ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a brief account of pragmatic theories of advice-giving as a discursive activity, and its associated interactional issues of face, particularly in relation to institutional contexts. Advice given by institutionally ratified experts who interact directly with a caller in a radio phone-in is more hedged and mitigated than advice texted or emailed from members of the audience, since the discursive management of affiliation and solidarity with the advice-seeker needs to be handled in different ways. The introduction of mobile and email technology in institutional contexts offers new participatory identities and sets up new interactional relationships between radio hosts, callers, listeners and the active members of the audience who text, message and email. The chapter focuses on the performance of 'the new me' on this successful game show-meets-makeover format, which combines many of the features of both 'game-doc' reality TV genres and the lifestyle makeover show.
