Why politicians are three‐faced: The face model of political interviews

Abstract

To investigate the relationship between face and equivocation in political interviews, a new typology of questions was devised, based on their face‐threatening properties. This typology was applied to the analysis of 18 interviews with the leaders of the three main political parties in the 1992 British General Election. Nineteen different subcategories were distinguished, grouped into three superordinate categories of face which politicians must defend—their own personal face, the face of the party which they represent and face in relation to supporting or not supporting significant others. On the basis of this analysis, a new model of question‐response sequences in political interviews was proposed, the main tenet of which is that face is the most important factor in determining whether or not a politician replies to a question. This model provides both a means of predicting the direction of politicians' responses to questions, and a framework for future studies evaluating the performance of both politicians and political interviewers.

‘Ducking and Diving’: How Political Issues Affect Equivocation in Japanese Political Interviews

“…Against such an option and in order to refrain from making face-damaging responses--to use Bull et al (1996) words -that is, responses which make themselves and/or their political allies look bad, and/or constrain their future freedom of action, interviewees in general tend to defend three 'faces': their own 'face' (e.g., as a global issues expert, as a prime minister), their political group or government 'face' (as the head of the party's committee, as a minister), and significant others' 'face' (the prime minister, potential voters).…”

“…A modification of equivocation theory has been proposed by Bull and his colleagues in terms of what are called threats to face (Bull et al, 1996;Bull, 2008). Bull and his colleagues proposed that questions might be formulated in such a way that politicians constantly run the risk of making face-damaging responses (responses which make themselves and/or their political allies look bad, and/or constrain their future freedom of action).…”

Politics as an Appearance and Reality Show: The Hermeneutics of Suspicion

“…For example, interviewers frequently use 'negative interrogations' or 'negative tag questions' which are seen as challenging what politicians say. Interviewers often pose quandary questions, inviting politicians to agree with one of two alternative answers in the knowledge that both answers are equally damaging to the interviewee's credibility (Bull, 1998(Bull, , 2002Bull et al, 1996). Interviewers justify this aggressive approach by claiming that politicians typically conceal matters from the public.…”

“…The questioning was typically adversarial. Paxman used what analysts have called an 'avoidance-avoidance' questions (Bavelas, 1998;Bull, 2002). This sort of questions seems semantically to call for a yes/no answer, but either 'yes' or 'no' would be equally disastrous for the politician.…”

The colour of rhetoric in the contemporary agora

“…It involves non-straightforward communication because it appears ambiguous, contradictory, tangential, obscure or even evasive (Bavelas et al, 1990, in Bull, 2000. The public's belief that politicians are evasive under questioning certainly has empirical backing (Bull et al, 1996;Bull and Mayer, 1993).…”