Perspectivation in the Romanian parliamentary discourse

The paper examines several perspectivation techniques based on a split of the speaker’s voice: quotation, rhetorical question and irony. The data are provided by the debate of the proposal of suspending the President from office in the Romanian Parliament (April 19, 2007). The analytical framework combines elements from different sources: M. Bakhtin’s dialogism, E. Goffman’s dramaturgic theory of human interaction, as well as more recent theories on perspectivation (Graumann and Kallmeyer 2002a) and stancetaking (Englebretson 2007) in discourse. The data analysis brings forward the fact that parliamentary speeches use voice staging as a complex strategy based on a specific interplay between subjectivity (evaluation, positioning) and intersubjectivity (alignment). The aim of this strategy is to challenge the pretended authority of the adversaries, as well as to provide the discourse with persuasive efficiency.