Abstract

The current study focuses on politicians’ use of idiomatic language and audience idiomatic knowledge in a popular Channels Television (Channels TV) talk show known as Politics Today. The objective is to explore language use, frequencies of idiomatic language used, and conceptualisation of idiomatic meaning in political talk shows. The mixed research design used the Cultural Conceptualisations (CCs) framework to guide the analysis of language use qualitatively and using descriptive statistics limited to frequency count distribution, percentages of occurrences, and ranking scores to calculate quantitatively. The authors collected 10 talk show episodes from Channels TV website and transcribed them, selecting 318 figurative languages that met purposive sampling criteria. They extracted 60 idioms from the transcribed text to examine 400 participants and investigate the extent of idiomatic meaning and language use. The correlation between language use and idiomatic meaning on Channels TV was statistically significant. The frequency of idioms used in talk shows is evidence that politicians are fond of persuading electorates and using different verbal expression tactics to make the most impression, which may convince their voters. The language used in political talk shows allows politicians to be politically inclined while remaining relevant. This study's findings have important implications for future research on idiomatic language use in political talk shows across cultural and political contexts.