalization. The article outlines the intellectual roots that many of the participants draw upon—that of the Arab nahda of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Finally, the article points out that there is a divergence between the general direction of scholarship produced in the West on the Arabic language and about the Al-Jazeera network and the broader intersection of language and nationalism addressed by the Al-Jazeera participants. Beyond noting the obvious linkage between language and nationalism, how actual participants deal with their intellectual legacies while attempting to prescribe and influence the present deserves greater analysis in the case of the Arabic language and its most noted vehicle today—the Al-Jazeera satellite television network.

Does gender make a difference in the way politicians speak and are spoken to in public? This paper examines perspective in three television interviews and two radio interviews with Bill Clinton in June 2004 and in three television interviews and two radio interviews with Hillary Clinton in June 2003 with the same interviewers. Our perspectival approach assumes that each utterance has a dialogically constructed point of view. Earlier research has shown that markers of conceptual orality and literacy as well as referencing (name and pronoun use for self and other reference) do reflect perspective. This paper asks whether perspective is gendered. Our data analysis demonstrates that some markers of perspective show gender differences while others do not. Those that do include the number of syllables spoken by each interlocutor, referencing, the use of the intensifier so, the use of the hedge you know, the use of non-standard pronunciations, turn transitions, and lastly the use of laughter.