“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true”
The strategic use of references to truth in Prime Minister’s
Questions
This chapter reports on an analysis of references to truth and compares their
discursive value with references to fact and to reality as argumentative and
rhetorical resources in the context of Prime Minister’s Questions. Truth is assigned
a dual status in the analysis: it is a fundamental premise and can thus be assigned
the status of a presupposition to which participants are committed. The research is
based on 240 question-response sequences between the Prime Minister and the Leader
of the Opposition. The analysis shows that references to truth are utilised by both
participants with the Prime Minister referring more frequently to truth and fact,
and the leader of the opposition referring more frequently to reality. References to
truth insinuate its gradient conceptualisation with higher and lower degrees of
truthfulness. The conversational implicature allows the speaker to act at face level
in accordance with the rules of conduct of the speech event.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Truth, reality and fact, and truths, realities and facts
- 3.Methodology and data
- 3.1Participants and procedure
- 3.2Data and method
- 3.3Results
- 4.Challenges
- 4.1The discursive value of references to truth
- 4.2The discursive value of references to fact
- 4.3The discursive value of references to reality
- 5.Conclusion
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Notes
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References
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Appendix