Theory Of Equivocation Research Articles

Political equivocation in a less-adversarial campaign context

ABSTRACT Scholars often use equivocation theory to explore political evasion in adversarial contexts, such as debates or press conferences, but less is known about equivocation in less-adversarial contexts. This content analysis reviews question-answer sequences during CNN’s 2019 climate crisis town hall, a less-adversarial campaign event, to address the question “Are politicians inherently evasive?” Contrary to the norm of evasiveness, the results demonstrated that politicians did not significantly equivocate when asked face-threatening questions. Politicians were also more likely to directly respond to moderator questions compared to public questions.

Do important questions demand respectful replies?

Abstract This paper examines the attributes of questions asked during televised political interviews in Japan. It details the type, style, and mode of questions posed during broadcast programs to national- and local-level politicians, and nonpoliticians, including experts in different areas. Based on data gathered during 2012–2013 from three interview programs, the paper provides criteria for identifying questions and distinguishing them from other expressions, differentiates the diverse types of questions, and proposes new criteria to analyze interviewers’ questions. Furthermore, the paper replicates and modifies the “Theory of Equivocation” to examine how Japanese interviewees cope with the communicative problems posed to them during televised political interviews and the effects of these questions on the interviewees’ replies.

Failures in Leadership

Abstract This paper examines how Japanese leading politicians deal with the communicative problems posed to them during broadcast political interviews. Based on data gathered during 14-month period in 2012–2013, the paper replicates and modifies the “Theory of Equivocation” to explore the extent to which national and local level politicians endeavor to affect the content of information distributed to the public and to influence the way people perceive events that take place in the public domain. Differentiating among selected groups of politicians, i.e., ruling and opposition parties’ members, Cabinet ministers and prime ministers, and local level politicians, the paper focuses on the ways Japanese politicians (and for comparison also nonpoliticians) equivocate during televised programs and the conditions underlying this equivocation, thereby also assesses the significance of these talk shows in the broader context of political communication in Japan.

Dodging DeflateGate: A Case Study of Equivocation and Strategic Ambiguity in a Crisis

This case study examined the effects of equivocation in sport communication. U.S. National Football League quarterback Tom Brady held a press conference in January 2015 during a scandal. The author experimentally manipulated versions of the press conference, one with equivocal parts included (e.g., “I don’t know, I have no idea”), and one with those parts removed. Outcome measures included source credibility and perceptions of dodging questions. When Brady equivocated, participants perceived him to have more goodwill. Furthermore, his equivocal answers were not perceived as dodging the questions. This case study helps extend predictions of strategic ambiguity and equivocation theory into the field of sport communication.

‘Ducking and Diving’: How Political Issues Affect Equivocation in Japanese Political Interviews

AbstractThis paper examines how Japanese leading politicians cope with the communication problems posed during televised political interviews. Based on data gathered during the year 2012–13, the paper replicates and modifies the Theory of Equivocation to detail the responsiveness of national and local level politicians (and for comparison also of non-politicians) to interview questions. Its main focus is on the extent to which Japanese politicians equivocate during televised programs, and the reasons underlying this equivocation. Overall, the paper aims to identify the motives behind interviewees’ equivocation, thereby to also assess the significance of these talk shows in the broader context of political communication in Japan.

Why Do We Think Politicians Are So Evasive? Insight From Theories of Equivocation and Deception, With a Content Analysis of U.S. Presidential Debates, 1996-2012

Politicians have a reputation for deception. Instead of blaming the politicians themselves, equivocation theory directs our attention to the situation in which politicians are asked questions. We draw on recent theories of deception detection—truth-default theory and information manipulation theory 2—to propose that a reason we think politicians are so evasive might be because, ironically, we believe them when they accuse their opponents of evasiveness in equivocal situations. We perform a content analysis of the question–answer sequences ( N = 810) in U.S. presidential debates 1996 to 2012. Our results indicate that politicians accuse each other of evasion to a significant degree. Meanwhile, they are not necessarily dodging questions to the extent that their overt allegations suggest. This study demonstrates how the predictions of equivocation theory and deception detection theories apply to the domain of U.S. presidential debates.

Equivocation in Arabic News Interviews

In the Arab media, it has been claimed that independent news channels put more pressure on officials and public figures, compared with the state-owned news channels. This article aims to compare empirically the strategies that Arab interviewers use to restrict or broaden the answers expected from interviewees in two different channels. Adopting contrastive methods, the findings show that the percentage of equivocations is remarkably low in the government-controlled channel. The study suggests that the findings could be understood within the well-studied theory of equivocation “avoidance-avoidance conflict,” which argues that people tend to equivocate when they are expected to reply to a question for which all potential replies have negative consequences. Arab interviewers in the government-controlled channels design their questions in a way that does not constrain their guests, but avoids conflict with them by allowing them to give a wide range of valid answers.

Culture or Communicative Conflict? The Analysis of Equivocation in Broadcast Japanese Political Interviews

The focus of this article is on equivocation in Japanese televised interviews, broadcast over a 14-month period in 2012-2013 (before and after the general election of December 16, 2012). An analysis was conducted of responses to questions by three different groups (national politicians, local politicians, and nonpoliticians). Results showed a striking level of equivocation by both national and local politicians, who together equivocated significantly more than nonpoliticians. Furthermore, national-level Diet members equivocated significantly more than local politicians, and both coalition groupings when in power were significantly more likely to equivocate than when in opposition. The results were interpreted in terms of the situational theory of communicative conflict and also in terms of cultural norms characteristic of Japanese politics and society. The failure to consider the role of such norms, it is proposed, represents an important omission in the original theory of equivocation.

Equivocation and doublespeak in far right-wing discourse: an analysis of Nick Griffin's performance on BBC's Question Time

An analysis was conducted of the discourse of Nick Griffin (leader of the BNP, the far right-wing British National Party), as featured on a television debate, broadcast on the popular BBC current affairs program Question Time (22 October 2009). On the basis of equivocation theory (Bavelas et al. 1990), it was hypothesized that Griffin's discourse may be seen to reflect an underlying communicative conflict. On the one hand, to be seen as racist is widely regarded as reprehensible in contemporary British society; on the other hand, much of the BNP's political support comes from its anti-immigrant stance. In this context, it was proposed that while Griffin denies criticisms that characterize the BNP as anti-immigrant or racist, he puts over his political message through implicit meanings, seemingly vague and ambiguous, but which carry clear implications regarding the BNP's continued underlying anti-immigrant stance. These implicit messages were further conceptualized as a form of “doublespeak” – language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words, and which may be characterized as a form of “calculated ambivalence.”

“Slipperiness, Evasion, and Ambiguity”

Noncommittal political discourse in televised political interviews is examined in the context of Bavelas, Black, Chovil, and Mullett's theory of equivocation. The two central propositions of this theory are shown to be well supported. Bull and others' reconceptualization of the theory in terms of face and face management is also discussed. It is argued that the latter is more parsimonious in its explanation of equivocal discourse in political interviews. Furthermore, it may be extended to those instances in which politicians do reply to questions, and to the assessment of the interview performance of both interviewers and politicians. In addition, it provides a useful conceptual framework for future research on nonequivocal political discourse. Overall, it is proposed that in the analysis of political discourse, the main propositions of equivocation theory can be subsumed within the wider conceptual framework of face and face management.

‘Well, I answer it by simply inviting you to look at the evidence’

In the discourse of political interviews, references to participants can be expressed explicitly by proper nouns and forms of address, and they can be expressed implicitly by personal pronouns and other indexical expressions. The meaning of personal pronouns is context-dependent and retrievable only by inference, and therefore is less determinate. Furthermore, it can shift according to the status of the participants in interaction. This may occur both in terms of social roles and in terms of roles in talk and footing. In this context, an analysis was conducted of televised political interviews broadcast during the 1997 and 2001 British general elections and just before the war with Iraq in 2003. Question-response sequences were identified in which politicians made use of pronominal shifts as a form of equivocation. These sequences were analyzed in the context of Bavelas et al.s (1990) theory of equivocation and Goffmans (1981) concept of footing. The polyvalent function of pronominal shifts, their potential perlocutionary effects and strategic advantages are discussed.

VICTOR HOULISTON. Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Persons's Jesuit Polemic, 1580-1610.

Victor Houliston's critical history of the career of Robert Persons makes a timely contribution to scholarship on early modern English Catholicism. Despite his central role in the English Catholic mission, Persons has not in the main received the same degree of critical attention (particularly with regard to his authorial habits or stylistic signature) as other leading figures such as Campion, Southwell, or Garnet. This is so partly because of the range of ambitions served by his writings—pastoral, political, and administrative as well as spiritual concerns—but also because of Persons's dexterity in blending topical and speculative modes of address. Houliston offers a judiciously focused survey of landmarks in Persons's writerly career, approached chronologically and with the specialist's eye trained on evolving thematic patterns that emerge over a thirty-year period of pastoral and polemical engagement. Both specialist and generalist will recognise the themes punctuating Houliston's survey, for these are the central issues faced by English Catholic communities from the onset of the Jesuit mission to England through the Stuart period: the succession question; debates over papal prerogatives vis-à-vis secular sovereignty; the political significance of recusancy; and the linguistic as well as political scandal of the theory of equivocation. To these topics Houliston brings a nuanced sense of Persons's convictions and evolving repertoire of argumentative tactics. In brief, Houliston's project participates in the recent and welcome trend in early modern religious studies which seeks to demystify the critical solvency of the radically oppositional logic found not only in the controversialist literature volleyed across the confessional divide but also in the lingering sense of logical contradiction that frustrated earlier scholarly efforts to parse the relation between the mission's (and Persons's) spiritual and political investments. Houliston's careful reconstitution of the contexts informing Persons's writings demonstrates quite clearly how the ‘polemical works’ and ‘works of spiritual devotion’ neither can nor should be sharply divided into separate categories (p. 133). In this regard, Houliston's monograph provides a useful counterpoint and complement to Michael Carrafiello's 1998 study Robert Persons and English Catholicism, 1580–1610 by focusing attention on the range of Persons's rhetorical techniques and adaptable faces of his literary persona. Arguably, Houliston's approach presents the suppler account of the evolving constellation of Persons's political, ecclesial, and pastoral concerns, particularly during the volatile period spanning the last years of Elizabeth I's reign and the immediate aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.

Who are we and who are you? The strategic use of forms of address in political interviews

In the discourse of political interviews, references to coparticipants can be expressed explicitly by proper nouns and forms of address, and they can be expressed implicitly by personal pronouns and other indexical expressions. The meaning of personal pronouns is context dependent and retrievable only by inference, and therefore is less determinate. Furthermore, it can shift as the status of the participants shifts in interaction. This may occur both in terms of social roles and in terms of roles in talk and footing. In this context, an analysis was conducted of televised political interviews broadcast during the 1997 and 2001 British general elections and just before the war with Iraq in 2003. Question-response sequences were identified in which politicians made use of pronominal shifts as a form of equivocation. These sequences were analyzed in the context of Bavelas et al.'s (1990) theory of equivocation and Goffman's (1981) concept of footing. In all but one of the questions, the interviewers sought to establish the politicians' authorship, whereas the politician typically responds in terms of the principal; in the other instance, the questioner sought to establish the position of the principal and the politician responds in terms of his own authorship. Possible strategic advantages of these forms of equivocation are discussed.

Equivocation and the Rhetoric of Modernization

The process of change in the British Labour Party (from 1983 to 1997) has been widely referred to as one of modernization. In this article, the rhetoric of modernization was examined in the context of Bavelas et al.’s theory of equivocation (as modified by Bull et al.). Five televised political interviews with Tony Blair from the 1997 General Election campaign were analyzed. Blair equivocated to questions about modernization, which created an avoidance-avoidance conflict, and replied to those that did not create such a conflict (phi = .87, p < .001). It was argued that this rhetoric of modernization can be seen not only as a form of equivocation but also to have distinct political advantages by promoting a highly inclusive social identity for New Labour. It is concluded that such strategic advantages of equivocation are not adequately represented in existing theory.

Equivocation Theory and News Interviews

According to a theory devised by Bavelas and colleagues, equivocation occurs in response to avoidance-avoidance conflicts. This article argues that this theory provides a valuable conceptual framework for the analysis of news interviews; in addition, some modifications are discussed. It proposes that the concept of threats to face can be used to provide a theoretical underpinning for why avoidance-avoidance conflicts occur in the context of political interviews. It is further argued that different forms of equivocation have different interactional consequences, which is not adequately represented in Bavelas and colleagues' theory: For example, implicit replies can be shown to have significant interactional advantages over nonreplies. Finally, whereas Bavelas and colleagues conduct their analysis at the level of each individual question, in some circumstances, avoidance-avoidance conflicts may also operate at the level of the interview as a whole; both levels of analysis must be considered for fuller understanding ofpressures toward equivocation.

Equivocation in America and Japan

This study provides a cross-cultural test of Bavelas's situational theory of equivocation. Students from the United States and Japan were presented with one of four versions of a questionnaire, prepared in English and Japanese, that consisted of two hypothetical scenarios. Each scenario was altered to create either an avoidance-avoidance situation or a nonconflict situation. The imagined interaction partners in these scenarios were described as someone possessing status either equal to or greater than the students' status. For each scenario, subjects wrote down what they thought they would say in the situation and then responded to several items about their perceptions of the message and situation. Results were strongly supportive of the theory. Both American and Japanese students produced messages exhibiting substantial equivocation, but only when in an avoidance-avoidance conflict situation. Contrary to expectations, such situations did not elicit more equivocation from Japanese students than from American students; nor did relative status affect the use of equivocation. The equivocations of subjects were judged by themselves and by independent coders to be deceptive, though prosocial. Implications of these findings for the theory are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.

Distinguo: The response to equivocation

Logical guarantees of validity must be understood as subject to the proviso that no equivocation is committed. But we do not have a formal theory of equivocation. This paper attempts to formulate rules for responding to equivocal arguments in the context of dialogue. What occurs when one distinguishes meanings of an equivocal expression turns out to be rather different from definition.

Roger Bacon on Equivocation

Many of the things in the world differ from one another to a substantial degree and yet we find ourselves often using one and the same word to refer to these objects. The result is sometimes confusing to those in attendance, especially when the truth value of expression is affected. just saw the dog a moment ago is a less than helpful response from a backyard astronomer having just looked at the dog-star when his neighbor has inquired about his own canine pet. And since the truth value of propositions plays a substantial role in the construction of sound deductive arguments, it is no wonder that Aristotle treated equivocation as one of the causes of deception that constitute argument a fallacy.1 Interestingly, however, while Anselm made a great contribution in developing a theory of paronomy2 and 12th and 13th century logicians advanced the philosophy of language through their theories of the properties of terms, the theory of equivocation laid down by Aristotle was not altered in any significant way throughout the Middle Ages and, with one exception, his triple division of species of equivocation was tampered with only with great reserve. The exception was Roger Bacon who, having given a traditional expose once in 1252, returned to the question in 1267 and 1292 with a freshness which led to, in the words of Jan Pinborg, an original systematization of possible changes [in signification] or equivocations, which has no medieval parallels.3 In this article I propose (Section I) to give a brief overview