About the Book
Rethinking Sinclair and Coulthard’s sequentiality-based notion of the follow-up, this volume explores its forms and communicative functions in traditional and contemporary modes of communication (parliamentary sessions, interviews, debates, speeches, op-eds, discussion forums and Twitter) wherein political actors address challenges to their political agenda and to their political face. In so doing, the volume achieves two major advances. First, its contributions expand the understanding of follow-ups beyond the traditional focus on structural sequentiality, considering communicative function as a defining feature of a follow-up. Second, it broadens the understanding of what constitutes political discourse, as not being limited to a single discourse, but also being able to span multiple discourses of different forms and speech events over time.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction (by Berlin, Lawrence N.); 2. Part I. Approaching follow-ups; 3. Sequentiality and follow-ups (by Mey, Jacob L.); 4. Follow-ups as speech acts in mediated political discourse (by Oishi, Etsuko); 5. Monologic follow-ups in political macro-discourse: The US anti-terrorist discourse as a case in point (by Cap, Piotr); 6. Part II. Follow-ups across genres; 7. Pragmatic strategies for follow-ups in US political debates (by Berlin, Lawrence N.); 8. Follow-ups and dialogue in online discussions on French politics: From Internet forums to social TV (by Atifi, Hassan); 9. Online follow-ups as evaluative reactions to two visits of the Argentinian president to the United States (by Granato, Luisa); 10. Part III. The perlocutionary potential of follow-ups as objects of talk; 11. Irony in and through follow-ups: Talk and meta-talk in online commenting in the Israeli context (by Weizman, Elda); 12. Follow-ups as multifunctional questioning and answering strategies in Prime Minister's Questions (by Ilie, Cornelia); 13. If I am elected President ...: Other-quotations in French presidential debates (by Johansson, Marjut); 14. 'When you came into office you said that your government would be different': Forms and functions of quotations in mediated political discourse (by Fetzer, Anita); 15. Subject index
Review :
The contributions of this volume present in-depth studies of a so-far under-researched discursive activity (follow-ups) in political discourse. Its clear focus and the systematic coverage of all relevant theoretical and empirical aspects of the topic provide readers with new insights and original research approaches. Written in a clear and accessible style, the contributions of this volume will be of interest for students and researchers from various fields like (applied) linguistics, communication and media studies, as well as political science.
In this excellent edited volume, the focus of all the chapters is on follow-ups in political discourse. In a follow-up, a prior communicative act may subsequently be accepted, challenged, or otherwise negotiated between the interactants. In a political election, for example, follow-ups may be needed to rebut negative campaigning by opposing politicians. In a broadcast interview, the interviewer may need to challenge a politician’s evasive responses through appropriate follow-ups. In computer-mediated discussions, a contributor has no way of knowing how well a message is received without appropriate follow-ups from other contributors. Even in the monologic context of a political speech, a speaker may use follow-ups, for example, by quoting either from their own speeches or from those of others. In this edited volume, the forms and functions of follow-ups are highlighted through sophisticated and detailed linguistic analyses, based on a wide range of both spoken and written genres of political communication. Thereby, these contributions serve to identify and establish a new, distinctive and exciting area of political discourse research.
This volume, informative and insightful, constitutes an enlightening contribution to the dynamics of critical political discourse analysis and followups in particular. It is of great value for those with a keen interest in how to better understand and deal with follow-ups across genres. This volume also confirms that follow-ups are a critical and complex component of human interaction. Indeed, this book is also thought-provoking. On reading it, one may reflect, among other things, that it might be worth associating the discussion of followups in media genres with such issues as face, (im)politeness, identity, and rapport management. And this may produce some interesting findings and contribute to a deeper understanding of follow-ups, mechanisms of human interaction across genres and human beings alike.
This volume coherently brings together a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches including diverse contexts: not only different genres (from discussion forums to Prime Minister’s questions) but also different countries and thus discourse in various languages or varieties (Argentina, France, Israel, UK, and US). Furthermore, this volume’s contributions range from spoken communication, as in presidential debates or political interviews, to CMC, as in online discussion forums or comment sections of online newspapers, and therefore exemplify the potential future research in the field of Political Discourse.
