“And I quote”: Forms and functions of quotations in Prime Minister's questions

Abstract

This paper examines the strategic use of the communicative act of quotation in mediated political discourse in Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs), considering the interdependencies between source and formatting on the one hand, and the use of metadata on the other.Quotations have been described as a special form of metarepresentation. They refer to prior discursive contributions and import and metarepresent them in another context, making explicit relevant contextual coordinates. As for their formatting, quotations have generally been classified as direct, indirect, hypothetical, mixed and mixed type, and the analysis of PMQs has identified another format: focussing. There is also variation in the formatting of quotatives, which frame the quotation and indicate the quoter's attitude towards the quoted.In PMQs, quotations fulfil an argumentative function. It is argued that by importing quoted, source and contextual coordinates at a particular stage in the discourse, they are assigned the status of quote-worthiness: they may be used to secure discourse common ground, to challenge argumentative coherence and credibility of Other while supporting those of Self. As for quoted sources, experts and allies are generally not explicitly taken up in the follow-up argumentation – unless refuted.