Pragmatic Function of Ellipsis in Political Interview

Abstract

Any interview reflects the general trend of economy and efficiency in terms of language use. It implies that language is a crucial tool at the disposal of the participants of interview. In this connection, political interview draws a special interest as it serves as an excellent platform that demonstrates how a balance between explicitness and implicitness could be found for successful social interaction. Since success is critical for both participants of political interview, they are eager to achieve it using all available linguistic devices. From this perspective, the role of ellipsis appears to be crucial because of its unique ability to provide minimum explicit linguistic devices and at the same time to deliver necessary message relying on extra-linguistic and linguistic contexts. Thus, the paper aims to explore the pragmatic functions of various elliptical constructions extensively used in political interview. The conversation analysis of these constructions suggests that the instances of their usages are motivated by both linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts.