• cable news
• Corpus-assisted analysis
• news interviews
• political discourse
• pro-forms
• Trump

This study analyzes a corpus of political news interviews taken from American cable networks. In fact, as research shows, cable news is the main source of information for the majority of Americans when it comes to political matters. This makes news interviews one of the most widespread and popular form of mediated political discourse and, most importantly, the primary way in which most Americans get in contact with political discourse.
The analysis focuses of pro-forms, which are analyzed particularly in their exclusive and inclusive function in order to highlight what identification strategies are enacted both by the interviewers and the interviewees. In addition, the analysis was also conducted based on the criteria of gender and political leanings, in order to foresee patterns of usage.
Furthermore, through this analysis it was possible to find some changing aspects of the news interview genre, especially in terms of influence of cable news style in political discourse and the consequent shift towards conversational style. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive picture of the political discourse of America in the “Trump years”, as it is becoming progressively polarized and divisive.