Abstract
This article looks at the significance of the practices of ‘belligerent broadcasting’ in the popular ‘trouble-shooting’ business television programme Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, USA. Belligerent broadcasting is a broadcast style that offers as spectacle expressions of anger or impatience, or the exercise of intimidation, against an on-screen interlocutor. Focusing on the performances of Gordon Ramsay, the article analyses the management of on-screen confrontation between participants occupying asymmetrical positions of power and perceived expertise. The article looks at how the face-threatening component of belligerent talk is ameliorated by strategies of authenticity and its representation as a productive force within the narrative of the programme. Finally, we assess the relevance of arguments that this broadcasting style might be seen as part of a ‘new incivility’ across media discourses.
This article presents the first of what we envisage as a series of case studies of a phenomenon we are calling ‘belligerent broadcasting’. Broadly, this rests on an observation that in a variety of genres, particularly but not exclusively on television, there has been a move in recent years to stage increasingly aggressive, and sometimes violent, forms of verbal confrontation. These genres range from talk shows which specialize in ‘confrontainment’ (Lorenzo-Dus, 2009), through instances of ‘lifestyle’ and ‘reality’ TV, to adversarial forms of accountability interviewing (Higgins, 2008; Hutchby, 2011; Montgomery, 2007). The verbal confrontations that occur here often include forms of language not previously (or very exceptionally) heard in public discourse such as swearing and direct, unmitigated insults. Their recipients have been reduced to tears or alternatively have reacted with equal ferocity producing events that transgress the boundaries of ‘civility’ (Lakoff, 2003), such as the infamous ‘racism row’ in 2007 on the UK’s Celebrity Big Brother (Rahman, 2008; Tolson, 2011). These are not just isolated incidents; our argument is that there is now a genus of programming that involves the routine production of face-threatening acts, such as, for example, those delivered to failed contestants in talent shows (such as X Factor) and competitive reality shows (such as The Apprentice) or to the hapless and incompetent restaurateurs in the UK and US versions of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
Such belligerence is interesting because it seems to contravene one of the defining characteristics of traditional broadcasting. That is, not only does it transgress the wider social norms of politeness and ‘face’, it also contradicts the emphasis on ‘sociability’ that Paddy Scannell (1996) argues is a long-established and fundamental feature of broadcast talk; a point to which we will return. Some of the vocabulary we are starting to use at this point is indicative of the approach we intend to take. We will be building on previous studies which have used methodologies derived from Conversation Analysis, Pragmatics and Interactional Sociolinguistics (Tolson, 2006), and which have previously analysed not only sociable, conversational broadcast talk but also ‘confrontation talk’ in radio phone-ins (Hutchby, 1996) and television talk shows (Hutchby, 2006; Tolson, 2001). The focus here is on the extent to which norms of ordinary conversation, such as cooperativeness, politeness and ‘face-work’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Goffman, 1972) can be applied to institutional talk designed for an ‘overhearing audience’ (Heritage, 1985). For example, the Journal of Pragmatics has dedicated an issue to argumentation in media, examining various strategies for controlling and guiding arguments of various forms and degrees of sincerity as media spectacles (Fetzer, 2007; Hess-Lüttich, 2007; Lauerbach, 2007; Luginbühl 2007; Simon-Vandenbergen, 2007; Thornborrow, 2007; van Rees, 2007). In our studies of belligerent broadcasting we will be taking a similar approach to the detailed analysis of transcripts of talk, looking closely at how they deploy conversational practices.
Our case study in this article, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, USA, can be defined as a ‘docu-soap’. That is, although the programme features celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, and though it falls broadly within the category of ‘factual entertainment’, it is not a cookery show; rather the focus is on failing businesses and their management, in which Ramsay, as the expert, intervenes. The programme is influenced by what Raymond Boyle (2008) sees as the rise in popular business programming, but also reflects the new priorities for documentary associated with an increasingly competitive market for relatively cheap programmes and the growth of the independent sector in UK television production following the 1992 Broadcasting Act. John Corner has described this as a ‘post documentary’ culture in which lifestyle programming and the ‘docu-soap’ occupy spaces in the TV schedule which were once the preserve of conventional documentaries, sit-coms and the broad genre of light entertainment. Corner draws on Ib Bondebjerg, who has highlighted a hybridization of the hard/soft distinction, which brings together the public and the personal in a ‘democratization of an old public service discourse’ (Bondebjerg, 1996: 29). In her study of the BBC, Georgina Born writes about the consequences of the institutional impetus towards this emphasis on narrative and character in the new forms of documentary: The concept of the ‘story’ became ubiquitous among producers to the point of obsession: ‘getting the story right’ and ‘finding strong characters’ were prime concerns. (2004: 431)
Programme types such as ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentaries, docu-soaps and various forms of reality TV have exemplified these priorities, and have of course been widely discussed (Biressi and Nunn, 2005; Hill, 2005; Holmes and Jermyn, 2004; Kilborn, 2003). However, none of these discussions has focussed on the imperative of conflict that underpins some of these programmes; what we describe as belligerent broadcasting.
Perhaps this lack of attention to belligerence in ‘factual entertainment’ is a consequence of the dominant perspective from which this genre has been critically evaluated. Following the pioneering work of the Midlands Television Research Group (Brunsdon et al., 2001) the focus has been on the transfer of programming into evening schedules that would previously have been transmitted during the day. In particular, in the ‘8–9 slot’ the focus has been on lifestyle and makeover programmes that have been conventionally associated with a female audience (Medhurst, 1999, Moseley, 2000). As a result, Brunsdon et al. speak of the ‘feminization’ of this part of the evening schedule, and subsequent work has highlighted the focus on ‘ordinary’ lifestyles in gardening makeovers (Taylor, 2002) and ‘postfeminist’ identities in cookery shows (Hollows, 2003). The problem we have here is that, although the success of Gordon Ramsay might be loosely connected to these developments, he also seems to represent a further shift. As we have observed, some of his recent programmes are oriented towards business as much as cookery, where his persona can be distinctively and stereotypically masculine (which he shares with other belligerent presenters), and his programmes are now transmitted after the 9 p.m. watershed because of the ‘bad language’ they contain.
However, there is some more recent work on ‘reality television’ that does perhaps begin to connect with our concerns. In their studies of the female audience for factual entertainment, Helen Wood, Beverley Skeggs and Nancy Thumim show how social class operates as a key variable, not only in different types of audience response, but also in the narrative structure of much of this genre of programming (Skeggs and Wood, 2008; Wood and Skeggs, 2008; Wood et al., 2009). Part of the ideological project here, particularly in programmes that focus on household management and ‘care of the self’, is the denigration of ‘dysfunctional’ lifestyles (associated with some working-class participants) and the promotion of acceptable (i.e. middle-class) alternatives (Palmer, 2003). In some reality TV, for example the long-running Wife Swap, this takes the form of melodramatic narratives that frequently culminate in highly emotional confrontations as women, in particular, criticize each other’s approaches to daily routines or practices of childcare. Now, consider how one of the respondents in this study, Ruby, speaks of her involvement in this programme: I think sometimes you’ve got to go through all that anger and fighting and shouting and screaming at each other to … find out the answer to solve the problem, it’s part of the process…. You do have to scream and shout sometimes to be heard. You know it’s an invasion in your life, you know it’s their home and someone’s coming in, you know, and saying right I’m going to change it. (Wood et al., 2009: 142–3)
While this is only a part of his belligerent persona, which can also manifest in quiet assertiveness, the difference with Gordon Ramsay is that as his programmes’ agent of change it is he who has licence to engage in extreme verbal confrontations.
So it would seem that here there might be a rationale for belligerence, as part of a cathartic process. Furthermore, there may be a certain authenticity in working things through in this fashion, for when people are screaming and shouting they are not dissembling or avoiding the issue. What Goffman called ‘flooding out’, here with anger and rage, can be seen as a marker of genuine emotion, particularly in the melodramatic tradition (Wood and Skeggs, 2008) that is also the basis for some talk shows (Shattuc, 1997). So are the verbal confrontations of Gordon Ramsay also a kind of cathartic response to his ‘kitchen nightmares’? As we will see, he does claim that his approach amounts to ‘brutal honesty’, but on the other hand this is not the authenticity of the ordinary person on reality TV. For Ramsay’s is a professional persona, performed routinely in his programmes, and in this development his belligerence has become a unique selling point.
Ramsay’s media persona
Gordon Ramsay’s first TV appearance was in the 1998 fly-on-the-wall documentary Boiling Point, which followed his quest to obtain three Michelin stars; an idea which was reprised in Beyond Boiling Point in 2000. Both programme titles highlight the potential for belligerence and loss of temper, a promise which was duly fulfilled in each. Further productions have included Hell’s Kitchen, The F Word (with its obvious pun) and Gordon Ramsay’s Cook-Along, as well as Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, which was first broadcast on UK Channel 4 in 2004. This is based on the model of the ‘troubleshooting’ expert consultant, in this case offering Ramsay as a successful restaurateur willing to give advice to failing restaurant owners, with the twist that he also appears as a chef, often dressed in whites, offering guidance on dishes. He therefore operates on the level of both restaurant owner and as accomplished chef, often switching between the two.
The character of Gordon Ramsay is interesting in itself as he is a pervasive media presence on both sides of the Atlantic (indeed, we will examine an extract from the US version of Kitchen Nightmares below), and is frequently highlighted in the media as being someone who is synonymous with ‘bad language’ on TV. Ramsay’s reputation as a belligerent chef is one that he takes pride in. His first autobiography, itself liberally sprinkled with expletives, includes a defence of his media persona, delivered in typically pugilistic fashion: There’s a big percentage of people out there who’ve seen me on the TV and who think I’m an arsehole. I was once ranked alongside Chris Evans and Mohamed Al Fayed in a shitty, downmarket ITV show called Britain’s Unbearable Bosses. That’s fine: the people who come up with this crap have never worked for me, and obviously haven’t bothered talking to anyone who has. I don’t give a damn if some dental hygienist comes up to me and tells me that she would never tolerate my behaviour from her boss – or behave in a similar way to someone in her employ. Kitchens are not like other workplaces. People who’ve worked with me, and who have survived, love it. I’m not speaking on their behalf – but ask them, and you’ll see that I’m right. What they get from me is brutal honesty, and that’s paramount. (Ramsay, 2007: 195)
It is evident that Ramsay distances himself here from a stereotypically female occupation, thus implicitly aligning his belligerence with a form of masculinity. In this version of his media persona he presents himself as an extreme version of the tough-talking businessman, an identity frequently associated with male-dominated occupational contexts (Baxter, 2006; Cameron, 2000). However, Ramsay justifies his belligerent masculinity on the basis that ‘kitchens are not like other workplaces’ and that ‘brutal honesty’ is a key asset for the successful restaurateur. We might want to question that assumption, given the wide variety of masculinities currently on display in TV cookery/business programmes (from ‘man-of-the-people’ Jamie Oliver to the Gallic charm of Raymond Blanc); and, indeed, in some of his recent shows Ramsay’s own persona has shifted in more sympathetic directions (Ramsay’s Best Restaurant for example). Cooking may ‘not get tougher than this’ as the Masterchef catchphrase has it, but there are undoubtedly different ways of doing ‘being tough’ in this environment. Nevertheless, for much of his career, and particularly in the programme we focus on here, Ramsay’s way of doing this is through a performance of ‘tough-talking’ masculinity associated with his claim to ‘brutally honest’ authenticity – a constructed persona with dramatic potential, as our analysis will now seek to demonstrate.
Swearing in belligerent exchanges
One of the features of Ramsay’s shows that generates much publicity and controversy is the prevalence of ‘swearing’. Ramsay’s persona as the swearing chef received media attention in 2008 when Channel Nine in Australia was criticized for broadcasting an episode of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares in which, one politician claimed, Ramsay used ‘the f-word’ 80 times in 40 minutes (BBC News, 2008), Ramsay’s defence was that this was representative of the real world of high-octane kitchen management. The network further defended it by offering the explanation that the swearing was, on occasion, commendable because Ramsay sometimes used the f-word as praise. Whatever the explanation offered, the story here served to raise Ramsay’s profile and boost viewing figures for the Australian screening of his shows, perhaps illustrating the global marketability of belligerence.
The post nine o’clock watershed slot for this show, both in the UK version and the UK screening of the US version, allows for moderate taboo language to be broadcast without beeping on UK TV. However, the trailer for Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (Series 4) featured cartoons showing flying kitchen knives, breaking crockery and rapidly chopped food. There are unattributed raised voices, subtitles for which appear on the screen in rhythm with the words, all increasing the sense of energy and drama that this show draws upon. In a visual sense too, the use of the colours red, orange and black in the programme logo shown on the trailer helps to enhance this sense of drama and dynamism. Expletives are bleeped out in the soundtrack (see Table 1).
Trailer
Within the trailer, which was broadcast before and after the watershed, the bleeped-over swearing is emphasized by means of the print convention of asterisks and other non-alphabetic keyboard symbols appearing in the written transcript onscreen. There is no mention of the ‘good deed’ that Ramsay offers by way of free business advice in these trailers. As far as the trailers are concerned, the main selling point, the thing that is likely to make good television, is the belligerence.
Elsewhere, though, media reporting of Ramsay does pick up on other aspects of his persona that point more to a deeper incivility than a simple discussion of ‘swearing’ would indicate. Indeed, at the end of each show, the trailer for the following week’s show highlights the argument as a sustained media spectacle. In Kitchen Nightmares USA, we can also see the belligerence highlighted in each show before the opening credits in which examples from previous shows in the UK version are edited together, followed by further snippets of linguistic and physical violence from the US shows. Our analysis highlights three strategies used in this programme to contextualize and justify belligerence as a valid (and dramatic) approach to trouble-shooting. The episode we are looking at in detail features a failing restaurant called ‘The Mixing Bowl’, which is owned by the chef (Billy) and his wife (Lisa), but managed by Mike, with long-suffering Kim as one of the serving staff appearing frequently to offer testimony to the narrative.
Construction of authenticity through voice-over
Within Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, USA, we find two different voiceovers are used to emphasize confrontation. The first, that of the main narrator added in post-production, is accompanied by briefer secondary voice-overs from participants as they narrate the action on screen, commenting retrospectively. To begin with a discussion of the main narrator’s post-production voice-over (VO), it is clear that this follows the convention in most reality-based shows in the use of present tense to comment on what is happening or has just happened on screen. Voice-overs are often used also to anticipate potential problems (Smith, 2010). However there are differences in the voice-overs of the UK and US versions of the programme. In the UK version, Ramsay provides his own voice-over in present tense as if to comment on the ongoing action, but he projects forward in time to anticipate future problems, always appearing to have an omniscient insight into what is to come. In the US version, the voice-over is supplied by Scottish actor Gordon Kennedy, who fulfils much the same role but also acts as a buffer between Ramsay and the viewer. The UK voice-over is disembodied from the Ramsay on-screen, but the US arrangement is an additional strategy to allow Ramsay to appear to be oblivious to the mechanics and techniques of mediation, and therefore more authentic, ‘not acting’ (Tolson, 2006: 11).
In the first scene we will look at (Table 2), which is the narrative climax of the episode, where the belligerence is at its most emphatic, Ramsay is visually present as part of the restaurant kitchen team, dressed in his chef’s whites rather than the jeans and t-shirts that he wears at other points. The reference to the ‘New York Dragons’ relates to an earlier scene in which Ramsay has been shown organizing the minor celebrities of this local sports team to patronize the restaurant. As the voice-over states on lines 1–4, there has been a mix-up with the table reservations and these celebrity guests have arrived to find no table ready for them.
Climax of belligerence
The editing exhibits a range of linguistic features edited into the show to try and maintain a sense of now-ness and continuity, although visually we see the participants in different clothing, thereby undermining the sense of continuity. This is particularly the case in the opening lines of this scene where the clothing of the participants changes to indicate that it has been filmed at various times during the day, but edited together to lend continuity to the exchanges. Mike’s shouted comments (lines 6 and 10–18) are accompanied by physical performances of violence with slammed fists and shocked-looking diners. The voice-over positions Mike as having lost his temper (lines 3–4), while the restaurant owner, Lisa, appears in a big close
The owner, Lisa, further emphasizes the importance of Mike’s loss of control when she appears in a participant’s secondary voice-over to comment on his performance’s effect on the wider community (line 20), the extent of which is something that Kim reiterates in her judgement passed on lines 23–5. Ramsay then appears to take control of the situation, issuing a directive laced with expletives (lines 27–32) which removes Mike from the scene, apparently sent out of the room to calm down. Lisa’s participant voice-over at this point again adds a commentary on the situation that emphasizes its drama (lines 34–7). However, while it is apparent that Mike himself had attempted to draw the argument to a close on lines 17–18, the editing moves straight to a head shot and participant secondary voiceover (lines 17–21) that serves to sustain the belligerent tone. The editing strategy is also undermined by other factors the alert viewer might be able to see, such as shifts from darkness to daylight (showing Mike ‘storming’ out of the restaurant late into service, but actually going into a twilit street which, in November, would indicate early evening). This scene, in other words, is arranged in order to emphasize and lend continuity to the sense of belligerence, irrespective of the real time ordering of events. This editing is acknowledged by the producers, who use the end credits to flash up a disclaimer that sequences may not be shown in the order in which they occurred.
Thus the two voice-overs work in tandem to create a narrative based around conflict between the interlocutors. The main voice-over, supplied here by Gordon Kennedy, adds tension and anticipation through the interplay of present tense commentary and projections into the future about the possible course that events will take. The lay participants’ secondary voice-over provides an outwardly independent assessment of the situation, but one which serves to reinforce the points made by the main voice-over. This interdependence between voice-overs helps to validate the belligerence by investing it with a sense of spontaneity and authenticity.
Construction of authenticity through ‘indirect aside’ commentary
The justification of Ramsay as an authentic expert who has the good fortune of his participants at heart is also emphasized through a technique in which he talks to the overhearing audience, without talking directly to camera. We have decided to name this mode of address the ‘indirect aside’, a technique which seems to have become quite common in reality TV shows (it is also used by Jamie Oliver for example). The conceptual roots of this lie in the theatrical device of ‘the aside’, where the performer breaks away from the inter-character dialogue to turn towards and give an address to the audience that the other characters do not hear. While the form of address we discuss is similarly directed towards the watching audience, it differs from the theatrical aside in the important respect that the addressee looks towards an unseen (and usually unheard) interlocutor standing behind and to the side of the camera. At a fundamental level, the effect of this form of address is to construct the professional chef as an expert, not just a media performer. There is a telling example of the indirect aside commentary in the following extract (Table 3) in which Mike attempts to justify to Ramsay the various promotional signs he has used to entice customers into the restaurant.
Indirect aside commentary
First, we see Ramsay deliver a series of expletives (lines 1 and 6) as evidence of his frustration with the ineffectual strategies Mike has used to attract customers. That this annoyance is based on his desire to help the restaurant improve is clear from Ramsay’s directive to remove the signs on the basis that customers ought to be prevented from seeing them, offering an ungenerous comparison with the look of a discount shop (line 1). What is interesting is the way in which the indirect aside commentary is then used, for Ramsay switches the terms of his belligerence to that of the indignant professional, itemizing the problems the restaurant faces (see Figure 1). This view is supported by the voice-over which employs items from the lexicon of rancor – confront, harsh reality – to prefigure the discussion Ramsay is about to have with the restaurant’s owners (lines 18–19).
[Indirect aside] ‘I’ve got a restaurateur who is just a simple cook...’
Non-belligerent vox pops as validation of Ramsay’s expertise
Just as belligerence is important in marketing the programme and Ramsay’s media persona, non-belligerence also plays an important role in confirming Ramsay’s expertise. Testimonies from the participants in the programme, as well as those from independent voices, such as restaurant guests or locals, serve to validate Ramsay’s authenticity through his expert advice having a positive effect on the business (Table 4).
Validation of Ramsay
The intervention of Ramsay as restaurateur is validated through the vox pop of an unnamed diner on lines 1–3, who draws attention to the double role he has had in changing the menu and the standard of service. This is emphasized in the voice-over, which glosses over the belligerence previously featured (on line 6, the rancorous exchanges from earlier are expressed, euphemistically, as ‘growing pains’), and this shifts from the present tense, which directly links the improvements to Ramsay’s intervention, to the past tense in the description of Mike’s personal ‘improvement’ as a restaurant manager. Ramsay’s direct intervention in his role as chef is given prominence in the testimony of the diners (lines 12–13, 18–19), stressed by the intervention of the voice-over between these two testimonies. The difference in tone between these testimonies and the belligerence that put these positive developments in play is marked throughout the extract, and the disjuncture between the tenor of these exchanges and those earlier in the programme is enhanced still further by Mike’s use of the folksy expletive ‘holy moley’ when expressing pleasure at the till receipts (line 24).
Broadcasting and ‘warranted’ belligerence
It is central to our argument that the notion of ‘belligerence’ offers an extremely fruitful way of thinking about shifts in the tenor of broadcast public discourse. At a preliminary level, it helps to bring into sharper relief a whole range of broadcasting practices and to begin to understand them as in some way related. As we outlined in our introduction, an understanding of belligerence in broadcasting helps us to see connections between pervasive features of verbal performance that are present or are emerging across the spectrum of television programming from news interviewing to competitive reality shows, from talent shows to lifestyle makeovers.
Yet, paradoxically, to call attention to the current prevalence and foregrounding of belligerence instantly raises questions, as we noted at the outset, about a core dimension of broadcast experience identified by Scannell (1996: 22) as ‘sociability’. For Scannell, the sociable character of talk on radio and television was a most important dimension of their communicative ethos as they adapted themselves to the task of how best to address a mass audience in conditions of domestic consumption. If, however, the historical accomplishment of broadcast talk has been to craft ways of sounding sociable to large audiences, how do we make sense of these interpolations of belligerence?
First, it is crucial to recognize that television’s mode of address to its audience has not in itself become belligerent. For a fundamental property of broadcast talk is that it is doubly articulated (Scannell, 1991: 1): television may routinely show us interlocutors talking to each other; but this talk in itself assumes a special character inasmuch as interlocutors talk not only to and for each other but, at one and the same time, they talk for an overhearing audience. Thus, while the news interviewer may practise belligerence with an interviewee, the news presenter’s address to the audience remains essentially ‘sociable’ – and is, if anything, becoming more so. Ramsay may swear at an interlocutor within the kitchen of the show but never at the broadcast audience. To some extent, therefore, the sociable character of broadcasting remains in place. Belligerence, where it occurs, takes place along only one of the two doubly articulated axes that have been identified as crucial to broadcast talk and not in direct address to the audience.
Second, however, our analysis begins to show how the notion of double-articulation may be insufficiently rich and textured to catch the complex participation frameworks (Goffman, 1986: 232) at stake in Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. For the dynamics of the show rest not just upon talk between interlocutors in a scene for an overhearing audience, but also draw upon the visual (as well as verbal) possibilities of the television medium. Thus, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares flits between multiple modes of direct and indirect address; changes which include transitions between voice-over commentary, dialogue (sometimes confrontational) between interlocutors in the scene, indirect aside, and evaluative vox-pop sound-bites from unnamed diners. From our perspective, one of the most interesting devices in this complex participation framework is the indirect aside, which provides a commentary on events delivered with a visual address slightly to one side of the camera’s (and audience’s) point of view to an unseen and unheard interlocutor. The obvious interpretation of this mode of address is that it takes place along an axis between a figure in the scene (Ramsay, or Kim, or Mike) and the speaker of the voice-over commentary. And if the unseen voice-over commentator normally provides an overarching interpretive scheme from which to make sense of the show, then the indirect aside provides a way of linking out from a participant in the dramatic action of the show to the voice-over’s situating framework of relevance.
Indeed, crucial in this respect is the kind of communicative work being done in indirect aside. By and large, whether from Ramsay or one of his victims, they offer positive reflections on, or justifications for, the belligerence of the show, coming from close to, or out of, the action itself. Here we must emphasize again that broadcasting would indulge in simple belligerence in and for itself at some risk. The second highest number of complaints received by the BBC in recent years relate to a live radio programme in which the presenter (comedian, Russell Brand) and his guest (well-known broadcaster and highly paid BBC employee, Jonathan Ross) left lewd messages on the answer phone of a potential interviewee. Reports of the event provoked over 50,000 complaints to the BBC and nearly 10,000 complaints to the regulator Ofcom, the burden of which was that the messages were offensive and inappropriate. It seems, as Goffman (1967: 10) puts it, that we are ‘disinclined to witness the defacement of others’, especially when it is performed gratuitously, without some sense of a justifying reason. In the event, Brand resigned from his show, Ross was suspended without pay for 12 weeks, the BBC was widely criticized for lack of editorial control, and the controller of BBC Radio 2 resigned. Though humour as a warrant for face-threatening acts has precedents in broadcasting (see, for example, the mock-insults on the Mrs Merton Show, as discussed in Montgomery, 2000), it seemed on this occasion far too weak a defence for the BBC to argue that its two broadcasters were simply joking.
By comparison, belligerence, where it occurs in Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, does so under the rubric of a ‘therapeutic warrant’. In other words, through voice-over commentary and indirect asides, perpetrators and victims provide, or are provided with, a justifying rationale for the belligerence that has occurred, as we can see in this excerpt from the closing scene (Table 5).
Justifying belligerence
The narrative’s upbeat resolution is apparent in both the language and visual imagery of this closing section. Talk of prosperity and happiness is aligned with park scenes and images of domestic contentment. Visual images show reconciliation of the previously feuding staff, and images of customers enjoying the restaurant’s food. Positive lexical choices also feature throughout, with fun, strength and amazement adding to the new-found financial success. There is testimony from the restaurant owner (lines 11–12), the waiter, Kim (lines 1–5), and even the previously besieged Mike (lines 24–5). The mode of address is also a crucial component of this final scene. Using indirect aside, the participants address the overhearing audience. Kim establishes the mood of improvement (lines 1–5; see Figure 2), Mike describes Gordon’s contribution in the third person (lines 24–6), and Lisa addresses her initial words to the audience, before naming Gordon as the recipient of her thanks (lines 36–7).
[Indirect aside] ‘The black cloud has definitely been lifted...’
Crucially, therefore, we are invited to believe that Mike has learnt from the experience, Kim and Billy’s marriage has been strengthened and the restaurant is now a success. Indeed, from these accounts, in the testimony of those who could be considered its targets, one would conclude that the belligerence has had a restorative purpose. It is not just that the kitchen has been released from its nightmare and the restaurant turned into a success. Participants have learnt from the experience, and relationships have flourished as a result. Ramsay in the context of the show is dramatized as more than a master chef transforming a kitchen or restaurant, but someone who, practising a form of ‘tough love’, leads people to a better life.
Conclusion
What we have been concerned to demonstrate is that it is not sufficient to consider acts of belligerence in isolation or in the abstract but rather that it is necessary to situate them within the complex communicative dynamics of the broadcast event. To paraphrase Williams on dramatic dialogue and monologue: ‘the common effect of the [show], wrongly identified with an abstracted character and his [belligerence], is a more general and conscious effect of a wider range of shifting speech forms’ (Williams, 1990: 60). But this can only be demonstrated through the kind of close attention to forms of talk within the total context of the show that our analysis is built upon.
Finally, that broadcast belligerence should have a ‘warrant’ provides us with an important key for understanding not just the current belligerent accent of contemporary broadcasting but also its relationship to other forms of mediation and the wider culture. Buonfino and Mulgan (2009), for example, argue that ‘incivility’ can be seen as an emergent threat to social cohesion, forming part of what Lakoff (2003) has conceptualized as a broader ‘new incivility’. Yet we can also conceive of various kinds of warrant that allow departure from civil conduct. For instance, in the face-threatening challenges of adversarial interviewing the warrant has long been that of the fourth estate and ‘speaking truth to power’ (Clayman, 2002; Higgins, 2010). Generally, however, the broader spectrum of belligerence may be seen as operating under the banner of increased directness and straightforwardness. What we see in belligerent broadcasting – as in Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares – is the celebration of a manner of speaking that cuts through evasion and obfuscation in the name of immediacy, authenticity, truth and understanding. This, however, is perhaps also the reflection of a mediated culture where what counts as appropriately civil public (and broadcast) behaviour is increasingly being challenged by the directness and immediacy of internet-based interaction.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Michael Higgins is Programme Leader in Journalism and Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde and member of the Ross Priory Broadcast Talk Group. He has published numerous journal articles and chapters on discourse and politics, and on issues around the mediated persona. His latest books are Media and Their Publics (Open University Press, 2008) and The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Culture (edited with Clarissa Smith and John Storey; Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Martin Montgomery is Chair Professor of English at the University of Macau. He has published widely on sociolinguistics, stylistics and discourse analysis. His latest books include The Discourse of Broadcast News (Routledge, 2007) and An Introduction to Language and Society (3rd Edition, Routledge, 2008). In 1992, while at the University at Strathclyde, Glasgow, he founded (with Joanna Thornborrow) the annual Ross Priory International Seminar in Broadcast Talk.
Angela Smith is based in the English team at the University of Sunderland where she is Reader in Language and Culture. She is a member of the Ross Priory Broadcast Talk Group and has published in the areas of media discourse, gender and ‘race’, including for the European Journal of Cultural Studies and British Politics, and is working on a forthcoming book The Language of Journalism: A Multi-Genre Perspective (Bloomsbury).
Andrew Tolson is Professor of Media and Communication in The Department of Media, Film and Journalism at De Montfort University, Leicester and member of the Ross Priory Broadcast Talk Group. His main research interest is in the analysis of broadcast talk (speech communication on TV and radio) though within that broad field he has particular interests in news and political communication and in media representations of ‘ordinary people’ and celebrity. Currently he is working on political discourse in news presentation and interviewing, in conjunction with a departmental media discourse project on Election 2010. His most recent book is Media Talk: Spoken Discourse on TV and Radio (Edinburgh University Press, 2006).