Doing things with discourse in the mediated political arena
Participation and pluralism of discursive action
This paper examines the contextual constraints and requirements of discursive action in question-answer-sequences
based discourse genres (interviews, Prime Minister’s Questions, People’s Prime Minister’s Questions) in mediated political
discourse. It considers the multilayeredness of participation and pluralism of discursive action on the one hand, and the
delimiting frame of the dialogic discourse genres on the other. It shows that both have a decisive impact on the participants’
meaning-making processes in context: the inherently unbounded participation framework contributes to pluralism of discursive
action, while genre- and media constraints narrow down the scope of production and interpretation. This does not only hold for the
stage at which a discursive action occurs in the discourse, but also for its degree of explicitness with regard to presuppositions
and felicity conditions.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Discursive action in context
- 3.Political discourse and participation
- 3.1Participation in political interviews
- 3.2Participation in Prime Minister’s Questions
- 3.3Participation in people’s Prime Minister’s questions
- 4.Participation and pluralism of discursive action
- 4.1More prototypical question-and answer sequences
- 4.2Less prototypical question-and answer sequences
- 5.Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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