Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing - Volume 44, Issue 3, 2022

“I won’t take that back”

A conversation analytical study of Members of Parliament’s responses to the President’s requests to withdraw statements

Discussions about what may and may not be said in the Dutch House of Representatives are more relevant than ever: both within the parliament and in the media. There is a heated debate going on about transgressive language use and the role of the President of the House when boundaries are crossed. This conversation-analytical study addresses sequences in which the President of the House requests Members of Parliament and Members of Government to take back their words. The analysis is based on thirteen such requests in debates that took place in the Plenary Hall over the past ten years. The analysis shows that the basic sequence involves the President of the House’s judgement of the inappropriate words (pre) that does not lead to withdrawing. This is followed by an explicit request, which is granted or not. Regularly, the judgment is enough to lead to a withdrawal or implicit or explicit refusal. Although requests to take back words are regularly granted, they are nearly always treated as problematic by the addressee. Politicians avoid positioning themselves as someone who is quick to change their mind and therefore problematise the request to take back words. The President of the House may resort to interactional sanctions other than those described in the Rules of Procedure.

The current study assesses whether the stylistic choices that Van Leeuwen & Van Haaften (2018) identified in the ‘Van Gelder’ case affect readers’ evaluations. This case revolves around summary proceedings that gymnast Yuri van Gelder brought against NOC*NSF, as NOC*NSF had removed him from the Olympic gymnastics final due to misbehaviour. Van Leeuwen & Van Haaften argue that Van Gelder’s lawyer’s stylistic choices minimise the severity of Van Gelder’s behaviour and paint him as a victim, while the NOC*NSF lawyer maximises the severity of the behaviour and frames Van Gelder as solely responsible for his situation.

209 participants read either an original or a manipulated fragment of the pleas and evaluated the severity of Van Gelder’s behaviour, his responsibility and their agreement with the judge’s decision. Results suggest that whether participants had read the original or the manipulated plea did not affect their evaluations. The content of the plea did matter, however, as participants who read the plea by the NOC*NSF lawyer were more negative about Van Gelder than those who had read Van Gelder’s lawyer’s plea. While the content of a text thus does affect readers’ evaluations, our stylistic manipulations may have been too subtle to make a difference.

In dit onderzoek laten we de argumentatieve functies zien van zelfverwijzing en zelfpromotie in de tweets van Nederlandstalige politici en experten in de beginfase van de covid-19-pandemie. Daartoe combineren we pragmatischdiscursieve analyse en inzichten uit argumentatietheorie. In de eerste plaats bespreken we verschillende manieren waarop sprekers hun ethos, dat wil zeggen hun geloofwaardigheid voor zover dat blijkt uit taalgebruik, op kunnen bouwen en argumentatief kunnen benutten. In de tweede plaats bekijken we hoe strategieën van zelfverwijzing en zelfpromotie kunnen bijdragen aan ethosopbouw en ethosgebruik. Ten slotte bekijken we hoe deze fenomenen interageren in tweets gepubliceerd door Nederlandstalige politici en experten in de eerste maanden van de pandemie. We laten zien dat de politici meer aan ethosopbouw doen dan de experten en meer collectieve zelfverwijzing gebruiken, vaak naar de regering of soms ook naar de volledige bevolking. De experten ondersteunen in hun tweets meer het ethos van anderen en gaan pas over tot ethosopbouw via verschillende zelfpromotiestrategieën wanneer hun ethos wordt aangevallen.