Meta-questions and meta-answers: The interplay of metadialogic practices in PMQs

Abstract

In UK Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs), metadialogic practices can steer the direction and scope of the parliamentary confrontation between the Leader of the Opposition (LO) or opposition Members of Parliament (MPs), and the Prime Minister (PM), which consists of polemical question-answer exchanges. Recurrent metadialogic practices are rationally and/or emotionally instantiated through meta-questions (posed by the LO) and meta-answers (delivered by the PM). This investigation used a pragma-rhetorical approach to the interplay between parliamentary meta-questions and meta-answers, which reveals, through the PM's evasiveness or failure to answer the LO's and opposition MPs' questions, a reluctance to play by the (parliamentary) rules and assume responsibility as head of government, party leader and ‘primus inter pares’ in the UK Parliament. The findings show that meta-questions and meta-answers interact at discursive, interpersonal and institutional levels. At the discursive level, they point to the debaters' appraisal of the urgency and importance of debated issues and to the debaters' commitments. At the interpersonal level, they indicate the scope of the debaters' strengths and weaknesses, and the degree of their adversarialness. At the institutional level, they signal the debaters' compliance with or defiance of institutional norms that regulate MPs' behaviour and verbal performance during PMQs.