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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 24:4 (2025) ► pp.650–674

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Equivocation in media communication

An analysis of Adel Al-Jubeir’s interviews as a case study

ORCiD logo with link | Majmaah University
Published online: 27 August 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.24009.alr
Abstract
This paper examines equivocation in Arabic and global interviews using interviews with Saudi politician Adel Al-Jubeir as a case study. The study has three main objectives: to assess the applicability of existing frameworks for coding responses in Arabic interviews, to explore the potential discrepancy in question design between Arabic and global interviews and its potential impact on equivocation, and to identify the most frequently recurring responses in these interviews. Rasiah, Parameswary. 2010. “A framework for the systematic analysis of evasion in parliamentary discourse”. Journal of Pragmatics 42(3):664–680. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar framework is employed to analyse equivocation and coding responses. The dataset includes 2 hours and 45 minutes of Arabic interviews and an equal duration of global interviews. The findings indicate the effectiveness of the proposed frameworks in coding responses in Arabic interviews. Likewise, they show that Arabic interviewers adopt a less adversarial questioning style compared to their global counterparts, and that aggressive questioning contributes to higher equivocation rates. Furthermore, the coded responses vary between the two interview settings.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Sample
    • 2.2Procedure
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (26)
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