Person:
Dori-Hacohen, Gonen

Job Title

Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Last Name

Dori-Hacohen

First Name

Gonen

Discipline

Communication

Introduction

As of September 1st, 2011, I am an Assistant Professor in the Communication Department at UMass Amherst.
I studied Israeli radio phone-ins, and now I expand to study American Political Radio Talk, including the "notorious" Rush Limbaugh, and also Interested in TV (Jon Stewart) and other arena for public participation, such as internet comments and various phone-ins.
Since 1996, I've been studying the intersection of interaction, culture, and the media. My interests lie both in interactions in the media and in mundane interactions, which I studied during my time at the Hebrew University, UCLA, and throughout my dissertation in the University of Haifa. In my graduate studies, I was fortunate enough to work with leading researchers in various streams of Language and Social Interaction research - also known as Discourse Studies: Pragmatics, Socio-Linguistics, Conversation Analysis, Linguistics, and Ethnography of Communication.

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Creative Resonance and Misalignment Stance: Achieving Distance in One Hebrew Interaction
(2017-01-01) Dori-Hacohen, Gonen
This paper elaborates on one element of the theory of Dialogic Syntax, Du Bois’ main tool for stance-taking, namely creative resonance. The examples are taken from a recording of a car ride which was part of data collected for the analysis of Hebrew. The focus in the analysis is on misalignment, when participants use stance acts to distance themselves from each other. The main claim of this paper is that whenever a stance act takes place, the relations between the participants are at stake. I show how creative, and to a lesser extent pre-existing, resonance can be used for creating and enhancing distance in misalignment. The discussion connects resonance and Dialogic Syntax with other frameworks for the study of language and interactions.
The "Long List" in oral interactions
(2020-01-01) Dori-Hacohen, Gonen
This paper discusses lists, a neglected structure, to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about them in oral interactions. Two such assumptions are: unlike narratives, lists are perceived as centered on the delivery of objective information; and three-part lists are normative. Using Israeli and U.S.A. radio call-in shows data, this paper discusses the “Long List” – a list with more than three parts. These lists deliver their speaker’s meaning in a structure resembling stories: a “lister” delivers the “list” in a “listing” process. Listings may be explicit or implicit and may include evaluative elements. Long Lists might appear in chains, and in the Israeli data Long Lists demonstrate normative features similar to three-part lists in mundane interactions. Connecting them with their context, lists are sometimes used to emphasize media biases. The conclusion connects the Long Lists to their speech event and to poetics.
"Rush, I Love You": Interactional Fandom on U.S. Political Talk radio
(2013-01-01) Dori-Hacohen, Gonen
This article analyzes the openings in host-caller interactions in three leading U.S. political talk radio (PTR) programs. Conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis are used to describe how fandom is achieved in these shows. Callers present themselves as fans in the first possible position in the interaction, using various practices ranging from uttering the word ditto to creating extended discourse structures. The hosts usually perceive these practices as compliments and appreciate them and the callers. PTR is a prime example of a fan-public, since its host harnesses the fans to achieve his political (and commercial) agenda. The hyphen in fan-public deserves attention, because this notion is rooted in infotainment, combining the relationships of the entertainment business, fans, and stars with the realm of politics, which would assume some critical notion and individuality in the decision-making processes.
Hebrew nu: Grammaticization of a borrowed particle from synchronic and diachronic perspectives
(2016-01-01) Maschler, Yael; Dori-Hacohen, Gonen
Hebrew nu is a non-referential item borrowed into the language in the early days of revival of spoken Hebrew, as is the case for many discourse markers (Schiffrin 1987) in language contact situations (e. g., Brody 1987; Maschler 1988, 1994,2000; Salmons 1990; Matras 1998). Even-Shoshan’s dictionary (2003) classifies it as an interjection and provides the information that nu was “imported from the European languages”, which could be understood as mainly Russian (nu),Yiddish (nu), and possibly Polish (no). Even-Shoshan provides the meanings 'efo (‘therefore’), hava (‘let us’), uvxen (‘well then’) – all words of rather high register. To these meanings, another dictionary (Avneyon 1998) adds a colloquial use: milat zeruz (‘an urging word’) and provides the example: nu kvar, bo! hasha'a me'uxeret! (‘nu already, come! It’s late!’).
Conspiracy, Religion, and the Public Sphere: The Discourses of Far-Right Counterpublics in the U.S. and South Korea
(2020-01-01) Reijven, Menno H.; Cho, Sarah; Ross, Matthew; Dori-Hacohen, Gonen
Much research within the noncritical perspective on the public sphere has been quantitative. To strengthen the argument for an ideologically disinterested approach to the study of publicity and counterpublicity, we use ethnomethodological discourse analysis to analyze how far-right movements claim counterpublicity, or “do being a counterpublic.” Specifically, we study the U.S. pundit Alex Jones and a prayer meeting of South Korean Evangelical Christians. For each, we considered how they created a shared discourse and attempted to change mainstream discourse while claiming being marginalized and different from the mainstream. Across these two case studies, the strategies for “doing being a counterpublic” are similar, even though they use different organizing symbols—conspiracy in the U.S. versus religion in Korea. These case studies show that the functionalist perspective yields benefits to understanding how publicity and counterpublicity are negotiated among various groups of activist citizens.
The cultural meanings of Israeli Tokbek (talk-back online commenting) and their relevance to the online democratic public sphere
(2013-01-01) Dori-Hacohen, Gonen; Shavit, Nimrod
Abstract: Israeli journalistic websites have initiated a feature that became fairly universal: a section at the end of each article that allows readers to respond to the article and to each other. This feature is captured by the metacommunicative term ‘tokbek’, derived from the English phrase ‘talk-back’. Although originally viewed as having the potential to promote civil participation, the tokbek soon became associated with pejorative cultural meanings that indicated its failure to do so. Drawing on the Ethnography of Communication, we provide an interpretative framework for an analysis of this failure. The main function of tokbek is the construction of the commenters’ political identities, mainly as leftists and rightists. This oppositional construction takes the antagonistic form of a ‘bashing ritual’ that communicates radical pessimism about the possibility of political debate. Because sharing a virtual space does not necessarily facilitate deliberation, democratic culture should be explicitly addressed when discussing technological advancements.
"I Have a Question for You": Practicies for Achieving Institutional Interaction in Israeli Radio Phone-In Programs
(2011-01-01) Dori-Hacohen, Gonen
Schegloff described utterances such as “lemme ask you a question” as pre-questions, pre-pre’s or pre-delicates (Schegloff 1980). This paper provides a discussion of similar utterances in a specific institutional setting - political radio phone-in programs in Israel. The participants use these utterances in ways that are similar to Schegloff’s description. Yet, the pre-construction has additional institutional functions for the differing roles of the host and the caller. Hosts use these utterances to manage the interaction during overlaps as a means to secure an exclusive turn of talk following them. Callers use them infrequently at the beginning of their talk as story-prompts. Hosts may challenge this usage and the interactional role reversal. Regular callers can use the pre-constructions similarly to hosts. In this way, the pre-constructions in the Israeli radio phone-in programs are employed as interactional practices that relate and construct the roles in this institutional setting.
'Hitlahamut': A term for unreasonable populist public talk in Israel
(2019-01-01) Dori-Hacohen, Gonen
This research follows the tradition of Ethnography of Communication to discuss hitlahamut, an Israeli term for a distinctive type of public talk. After presenting the denotive meaning, I define the act and style hitlahamut encodes, using analysis of the type of talk it describes. The data are taken from phone-in interactions and online op-eds and news. Hitlahamut defines a self-centered emotive, exaggerated style of the confrontational and divisive message, and it encodes hostile relations between the participants. I then connect this term with other Israeli terms for talk and with terms for public talk elsewhere, suggesting that hitlahamut describes unreasonable criticism, enabling participants not to engage with the content of the criticism due to its (perceived) style. In addition, hitlahamut describes populist discourse (from both left and right) due to its combination of aggression and emotive style with divisive language and problematic argumentative content.