August 2015 1 TECHNIQUES OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS Peter Bull Department of Psychology, University of York, UK 1. Introduction The focus of this paper is on techniques we have devised for the analysis of different forms of political discourse in four different genre of political communication: speeches, interviews, parliamentary questions, and news broadcasts. Each genre can be seen as representing a different form of political discourse: specifically, politicians addressing an audience (monologue), politicians questioned by professional interviewers, politicians in debate with one another, and politicians as reported in the television news. Notably, political communication varies according to genre (Thibault, 2003). Not only does the format of a political speech differ markedly from that of an interview, but so too do the kinds of questions posed by a political interviewer differ from those posed by opposing politicians in debate with one another. Furthermore, the way in which political interviews are presented in a news broadcast differs notably from their presentation in extended political programmes (Bull, Negrine & Hawn, 2014). Each genre requires appropriate techniques of analysis, and it is the purpose of this paper is to outline those techniques. There are two main aspects to our methodological approach. 1. Initially, a full verbatim transcript is prepared from a videorecording or DVD of whatever form of political discourse is under review. 2. Analyses are then performed on that transcript, using a variety of techniques appropriate to each genre of communication.
2. Transcription 2 In some instances, transcripts may already be available, for example, of a speech to be delivered at a major party conference. But the transcript always has to be checked against the actual delivery, since speakers may ad lib, extemporize, or in other ways deviate from the speech they had planned to deliver. In the context of the British parliament, transcripts are available in electronic form from Hansard, the written record of parliamentary debates in the House of Commons (http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/commons/) However, Hansard, it should be noted, is not a full verbatim record of parliamentary proceedings. It is intended to be substantially the verbatim report, with repetitions and redundancies omitted and with obvious mistakes corrected, but which on the other hand leaves out nothing that adds to the meaning of the speech or illustrates the argument (May, 2004, p.260). Hence, in our research on parliamentary questions, Hansard is corrected from videorecordings of to ensure a full verbatim record is obtained (Bull & Wells, 2012). From a microanalytic perspective, such verbatim transcripts are essential. Traditionally, from the origins of rhetoric in classical Greece to the measurement of information in the twentieth century, communication had been studied mostly in terms of what it should be - in terms, for example, of its efficiency, clarity or persuasiveness (Bavelas, Black, Chovil, & Mullett, 1990). What makes the microanalytic so distinctive is the analysis of communication as it actually occurs - the attempt to observe, record, examine and describe social interaction in the finest of detail (Bull, 2002). From this perspective, no detail of interaction (however trivial it may seem) can be dismissed as disorderly, accidental or irrelevant (Heritage, 1989). So, for example, speech errors, slips of the tongue, and false starts need to be recorded, because they may be potentially significant in the context of the ongoing interaction.
3 Nevertheless, however detailed the transcript, it is no substitute for the recording itself. If the researchers works from the transcript alone, important points of detail may be missed which were not annotated on the original transcript. The best technique is to view or listen to the tape in conjunction with a transcript, either in the form of an audiorecording, or ideally in the form of a videorecording, so that researchers can not only hear what is said and how it is said, but can also see any associated nonverbal behaviour for themselves. This was the approach adopted throughout our research. Once the transcript has been prepared, we have developed a number of different techniques for their analysis. These are presented below, in relation to each of the four genres of political communication described above. 3. Political speeches Speech-making has traditionally been regarded as monologue, but of particular importance has been Atkinson s pioneering research (e.g., 1984a) on how politicians invite audience applause. Atkinson s key insight was to compare political speech-making with how people take turns in conversation. However, in a political speech, audience turns are essentially limited to a restricted range of activities, such as applause, cheering, laughter, chanting, sometimes even booing. Hence, political speech-making is not monologic but dialogic, an interaction between speaker and audience. From this perspective, even a verbatim record of the speech is not in itself sufficient. This is because detailed transcripts also have to be made of audience responses. Our technique is based on that pioneered by Atkinson (e.g,. 1984b). He indicated the occurrence of applause with a a succession of lower and upper case crosses (xxxxxx), to indicate quieter or louder applause respectively. A dash on either side of a cross was used to represent an isolated clap (-x-), and several in a row represent hesitant or spasmodic clapping (-x-x-x-). In preparing the transcript, audience applause is aligned with the text to indicate where it
actually starts. 4 This is important because it can indicate whether or not the applause is interruptive. For example, in the following extract from a speech by former Prime Minister Tony Blair (Blackpool, 1 October, 1996), the audience interrupted with applause after the phrase... to join a trade union, arguably to endorse Blair's commitment to the principle of trade union representation. The alignment of the crosses under the word and is intended to indicate that the applause is interruptive: We will be part of the European Social Chapter as every other government Tory or Labour is in the rest of Europe. And there will be a right for any individual to join a trade union and if... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx In the same speech, Blair was also applauded for the following statement: Ask me my three main priorities for Government, and I tell you: education, education and education. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Here, the applause begins after Blair has completed the statement, and again the alignment is intended to indicate this. Atkinson s (e.g., 1984a) research was based exclusively on the analysis of applause. However, audiences of course do other things beside applaud. They may, for example, cheer, laugh, chant, or even boo. In our transcripts, these are transcribed on much the same way as applause, but with the letters (hh) for laughter, (cc) for cheering, and (bb) for booing. Chants are written out in full. These audience responses have been analyzed in two studies of speeches from the Japanese general elections of 2005 and 2009 (Bull & Feldman, 2011; Feldman & Bull, 2012), and a further study of speeches from the American presidential election of 2012 (Bull & Miskinis, 2015). How political speakers invite responses (in particular applause) from their audience
5 has been analyzed by Atkinson (1984a) in terms of what he called rhetorical devices. On the basis of these transcripts, such rhetorical devices which precede audience responses are then identified and classified. We have now identified in total 16 different rhetorical devices, whereby political speakers may invite responses from their audiences, based on British, Japanese and American speeches (Bull & Wells, 2002; Bull & Feldman, 2011; Feldman & Bull, 2012; Bull & Miskinis, 2015). 4. Broadcast interviews Broadcast interviews typically take the form of question-response sequences, in which a political journalist asks questions to which the politician may or may not give an answer. In the context of such interviews, we have developed techniques for the analysis both of questions and responses. 4.1. Types of question. Analysing different types of question is important, because it provides criteria whereby we can assess whether a politician has given an answer. This is not always straightforward. So, for example, in so-called yes-no or polar questions, responding yes or no might sound like an answer, but this is not always the case (Bull, 2003): So, for example, yes may be used to acknowledge a question, rather than give an answer. No may precede a disagreement with the wording of a question, rather than an answer to it. Furthermore, it is possible to answer a yes-no question without using either yes or no. To respond Only a little to the question Do you like coffee? is a perfectly reasonable answer, although it uses neither the words yes or no. 4.2. Non-replies Instances where the politician does not reply to the question are called
non-replies. 6 This term was coined in preference to the more pejorative term evasion (cf. Harris, 1991), because under certain circumstances not giving an answer can readily be justified. For example, if a question contains contentious or inaccurate presuppositions, these may be legitimately challenged by the politician; it would be specious to dismiss such challenges as just evasions. Indeed, in attempting to answer such a question, a politician may fall into the trap of seeming to accept presuppositions that are in fact seriously open to dispute. So, for example, Why do you think your government has been such a disastrous economic failure? presupposes that the government has been a disastrous economic failure. To answer the question is to accept the presupposition, which the politician may well wish to challenge. We have developed an equivocation typology, which distinguishes at least 35 ways of not replying to a question, divided into superordinate and subordinate categories. So, for example, attacks the questuion is a superordinate category, which can be distinguished into a number of subordinate categories, such as th question is based on a false premise, the question is objectionable, the question is factually inaccurate, and so forth (Bull, 2003).. 4.3 Face-threats in questions. Another important aspect of questions is the way in which they may constrain a politician s response by creating what are termed threats to face. These are responses which may cast the politician in a bad light, or constrain their future freedom of action. Our typology identifies 19 such threats to face, grouped into three main aspects of face: own individual face, the face of the party which the politician represents, and the face of significant others. Significant others may be political allies, whose the face the politician wishes to support, or political opponents, whose face the politician does not wish to support (Bull, Elliott, Palmer, & Walker, 1996).
7 Using this typology, questions can be classified into those which present a communicative conflict (CC questions) and non-conflictual (non-cc) questions (Bull et al., 1996): In CC questions, all the principal types of response are considered to present a threat to face. So, for example, in a polar/yes-no question, there are three principal forms of response: answer in the affirmative, answer in the negative, or equivocate. In a CC question, all three forms of response would be judged as potentially face-threatening. In non-conflictual questions, a response is considered possible which does not present a threat to face. We found that to CC questions, the modal response was to equivocate (64%); to non-cc questions, the modal response was to answer (60%) (Bull et al., 1996). 5. Parliamentary questions In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister s Questions (PMQs) are a weekly 30-minute parliamentary session, in which the Prime Minister responds to questions from both government and opposition Members of Parliament (MPs). Like a broadcast political interview, PMQs take the form of question-response sequences. Thus, the procedures for analyzing questions and responses in political interviews described above have been extended to the analysis of PMQs (Bull & Wells, 2012; Bull, 2013; Bates, Kerr, Byrne, & Stanley, 2012). However, there are importance differences between the two contexts, hence these procedures also require some modification. The principal difference is that the questions in PMQs are posed by opposing politicians, not by a professional political interviewer. As journalists, interviewers are expected to be impartial. For example, according to the editorial guidelines of the BBC, impartiality lies at the heart of the BBC's commitment to its audiences. In contrast,
8 politicians are restricted by no such constraints. They can be as partial and as unashamedly partisan as they choose. From this perspective, politicians use the question-response format of PMQs to perform many other discursive actions besides just asking and responding to questions: For example, MPs may ask more than one question, in the form of either several co-ordinating or independent interrogative clauses. They may preface their questions with one or more propositions, or with attacks on other politicians. They may also make jokes or asides. Thus, various kinds of discursive action are performed as part of the wider questioning turn, but do not necessarily constitute interrogatives as such (Harris, 2001). Hence, in our analyses of PMQs, it is not questions and responses which form the focus of the analysis, but questioning and response turns. 1. Questioning turns identify different techniques whereby face-threats may be posed in questions. 2. Response turns identify different techniques whereby the PM may counter face-threats in questioning turns. The results of both this analysis (Bull & Wells, 2012) and the earlier analysis by Harris (2001) show that the aggressive use of facework (what may be termed face aggravation) is a salient feature of PMQ discourse. 6 News broadcasts The final genre I wish to discuss is that of the television news, which is for many people the main - and sometimes the only - source of information about political events (Johnson-Cartee, 2005). We have devised two innovative methodological techniques for the analysis of news
editing (Bull, Negrine & Hawn, 2014): 9 1. Identify specific audio-visual clips, which are utilized by more than one news channel. Thereby, we can study how identical audio-visual content (or parts thereof) is interpreted differently across different news bulletins and different news channels. 2. Compare audio-visual recordings of debates in the House of Commons with Hansard, thereby we can assess the extent to which selective editing may have occurred in audio-visual recordings of parliament, as broadcast on the television news. 7 Conclusions All the techniques described above have been used in a series of empirical studies of political discourse conducted by the author and his colleagues: Each is focussed on a different genre of communication (political speeches, broadcast interviews, parliamentary questions, and television news bulletins). In every case, verbatim transcripts were made, but the analyses performed on the transcripts varied according to communication genre. Through detailed microanalyses of this kind, we have investigated: How political speakers interact with their audiences. How and why equivocation occurs in political interviews How the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition interact with one another in Prime Minister s Questions Whether news broadcasters give us the political facts, or are simply out to tell us a good story. Thuss, in conclusion, my proposla is that through these kind of detailed microanalyses, we can investigate macros issue of political rhetoric, political debate, and political dialogue. References Bates, S., Kerr, P., Byrne, C. and Stanley, L. (2014). Questions to the Prime Minister: A
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