“Hypophora” and “question cascade” in Cantonese political discourse: the stance triangle and the use of rhetorical moves and utterance final particles

Abstract This paper looks into the specific pragmatic functions of Cantonese utterance final particles (UFPs) employed in a televised political debate, hosted by the Television Broadcasts Limited in 2016. The paper explores the most frequently used UFPs and discusses how they are being manipulated with two prominent questioning strategies, i.e., hypophora and question cascade, to help project negative stance in this highly institutionalized discourse genre. With the aid of the theoretical framework of ‘stance triangle’, I investigate how various stance-taking activities are navigated through the employment of two questioning strategies as well as UFPs to establish dis-alignment among the electoral candidates. The findings show that the most frequently used UFPs are le1 and aa3: these two UFPs are relatively neutral in question design in daily conversation and are used in all types of question such as polar questions, alternative questions, and content questions. The findings demonstrate that these particles serve as a mitigator and softener with the strategic use of hypophora and question cascade. This paper also proposes a revised stance triangle that helps understand how the negative stances are navigated in questioning strategies and realize the stance objects in an explicit manner. Discovering the true stance objects reveals that the question designs are usually oriented to the “remote audiences,”i.e. the voters.