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Article published In: Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 9:2 (2018) ► pp.175–207

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Hedging in political interviewing

When Obama meets the press

 | University of Rome Tor Vergata
Published online: 28 June 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.15030.pon
Abstract
This study presents an analysis of hedging strategies employed by the former president of the United States, Barack Obama, in political interviewing. Using a discourse-analytic procedure, the study investigates a corpus of 22 press interviews and verifies the presence of hedging-related discursive strategies in the President’s responses. It also identifies four specific interrelated discourse moves: ‘Reformulating the interviewer’s question’, ‘Expanding the scope of the original question sequence’, ‘Switching the time frame of the question context’, ‘Recasting the question reference from specific to general terms’. It is suggested that President Obama manages to avoid explicit responses to questions about controversial issues through hedging strategies, which shift the focus of the interviewer’s question to different interrogative formats, time frames and reference perspectives.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Aim
  • 3.Data
  • 4.Analytic framework
  • 5.Example of hedging in the Obama press interviews
  • 6.Analysis
    • 6.1Discourse strategies
      • Strategy of indetermination
      • Strategy of camouflage
      • Strategy of subjectivization
      • Strategy of depersonalization
      • Hesitation strategies
      • Evasion strategies
    • 6.2A cautious response style
      • Reformulating the interviewer’s question
      • Expanding the scope of the original question sequence
      • Switching the time frame of the question context
        • Time frame switch to future
        • Time frame switch to past
      • Recasting the question reference from specific to general terms
    • 6.3Further findings
  • 7.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
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