An-Najah Staff

This article is a cross-cultural study of \'conversational violence\' on certain TV stations primarily \' the Opposite Direction \'on Al-Jazeera TV station by drawing on the concept of conversational violence as explained by Luginbuhl (2007) and Frank (1992).    Conversational violence on certain TV shows has become a battlefield for politicians or the elites to spell out and promote their individual agendas regardless of the consequences which might result from staging such events transgressing all normal and agreed upon conventions in institutional talk.
This paper is meant to explore the strategies and resources which participants on such heated TV shows primarily \'the Opposite Direction\', 
employ to achieve their agenda or promote their own perspective.It appears that the employment of certain communication strategies and resources such as interruption and the intonational contour of the participants have grave consequences on the viewing public in terms of instilling a culture of violence through language in the minds of the viewing public and ushering in an era of legalizing a new type of argumentation which does not adhere primarily to the conventions and regulations of institutional talk where participants including the host have to abide by. And by virtue of that they dismiss the notion of having a real and responsible debate whose primary focus is both to educate the public and to spell out the pros and cons of any perspective rather than to smear each other\'s reputation and leave the viewing public very confused, misinformed, and frustrated.
This paper underscores the employment of conversational violence as a linguistic/communicative resource which manifests itself in the behavioral action of participants on certain TV shows by citing excerpts from televised shows to point out how politicians or elite participants on such TV shows employ conversational violence to advance their agenda and gain some publicity.