Evasiveness in Greek Political Interviews: A Case Study in Conversation Analysis

Abstract

This paper identifies the conversational practices of evasiveness in Greek political interviews and debates through Conversation Analysis (CA) methodology. The present study is accomplished according to Clayman and Heritage's proposed model of questioning and answering dimensions in American and British news interviews. The analysis focuses on the sequential organisation of the pre-allocation type of interviews exploring how interviewers structure their questions while focusing on the practices that interviewees deploy to display resistance towards the addressed questions. By presenting transcripts from three interviews and two political debates, it is argued that Greek IEs show resistance in answering by providing partial or incomplete responses or by performing a different action than the addressed through specific turn prefaces, i.e., look-, listen-, first of all- turn beginning components and the practices of rhetorical questions and the incorporation of IR’s wording. According to findings, similar practices of resistance can be found in both cross-cultural contexts with some differentiations and novel elements in the Greek corpus as well as Greek IRs’ multi-unit style of questioning which seems to favour politicians’ evasiveness.