'So my position is…': So-prefaced answers and epistemic authority in British news interviews

• Ian Hutchby ^[1]
  1. [1] University of York

     University of York

     Reino Unido

     
• Localización: Journal of language and politics, ISSN 1569-2159, Vol. 19, Nº. 4, 2020
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article examines the interactional functions of the so-prefaced answer, when used by interviewees in news and other political discussion broadcasts. Using the methods of conversation analysis, based on a data corpus of recent broadcasts from British mainstream television, the analysis shows that the so-preface functions in a cluster of related ways within the question-answer discourse structure of the political news interview. Specifically, it is used to reset or reframe the prior question from a standpoint of epistemic authority, enabling the interviewee to answer on their terms rather than the interviewer’s.