“You’re Important, Jeremy, but Not That Important”: Personalised Responses and Equivocation in Political Interviews

Previous Research – Questions

In democratic nations, interviews are typically conducted to obtain information from politicians on their policies or the actions of their party, be it in government or in opposition. One purpose of research on political interviews has been to assess the extent to which politicians provide direct answers to the questions they are asked (e.g., Bull, 1994; Harris, 1991). However, identifying what constitutes a reply goes hand in hand with what is identifiable as a question. That process, however, is somewhat less straightforward than it seems. Consequently, to better facilitate the quantitative analysis of interviews, Bull (1994) proposed a method to clarify identification of both questions and replies. Questions typically take an interrogative form (e.g., “Did you authorise that?”), but not always. Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985) refer to questions that are declarative in form, which are often voiced with rising intonation at the end of the statement (e.g., “You authorised that?”). Indeed, a request for information may not only be, syntactically, of non-interrogative form but even contain no verb. For example, in a 2017 interview of PM Theresa May, Jeremy Paxman was asking about net migration to the UK:

Clearly, the second turn of Paxman here is a request for information, but contains no verb; these are referred to as moodless questions (Jucker, 1986). Harris (1991) suggested that political interviews include substantial numbers of questions that are non-interrogative in form, and that these are put forward by the interviewer for the politician to express agreement or disagreement.

Questions in interrogative syntax fit one of three distinguishable forms based on the type of expected reply (Quirk et al., 1985). Those seeking affirmation or negation are defined as yes-no (or polar) questions (e.g., “Will there be tax increases?”). Those seeking a reply from an open range are identified as wh-questions; these feature an interrogative word, namely, how (the only one not to begin with wh), who, why, when, which, or what (e.g., “What does that mean?”) [Bull (1994) added where to this list]. Those which present two or more alternatives are referred to as alternative (or disjunctive) questions (e.g., “Was that the fault of the Chancellor, or are you to blame?”).

In addition to the three interrogative types (yes-no, alternative, and wh-questions) and the two non-interrogative (declarative and moodless), Bull (1994) added a third non-interrogative type: indirect. Bull (2009, p. 217) defines indirect questions as “a means of asking questions through reporting that of another”. He provided the following example (in which the question’s force is not expressed directly, but is expressed via a subordinate clause): “Many people have asked the question why did you go to war in Iraq”. Bull’s (1994) analysis identified over 1,000 questions from 33 political interviews, and all were identifiable as one of these six question types.

Previous Research – Replies and Evasion

As questions are identifiable as a request for information, a reply is a response which provides the requested information. In terms of political interviews, assessment of replies is interesting in that it addresses the unflattering view which prevails in the public perception: that politicians, in general, are evasive (Harris, 1991). Harris’s study was conducted to evaluate the extent to which politicians do give straight answers to questions. From 17 political interviews conducted between 1984 and 1987, mostly with leading UK politicians, Harris found that direct answers were provided to just over 39% of the questions asked. Bull’s (1994) clarification of questions and replies in political interviews proposed three types of response to interviewers’ questions: Replies provide, explicitly, the information requested; Non-replies are a failure to provide the information; Intermediate replies sit midway on a continuum between replies and non-replies. Intermediate replies include instances where the politician’s answer is not stated explicitly but is implied, instances where the politician gives only a partial answer, and instances where an assessment of whether a reply was forthcoming cannot be made because the politician was interrupted. Bull’s analysis of 33 interviews with leading UK politicians conducted between 1987 and 1992 found that 45.6% of questions received an explicit reply. Noticeably, this figure, termed reply rate, is comparable to the figure of 39.3% which Harris (1991) reported for direct answers from an entirely different set of interviews. More up-to-date studies, although of only a small set of interviews (Bull, 2016, 2017), are indicative of even lower reply rates by recent party leaders. All of the above studies are consistent in showing that leading UK politicians tend not to give full replies to the majority of interviewers’ questions.

Of course, studies of equivocation in interviews and press conferences extend beyond UK politics. Researchers have examined the practices of politicians worldwide, including, the United States (e.g., Clayman, 2001; Clementson & Eveland, 2016), Malaysia (Nur Zahraa & Siti Rohana, 2016), Montenegro (Vuković, 2013), Taiwan (Huang, 2009), and Turkey (Çakir, Kökpinar Kaya, & Kara, 2016). Such studies, however, either did not set out to evaluate reply rates or, where statistics are reported, they are not always suitable for comparison with the foregoing UK studies. A clearer comparison can be made with a study of Japanese politicians (Feldman, Kinoshita, & Bull, 2015), where, from a series of interviews conducted in 2012 and 2013, national politicians gave direct replies to 41.4% of questions. This figure is noticeably similar to the reply rates reported for UK politicians in the 1980s and 1990s (Bull, 1994; Harris, 1991).

Previous Research – Personalisation

The study of personalisation in politics has meant different things to different researchers. For example, Thornborrow and Montgomery (2010) utilise the term to relate to subjective experiences of interviewees. Leone (2013, p. 133) defines it as “the phenomenon of leaders’ profiles eclipsing those of their respective parties”. Here, the term is used for discourse directed at a person present, with the intention of having personal relevance to that individual. This form of personalisation in political communication has been investigated in areas beyond the broadcast interview. For example, in Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) – the UK Parliament’s highest profile event – Waddle, Bull, and Böhnke (2019) investigated personalisation in the question-response exchanges between the leaders. Their evaluation of what are, effectively, personal attacks showed that, of the five PMs between 1979 and 2016, David Cameron was the most personally aggressive. In one period of Cameron’s premiership (the ten PMQs sessions before the 2015 General Election), over 60% of his responses to Leader of the Opposition (LO) Ed Miliband contained a personal attack. Whilst acknowledging the differences between the two modes of political communication, particularly the rivalrous situation which exists between the leaders, Waddle et al. proposed that, similar to political interviews, a potential function of personalisation in PMQs is equivocation.

An extensive literature search shows that evaluations of this form of personalisation have not been the primary focus of political interview research. However, close scrutiny of research into evasion does yield some findings. These tend to be from studies utilising the aforementioned typology of equivocation (Bull, 2003; Bull & Mayer 1993). The fifth category from that typology (attacks the interviewer) is an equivocal response to a question in the form of critical personalisation directed at the interviewer. In Bull and Mayer’s analysis of 15 interviews with three leading politicians, only Margaret Thatcher resorted to personal criticism; 13% of her equivocal responses contained a personal attack on the interviewer.

Simon-Vandenbergen (2008) examined responses of extremist politicians – from the Belgian right wing party Vlaams Belangⁱ – as a comparison to mainstream political discourse. It was reported that the far right politicians resorted to responses which were highly personal. Simon-Vandenbergen suggested that, beyond challenging an interviewer’s neutrality, responding with such personalisation was characteristic of extremist discourse.

Subsequent research, conducted by Mehdipour and Nabifar (2011), included an analysis of evasive techniques over a series of 20 interviews held between 2001 and 2010. They used the typology of equivocation discussed above (Bull, 2003; Bull & Mayer, 1993) to evaluate the responses of two high profile figures in US politics: Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. They reported a total of 362 questions asked, 146 of which received an equivocal response. Only one of these equivocal responses – given by Rice – was identified as an attack on the interviewer.

Çakir et al.’s (2016) analysis covered eight interviews of Turkish politicians in 2011. They reported that two of the eight politicians used a personal attack on the interviewer as an equivocal strategy. Overall, just over 4% of the equivocal responses were identified as that form of personalisation. However, it is difficult to contrast those findings with the foregoing UK studies because, for the Turkish study, only 68 evasive responses are reported across 1,182 minutes of interview time. Interestingly, Çakir et al. identified three additional evasive strategies, one of which – using humour – matches the personalisation category blandishments proposed by Waddle and Bull (2016). Çakir et al. show PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to be a frequent user of humour in lieu of a direct answer. Waddle and Bull noted such practices by senior Conservative politician Boris Johnson. For example, when questioned in 2011 by Jeremy Paxman about aspiring to be party leader, he bantered with the interviewer that he (Paxman) might want the job:

It is apparent that such personalised rhetoric can be a feature of responses to interviewers’ questions. To date, however, personalisation has not been the specific focus of research into evasiveness by politicians. This study aims to address that shortfall.

The Current Study

The focus herein was an analysis of interviews with UK party leaders from two recent general election campaigns. It is apparent from the foregoing reviews, that personalised equivocation is more diverse than the critical comments used by Thatcher, as reported by Bull and Mayer (1993). A detailed analysis of the responses of recent politicians would provide data to address a number of key areas: the range of personalisation in mainstream political discourse, the extent to which it forms an equivocal response (including measuring its effectiveness as an evasive tactic), and the recent party leaders who are inclined to use it. This study is not only an investigation into this specific form of dialogue, but also an overdue up-to-date assessment of how leading politicians respond to interviewers’ questions.ⁱⁱ

Analysis included an assessment of interviewers’ questions and politicians’ responses in accordance with the methods of Bull (1994).ⁱⁱⁱ The politicians’ responses were further assessed for personalised language using the categories of personalisation proposed by Waddle and Bull (2016). The use of that categorisation system – with its seven types of personalised replies – means that the scope of personalisation analysis is now broader than the single attacks the interviewer category characterised in responses by Thatcher in the 1980s. Therefore, it was predicted that personalised equivocation levels would be higher in these recent interviews. For the same reason, there was an expectation that more politicians would be observed using personalisation as an equivocal response than had previously. It was also predicted, as suggested by recent studies of single interviews (Bull, 2016, 2017), that the overall reply rate of current politicians would be lower than those of their predecessors.

Interview Participants

The politicians who featured in the analysed interviews were all leaders of UK political parties at that time. In 2015 they were: David Cameron (Conservative PM), Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats), Nigel Farage (United Kingdom Independence Party [UKIP]), and Ed Miliband (Labour). In 2017 they were: Jeremy Corbyn (Labour), Tim Farron (Liberal Democrats), Theresa May (Conservative PM), and Paul Nuttall (UKIP). The interviewers were Evan Davis (BBC), Andrew Marr (BBC), Andrew Neil (BBC), Jeremy Paxman (Channel 4/Sky News), and Robert Peston (ITV). Details of each interview are displayed in Table 1.

Apparatus

Videos of the interviews were accessible from either bbc.co.uk or youtube.com. Online searches (detailed below) led to the following websites for interview transcripts: bbc.co.uk, facebook.com, news-watch.co.uk, politicshome.com, skygroup.sky, and spectator.co.uk. Online transcripts could not be located for three interviews; these were transcribed by the first author. [See Appendix for transcript web page details.]

Procedure

General election campaigns were selected as the basis of the analysed interviews because, at such times, broadcasters typically include all major party leaders. Also, particularly for leaders of the largest parties, airtime tends to be similar. General elections in the UK can be as much as five years apart, but the two most recent elections^iv were separated by just over two years: 7 May 2015 and 8 June 2017. Accordingly, it was decided to include interviews from both the 2017 and the 2015 election campaigns to provide a larger sample of relatively recent material. The date of the 2015 General Election was set by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which schedules general elections every five years (House of Commons Library, 2017). Official campaigning began on 30 March 2015. On 18 April 2017, the PM announced her intention to call an early election. In accordance with the Act, agreement was required by two-thirds of the House of Commons; the motion was passed the following day. Internet searches were conducted for videos of complete interviews between the above dates (30 March - 7 May 2015 and 18 April - 8 June 2017). Searches were also conducted for online interview transcriptions; where these were not available, they were transcribed by the first author. Using the videos and the transcripts, the interviews were analysed for personalisation and reply rate separately. Both analyses (detailed below) were conducted in full by the first author. In each case, initial analysis was based on the transcripts. To facilitate accuracy, anything even vaguely ambiguous from the transcript alone was checked using the videos.

Personalisation

Across all 26 interviews (11 in 2015 and 15 in 2017), there were 544 equivocal responses by the politicians. 7% of these responses included personalised comments aimed at the interviewer. Waddle and Bull (2016) identified seven types of personalisation used by politicians in interviews. Five of these were evident from the current corpus. These findings show highly personalised responses to be, not only characteristic of extremist discourse (Simon-Vandenbergen, 2008), but an occasional tactic of mainstream politicians. The most common – almost 45% – were comments about the interviewers’ conduct. Over a quarter were of the more genial variety – labelled blandishments. Just short of a quarter were comments making reference to the interviewers’ competence. There was only one example of a politician levelling an accusation of personal bias at the interviewer. There was also only a single example of a personalised response fitting the category interviewer history.

Findings support Waddle and Bull’s (2016) personalisation typology in that all personalised equivocal responses were identifiable as one of the seven types therein. Notably absent from these interviews were responses befitting the category interviewer frame of mind. This specific form of personalisation was a reported feature of responses by Labour politician Peter Mandelson. One such case is highlighted in the Introduction above. Another occurred during an interview with the BBC’s Tim Willcox in 2010, when Mandelson repeated the phrase “calm down” four times. A further instance of this highly personal response was evident during a 2010 press conference, where Mandelson and other leading Labour politicians were being questioned by journalists, including Sky’s Adam Boulton. On that occasion, Mandelson repeatedly told Boulton to calm down. The obvious conclusion from these observations is that this form of response is not widely used, but is an occasional tactic of Mandelson’s, and one which he uses somewhat successfully to achieve greater control of the conversation.

For the individual politicians in this study, UKIP leader Nigel Farage directed the largest proportion of personal comments at the interviewers. Over 17% of his equivocal responses contained personalisation. Interestingly, Farage’s successor as UKIP leader, Paul Nuttall, directed no personal comments at the interviewers during his equivocal responses. Comparing these figures to previous findings (Bull, 2003; Bull & Mayer, 1993), only Farage was a more frequent user of personalisation than former PM Margaret Thatcher, whose reported rate of personalised equivocation was 13%. It is important to note that previous research did not encompass as broad a range of personalisation as this study, chiefly, the inclusion of more genial tactics (labelled blandishments). However, only one of Farage’s personalisations was identified thus, so, even without blandishments, the former UKIP leader’s personalisation was still slightly higher than Thatcher’s.

As only one of the political leaders in this study used personalised equivocation at a level above that of former PM Thatcher, this does not represent support for the prediction of higher levels by the recent politicians. However, all but one of the eight politicians here occasionally resorted to personal comments in lieu of a direct reply; previous research (Bull, 2003; Bull & Mayer, 1993) reported personalisation tactics by only one of three leaders analysed. So, as expected, more politicians were observed using personalised equivocal responses. This may be indicative of an increased likelihood for politicians to be personal in their responses. However, as the current method is broader in scope and the videos and transcripts of the interviews from the 1980s and 1990s were not at our disposal, this could not be confirmed.

A closer look at one of the politicians here highlights a notable distinction. At just over 5% of his equivocal responses containing personal comments, former PM David Cameron was one of the lowest users of personalisation across these interviews. In contrast, an entirely different picture emerged from an analysis in a parliamentary setting (Waddle et al., 2019). When responding to questions from his political opponent, his personal aggression then was highest of the five PMs analysed. In one period of ten consecutive sessions of PMQs, almost 62% of his responses contained a personal attack on the LO. The salience of this sharp difference in one politician’s behaviour across two distinct modes of political communication is perhaps more noteworthy with consideration of the timings. The PMQs sessions assessed by Waddle et al., and Cameron’s interviews analysed here, both took place between January and April 2015. Clearly, the then PM had a tendency to respond with personal antagonism towards a political opponent; the same tendency was not a feature of his behaviour towards political interviewers.

Reply Rate

Reply rate – defined as the percentage of responses which explicitly provide the information as requested in the interviewers’ questions – was also assessed. For the 2015 interviews this was 43%, for 2017 it was 34%, giving an overall reply rate across all 26 interviews of almost 38%. Research on interviews from the 1980s and 1990s found rates of just over 39% (Harris, 1991) and close to 46% (Bull, 1994). Although recent analyses of individual interviews have hinted at lower reply rates by current leading politicians (Bull, 2016, 2017), the more comprehensive analysis here suggests an overall similarity with their predecessors.

Individually, a broader range of reply rates was apparent across the eight political leaders. Amongst the lowest, and supportive of recent findings by Bull (2016, 2017), were the leaders of the two main political parties in 2017: LO Corbyn at just below 30%, and PM May just short of 32%. Lowest of all across these interviews was Farron, at below 29%. Highest in their reply rates were the UKIP pair, Farage and Nuttall. Their identical reply rate figures (49.45%) showed they gave direct replies to almost half of the questions. Their apparent similarity in this aspect of interview conduct stands in stark contrast to their levels of personalisation, where, in that analysis, they were polar opposites.

Limitations

The findings herein are from two distinct periods – the general election campaigns of 2015 and 2017. Hence, it is necessary to acknowledge the importance of contemporary political context, which was not accounted for here. Contextual influences may feature in the levels of personalisation or reply rate and, though only two years apart, the effects of these influences on the nature of the discourse are likely to vary. Indeed, the same will be true when comparing with interviews from the past. A further connected limitation relates to action orientation. Utterances, including questions and responses, should not be treated in isolation; rather, according to the conversation analysis (CA) approach, they may be understood as forms of action relevant to their specific context and oriented towards certain goals (Drew & Heritage, 1992). However, we believe the findings from this study could be used in future research to address these limitations by investigating action-orientation and the role of context in broadcast political interviews.

Future research may also consider whether there are features of questions (e.g., the presence of personalisation directed at the politician) which are more likely to be met with a response which targets the interviewer. A future study might also investigate the role of question topic in relation to personalisation. A similar analysis was conducted by Waddle and Bull (2019) on the question-response sequences in PMQs, showing that domestic policy exchanges, compared to foreign policy, were significantly higher in personal antagonism between the leaders. Such a study would show if question topic plays a similar role in exchanges between interviewer and politician.

Conclusions

The basis of this study was an investigation into personalised rhetoric in equivocal responses by politicians. Featured interviews were with leaders of four UK political parties (Labour, Liberal Democrats, Conservative, and UKIP). This allowed an assessment across the mainstream political spectrum. Interviews were held during two general election campaigns (2015 and 2017) – the recency of these would facilitate an up-to-date analysis, and allow a comparison with findings from the study of interviews from around a generation ago. The method of analysis also provided an opportunity to make comparisons in reply rate – the extent to which politicians give explicit answers to interviewers’ questions. Overall, the reply rate was 38%, not dissimilar to the overall rates reported for politicians from the 1980s and 1990s (Bull, 1994; Harris, 1991).

In terms of personalisation, results here were supportive of the typology devised by Waddle and Bull (2016). All equivocal responses directed personally at the interviewer were identifiable in accordance with the typology. Five of their seven categories were identified in this corpus. Most were of the critical variety; though over a quarter were good-natured. The type of personalisation seemingly a tactic of former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson – repeatedly telling the interviewer to calm down – did not feature here. Overall, 7% of equivocal responses (occasions when a full reply was not forthcoming) contained personalisation. The politician highest in personalised rhetoric here was Nigel Farage, with over 17% of his equivocal replies identified thus. However, his successor as UKIP leader, Paul Nuttall, made no such responses. The interpretation from these findings is that their position on the political spectrum is not a factor, suggesting it is more a matter of personal style. Also on an individual level, another finding of interest related to former PM David Cameron. A relative frequent user of personal attacks on opponents at PMQs (Waddle et al., 2019), he did not exhibit a similar tendency in these interviews.

The reported effectiveness of personalisation (Bull & Mayer, 1993) – the strong likelihood of it diverting the interviewer from repeating a question that has gone unanswered – was supported by the results of this study. Bull and Mayer also reported that PM Margaret Thatcher was the politician inclined to direct personal responses at the interviewer. Results for the eight party leaders here showed only Farage to have a greater inclination for personalised equivocation than Thatcher. This finding, coupled with the now broader scope of identifying personalisation, is not evidence of increased levels by recent politicians. However, all but one of the eight leaders directed responses personally at the interviewer in lieu of a straight answer. It seems for most politicians, playing the man, in one form or another, is not beyond the pale.