On Identifying Questions, Replies, and Non-Replies in Political Interviews

Bull, Peter

doi:10.1177/0261927x94132002

Cited by 107 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Although personal attacks are not unique to far right-wing politicians, it should be noted that they are comparatively rare amongst mainstream British politicians. Thus, in an analysis of 33 broadcast interviews with four British party political leaders, it was found that the only politician to use personal attacks was former prime minister Margaret Thatcher (Bull 1994). Furthermore, these attacks pertained only to the putative neutrality of the journalist, not to his private life or personality (Simon-Vandenbergen 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equivocation and doublespeak in far right-wing discourse: an analysis of Nick Griffin's performance on BBC's Question Time

Bull

Simon‐Vandenbergen

2014

Text &Amp; Talk

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An analysis was conducted of the discourse of Nick Griin (leader of the BNP, the far right-wing British National Party), as featured on a television debate, broadcast on the popular BBC current afairs program Question Time (22 October 2009). On the basis of equivocation theory (Bavelas et al. 1990), it was hypothesized that Griin's discourse may be seen to relect an underlying communicative conlict. On the one hand, to be seen as racist is widely regarded as reprehensible in contemporary British society; on the other hand, much of the BNP's political support comes from its anti-immigrant stance. In this context, it was proposed that while Griin denies criticisms that characterize the BNP as anti-immigrant or racist, he puts over his political message through implicit meanings, seemingly vague and ambiguous, but which carry clear implications regarding the BNP's continued underlying anti-immigrant stance. These implicit messages were further conceptualized as a form of "doublespeak" -language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words, and which may be characterized as a form of "calculated ambivalence."

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equivocation and doublespeak in far right-wing discourse: an analysis of Nick Griffin's performance on BBC's Question Time

Bull

Simon‐Vandenbergen

2014

Text &Amp; Talk

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“…The use of interrogation in interactional discourse has also been studied in political interviews (Bull 1994;Gago and Silveira 2006) and doctor-patient talk (Harres 1998;Strivers and Heritage 2008).…”

Section: Questions In Interactive Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

‘Who will employ them? ’Questions as engagement strategies in Nigerian job portals online

Taiwo¹

2015

Ghana J. Ling.

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This study investigates the use of questions for engagement by writers in discussions in online job portals. Based on a mini corpus of 40 postings together with their comments consisting of 139,104 words extracted from Naijahotjobs and Nairaland job portal discussions, the study addresses the functional use of questions in the presentation of writer's stance, the possible variation of questions with the topics being discussed, the rhetorical functions of questions and the use of question clusters in discussions. The analysis shows that two major kinds of questions were frequently used for engagement -wh-and yes-no questions. This represents two levels of complexity in interrogationopen-ended and closed-ended levels. It also reveals that the two most prominent groups in the discussions (motivational writers and graduate job seekers) used questions differently for engagement purposes. Motivational writers who typically assumed the position of experts used questions to engage the cognition of readers and sometimes to threaten their face, while graduate job seekers tended to ask information-seeking and confirmation questions based on issues agitating their minds about their unemployment situation. In addition, graduate job seekers asked what I refer to as 'protest questions', which focus on social issues connected with unemployment. This study therefore shows that beyond networking and getting relevant information about how to secure employment and advance in a career, job portals have provided a space for interrogating, confronting and guiding job seekers on the social problem of unemployment in Nigeria.

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“…Various ways of not answering questions have been investigated, including 'answering more than the question' in medical history-taking (Stivers and Heritage, 2001: 151) and small court hearings (Atkinson, 1992), using alternative descriptions to avoid 'what the question asks' in cross-examinations (Drew, 1992: 490), the selection of non-conforming responses to Yes/No interrogatives as a means of managing misalignments between speakers (Raymond, 2003), question evasion in political news interviews (Bull, 1994;Bull and Mayer, 1993;Clayman, 1993Clayman, , 2001Harris, 1991) and parliamentary debate (Rasiah, 2009). Responses to RSQs display a range of ways in which the officers evade the questions.…”

Section: Not Answering the Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing impartiality in French tourist offices: Responses to recommendation-seeking questions

Chevalier

2011

Discourse Studies

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This article examines the ways in which French tourist officers manage impartiality in telephone calls when faced with recommendation-seeking questions (RSQs). Using Conversation Analysis and drawing on a corpus of 700+ telephone calls, it shows that, by typically avoiding conforming responses, officers resist confirming the evaluative element embodied in RSQs and, thus, avoid making recommendations. Instead, they opt to treat the questions as unanswerable in their own terms, a practice that may be deployed on its own or in conjunction with other practices such as supplying information that will assist callers in making their choices and/or constructing responses as contingent. Further, officers typically do not decline to make recommendations on institutional grounds and, through their choices of interactional practices, obscure the institutional restrictions under which they operate. Thus, the selection of nonconforming responses by tourist officers is shown to contribute to the maintenance of an impartial stance. Finally, the article addresses the notions of affiliation and alignment and shows that nonconforming responses are less disaffiliative than outright rejections.

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On Identifying Questions, Replies, and Non-Replies in Political Interviews

Cited by 107 publications

References 9 publications

Equivocation and doublespeak in far right-wing discourse: an analysis of Nick Griffin's performance on BBC's Question Time

Equivocation and doublespeak in far right-wing discourse: an analysis of Nick Griffin's performance on BBC's Question Time

‘Who will employ them? ’Questions as engagement strategies in Nigerian job portals online

Managing impartiality in French tourist offices: Responses to recommendation-seeking questions

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