Talk Radio, Discourse
Radio was the first electronic mass medium. It became a prominent part in people's every day experiences and in the discursive practices of mass media that followed in its wake. Moreover, radio was instrumental in creating communities around it and it has a central part in the public sphere. Key features of radio discourse include: intentionality, sociability, performativity, interactivity, and liveliness. There are many radiophonic genres; foremost among them is the phone-in, in which an ordinary person calls in to a program to talk with a host in front of the audience. The structure and features of phone-ins are illustrated to demonstrate how an institutional setting is achieved. 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
History of Media and Communications; 
language and social interaction; 
media and society; 
public participation; 
radio
“With whom do I have the pleasure?”: Callers’ categories in political talk radio programs
This paper discusses the caller types in political talk radio programs in Israel and the United States. The different caller types are: anonymous, regular, returning, first-time and the unmarked standard caller. The regular callers in Israel use recognitionals to be identified by the host. The returning callers in both countries state their return at the beginning of their talk. The first-time caller also starts his interaction by stating this identity, and some of them say they are regular listeners, to mitigate their novice identity. These types are relevant throughout the interactions: the interactions with regulars and returning callers are harsher or freer than other interactions, whereas interactions with first time callers are gentler. These types resemble similar types from non-media environments, such as the barroom. The various caller membership types contribute to the construction of a community around the programs.
From sequential to affective discourse marker: Hebrew nu on Israeli political phone-in radio programs
Previous studies of Hebrew nu investigate this discourse marker in casual conversation. The current study explores nu on Israeli political phone-in radio programs and broadens our knowledge both about the functions and grammaticization processes of discourse markers and about some particularities of Israeli political talk radio. The comparison to casual talk reveals both qualitative and quantitative differences. In casual talk, the main function of nu is a sequential one – urging further development of an ongoing topic (69%). In the radiophonic data, the most common role of nu is as a keying token (53%), functioning in the affective realm. Furthermore, the talk-radio data show a wider variety of keys constructed by nu – which range from joking to sheer contempt – clustering closer towards the latter, in contrast to the case of casual talk, manifesting mostly the joking key. Structurally, whereas sequential functions are generally accomplished by stand-alone nu, affective tokens are accompanied by same-speaker talk. The analysis sheds new light on how a sequential token might come to function in the affective realm.