Cover not available
Article published In:
Internet Pragmatics
Vol. 1:1 (2018) ► pp.29–54

“Our Chief Political Editor reads between the lines of the Chancellor’s Budget speech”

The strategic exploitation of conversational implicature in mediated political discourse

| University of Augsburg, Germany

This paper examines the multilayeredness of computer-mediated political discourse, focussing on the interdependencies between the contextual constraints and requirements of the medium on the one hand, and contextualisation, indexicality of communicative action and conversational implicature on the other. Particular attention is given to implicit and entextualised references to differences between what is said and what is meant in the communicative act of follow-up, to the importation of context and provision of background information, to their function with respect to the interactional organisation of (non)credibility and argumentative (non)coherence, and to the co-construction of discourse common ground. Within the context of computer-mediated political discourse, these references are used strategically to accommodate the contextual constraints and requirements of a multilayered reception format and their multilayered felicity conditions, and to support speaker-intended interpretation of multilayered discourse on the production side.

Keywords: context, contextualisation, conversational implicature, speaker-intended meaning, discourse common ground, follow-up, political discourse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The multilayeredness of mediated political discourse
  • 3.Follow-ups in mediated political discourse
  • 4.The Budget speech
    • 4.1Data and metadata
    • 4.2Data and metarepresentation
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 28 May 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00003.fet
References
Atifi, Hassan, and Michel Marcoccia
2015 “Follow-ups and dialogue in online discussions on French politics: From Internet forums to social TV”. In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-Ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda, Weizman, and Lawrence N. Berlin, 109–140. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Austin, John L.
1976 How to do Things with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bateson, Gregory
1972 Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Chandler Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chilton, Paul, and Christina Schäffner
2002 “Introduction: Themes and principles in the analysis of political discourse”. In Politics as Text and Talk: Analytical Approaches to Political Discourse, ed. by Paul Chilton, and Christina Schäffner, 1–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clayman, Steven, and John Heritage
2002 The News Interview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
1995 Media Discourse. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
1998 “Political discourse in the media: Analytical framework”. In Approaches to Media Discourse, ed. by Allan Bell, and Peter Garret, 142–162. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
2006 Language and Globalization. Oxon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita
2000 “Negotiating validity claims in political interviews.” Text 20(4): 1–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 “ ‘Minister, we will see how the public judges you’. Media references in political interviews.” Journal of Pragmatics 38(2): 180–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “’Here is the difference, here is the passion, here is the chance to be part of a great change’: Strategic context importation in political discourse.” In Context and Contexts: Parts Meet Whole?, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Etsuko Oishi, 115–146. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 “Contexts in interaction: Relating pragmatic wastebaskets.” In What is a Context? Linguistic Approaches and Challenges, ed. by Rita Finkbeiner, Jörg Meibauer, and Petra Schumacher, 105–127. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “The multilayered and multifaceted nature of political discourse.” In The Pragmatics of Political Discourse. Explorations across Cultures, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 1–18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “Conceptualizing discourse.” In The Pragmatics of Discourse, ed. by Klaus Schneider, and Anne Barron, 35–61. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “ ‘When you came into office you said that your government would be different’: Forms and functions of quotations in mediated political discourse.” In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-Ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence N. Berlin, 245–273. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “Political interviews and responsibility: A case study of its interactional organization.” In Responsibility in Discourse and the Discourse of Responsibility, ed. by Jan-Ola Östman, and Anna Solin, 163–196. Sheffield: Equinox.Google Scholar
2017 “The dynamics of discourse: Quantity meets quality.” In Implicitness: From Lexis to Discourse, ed. by Piotr Cap, and Marta Dynel, 235–257. Amsterdam: John Benjamnis. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita, and Varol Akman
2002 “Contexts of social action: Guest editors’ introduction.” Language and Communication 22(4): 391–402. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita, and Elisabeth Reber
2015 “Quoting in political discourse: Professional talk meets ordinary postings.” In The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then, ed. by Jenny Arendholz, Wolfram Bublitz, and Monika Kirner-Ludwig, 97–124. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita, Elda Weizman, and Laurence N. Berlin
(eds.) 2015 The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-Ups. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1986 Frame Analysis. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Givòn, Talmy
2005 Context as Other Minds. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Greatbatch, David
1988 “A turn-taking system for British news interviews.” Language in Society 171: 401–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, Herbert Paul
1975 “Logic and conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics. Vol. III, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J.
1996 “The linguistic and cultural relativity of inference.” In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, ed. by John J. Gumperz, and Stephen C. Levinson, 374–406. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen
1987 Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Heritage, John
1984 Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
1985 “Analysing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience.” In Handbook of Discourse Analysis 3: Discourse and Dialogue, ed. by Teun A. van Dijk, 95–117. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
1979 “Activity types and language.” Linguistics 171: 365–399. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Linell, Per
1998 Approaching Dialogue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2009 Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-Making. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.Google Scholar
Livnat, Zohar
2012 “Follow-ups in a loose argumentative context: The pragmatic effectiveness of figurative analogy.” In Proceedings of the ESF Strategic Workshop on Follow-Ups Across Discourse Domains: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Their Forms and Functions, Würzburg (Germany), 31 May – 2 June 2012, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Elisabeth Reber, 165–177. Würzburg: Universität Würzburg 2012. – [online]. URL: [URL]
Penco, Carlo
1999 “Objective and cognitive context.” In 2nd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context, Context’99, Proceedings, ed. by Paolo Bouquet, Massimo Benerecetti, Luciano Serafini, Patrick Brézillon, and Francesca Castellani, 270–283. Heidelberg: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Searle, John R.
1969 Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sinclair, John, and Malcolm Coulthard
1975 Towards an Analysis of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson
1986 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Thibault, Paul J.
2003 “Contextualization and social meaning-making practices.” In Language and Interaction. Discussions with John J. Gumperz, ed. by Susan L. Eerdmans, Carlo L. Prevignano, and Paul J. Thibault, 41–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weinberger, David
2011 Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now that the Facts aren’t the Facts, Experts are Everywhere, and the Smartest person in the Room is the Room. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Weizman, Elda
2015 “Irony in and through follow-ups: Talk and meta-talk in online commenting in the Israeli context.” In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-Ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence N. Berlin, 173–194. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weizman, Elda, and Anita Fetzer
(eds.) 2015 Follow-Ups in Political Discourse: Explorations across Contexts Discourse Domains. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yus, Francisco
2011 Cyberpragmatics: Internet-Mediated Communication in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Fetzer, Anita & Iwona Witczak-Plisiecka
2021. Argumentative, Political and Legal Discourse. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 520 ff. DOI logo
Xie, Chaoqun, Francisco Yus & Hartmut Haberland
2021. Introduction. In Approaches to Internet Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 318], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 247 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 september 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.