“It’s the National Assembly here, Madam!”: Managing discursive conflicts through forms of address in interruptions and reactions in Finnish, French, and German parliamentary debates

Parliamentary debates are adversarial in nature (). This paper focuses on interruptions, which have been described as a means by which to disturb the speech of an authorised speaker (), and their subsequent reactions. Herein, we aim to examine the link between the use of address forms and the conflictual nature of parliamentary debates. Drawing on cross-cultural pragmatics, our study compares data from the Finnish Eduskunta, the French Assemblée nationale, and the German Bundestag. Cross-cultural differences were found in the frequency of address forms (31% in German, 20% in French, and 10% in Finnish), although pronominal and verbal address forms were more frequent than nominal forms of address (NFAs). Beyond the default V forms, T forms challenging institutional norms were also found. Pragmatically, NFAs served as markers of “courteous attacks” (), resulting in a contrast between the courteous forms used and the conflictual nature of the exchange. Overall, address forms were important means for identifying the person(s) targeted by confrontational interruptions and their reactions to them.

Keywords: interruptions, address forms, parliamentary debates, political discourse, pragmatics

Article outline

1.Introduction
2.Interruptions and reactions to interruptions in Finnish, French, and German parliamentary debates
3.Address forms
- 3.1Address systems in Finnish, French, and German
- 3.2Previous studies on address forms in parliamentary debates and research questions
4.Methodology
- 4.1Stenographic practices and norms of addressing
- 4.2Data and methods
5.Results and discussion: Address forms in Finnish, French, and German parliamentary debates
- 5.1T/V forms
  - 5.1.1V forms
  - 5.1.2T forms
- 5.2Nominal forms of address (NFAs)
  - 5.2.1Gendered titles + surnames
  - 5.2.2Institutional and role-related NFAs
  - 5.2.3Collegial NFAs
  - 5.2.4Other NFAs
6.Conclusions
Note
Acknowledgements
References

References (68)

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