(Im)politeness during Prime Minister's Questions in the U.K. Parliament

Murphy, James

Abstract

Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) is a weekly, half-hour long session in the British House of Commons, which gives backbench Members of Parliament (MPs) and the Leader of the Opposition (LO) the opportunity to ask the Prime Minister (PM) questions on any topic relating to the government's policies and actions. The discourse at PMQs is often described as adversarial (see Bull & Wells 2011) and in this paper I will show how the notion of impoliteness can be applied to both the questions and the answers which make up the session. Through the detailed analysis of six sessions of PMQs I will also demonstrate that PMQs is also a source of polite linguistic behaviour of the sort described in Brown & Levinson's (1987) politeness theory. Comparisons between Gordon Brown's and David Cameron's speech styles will also be drawn. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 6, 2019
• Journal: Pragmatics and Society
• Print ISSN: 1878-9714
• Electronic ISSN: 1878-9722
• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 76-104
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.5.1.04mur
• Keywords: Prime Ministers questions, impoliteness, community of practice, face-threatening acts, parliamentary discourse, mitigation, politeness
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/825782
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ps.5.1.04mur
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is a post-print version of the article Murphy, J. (2014) (Im)politeness during Prime Minister’s Questions in the U.K. Parliament. Pragmatics and Society, 5 (1). pp. 76-104. ISSN 1878-9714 published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ps.5.1.04mur. The publisher should be contacted for permission to re-use or reprint the material in any form.