ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how political speakers in different contexts and genres cope with conflict. It discusses three particular genres: political interviews, debates and parliamentary questions. The chapter focuses on British data, though data from other cultures and shows that while the rules of engagement vary, all communicative strategies find an explanation within the theory of face. It argues that in political discourse face and face management constitute the unifying factor in all occurrences of conflict and summarises in broad lines the most important results from the empirical studies and provides an interpretation in terms of facework and face management. The chapter looks at the expression of commitment as an equally important strategy for presenting a desirable political face. Political interviewers as journalists are expected to be impartial. The public nature of political discourse entails that the stakes for speakers are high: either they convince the electorate or they fail to do so.
