Maneuvering strategically in a political interview: analyzing and evaluating responses to an accusation of inconsistency

The aim of this book is to provide a pragma-dialectical analysis and evaluation of the way in which politicians maneuver strategically in response to an interviewer’s accusation in a political interview that their position is inconsistent with another position they have advanced before. The author shows first what kinds of responses politicians can provide when they are confronted with a criticism of inconsistency. Next, she identifies the most important preconditions imposed on the argumentative discourse by the requirements of a political interview. Her analysis concentrates on the kinds of advantages a politician can gain in a political interview by responding to an accusation of inconsistency by retracting a standpoint that has been advanced earlier and subsequently reformulating this standpoint. In order to evaluate a politician’s responses, the author formulates a set of soundness conditions which she applies to a number of concrete cases taken from BBC interviews to judge whether the responses concerned are reasonable.