A challenging question can prompt a variety of responses from politicians in their attempt to save face. Criticising the interviewer is one such tactic identified in previous research. The focus here was on this form of personalisation: responses directed personally at the interviewer, often used as a substitute for a straight answer (i.e., playing the man, not the ball). Sampling online interview videos, our analysis revealed a broad range of personalisations: many critical, but also non-critical, including flattery, banter, and advice to calm down. These tactics are discussed as effective responses, which can disarm, wrong-foot, neutralise, or beguile interviewers, often shifting control towards the politician. Furthermore, personalised rhetoric appears more widespread than previously suggested—featuring in the communicative style of many mainstream British politicians. A new typology of personalisation is proposed, designed to fit within the existing overall equivocation typology for the benefit of future empirical research.
AtkinsonM. (1984). Our masters’ voices: The language and body language of politics. London, England: Methuen.
2.
BatesS. R.KerrP.ByrneC.StanleyL. (2014). Questions to the Prime Minister: A comparative study of PMQs from Thatcher to Cameron. Parliamentary Affairs, 67, 253-280.
3.
BavelasJ. B.BlackA.BrysonL.MullettJ. (1988). Political equivocation: A situational explanation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 7, 137-145.
4.
BavelasJ. B.BlackA.ChovilN.MullettJ. (1990). Equivocal communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
5.
BrownP.LevinsonS. C. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In GoodyE. N. (Ed.), Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction (pp. 56-289). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
6.
BrownP.LevinsonS. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
7.
BullP. (2000). Equivocation and the rhetoric of modernization: An analysis of televised interviews with Tony Blair in the 1997 British General Election. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 19, 222-247.
8.
BullP. (2003). The microanalysis of political communication: Claptrap and ambiguity. London, England: Routledge.
9.
BullP. (2012a). Follow-ups in broadcast political discourse: Speeches, interviews, and parliamentary questions. In FetzerA.WeizmanE.ReberE. (Eds.), Proceedings of the ESF strategic workshop on follow-ups across discourse domains: A cross-cultural exploration of their forms and functions (pp. 35-47). Würzburg, Germany: University of Würzburg.
10.
BullP. (2012b). Watch dogs or guard dogs? Adversarial discourse in political journalism. In BerlinL. N.FetzerA. (Eds.), Dialogue in politics (pp. 69-87). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
11.
BullP.ElliottJ. (1998). Level of threat: A means of assessing interviewer toughness and neutrality. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 17, 220-244.
12.
BullP.MayerK. (1993). How not to answer questions in political interviews. Political Psychology, 14, 651-666.
13.
BullP.WellsP. (2012). Adversarial discourse in Prime Minister’s Questions. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 31, 30-48.
14.
ClaymanS.HeritageJ. (2002). The news interview: Journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
15.
ClaymanS. E.HeritageJ.ElliottM. N.McDonaldL. L. (2007). When does the watchdog bark? Conditions of aggressive questioning in presidential news conferences. American Sociological Review, 72, 23-41.
16.
CockerellM. (1988). Live from Number 10: The inside story of Prime Ministers and television. London, England: Faber & Faber.
17.
DayR. (1989). Grand inquisitor. London, England: Pan Books.
18.
FeldmanO.KinoshitaK.BullP. (2015). Culture or communicative conflict? The analysis of equivocation in broadcast Japanese political interviews. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34, 65-89.
19.
GoffmanE. (1955). On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes, 18, 213-231. Reprinted in E. Goffman (1967), Interaction ritual (pp. 5-45). New York, NY: Doubleday.
20.
GreatbatchD. (1986). Aspects of topical organization in news interviews: The use of agenda-shifting procedures by interviewees. Media, Culture & Society, 8, 441-455.
21.
GreatbatchD. (1988). A turn-taking system for British news interviews. Language in Society, 17, 401-430.
HarrisS. (1991). Evasive action: How politicians respond to questions in political interviews. In ScannellP. (Ed.), Broadcast talk (pp. 76-99). London, England: Sage.
24.
HarrisS. (2001). Being politically impolite: Extending politeness theory to adversarial political discourse. Discourse & Society, 12, 451-472.
25.
HeritageJ. (1985). Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In van DijkT. A. (Ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis, Volume 3: Discourse and dialogue (pp. 95-117). London, England: Academic Press.
26.
Johnson-CarteeK. S. (2005). News narratives and news framing: Constructing political reality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
27.
JuckerA. H. (1986). News interviews: A pragmalinguistic analysis. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
28.
LeoneG. (2013). Sometimes I, sometimes me: A study on the use of autobiographical memories in two political speeches by Barack Obama. In PoggiI.D’ErricoF.VinczeL.VinciarelliA. (Eds.), Multimodal communication in political speech: Shaping minds and social action (pp. 133-148). Berlin, Germany: Springer.
29.
LloydJ. (2004). What the media are doing to our politics. London, England: Constable & Robinson.
30.
MacmillanH. (1971). Riding the storm, 1956-1959. London, England: Macmillan.
31.
SabatoL. J. (2000). Feeding frenzy: Attack journalism and American politics. Baltimore, MD: Lanahan.
32.
Simon-VandenbergenA-M. (2008). “Those are only slogans”: A linguistic analysis of argumentation in debates with extremist political speakers. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 27, 345-358.
33.
SinclairJ. M.CoulthardR. M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse: The English used by teachers and pupils. London, England: Oxford University Press.
34.
ThornborrowJ.MontgomeryM. (2010). Special issue on personalization in the broadcast news interview. Discourse & Communication, 4, 99-104.
35.
WaltonD. N. (1987). The ad hominem argument as an informal fallacy. Argumentation, 1, 317-331.
36.
WyattW. (1985). Confessions of an optimist. London, England: Collins.
