Visuo-material performances: 'Literalized’ quotations in prime minister’s questions
Abstract
Drawn from a larger project on reported speech in parliamentary interaction (Reber, forthcomingReber, E. Forthcoming). Quoting in parliamentary question time. Exploring recent change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), this paper studies visuo-material performances of so-called “literalized” (Rumsey, 1992Rumsey, A. (1992) Wording, meaning, and linguistic ideology. American Anthropologist, 92, 346–361. 
) quoting, i.e., verbatim reproductions of original utterances. Taking an interactional-linguistic perspective, I analyze how participants accomplish ‘literalized’ reported speech through vocal, verbal, and visual cues, recruiting their material documents. The data are culled from video recordings of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), a parliamentary session where the Prime Minister (PM) takes questions from the Leader of the Opposition (LO) and Members of Parliament (MPs) at the British House of Commons. I place my focus on cases where speakers use original documents as visual aids, a classic rhetoric device of persuasion, and show how paper documents are constituted, celebrated, and rhetorically enacted as (seemingly) original documents in embodied, situated ways. As a conclusion, I argue that the display of original documents allows the speaker to make claims of having not only evidential but also experiential access to their sources, a practice that underpins their evidential authority.
Keywords:
1.Introduction
I begin with some recent examples of how visual aids, specifically written documents, are deployed in political arenas. In 2016, a debate in the Swiss Nationalrat was televised for the first time, and participants seemed to engage in a more theatrical conduct (Fabienne Tissot, p.c.): A parliamentary speaker claimed to display a copy of the Swiss constitution, which was later identified as an old history book (Fumagalli, 2016Fumagalli, A. (2016) Adrian Amstutz’ «Verfassung» war gar keine. Aargauer Zeitung 5 October 2016 Retrieved from https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/schweiz/adrian-amstutz-verfassung-war-gar-keine-130620996/> (12 August 2019).).
At the first press conference as President-elect of the United States in the same year, Donald J. Trump used visual aids when presenting large piles of papers to support his claim that he had handed over his business affairs to his two sons to avoid a conflict of interest between his business and his incoming presidency. Video footage shows that he pointed to the papers, saying: “These papers are just some of the many documents that I’ve signed, turning over complete and total control to my sons.” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV27p_IGSAU>. As was later demonstrated on the CNN Twitter feed, the documents were blank <https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/819298681643995136>.11.The Trump example is not new in the history of politics: When the Rome treaty was signed, the folders presented to the world contained blank pages as well (Willey, 2017Willey, David 2017 EU summit: My part in the Treaty of Rome signing. BBC News 25 March 2017 Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39365281 (12 August 2019).). This anectodical evidence suggests that political speakers make use of paper documents or books as physical evidence to support the point they wish to make for mediated, public audiences.
Objects as visual aids of persuasion have long been a classic in political communication (cf. Atkinson, 2004 (2004) Lend me your ears. All you need to know about making speeches and presentations. London: Vermillion., Chapters 4–5, 2017). In this paper, I analyze how material text artifacts are deployed as rhetorical devices when quoting in parliamentary interaction, drawing on authentic video footage of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), a parliamentary question time at the British House of Commons. This work stems from a larger project on reported speech, where I found a practice addressed at public viewers of PMQs, which has been TV broadcast since 1989: Here, speakers enact what is presented as the literal wording of prior discourse as a visual performance of written sources for credibility enhancement, in displaying the speaker’s maximum access to the source (Reber, forthcomingReber, E. Forthcoming). Quoting in parliamentary question time. Exploring recent change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.).
Reported speech and quotations have been described as evidentials in various linguistic fields of study (e.g., Aikhenvald, 2004Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2004) Evidentiality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.; Clift, 2006Clift, R. (2006) Indexing stance: reported speech as an interactional evidential. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 10(5), 569–595. ). Van Dijk notes:
[E]videntials of different kinds as well as other epistemic strategies are used in order to establish, confirm or enhance the credibility of speakers, their reliability as a source of knowledge and as an authority who has or had access to the events reported or to a reliable source who did have such access.(van Dijk, 2014van Dijk, T. A. (2014) Discourse and knowledge: A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In this sense, speakers’ own experiential access – or access to reliable sources having that access – represents a specific resource to construct authority, reliability, and credibility. These are social notions which are essential for power management in political discourse.
In this paper, I am particularly concerned with how speakers recruit and display – what they claim to be – original documents for a mediated audience when making quotations during the question-answer sequences at PMQs. I argue that through these recruitments and displays, speakers claim to have not only evidential but also experiential access to their sources, a practice that underpins their evidential authority. To this end, I analyze (1) speakers’ practices to present these documents; (2) the prosodic, lexico-syntactic, and visual contextualization of quotations; and (3) in how far the quotations are indeed or only rhetorically enacted as verbatim quotations.
In terms of this latter aspect, Rumsey (1992Rumsey, A. (1992) Wording, meaning, and linguistic ideology. American Anthropologist, 92, 346–361. , p. 356) observes that there are certain text types, e.g., academic writing and courtroom interaction, where there are normative constraints to reproduce past speech as verbatim, a practice that he calls “literalized” quoting. He notes that that direct speech, i.e.,
a grammatical category whose erstwhile function is to signal that some (largely unspecified) encoding features of the reported utterance are being imported from another speech situation now becomes “literalized” in such a way as to specify that the reported utterance reproduces all lexico-grammatical features of the original, at just the level of delicacy that is captured by our graphemic writing system […].(Rumsey, 1992Rumsey, A. (1992) Wording, meaning, and linguistic ideology. American Anthropologist, 92, 346–361.
In this sense, literalized quoting is a specific kind of “recontextualization”, a process where “a selected stretch of discourse is first extracted from one context […] and then embedded into another context, that is a media item, and marked as a quote in a proper way.” (Haapanen & Perrin, 2017Haapanen, L., & Perrin, D. (2017) Media and quoting. Understanding the purposes, roles, and processes of quoting in mass and social media. In D. Perrin, & C. Cotter (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and media (pp. 424–441). London: Routledge. , p. 425).
The chapter is organized as follows: I first review relevant past research (2), specifically with respect to quotation and authorship in political discourse (2.1) and quotation, embodiment, and visual aids (2.2), and describe the data and methodology used in the study (3). I then present my results (4), before closing with a summary and conclusions (5).
2.Literature review
Quotations and reported speech have been analyzed with respect to formal and functional issues across various social contexts and from different perspectives (cf., e.g., the overview and terminological discussion in Holt, 2009 (2009) Reported speech. In S. D’hondt, J.-O. Östman & J. Verschueren (Eds.), The pragmatics of interaction (pp. 190–205). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. and the contributions to Arendholz, Kirner, & Bublitz, 2015Arendholz, J., Kirner, M., & Bublitz, W. (Eds.) (2015) Quoting now and then. Leiden: Brill. ; Buchstaller & van Alphen, 2012Buchstaller, I., & van Alphen, I. (Eds.) (2012) Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ; Holt & Clift, 2010Holt, E., & Clift, R. (Eds.) (2010) Reporting talk: Reported speech in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). Grammatically, a “quotation is a construction, a routinized sequence of words used together to express a certain meaning, in this case reportativity” (Buchstaller, 2014Buchstaller, I. (2014) Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell., p. 15). In contrast to more recent, innovative quotative constructions such as “This is + noun phrase” (e.g., “This is my mum ‘What are you doing?’”, Cheshire & Fox, 2007Cheshire, J., & Fox, S. (2007) ‘Innovation in the quotative system of London adolescents: The emergence of this is me
’. Paper presented at NWAV 36, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November., quoted in Buchstaller, 2014Buchstaller, I. (2014) Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell., p. 2), the most frequent quotative verb say belongs to the transitive reportative verbs, which are produced in constructions of “noun phrase + transitive verb of reporting + quote” (e.g., “My mum said/asked/etc. ‘What are you doing?’”; Buchstaller 2014Buchstaller, I. (2014) Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell., p. 15). Quotations with say are furthermore typical of argumentative interaction (Wooffitt & Alistone, 2008Wooffitt, R., & Alistone, S. (2008) Participation, procedure and accountability: ‘You said’ speech markers in negotiating reports of ambiguous phenomena. Discourse Studies, 10(3): 407–427. ; Goodwin, 1990Goodwin, M. (1990) He-said-she-said: Talk as social organisation among black children. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.). Traditionally, quotations are commonly associated with the grammatical structure of reported speech, which is composed of a “reporting clause”, which includes the source, a quotative verb, as well as potentially the addressee(s), circumstantial aspects of the act of quoting and the manner of speaking (e.g., “Dorothy said quietly to her colleague at work”); and a “reported clause”, i.e., the quotation, which is shaped as direct speech (e.g., ‘My mother’s on the phone.’) or indirect speech (e.g., “that her mother was on the phone”; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985) A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman., p. 1020). Nevertheless, other linguistic forms of quotations, such as comment clauses, exist (e.g., “As you said, George is a liar.”; Quirk et al., 1985Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985) A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman., p. 1116).
Driven by a general interest in the study of language in its home – social interaction – the focus of this paper is on quoting as an embodied, interactional practice, involving the manipulation of objects. Specifically, I consider speakers’ quoting practices in parliamentary interaction where original documents are held into the camera and argue that such practices are related to questions of quotation and authorship as well as of patterned embodied and material conduct in social interaction. To provide a backdrop to my analysis, the relevant past literature is reviewed in what follows:
2.1Quotation and authorship in political discourse
Traditionally, direct speech has been associated with a practice where the speaker purports to give the exact wording of what was said previously, while indirect speech merely provides a summary of past speech (Coulmas, 1986Coulmas, F. (1986) Reported speech: Some general issues. In F. Coulmas (Eds.), Direct and indirect speech (pp. 1–28). Berlin: De Gruyter. ; Quirk et al., 1985Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985) A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.). However, the straightforward link between direct speech and verbatim quotations has strongly been questioned in interactional and discourse analytic studies. For everyday interaction, the position that direct speech represents a verbatim of the quoted speech as it is often folk belief has long been discarded (cf., e.g., Holt, 1996Holt, E. (1996) Reporting on talk: the use of direct reported speech in conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29(3), 219–245. ; cf. also Mathis & Yule, 1994Mathis, T., & Yule, G. (1994) Zero quotatives. Discourse Processes, 18(1), 63–76. ) but the situation is not so clear with respect to political discourse.
In a study on parliamentary discourse in the British House of Commons, Antaki and Leudar observe that MPs recruit literal quotations of political opponents from Hansard, the official public record of the British Parliament, to perform hostile actions. Here “[l]iteral recruitment works to provide an unchallengeable, impartial, and counterintuitive source for the speaker’s position.” (Antaki & Leudar, 2001Antaki, Ch., & Leudar, I. 2001 Recruiting the record: Using opponents’ exact words in parliamentary argumentation. Text, 21(4), 467–488. , p. 486). More recent research on quoting at PMQs has put a focus on quotations of members of the public (rather than politicians and other official authorities), in particular as a resource for constructing ordinariness (e.g., Bull & Waddle, 2019Bull, P., & Waddle, M. (2019) “Let me now answer, very directly, Marie’s question”: The impact of quoting members of the public in Prime Minister’s Questions. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 7(1), 56–78. ; Fetzer & Bull, 2019Fetzer, A., & Bull, P. (2019) Quoting ordinary people in Prime Minister’s Questions. In A. Fetzer, & E. Weizman (Eds.), The construction of ‘ordinariness’ across media genres (pp. 73–101). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ; Fetzer & Weizman, 2018Fetzer, A., & Weizman, E. (2018) ‘What I would say to John and everyone like John is …’: The construction of ordinariness through quotations in mediated political discourse. Discourse & Society, 29 (5), 495–513. ). While this work points out important functions of quoting in parliament, it heavily draws on Hansard, i.e., the written record, rather than using the video footage to analyze the interaction in parliament for what it is – embodied performances of power talk for a public audience (cf. Section 3).
Tannen makes a strong case to replace the notions of direct speech, direct quotation, or direct discourse with “constructed dialogue” (Tannen, 22007Tannen, D. (2
2007) Talking voices: repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , p. 112), arguing that there are cases where what is presented as a direct quotation was “not actually spoken by the person to who it is attributed” (Tannen, 22007Tannen, D. (2
2007) Talking voices: repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , p. 112). She concedes, however, that constructed dialogue may not necessarily be fictitious in the sense that it was not actually produced by the person to whom it is ascribed. Rather, it represents a “[creative and enlivening] act of transforming others’ words into one’s own discourse” (Tannen, 22007Tannen, D. (2
2007) Talking voices: repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , p. 112). She points out that stretches of speech taken from one situation, produced for a specific communicative goal, are used as constructed dialogue in another, deployed for purposes which may be completely different from the original context. (Tannen, 22007Tannen, D. (2
2007) Talking voices: repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , p. 107) Because of this ability for transformation, constructed dialogue constitutes a powerful tool for argumentative rhetoric, such as, e.g., political speech. She notes that when criticism is implemented through reported speech, commonly the “literal truth of the report is not questioned” (Tannen, 22007Tannen, D. (2
2007) Talking voices: repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , p. 108). Crucially, constructed dialogue can take a variety of forms, including, e.g., what Tannen (
22007Tannen, D. (2
2007) Talking voices: repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , pp. 112–119) calls “summarizing dialogue” or “fade out, fade in”, where indirect and direct quotation are formally blurred. In sum, Tannen’s work invites us to view direct quotations as a rhetoric device in political oratory, where questions of authenticity may be secondary but where quoting serves as an involvement strategy targeted at public audiences.
2.2Quotation, embodiment, and visual aids
Although the anecdotal evidence presented in the beginning of this paper clearly illustrates the relevance politicians ascribe to the presentation of written documents as visual aids for persuasion to the extent that they even may use fabricated evidence for their purposes, I am not aware of previous research that has studied these practices in a systematic way.
Nevertheless, the study of quoting and embodiment has recently become a burgeoning research area. Perhaps the most radical finding is that bodily movements, such as dancing steps, can be treated as “bodily quotations” (Keevallik, 2010Keevallik, L. (2010) Bodily quoting in dance correction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(4), 401–426. , p. 402). Here, the teacher demonstrates students’ dancing steps, simultaneously describing the movements for instruction. Keevallik argues “that verbal and bodily quoting are essentially the same kinds of activities. They serve to create coherence, make sense, provide proof, and give evidence.” (Keevallik, 2010Keevallik, L. (2010) Bodily quoting in dance correction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(4), 401–426. , p. 402, see also Good, 2015Good, J. S. (2015) Reported and enacted actions: Moving beyond reported speech and related concepts. Discourse Studies, 17, 663–681. ; Keevallik, 2013 (2013) The interdependence of bodily demonstrations and clausal syntax. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 46(1), 1–21. )
Stec, Huiskes, and Redeker (2016)Stec, K., Huiskes, M., & Redeker, G. (2016) Multimodal quotation: Role shift practices in spoken narratives. Journal of Pragmatics, 104, 1–17. illustrate that – in addition to voicing – gaze, facial expression, body posture, and, sometimes, gesture are functional in signaling shifts in footing in narratives. Blackwell, Perlman, and Fox Tree (2015)Blackwell, N. L., Perlman, M., & Fox Tree, Jean E. (2015) Quotation as a multimodal construction. Journal of Pragmatics, 81, 1–7. reveal a correlation between the type of quotative and the type of reported speech (direct, indirect) with respect to bodily demonstrations. Here, it was found that quotations introduced by the quotative say were performed with the least vocal and bodily demonstration, and indirect speech with even less vocal and bodily demonstration than direct speech (cf. also Clark & Gerrig, 1990Clark, H. H., & Gerrig, R. J. (1990) Quotations as demonstrations. Language, 66, 764–805. , for the distinction between the direct and indirect speech as demonstrations and descriptions).
A dimension which combines the studies mentioned is how bodily and vocal resources are deployed to display the speaker’s stance toward the quoted speech or bodily action. Importantly, Good adds to these speaker-center findings an audience perspective relevant to the present analysis: He observes that reported actions “bring to life past events and make them accessible and assessable for a current audience.” (Good, 2015Good, J. S. (2015) Reported and enacted actions: Moving beyond reported speech and related concepts. Discourse Studies, 17, 663–681. , p. 679) I show that this can also claimed for quoting at PMQs.
In sum, bodily movements serve to cue shifts in footing, perform demonstrations and display speaker stance. Bodily movements can, themselves, be quoted as bodily actions which can be performed in syntactically projected turn-constructional slots. In this way, these reported actions are made accessible and assessable for recipients.
3.Data and methodology
The database of this study consists of video recordings of PMQs taken from 2003–2013 (44 sessions, approximately 22 hours), which have been collected for a larger project on recent change in quoting in parliamentary question time (Reber, forthcomingReber, E. Forthcoming). Quoting in parliamentary question time. Exploring recent change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). PMQs is a mediated setting with professional orators performing (commonly rehearsed and scripted) actions predefined by their institutional roles (i.e., the Prime Minister (PM), Members of Parliament (MP), the Leader of the Opposition (LO), and the Speaker (S)) in a split participation framework, involving participants and audiences co-present in the House as well as listeners to and viewers of the broadcast. The interaction is mediated by S, which also means that parliamentary speakers only address each other indirectly through S, using third-person address (cf. also Ilie, 2010Ilie, C. (2010) Strategic uses of parliamentary forms of address: The case of the U.K. Parliament and the Swedish Riksdag. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 885–911. ).
The concept of “parasocial interaction” (Streeck, 2008Streeck, J. (2008) Gesture in political communication: A case study of the Democratic presidential candidates during the 2004 primary campaign. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41(2), 154–186. , p. 157, with reference to Horton & Wohl, 1956Horton, D., & R. R. Wohl (1956) Mass communication and para-social interaction. Psychiatry, 19, 215–229. ) is further useful here. It describes the communicative situation that the interaction between politicians in a mediated arena is enacted for the TV audience in such a way that “[enables] them to respond as if they were in direct personal interaction with the personae on the screen.” (Streeck, 2008Streeck, J. (2008) Gesture in political communication: A case study of the Democratic presidential candidates during the 2004 primary campaign. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41(2), 154–186. , p. 157)
All parliamentary proceedings are documented in Hansard, the official record of the British parliament. Although prior research has been largely grounded in Hansard (e.g., in particular Antaki & Leudar, 2001Antaki, Ch., & Leudar, I. 2001 Recruiting the record: Using opponents’ exact words in parliamentary argumentation. Text, 21(4), 467–488. ; Sealey & Bates, 2016Sealey, A. & Bates, St. (2016) Prime ministerial self-reported actions in Prime Minister’s Questions 1979–2010: A corpus-assisted analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 104: 18–31. ) and Hansard has been compiled as a corpus for academic purposes <https://www.english-corpora.org/hansard/>, its shortcomings for linguistic and interactional analysis have been widely illustrated and acknowledged. As Slembrouck (1992)Slembrouck, St. (1992) The parliamentary Hansard ‘verbatim’ report: The written construction of spoken discourse. Language and Literature, 1(2), 101–119. illustrates, Hansard only represents an edited transcript of the proceedings and shows an orientation to a written standard, a preference for ideational meanings, an unsystematic account of interactional processes, such as turn-taking, audience responses, and unintelligible speech, and a tendency to a normative representation of address forms and speech acts, which masks deviations from prescribed, institutional conventions (cf. also Mollin, 2007Mollin, S. (2007) The Hansard hazard. Gauging the accuracy of British parliamentary transcripts. Corpora, 2(2), 87–210. ). In previous work (Reber, 2019 (2019) ‘Punch and Judy’ politics? Embodying challenging courses of action in parliament. In E. Reber, & C. Gerhardt (Eds.), Embodied activities in face-to-face and mediated settings: Social encounters in time and space (pp. 255–297). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ), I showed how meaning-making is achieved in multimodal ways for a complex participation framework at PMQs, demonstrating the strength of a video analysis of parliamentary interaction. This requires a transcription of the fine detail of vocal, verbal, and visuo-material conduct. The two transcription systems that lend themselves well to this end are GAT 2 (Couper-Kuhlen & Barth-Weingarten, 2011Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Barth-Weingarten, D. (2011) A system for transcribing talk-in-interaction: GAT 2. English translation and adaptation of Selting, Margret et al: Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2. Gesprächsforschung Online, 12, 1–51.) and the conventions for multimodal transcription (Mondada, 2016 2016 Conventions for multimodal transcription. Version 3.0.6, July 2016 Retrieved from https://franzoesistik.philhist.unibas.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/franzoesistik/mondada_multimodal_conventions.pdf> (12 August 2019).; see Appendix), which I used for the transcriptions of the excerpts presented in this paper. Information about the camera work are provided to make transparent to the reader which shot is visible to viewers – and the analyst – at a particular point in time.
My methodology is informed by Interactional Linguistics (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Selting, M. (1996) Towards an interactional perspective on prosody and a prosodic perspective on interaction. In E. Couper-Kuhlen, & M. Selting (Eds), Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies (p. 11–56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 2001 (2001) Introducing Interactional Linguistics. In M. Selting, & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Studies in Interactional Linguistics (pp. 1–22). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 2018 (2018) Interactional Linguistics: Studying language in social interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), a research program concerned with the study of linguistic structures in social interaction. My analysis followed these steps:
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A first search revealed that reported speech with say constitutes the most frequent grammatical construction for evidential practices of quoting in the 2003–2013 dataset.
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Next, I analyzed the phonetic-prosodic, lexico-syntactic, and visuo-material features of reported speech with say. I found that parliamentary speakers most frequently enact direct speech but also sometimes other grammatical formats, e.g., indirect speech, as ‘literalized’ quotations. Importantly, speakers display haptic and visual engagement with their written documents to contextualize the quotation as a verbatim reproduction of past speech here (Reber, forthcomingReber, E. Forthcoming). Quoting in parliamentary question time. Exploring recent change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; Section 4.1).
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Zooming in on the finding that speakers recruit their written sources, I examined how speakers use claims of their evidential access to original documents as a rhetorical resource in more detail. The interactional video analysis yielded the practices described in Sections 4.2–4.4.
4.Results
In Reber (forthcoming)Reber, E. Forthcoming). Quoting in parliamentary question time. Exploring recent change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., I suggest that, since 1978, when it was first radio broadcast, PMQs has seen an increased ‘literalization’ of quotations.22.The term ‘literalization’ is put in single quotation marks to indicate that we are dealing with parliamentary speakers’ claims of ‘literalized’ quotations rather than with actual evidence that these quotations are verbatim versions of past speech. Although most widely performed in direct speech, it pertains to all types of reported speech in the 2003–2013 data set on which the argument for the present paper is based. I also found that this increased displayed ‘literalization’ becomes further visible by the emergent use of the construction, “(and) I quote,” an aspect which is not explored here for reasons of time and space.
In this section, I first illustrate the general phenomenon and discuss what I mean by visuo-material performances of ‘literalized’ quotations, showing a typical example where speakers recruit their notes – but not necessarily an original document – to perform a ‘literalized’, verbatim quotation in direct speech (4.1). I then turn to specific cases where speakers claim to display original documents and directly quote from them for their audiences. To this end, I consider three excerpts to demonstrate how this practice materializes in the data: A leaked confidential original document is deployed as a resource for ridicule of the political opponent (4.2), the speaker constitutes a single cover page as an entire report (4.3), and the speaker enacts selected text chunks for rhetorical effect (4.4).
4.1The visuo-material performance of ‘literalized’ quotations
‘Literalized’ quotations in direct speech are characterized by a cluster of typical prosodic, lexico-syntactic, visual and material cues, which make them recognizable as a particular practice of quoting in the data. The typical features involve (1) lexico-syntactic markers which mark the quotation as direct speech and/or as what is heard as “conceptionally written” (Koch & Oesterreicher, 2007Koch, P., & Oesterreicher, W. (2007) Schriftlichkeit und kommunikative Distanz. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik, 35(3), 346–375. ), (2) often a prosodic break between the reporting clause and the quotation, i.e., the quotation is produced in a separate intonation phrase, (3) sometimes a shift in voicing, and (4) visuo-material cues, which involve a visual engagement with the speakers’ notes, sometimes a haptic manipulation of notes and / or a shift in the orator’s posture.
Excerpt (1), taken from a question-answer sequence between a governmental MP and the PM, represents a typical example. The reported speech is in Lines 16–25.
MP: Robert N. Wareing (Lab); PM: Tony Blair (Lab); S: Michael Martin
1 S: mister WAReing-
cam >> extreme long shot --->
2 MP: (1.24)
3 MP: mister SPEAker; (--)
4 MP: the prIme minister: (.) tries to JUStify; (--)
5 MP: the:| *(.) #illEgal WAR: (.) against irAq. (1.1)
cam --->|long shot --->
mpG *hand-in-jacket gesture --->
fig #Fig.1
6 MP: to thOse of us (.) who opPOSED it. (-)
7 MP: on the |GROUNDS that; (--)
cam ---> |medium close-up --->
8 MP: IF we had nOt gone to wAr,
9 MP: saddam hussEi:n (-) and his ↑TWO sons; (-)
10 MP: would *stIill have been# in charge* of iRAQ. (--)
mpG ---> *pulls out paper *unfolds sheet of paper --->
fig #Fig.2
11 MP: ↑hOw then does+ the prime minister# exPLAIN;* (--)
mpG --->*
mpH +gazes down to paper --->
fig #Fig.3
12 MP: his stAtement to+ ↑THIS house; (--) +
mpH ---> + looks up towards PM+
13 MP: +on the twenty fifth of FEBruary, (-)
mpH + looks down to notes --->
14 MP: twO thousand and THREE, (1.1)
15 MP: column One two four: +(.) <<p>official rePORT;>+
mpH ---> + looks up towards PM +
16 MP: -> +(1.3) <<p, all>when he said> ↑even NOW, (-)
mpH + reorients towards notes --->
17 MP: -> toDAY, (--)
18 MP: -> we are Offering SADdam,(-)
19 MP: -> the prOspect of (---) of +↑VOLuntary (.) + disArmaming,(--)
mpH --->+ gazes towards PM+ gazes to notes -->
20 MP: -> through the united NAtions. (---)
21 MP: -> i detEst his reGIME, (--)
22 MP: -> but even NOW; (-)
23 MP: -> he could (.) +↑SAVE it; (-) +
mpH ---> + gazes towards PM+
24 MP: -> +by comPLYing; (-)+
mpH +gazes to notes ->+
25 MP: -> with the+ united nAtions’s +(.) deMAND. (.) +°|
mpH +gazes to notes +looks up towards PM+
mpW °sits down
cam ---> |long shot >>
The sequence begins with a summons by S (Line 1), which the MP ratifies, addressing him by his title (Line 3). Next the MP presents a position of the PM without providing evidence for it (Lines 4–10; (…) IF we had nOt gone to wAr, saddam hussEi:n (-) and his ↑TWO sons; (-) would stIill have been in charge of iRAQ.). This provides the “question preface” (Clayman & Heritage, 2002Clayman, St. E., & Heritage, J. (2002) The news interview: Journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ). i.e., the backdrop against the subsequent wh-question, in which the MP asks the PM to explain a contradictory statement previously made in parliament (Lines 11–15; ↑hOw then does the prime minister exPLAIN; (…)). To highlight conflicting positions and actions is a common practice to attack the credibility and authority of the political opponent at PMQs. In addition to giving the location (Line 12) where the statement was given, the MP details the exact date (Lines 13–14, on the twenty fifth of FEBruary, twO thousand and THREE)) and reference in Hansard (Line 15, column One two four: official rePORT), framing what follows as a stretch of speech quoted from Hansard. In doing so, he displays direct access to his sources, authorizing and authenticating the quotation.
The statement is quoted in direct speech: It is introduced by a reporting clause, which assigns the source of the quotation to the PM in the form of a third-person pronominal subject. The quotative verb is in simple past form (when he said; Line 16). The lexico-syntactic marking of the quotation contextualizes it as direct speech: a non-production of the complementizer that, no change of the temporal adverbials toDAY / NOW and of the pronouns we / I nor a backshift of the verbs are and detEst (Lines 16–25). Prosodically, the quotation is produced with slightly higher and more frequent pitch accents. Grammatically, the choice of a nominal style, i.e., the high density of nouns (e.g., Lines 19–20; the prOspect of (---) of ↑VOLuntary (.) disArmaming,(--) through the united Nations;) make the quotation heard as “conceptually written” (Koch & Oesterreicher, 2007Koch, P., & Oesterreicher, W. (2007) Schriftlichkeit und kommunikative Distanz. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik, 35(3), 346–375. ) and directly read from the Hansard. Visually, the quotation is projected, enacted, and completed through bodily movements and the haptic manipulation of paper.
The camera angle does not allow us to watch the MP at the beginning of the excerpt but only when he comes into view early in the question turn (Line 5). We see him standing, performing what has been described as a “hand-in-waistcoat” or “hand-in-jacket” gesture (Fleckner, 1997Fleckner, U. (1997) Napoleons Hand in der Weste. Von der ethischen zur politischen Rhetorik einer Geste. Daidalos. Architektur – Kunst – Kultur, 64, 122–129.; Figure 1).
On the beginning of the last intonation phrase of the question preface, he pulls out a folded sheet of paper from under his jacket (Figure 2) and begins to unfold it (Line 10).
During the production of the wh-interrogative, the MP orients his gaze to the sheet of paper, while still unfolding it (Line 11, Figure 3). Despite some points where he looks up toward the PM, he keeps a sustained gaze to his notes when performing the quotation. This means that in retrospect the hand-in-jacket gesture, visible for the viewer from early into the turn onwards, can be treated as a multimodal projection (cf. Stukenbrock, 2018Stukenbrock, A. (2018) Forward-looking: Where do we go with multimodal projections? In A. Deppermann, & J. Streeck (Eds.), Modalities and temporalities: Convergences and divergences of bodily resources in interaction (pp. 31–68). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.) of the quotation to be performed toward the end of the turn.
We have seen that ‘literalized’ quotations represent visuo-material performances by participants at PMQs which are projected, enacted and completed through bodily movements and the haptic manipulation of paper. They are designed to come off as verbatim reproductions of past speech, displaying the speaker’s evidential access to the source, lending him evidential authority to support his accusation. In this way, this quoting practice constitutes a rhetorical resource to enhance the credibility of the speaker in his positioning against the PM.
Note that while the MP in Excerpt 1 made a point of giving the exact details of the source quoted, he did not constitute the document recruited as an original copy of Hansard, a practice we look into in what follows.
4.2An original document as a resource for ridicule of the political opponent
To use written notes to perform direct speech lends the speaker evidential authority because it displays a claim to have access to authentic sources and the original wording of the evidence. The analysis of direct speech where the original documents are held into the camera for public view illustrates that this practice additionally allows the speaker not only to claim evidential authority but also experiential access. This becomes particularly clear in Excerpt 2, where the LO displays a leaked governmental document in order to ridicule the PM (cf. also Reber, 2019 (2019) ‘Punch and Judy’ politics? Embodying challenging courses of action in parliament. In E. Reber, & C. Gerhardt (Eds.), Embodied activities in face-to-face and mediated settings: Social encounters in time and space (pp. 255–297). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. for ridicule at PMQs).
LO: Michael Howard; PM: Tony Blair; S: Michael Martin
1 LO: the PRIME minister;
cam >> medium close-up --->
loG >> holds sheet of paper in right hand --->
2 LO: <<all>the prime minister> realˀ ↑REcently sent;
3 LO: ˚h a ↑PERsonal memo to: (0.48) <<all>All members of his
cabinet.>
4 LO: -> and_uh as it happens *i’ve (.) <<all>i’ve got a COPy# [here.*>]
5 MP: [l l l l]
loG -> --->*lifts sheet of paper to show it *
fig #Fig.4
6 MPs: [*l l l l l l l l]
7 LO: -> [*(3.03) it SAYS,]
loG *puts it back to dispatch box --->
8 MPs: [l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l ]
9 LO: -> [(0.20|0.64)* #it says ↑TOO often, (0.43)]
cam --->|bird’s eye view
loG --->*
fig #Fig.5
10 LO: -> chAnge has been iNITiated-
11 LO: -> ˚h in ↑IGnorance of the rIsks;
12 LO: -> and the whAt [might be done to DEAL with them. ]
13 MPs: [sh mur sh mur sh mur sh mur sh mur]
14 MPs: [l l l sh l sh l ]
15 LO: -> [(1.14) in FUture;]
16 MPs: [l l l sh]
17 LO: -> [it SAYS;]
18 LO: -> #we need to ensure that RISKS;
fig #Fig.6
19 LO: -> ˚h have been adequately considered befOre (0.32) be↑FORE we
make POLicy announcements.
20 MPs: [l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l]
21 LO: [(2.59) when he (0.42) when he WROTE that,]
22 LO: <<all>when he WROTE that mister speaker;>=
23 LO: <<all>↑whAt exactly did he have in MIND.>
24 MPs: l l l l l l
The LO prepares for the quotation in a headline-punch line structure in which the ascribed source is introduced (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1986) Generating applause. A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 110–157. ).44.Headline-punchline structures are a common rhetorical device in political speech to generate applause. Heritage and Greatbatch observe:
Here, the speaker proposes to make a declaration, pledge, or announcement and then proceeds to make it. The message (or punch line) is emphasized by the speaker’s calling attention in advance to what he or she is about to say. Similarly, the audience is given to understand that applause will properly be due at the completion of the punch line message, which, once again, is normally short and simple.(Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1986) Generating applause. A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 110–157. , p. 128–129)
He first announces that Blair, the co-present PM targeted by his speech, sent a personal memo to his cabinet members, which functions as the headline <<all>the prime minister> realˀ ↑REcently sent; ˚h a ↑PERsonal memo to: (0.48) <<all>All members of his cabinet.> (Lines 1–3). Next, he claims to have a copy of this memo and=uh as it happens i’ve (.) i’ve got a COPy here. (Line 4), displaying a sheet of paper with an official letterhead to S (Figure 4).
This is taken up by the MPs with laughter (Lines 5–6), treating this as the punch line. In overlap, the LO projects a quotation in a reporting clause, putting the sheet of paper back to the dispatch box. When he recycles the reporting clause following a pause and begins with the quotation it says ↑TOO often, (Line 9), he gazes down to his notes (Figure 5) before looking toward S. In what follows he delivers the quotation in two portions (Lines 9–19), orienting to the audience responses and displaying multiple orientations toward the various co-present parties and his notes (Figure 6). What is revealing is that when delivering the quotation, he does not consult what was claimed to be the original memo but another document from his pile of paper. Finally, he produces the question component of the turn, asking whAt exactly did he have in MIND.> when the PM wrote the memo (Lines 21–23). This again taken up by laughter on the part of the MPs (Line 24).
This shows that displays of claimed original documents serve to upgrade claims of evidential access in not only showing direct evidential but also experiential access to the original speech situation. In the concrete example, it is deployed to expose the PM to ridicule – evidenced by the MPs’ laughter – a common practice for hostile actions in political discourse (cf. Vincze, Bongelli, Riccioni, & Zuczkowski, 2016Vincze, L., Bongelli, R., Riccioni, I., & Zuczkowski, A. (2016) Ignorance-unmasking questions in the Royal-Sarkozy presidential debate: A resource to claim epistemic authority. Discourse Studies, 18(4), 430–453. ).
4.3The constitution of a single cover page as an entire report
The data show that not only original documents are displayed but single-page photocopies are constituted as multipage documents. Excerpt 3, which is taken from a question turn of an opposition MP, is a case in point. The MP displays what he claims to be the recent report by the British Medical Association (the BMA, the be em ai, Line 9) but in fact it only seems to be a photocopy of the cover that he is showing. NHS (en aitch es, Line 11) stands for National Health System, the publicly funded national healthcare system in the UK.
MP: Nigel Evans (Con); PM: Gordon Brown (Lab); S: Michael Martin
1 S: nigel Evans-
cam >> extreme long shot --->
2 MPs: [h h h h h h h h h h h h ]
3 MP: [(2.11) mister |*SPEAker;]
cam --->|long shot --->
mpG *holds report in his folded hands --->
4 MP: (0.86) In# (.) two thOusand (.) and SEVen;=
fig #Fig.7
5 MP: =there were Eight thousand three hundred |and twenty four
cam --->| medium close-up
MP: DEATHS;
6 MP: ˚h where cEe difficile was mentioned as a cause on the death (.)
MP: cerTIFicate;
7 MP: <<all> that was an increase of twenty eight per CENT;>
8 MP: ˚h on the yEar (.) beFORE;
9 MP: *(0.76) yesterday the be em Ai (.) brought# *out a rePORT;
mpG *takes report with his right hand *taps to report
fig #Fig.8
10 MP: -> ˚h uhˀ which sAid that (.) uh <<all>in*fection control
mpG with left hand ---> *taps -->
MP: -> procedures were being dA*maged because of over>CROWding;
mpG ---> *taps -->
11 MP: -> ˚h and understAffing at en aitch es: faCILities;
12 MP: ˚hh *dOes the prime *minister agree with me that ANy (0.42)
mpG --> *taps -->* takes report in his folded hands again--->
MP: avoidable dEath (0.49) #is tOtally (.) unaccEptable,
13 MP: *˚h and in LIGHT of this #repOrt, *
mpG *waves report repeatedly with right hand*
fig #Fig.9
14 MP: *˚h whAt fresh actions (0.24) is the government NOW
*takes report in his folded hands again >>
MP: going to take;
15 MP: (0.61) to eLIMinate (.) all sUperbugs (0.21) from our
MP: hospital[s;
16 MPs: [h h |h h h h]
17 PM: [0.49)| (xxx)] <<all>miˀ miˀ miˀ mister SPEAker;>=
cam: |bird’s eye view >>
18 PM: =iˀ i’m deTERmined to do that; ((turn continues))
Following the summons of S (Line 1), the MP answers in taking the turn, addressing S (Line 3). The MP continues, presenting figures and statistics that illustrate an increase in deaths caused by the hospital bug cEe difficile (Lines 4–8). During his speech, we see him holding his documents in his folded arms (Figure 7).
There follows a medium-length pause where he takes the documents with his right hand before he resumes his speech, referring to a recent report by the British Medical Association (Line 9, yesterday the be em Ai (.) brought out a rePORT).55.The BMA describes itself as “the trade union and professional association for doctors and medical students across the UK” (https://www.bma.org.uk/) In the subsequent relative clause he produces reported speech, in which he quotes the report as making the situation within the NHS responsible for the increased death rate (Lines 10–11; ˚h uhˀ which sAid that (.) uh <<all>infection control procedures were being dAmaged because of over>CROWding; ˚h and understAffing at en aitch es: faCILities;). Since the NHS is under governmental responsibility, the quotation serves as an attack toward the PM’s governance. Crucially, the speaker places or shortly taps with his right hand on the document when he represents the report as his evidential source (Lines 9–10, Figure 8) and produces the key word in the quotation (dAmaged). In doing so, he visually constitutes the document as a physical copy of the report for the PM and the split audience. Showing physical evidence for the source of the quotation, he authenticates and substantiates the quoted accusation for his audience. Next, the MP produces the question component (Lines 12–15) in which he again verbally refers to the report, accompanied by a hand movement which visualizes the document as report (Line 13, Figure 9).
To sum up, single-page copies may be constituted as authentic multipage documents, which are presented as physical evidence for the position quoted. This shows that it may be rhetorically sufficient for the speaker to claim their experiential access to the original source, showing a photocopy, rather than providing physical evidence of the original.
4.4The enactment of selected text chunks for rhetorical effect
Excerpt 4 shows that participants do not merely read stretches of text word by word to the audience but enact relevant chunks for rhetorical effect. The extract is taken from an answer turn by Tony Blair at his last PMQs in office as PM. In the question turn (not shown here), the governmental MP thanks him for his political achievement and previous support of the communities in the MP’s constituency following the collapse of the MG Rover Longbridge car factory. In his response, the PM first refers to the peace process in the Middle East and in Northern Ireland (not shown here) before he turns to the redundancies at the car factory.
MP: Richard Burden (Lab); PM: Tony Blair; S: Michael Martin
1 PM: <<all>can i also thAnk him for his kInd words that he said in
cam >> medium close-up of PM--->
PM: relation to ˚h the clOsure of longbridge in his constituency;>=
2 PM: =and he’s absolutely RIGHT-=
3 PM: =i think it’s eighty five per cent of the work force that have
PM: now: | ˚h uh found a JOB-=
cam --->| medium close-up of questioning MP --->
4 PM: =and i conGRATulate him On that_|anˀ-
cam --->| medium close-up of PM --->
5 PM: $‡˚h i feel a certain soliDARity_uh (.) fOr them-
pmG $takes sheets of paper in folder to turn to original document ->
pmH ‡sustained gaze to papers --->
6 PM: since i received the:_uh following communication that came
PM: across$ by urgent letter YESterday,
pmG --->$
7 PM: -> #˚hh ↑dEtails of emplOyee leaving ‡WORK, ‡
pmH --->‡brief look up‡
fig #Fig.10
8 MPs: ‡((soft laughter))
pmH ‡sustained look to original document --->
9 PM: -> sUrname BLAIR- (.)
10 PM: -> fIrst name TEE;
11 PM: -> $(1.09) uhm (-)((click)) ˚h it said actually mIster missus
pmG $takes original document to hold it up --->
PM: -> miss or OTHer,
˚h [hh˚|(1.8)] |
12 MPs: [l l l l l]
cam --->| bird’s eye view|
13 PM: -> |↑THIS form is important (.) tˀ (.) to you;=
cam |medium close-up of PM --->
14 PM: -> =TAKE good care of it.=‡
pmH --->‡
15 PM: -> $‡ pEe forty‡ FIVE. $
pmG $puts document down and closes pages$
pmH ‡looks up ‡
16 MPs: |$%((laughter)) $%
cam |extreme long shot >>
pmG $takes open folder$
pmW %sits down %
The PM first thanks the questioning MP (Line 1) before displaying agreement with what the MP reported on his constituency in his question turn and congratulating the MP on his success (Lines 2–4). Alluding to his own imminent resignation, he next claims to feel solidarity with the former MG Rover employees (Line 5), a move that is accompanied by a visual orientation down toward the documents in his folder. At the same time, he takes several sheets of paper to turn to the relevant document, a movement that is completed during the subsequent account for his claim in which he says that he received urgent communication in the form of a letter himself the day before (Line 6; since i received the:_uh following communication that came across by urgent letter YESterday,). Note that the speaker does not specify the sort of letter he received but only says that it was urgent, implying that it was a highly important document. In doing so, he creates a puzzle what the letter might be. Puzzle-solution (or riddle-solution) structures of this kind represent another common rhetorical device in political discourse to lend extra emphasis to the position of speakers and convey their message in an especially poignant way such that they generate applause (Antaki & Leudar, 2001Antaki, Ch., & Leudar, I. 2001 Recruiting the record: Using opponents’ exact words in parliamentary argumentation. Text, 21(4), 467–488. ; Atkinson, 1984Atkinson, M. (1984) Our Masters’ Voices: The language and body language of politics. London / New York: Routledge.; Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1986) Generating applause. A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 110–157. ; Sato, 2014Sato, I. L. (2014) Social relations and institutional structures in modern American political campaigns (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of California, Santa Barbara.).66.This is a description of how puzzle-solution structures work:
In this comparatively straightforward device, the speaker begins by establishing some kind of puzzle or problem in the minds of the listeners and then, shortly afterward, offers as the solution to the problem a statement that stands as the core to the message that he or she wishes to get across. The adumbrated message is emphasized by the puzzle, which invites the audience to anticipate or guess at its solution and, by the same token, to listen carefully to the speaker’s own solution when it is delivered. (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1986) Generating applause. A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 110–157. , p. 127)
In other work on reported speech with say at PMQs, I showed that typically, sources – rather than quotations – are presented as a puzzle, i.e., the audience is commonly left guessing who the source of the quotation is (and not what was said by a particular party; Reber, forthcomingReber, E. Forthcoming). Quoting in parliamentary question time. Exploring recent change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.).
When the PM is positioned, having placed his right hand on the original document and displaying a sustained gaze toward it, thus showing full visual and tactile engagement with his source, he resumes with his speech in a new intonation phrase after a long inbreath (Figure 10).
Its onset is produced on a step up in pitch, marking a “new beginning” (Couper-Kuhlen, 2004Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2004) Prosody and sequence organisation: The case of new beginnings. In E. Couper-Kuhlen & C. E. Ford (Eds.), Sound patterns in interaction (pp. 335–376). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ). The chunks quoted from the document placed in front of the speaker have the syntactic shape of what have been traditionally called elliptical noun phrases (Lines 7, 9, 10; ↑dEtails of emplOyee leaving WORK, sUrname BLAIR- fIrst name TEE;). Note that this is a “zero-quotative” structure (Mathis & Yule, 1994Mathis, T., & Yule, G. (1994) Zero quotatives. Discourse Processes, 18(1), 63–76. ), where the quotation is not introduced by a reporting clause. After the first line of quotation the speaker looks up to pursue a response, which is forthcoming as laughter in the following line (Line 8). The pauses in Lines 9 and 11, where the speaker maintains a sustained look to the document and – in Line 11 – holds it up, make the performance come off as spontaneous and suggest that the speaker is searching for what to quote as he speaks. In Line 11, the speaker produces a reporting clause to underline that this is really what it said in the letter (it said actually mIster misssus miss or OTHer), which is taken up by audience laughter. He continues, quoting two more sentences which verbalize the importance of the document (Lines 13, 14; ↑
THIS form is important (.) tˀ (.) to you; TAKE good care of it) before he produces the name of form, P 45 (pEe forty FIVE, Line 15).77.P45 is a form issued upon leaving a job in the UK. It details how much tax the employee has paid on their salary so far in the tax year. At the same time, he puts the document down, disengaging his gaze from it. In responding with laughter (Line 16), the audience shows recognition of the document: It represents the solution to the puzzle of what kind of communication the speaker received. At the same time, it can be assumed that the audience treats it as a laughable that the PM’s receiving his P 45 should be compared to the situation of the car workers when they were made redundant.
An examination of the P45 forms available online suggests that there are several versions of the form. Blair seems to have referred to the one for the new employer. Moreover, he did not read out the full text but only presented selected chunks designed to package the quotation in a dense, incisive but also engaging fashion in the puzzle-solution format. On top of the document it says, for instance, “P45 Part 2 Details of employee leaving work” but when quoting from it, the PM did not mention the label of the form, P45, until the very end. Also, the two sentences quoted in Lines 13–14 can be found at the bottom, but the full paragraph reads: “This form is important to you. Take good care of it and keep it safe. Copies are not available. Please keep Parts 2 and 3 of the form together and do not alter them in any way.” (HM Revenue & Customs, 2019HM Revenue & Customs 2019 P45 manual 15 February 2019 Retrieved from https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/511179/P45_Manual_12_15.pdf (12 August, 2019)., p. 3).
5.Summary and conclusions
In this study, I explored the finding that speakers at PMQs recruit their written sources when performing what comes off as ‘literalized’ quotation. I began with the observation that ‘literalized’ quotations represent visuo-material performances, involving prosodic, lexico-semantic, and visuo-material resources, which are used to frame the quotation as verbatim reproductions of past speech, displaying the speaker’s evidential access to the source.
The analysis of cases where speakers claim to have original documents on display revealed that paper notes can be constituted as original documents in situated practices which make their relevance recognizable to the audience, and quotations from these are enacted in rhetorically skilled ways for local communicative purposes. Crucially, it was shown that the quotations themselves do not always necessarily constitute a literal reproduction of the document texts. This suggests that political speakers are in a position to manipulate their audiences as to what the contents of the documents are, simply because the latter do not always have equal evidential and experiential access to the sources quoted.
These findings make an important contribution to previous research on quoting in face-to-face interaction as well as political communication, in showing that quotations are not only bodily enacted and demonstrated but may also involve material (re)sources, representing visuo-material performances with specific interactional and rhetorical functions. Crucially, the presentation of (seemingly) original documents allows the politician to display a claim that they do not only have evidential access but also experiential access to their sources, lending them upgraded evidential authority and credibility to support their position in the argumentative interaction in the House.88.Similarly, Heritage and Raymond (2005)Heritage, J., & Raymond, G. (2005) The terms of agreement: Indexing epistemic authority and subordination in talk-in-interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68(1), 15–38. have shown that in everyday interaction, claims about speakers’ experiential access towards events (or the lack of it) may upgrade or downgrade the force of claims and assessments.
In this vein, the study adds another insight to a more holistic understanding of the interplay between vocal, verbal and visuo-material communication in the political arena.
Finally, the orientation of parliamentary speakers to ‘literalized’ direct speech and claims of direct evidential and even experiential access can be explained by three potential factors: First, a drop in public “trust in government” since the “early 1990s” (Bromley, Curtice & Seyd, 2004Bromley, C., Curtice, J., & Seyd, B. (2004) Is Britain facing a crisis of democracy? Technical Report. Constitution Unit, School of Public Policy, University College London., p. 5), which politicians seem to counter with strategies to regain credibility; second, better access to archives of speech and texts due to the recent technical development, which allows for wider direct, verbatim quoting and furthers claims of direct evidential access; and, third, a tendency to play to a mediated viewing audience. Here the obvious visualization of the genre, which came about through the use of cameras in the House of Commons Chamber since the late 1980s, becomes particularly visible.99.My study offers a strictly descriptive analysis of the visuo-material practices of quoting in political oratory. Although the research conducted in Reber (forthcoming)Reber, E. Forthcoming). Quoting in parliamentary question time. Exploring recent change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. suggests that a frequent use of direct speech for action formation in question turns could be linked to political success, the study of the wider political effects of this practice must be left to future research.
Notes
Here, the speaker proposes to make a declaration, pledge, or announcement and then proceeds to make it. The message (or punch line) is emphasized by the speaker’s calling attention in advance to what he or she is about to say. Similarly, the audience is given to understand that applause will properly be due at the completion of the punch line message, which, once again, is normally short and simple.(Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1986) Generating applause. A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 110–157.
In this comparatively straightforward device, the speaker begins by establishing some kind of puzzle or problem in the minds of the listeners and then, shortly afterward, offers as the solution to the problem a statement that stands as the core to the message that he or she wishes to get across. The adumbrated message is emphasized by the puzzle, which invites the audience to anticipate or guess at its solution and, by the same token, to listen carefully to the speaker’s own solution when it is delivered. (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1986) Generating applause. A study of rhetoric and response at party political conferences. American Journal of Sociology, 92(1), 110–157.
have shown that in everyday interaction, claims about speakers’ experiential access towards events (or the lack of it) may upgrade or downgrade the force of claims and assessments.References
Appendix
GAT 2 transcription conventions (adapted from Couper-Kuhlen and Barth-Weingarten, 2011Couper-Kuhlen, E., & Barth-Weingarten, D. (2011) A system for transcribing talk-in-interaction: GAT 2. English translation and adaptation of Selting, Margret et al: Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2. Gesprächsforschung Online, 12, 1–51.)
| [ ] | overlap and simultaneous talk |
| = | fast, immediate continuation with a new turn or segment (latching) |
| (.) | micro pause, estimated, up to 0.2 sec. duration appr. |
| (-) | short estimated pause of appr. 0.2–0.5 sec. duration |
| (--) | intermediary estimated pause of appr. 0.5–0.8 sec. duration |
| (---) | longer estimated pause of appr. 0.8–1.0 sec. duration |
| (0.5)/(2.0) | measured pause of appr. 0.5 / 2.0 sec. duration (to tenth of a second) |
| and_uh | cliticizations within units |
| uh, uhm, etc. | hesitation markers, so-called “filled pauses” |
| :, ::, ::: | lengthening, depending on duration |
| ʔ | cut-off by glottal closure |
| ? | rising to high |
| , | rising to mid |
| – | level |
| ; | falling to mid |
| . | falling to low |
| (may i) | assumed wording |
| SYLlable | focus accent |
| sYllable | secondary accent |
| !SYL!lable | extra strong accent |
| ↑ | smaller pitch upstep |
| ↑↑ | arger pitch upstep |
| <<l> > | lower pitch register |
| <<h> > | higher pitch register |
| <<f> > | forte, loud |
| <<ff> > | fortissimo, very loud |
| <<p> > | piano, soft |
| <<pp> > | pianissimo, very soft |
| <<all> > | allegro, fast |
| <<len> > | lento, slow |
| <<cresc> > | crescendo, increasingly louder |
| <<dim> > | diminuendo, increasingly softer |
| <<acc> > | accelerando, increasingly faster |
| <<rall> > | rallentando, increasingly slower |
| ((coughs)) | non-verbal vocal actions and events |
| <<coughing> > | … with indication of scope |
| ((laughs)) / l l l | description of laughter |
| <<:-)> so> | smile voice |
| °h/ °hh // | in- / outbreaths of appr. 0.2–0.5 sec. duration |
| h° hh° | in- / outbreaths of appr. 0.5–0.8 sec. duration |
| °hhh / hhh° | in- / outbreaths of appr. 0.8–1.0 sec. duration |
| appr. 3 sec)) | |
| ((…)) | omission in transcript |
| -> | refers to a line of transcript relevant in the argument |
Conventions for multimodal transcription (adapted from Mondada, 2016 2016 Conventions for multimodal transcription. Version 3.0.6, July 2016 Retrieved from https://franzoesistik.philhist.unibas.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/franzoesistik/mondada_multimodal_conventions.pdf> (12 August 2019)., 2019Mondada, L. (2019) Practices for showing, looking, and videorecording: The interactional establishment of a common focus of attention. In E. Reber, & C. Gerhardt (Eds.), Embodied activities in face-to-face and mediated settings – social encounters in time and space (pp. 63–104). London: Palgrave Macmillan. )
| Speaker roles | Head movement and gaze |
Hand movements and gesture |
Posture | Body movement/Walk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LO (questioning) | loH + | loG * | loP □ | loW° |
| MP (questioning) | mpH + | mpG * | mpP □ | mpW° |
| PM (answering) | pmH ‡ | pmG $ | pmP § | pmW % |