Women are smaller, weaker and less intelligent: A linguistic case study on Piers Morgan v. Janusz Korwin-Mikke interview

In 2017, Good Morning Britain invited a Polish MEP, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, to join the show and elaborate on his controversial remarks made during an EU debate. The interview, conducted by Piers Morgan, quickly became a heated debate abundant in linguistic cues typical for conflict talk. The study presented analyzes this confrontation within the framework of conversation analysis and pinpoints specifically the concept of the speaker’s powerfulness. The analysis shows that both interlocutors exercise their linguistic force through negative impoliteness, intensifiers, meta-discourse, gradation, epistemic reasoning, and imperatives. Public reception of the event is highly critical of Piers Morgan and negative, however more balanced, of Janusz Korwin-Mikke, and the discussion provokes broader debates on journalistic conduct, sexism, and the EU. Despite Morgan’s pragmatic floor winning, it is Korwin-Mikke who gathers more proponents, an outcome which stems from two perception fallacies: thehalo effect and thepowerful speaker paradox.