Late-night talk shows have become a central venue for political communication in the U.S.A. In these interviews, entertainment and politics are both used and therefore we name them Entertainment-Political Interviews (EPIs). While research on such shows generally assumes that the EPI is a hybrid discourse, crafting entertainment and politics into one coherent discourse, this assumption has not been empirically justified. Using membership categorization analysis (MCA) to study how the participants self-categorize in the EPI, we illustrate how they orient to political and entertainment talk. First, by applying Sacks’ (1972) hearer’s maxim to its fullest extent, entertainment and politics are identified as independently foundational devices for the EPI. Second, only one of these devices is relevant at a time to shape a turn at talk. Third, still, each device is continuously relevant to the participants. Thus, the understanding of the activity is based on the separation of the device of politics and of entertainment. Therefore, we argue, the EPI does not result in a hybrid device with a hybrid form of talk, but rather, participants alternate between politics and entertainment.

深夜脱口秀节目已成为美国政治交流的中心场所。在这些采访中，娱乐和政治都被使用，因此我们将其命名为娱乐政治采访（EPI）。尽管对此类节目的研究通常假设EPI是一种混合话语，将娱乐和政治整合为一个连贯的话语，但这种假设在经验上是没有道理的。使用成员资格分类分析（MCA）研究参与者如何在EPI中进行自我分类，我们说明了他们如何适应政治和娱乐话题。首先，通过最大程度地运用萨克斯（Sacks，1972）的听众格言，娱乐和政治被确定为EPI的独立基础工具。其次，这些设备中只有一个与时间相关，可以影响讲话的转弯。第三，还是 每个设备都与参与者持续相关。因此，对活动的理解是基于政治和娱乐手段的分离。因此，我们认为，EPI不会导致混合使用讲话形式的混合设备，而是参与者在政治和娱乐之间进行交替。