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Follow-ups as multifunctional questioning and answering strategies in Prime Minister’s Questions

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In parliamentary interaction, more than in other types of institutional dialogue, follow-ups indicate how UK Members of Parliament (MPs) negotiate not only the pros and cons of topic-related issues, but also their status, roles and power positions. While a follow-up is normally conditioned by preceding turns in a dialogue, and, in its turn, it helps to shape the scope, focus and/or content of subsequent uptakes and follow-ups, interactively co-constructed follow-ups during Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) display recurrent argumentative or counter-argumentative strategies since they not only highlight controversial aspects of the debated issues, but they also serve (explicitly or implicitly) to successively and repeatedly call into question the position of a political adversary, thereby undermining the latter’s authority and credibility. The aim of the present investigation is to identify and examine the discursive and argumentative functions of follow-ups occurring in PMQs of the House of Commons. The main research questions to be pursued are the following: What recurrent follow-up patterns can be found in PMQs? How are follow-ups initiated and responded to in the ongoing parliamentary interaction? What impact do follow-ups have on subsequent uptakes, and on the power balance between questioning MP and responding Prime Minister?

  • Affiliations: 1: Zayed University, Abu Dhabi

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References

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    1964 Les questions, instruments de contrôle parlementaire. Paris: Montecitorio.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Axford, Barrie and Huggins, Richard
    (eds.) 2001 New Media and Politics. London: Sage.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Baldwin, Nicholas J
    (ed) 2005 Parliament in the 21st Century. London: Politico.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Brown, Peter M
    1987 The Art of Questioning: Thirty Maxims of Cross-Examination. New York: Macmillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Bull, Peter and Wells, Pam
    2012 “Adversarial Discourse in Prime Minister’s Questions”. Journal of Language and Social Psychology31(1): 30–48. doi: 10.1177/0261927X11425034
     https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X11425034 [Google Scholar]
  6. Coulthard, Malcolm and Brazil, David
    1979 “Exchange Structure”. InStudies in Discourse Analysis, ed. by Malcolm Coulthard and Martin Montgomery , 82–106. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Parliamentary questions 2010 House of Commons Information Office Factsheet P1. UK Parliament.
  8. Franklin, Mark and Norton, Philip
    (eds.) 1993 Parliamentary Questions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Franks, Suzanne , and Vandermark, Adam
    1995 “Televising Parliament: Five years on”. Parliamentary Affairs48(1): 57–71.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Freed, Alice F. and Ehrlich, Susan
    (eds.) 2010 “Why do you ask?” The Functions of Questions in Institutional Discourse. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Goffman, Erving
    1974 Frame Analysis: An essay on the Organization of Experience. London: Harper and Row.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Harris, Sandra
    1989 “Defendant Resistance to Power and Control in Court”. InWorking with Language: A Multidisciplinary Consideration of Language Use in Work Contexts, ed. by Hywel Coleman , 129–164. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. 2001 “Being Politically Impolite: Extending Politeness Theory to Adversarial Political Discourse”. Discourse & Society12(4): 451–472. doi: 10.1177/0957926501012004003
     https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926501012004003 [Google Scholar]
  14. Heritage, John
    2002 “The Limits of Questioning: Negative Interrogatives and Hostile Question Content”. Journal of Pragmatics34: 1472–1446. doi: 10.1016/S0378‑2166(02)00072‑3
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00072-3 [Google Scholar]
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    2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1515/zaa‑2005‑0209
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  16. Ilie, Cornelia
    1994 What Else can I Tell you? A Pragmatic Study of English Rhetorical Questions as Discursive and argumentative Acts. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. 1995 “The Validity of Rhetorical Questions as Arguments in the Courtroom”. InSpecial Fields and Cases. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Argumentation, ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren , Rob Grootendorst , J. Anthony Blair , and Charles A. Willard , 73–88. Amsterdam: SICSAT.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. 1998 “Questioning is not Asking: The Discursive Functions of Rhetorical Questions in American Talk Shows”. Texas Linguistic Forum39: 122–135.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. 1999 “Question-Response Argumentation in Talk Shows”. Journal of Pragmatics31(8): 975–999. doi: 10.1016/S0378‑2166(99)00056‑9
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00056-9 [Google Scholar]
  20. 2001 “Semi-Institutional Discourse: The Case of Talk Shows”. Journal of Pragmatics33(2): 209–254. doi: 10.1016/S0378‑2166(99)00133‑2
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00133-2 [Google Scholar]
  21. 2003a “Histrionic and Agonistic Features of Parliamentary Discourse”. Studies in Communication Sciences3(1): 25–53.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. 2003b “Discourse and Metadiscourse in Parliamentary Debates”. Journal of Language and Politics1(2): 269–291.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. 2009 “Rhetorical Questions. InThe Routledge Pragmatics Encyclopedia, ed. by Cummings, Louise . London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. 2010 “When Speaking Means Doing: The Dynamics of Parliamentary Speech Acts”. Bolletino della Societá Filosofica Italiana201: 50–65.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. 2012 “Metadiscourse in Follow-Ups: Crossing the Micro-Macro Divide in Political Dialogue. InFollow-Ups across Discourse Domains: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Their Forms and Functions, ed. by Anita Fetzer , Elda Weizman and Elisabeth Reber , 134–150. opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de/volltexte/2012/7165/
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Forthcoming 2016 “Parliamentary Discourse and Deliberative Rhetoric”. In Pasi Ihalainen , Cornelia Ilie & Kari Palonen (eds.), Parliaments and Parliamentarism: A Comparative History of Disputes about a European Concept. Oxford & New York: Berghahn Books.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Kiefer, Ferenc
    1988 “On the Pragmatics of Answers”. In Michel Meyer (ed.)Questions and Questioning, 255–278. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110864205.255
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110864205.255 [Google Scholar]
  28. Koshik, Irene
    2003 “Wh-Questions as Challenges”. Discourse Studies5: 51–77. doi: 10.1177/14614456030050010301
     https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456030050010301 [Google Scholar]
  29. Kotthoff, Helga
    1993 “Disagreement and Concession in Disputes: On the context Sensitivity of Preference Structures”. Language in Society22: 193–216. doi: 10.1017/S0047404500017103
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500017103 [Google Scholar]
  30. Mehan, Hugh
    1979 Learning Lessons: Social Organization in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. doi: 10.4159/harvard.9780674420106
     https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674420106 [Google Scholar]
  31. Meibauer, Jörg
    1986 Rhetorische Fragen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. doi: 10.1515/9783111352572
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111352572 [Google Scholar]
  32. Mishler, Elliot
    1975 “Studies in Dialogue and Discourse, II: Types of Discourse Initiated by and Sustained through Questioning”. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research4(2): 98–121. doi: 10.1007/BF01077031
     https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01077031 [Google Scholar]
  33. Pérez de Ayala, Soledad
    2001 “FTAs and Erskine May: Conflicting Needs? – Politeness in Question Time”. Journal of Pragmatics33: 143–169. doi: 10.1016/S0378‑2166(00)00002‑3
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00002-3 [Google Scholar]
  34. Petty, Richard E. , John T. Cacioppo and Martin Heesacker
    1981 “Effects of Rhetorical Questions on Persuasion: A Cognitive Response Analysis”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology40: 432–440. doi: 10.1037/0022‑3514.40.3.432
     https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.40.3.432 [Google Scholar]
  35. Quirk, Randolph , Greenbaum, Sidney , Leech, Geoffrey and Svartvik, Jan
    1972 A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Rogers, Robert and Walters, Rhodri
    (6th ed.) 2006 How Parliament Works. Oxford: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Sánchez de Dios, Manuel and Wiberg, Matti
    2012 “Questioning in European Parliaments”. InThe Roles and Function of Parliamentary Questions, ed. by Shane Martin and Olivier Rozenberg , 96–109. Oxford: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  38. Sinclair, John McHardy and R. Malcolm Coulthard
    1975 Toward an Analysis of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Walton, Douglas N
    1980 “Why is the Ad Populum a Fallacy?” Philosophy and Rhetoric13(4): 264–278.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. 1981 “The Fallacy of many Questions”. Logique et Analyse95–96: 291–313.
     [Google Scholar]
  41. 1997 “Judging how Heavily a Question is Loaded: A Pragmatic Method”. Inquiry: Critical Thinking across the Disciplines17(2): 53–71. doi: 10.5840/inquiryctnews199717228
     https://doi.org/10.5840/inquiryctnews199717228 [Google Scholar]
  42. Wiberg, Matti
    1995 “Parliamentary Questioning. Control by Communication”. InParliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe, ed. by Herbert Döring , 179–222. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Wiberg, Matti , and Antti Koura
    1994 “The Logic of Parliamentary Questioning”. InParliamentary Control in the Nordic countries, ed. by Matti Wiberg , 19–44. Tampere: Finnish Political Science Association.
     [Google Scholar]

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