‘When you came into office you said that your government would be different’

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to analyse the forms and communicative functions of quotations as follow-ups in mediated political discourse where they are used strategically to achieve the following goals: (1) intensify the force of an argument, (2) demonstrate ideological coherence or non-coherence, (3) construct, reconstruct and deconstruct the credibility of self and others, and (4) express alignment and disalignment. On a more global level, quotation contribute to the construal of interdiscursitivity by beckoning the addressees out of the on-going discourse into a more or less specified prior discourse and back again, thus following-up on what has been mentioned before. In interviews, they are used to challenge the argumentative coherence and credibility of a politician (and her/his party). In British Prime Minister’s Questions and in speeches, they are used to provide relevant background information against which the deconstruction of the opponent’s ideological coherence and the reconstruction of ideological coherence of self are based.

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