Evasion in Malaysian Parliamentary Question Time

Abstract

This study explores evasion employed by Malaysian ministers and deputy ministers during Question Time using Clayman’s Framework of Evasion (2001, 2012). While most evasion studies have focused on political interviews, particularly within western settings, this study examines evasion during Question Time in the Malaysian parliament. The study is content-analytic and uses parliamentary Hansards. Ministers and deputy ministers performed various overt and covert strategies of resistance by refusing to commit to an answer, attacking the questioners, justifying the agenda shifts to counter negative presuppositions and provide rationales, minimizing the divergence to downgrade the severity of a situation, and operating on the question by asserting agreements and talking about the current policy. Further, the questioners did not pursue overtly employed instances of evasion, indicating the influence of context on evasion. Finally, other strategies of evasion found in this study that were not found in Clayman (2001, 2012), such as jokes, could be further explored in future studies.