{"title":"‘I just need a yes or no’: Managing resistant responses in U.S. Senate hearings","authors":"Marissa Caldwell, Joshua Raclaw","doi":"10.1177/14614456231159026","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Using conversation analysis, this article examines how questioners manage resistant responses in the context of U.S. Senate hearings. In particular, we examine how questioning Senators use explicit metacommentary – a turn constructional practice in which speakers offer ‘on-record’ comments on the manner in which a prior turn was formulated – to manage a recipient’s resistant responses to polar questions. Within these contexts, metacommentary becomes a resource for highlighting the preference organization of the original question and challenging the adequacy of the recipient’s response. The analysis shows how metacommentary not only serves to guide a question recipient toward producing an adequate response, but additionally works to register the questioning Senator’s stance toward the inadequacy of the response while highlighting this inadequacy for both the co-present audience and viewers of these publicly televised hearings.","PeriodicalId":47598,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"618 - 640"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Discourse Studies","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456231159026","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Using conversation analysis, this article examines how questioners manage resistant responses in the context of U.S. Senate hearings. In particular, we examine how questioning Senators use explicit metacommentary – a turn constructional practice in which speakers offer ‘on-record’ comments on the manner in which a prior turn was formulated – to manage a recipient’s resistant responses to polar questions. Within these contexts, metacommentary becomes a resource for highlighting the preference organization of the original question and challenging the adequacy of the recipient’s response. The analysis shows how metacommentary not only serves to guide a question recipient toward producing an adequate response, but additionally works to register the questioning Senator’s stance toward the inadequacy of the response while highlighting this inadequacy for both the co-present audience and viewers of these publicly televised hearings.
期刊介绍:
Discourse Studies is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal for the study of text and talk. Publishing outstanding work on the structures and strategies of written and spoken discourse, special attention is given to cross-disciplinary studies of text and talk in linguistics, anthropology, ethnomethodology, cognitive and social psychology, communication studies and law.