'That was a bit daft though, wasn't it?' Strategic use of impoliteness in a post-match interview

Post-match media interviews are typically characterised by polite and conciliatory exchanges between broadcast interviewers and professional sports players (File, 2012). This chapter, however, focuses on a post-match interview in which the interviewer employs face-threatening elicitations. Taking account of the social context, including the match context and discourse co-text, the chapter explores possible reasons for this face-threatening attack. Ethnographic interview data, which includes the perceptions of the participants, is also used to warrant the interpretation. The ethnographic data suggests that impoliteness can be strategically employed as a discursive resource to achieve a more frank revealing post-match interview exchange. As well as contributing to our understanding of impoliteness in media contexts, this chapter also testifies to the value of ethnographic insights in studies of (im)politeness