Leon2004
| Leon2004 | |
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Leon2004 |
| Author(s) | Jacqueline Léon |
| Title | Preference and "Bias" in the Format of French News Interviews: The Semantic Analysis of Question–Answer Pairs in Conversation |
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| Tag(s) | EMCA, news interviews, question-answer pairs, yes-no questions, preference, French |
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| Year | 2004 |
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| Journal | Journal of Pragmatics |
| Volume | 36 |
| Number | 10 |
| Pages | 1885–1920 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.pragma.2004.01.004 |
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Abstract
This paper aims to explain questioning in French news interviews by studying the semantic structure of question–answer pairs. To tackle this issue, we propose to confront the semantic descriptions of question–answer pairs by linguists with Sacks’ notion of preference for agreement. We will show that the design of questions and answers towards preference is constrained by linguistic structures. We will see that the design of question–answers by the participants of news interviews systematically flouts semantic predictions as well as preference for agreement. Particular attention will be paid to yes–no questions and to the strategies elaborated by interviewees to answer biased questions without violating the agreement principle. We conclude with a discussion of the impact of the bias built up by biased questions and answers on the format of French news interviews. The corpus is made up of French broadcast interviews of public personalities, mostly political, interviewed by journalists.
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