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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 19:4 (2020) ► pp.563–582

“So my position is…”

So-prefaced answers and epistemic authority in British news interviews

ORCID logo | University of York

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.

Keywords: conversation analysis, epistemics, evasion, news interviews, so-preface, turn-initial particles
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pragmatics of news interviews
  • 3.“So” as a turn-initial particle
  • 4.Data
  • 5.So-prefacing in context
  • 6.Explanatory answers and epistemic privilege
  • 7.Agenda resets and position-avowals
  • 8.Evasive action
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 24 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19089.hut
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