Adversarial Questioning and Answering Strategies in Chinese Government Press Conferences

Abstract

對政治人物訪談和政府新聞發佈會進行研究可以幫助人們瞭解一個國家的政策走向及國民生存狀態。相關研究已經發現在西方政治人物訪談中，記者對政治人物的提問愈加具有對抗性 (Clayman and Heritage 2002a/b), 這種對抗式的提問風格已經影響到了中西文明交匯的香港(Yip 2003)。而對於更廣泛的華人地區記者和政治人物之間的語言互動及問答風格，目前還沒有太多的深入探討。本文基於Clayman 和 Heritage兩位學者所提出的‘對抗式提問’分析模型 (2002b)，將對在中國大陸召開的十場新聞發佈會進行研究，試圖探討中國政府新聞發佈會中問答的語言特色，特別關注中外記者提問的風格差異，各種對抗式提問的形式，政府官員的作答策略以及由此反映出的本屆政府的執政理念。

Studying political interviews and press conferences is significant as it may provide a special insight into the change in the policy of a country, and perhaps even the well-being of a society as a whole. Previous studies on broadcast interviews have identified adversarial questioning as an increasing and pervasive style in journalistic practice in the western world (Clayman and Heritage 2002a/b). The use of such adversarial style has emerged in Hong Kong — a metropolitan city deeply influenced by both Chinese and western cultures (Yip 2003). However, the general knowledge of how journalists treat public figures in other parts of the Chinese-speaking world remains relatively unknown. This study attempts to investigate the questioning and answering patterns, in particular adversarial questioning, in Chinese government press conferences which has thus far received little scholarly attention. Drawing on Clayman and Heritage’s coding system for measuring adversarial questioning in U.S. press conferences (2002b), the current study examines the question-answer sequences based on a corpus of ten government press conferences held in mainland China, and aims to present a questioning format by showing any differences in the design of questions by Chinese journalists and their foreign counterparts. The study further explores the format of the response of Chinese officials typical of these events and some possible correlation between government officials’ question-taking and their setting of the political agenda.