Quote of the week
“If this doesn’t work out, I’ll probably will do it, maybe definitely.”
Donald Trump, 10th January 2019
Continue reading “Probably, maybe, definitely”
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The many faces of ‘no’
Theresa May seems to have developed many ways of saying ‘no’ without actually meaning it. In her interview with Andrew Marr at the weekend, she frequently used reduced articulations of the word (e.g. ‘n-’) to preface her responses to Marr’s questions.
Slip of the Tongue: Titsly Come Dancing
Speech errors don’t get much better when they appear in front of a live audience of millions on the BBC for the final of Strictly Come Dancing. This Freudian slips will go down as one of the classics.
Quote of the week
“I believe that all fish should be in the sea.”
Benjamin Zephaniah, BBC Question Time, 29th November 2018
Slips of the Tongue: Repair Procedures
Slips of the tongue (speech errors) nearly always include some repair whereby the speaker realises the mistake and then attempts to correct for their error.
Slip of the Tongue: Borrowing from downstream
Speech errors (slips of the tongue) often ‘borrow’ from language in the mind that is downstream of the target language. Here is a good example from Theresa May at PMQs.
Continue reading “Slip of the Tongue: Borrowing from downstream”
Whooo! There’s that Corbyn stare again.
Prime Minister’s questions (PMQs) got a ‘whooo!’ of surprise today when Jeremy Corbyn was speaking at the dispatch box.
Bad things always come in threes
One way to put a politician on the spot is to ask them how many people have been affected by their policy. Three times seems to be the optimum number of times to ask according to the Andrew Marr’s rulebook as he interviewed Theresa May on Sunday.
Howzat! A hat trick of slips.
Slips of the tongue can be annoying for interviewers when they happen once. But when one error leads into another and then another, all in the space of a few words, it can be triply frustrating.
Slip of the Tongue: ‘exotic spresm’
Vince Cable should perhaps leave sexual innuendos to others after fluffing his lines at the Liberal Democrats’ conference on Tuesday. Cable had intended to say that the Tories were locked in an ‘erotic spasm’ over Brexit, but instead the words came out as ‘exotic spresm’ producing an interesting slip.
Slip of the Tongue
Phoneme insertion in line 01.
Slip of the Tongue
Slips of the tongue that involve word substitution always seem to get the biggest laughs. Here Jeremy Hunt, the new Foreign Secretary, mistakenly refers to his wife as Japanese when she is in fact Chinese. The humour in this slip was obvious to the audience of Chinese dignitaries during a visit by Hunt to Beijing to discuss post-Brexit trade talks.
The ‘shame’ shout
Standing up and speaking in public is not just a one-way affair from speaker to audience. The reaction of the audience to what is said can be just as important and defining as the speaker’s words themselves.
Quote of the week
“This is the most expensive round of golf in history.”
Barry Gardner, BBC Question Time, 12th July 2018
Two ‘fakes’ raise the stakes
Conversation can sometimes be like a game of poker, raising and doubling stakes, as the Andrew Marr Show demonstrated on Sunday.
Slip of the Tongue (Sally Who?)
Sally Who? You don’t get a name like that unless you work for the BBC!
Quote of the week
“You wait forever for a bus question at PMQs, and then seven come along at once.”
Scott Mann, Conservative MP at PMQs, 4th July 2018
Slip of the Tongue
An interesting slip of the tongue by Theresa May at Prime Minister’s question time occurred on Wednesday and suggested that perhaps we had voted for rather more than we thought during the EU referendum in 2016!
a/the Single Market
It seems strange that two of the smallest and most commonest words in the English dictionary could cause confusion between interviewer and interviewee but that is what ‘a’ and ‘the’ seemed to do on Sunday when Andrew Marr interviewed James Brokenshire, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on the BBC.
Interview terminated!
Richard Madeley knows when to shut down an interview. On ITV’s Good Morning Britain, he abruptly brought his interview with Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, to an end when Williamson refused to answer his question after four strikes.
A brief bit of brevity
Prime Minister’s question time (PMQs) is known for lengthy questions and answers from Prime Ministers and backbenchers so it was interesting to observe a brief bit of brevity from the Prime Minister in two of her answers on Wednesday.
Slips of the Tongue
Two slips of the tongue from the BBC.
This can be a one word answer if you wouldn’t mind?
Interviewers don’t always get what they ask for but when they do, it can often cause difficulties for the interview.
Continue reading “This can be a one word answer if you wouldn’t mind?”
Never ask a genuine question at PMQs
Lawyers sometimes say that you should never ask a witness a question during trial to which you don’t the answer to. The same principles usually operates in Prime Minister’s questions in the House of Commons where the question and answer session is really one of “statement” followed by “statement” (even though the statements are dressed up as questions and answers).
Slip of the Tongue
A slip of the tongue from a Radio 4 Today programme presenter (Justin Webb).
Angling for a job, Ms Perry?
Claire Perry, Conservative MP, seemed to enjoy asking questions on the Daily Politics today, so much so that Andrew Neil feared she was angling for his job.
Slip of the Tongue
A slip of the tongue by Boris Johnson.
Quote of the week
“I am officially dead, although I’m alive, I have no income and because I am listed dead, I can’t do anything.”
Constantin Reliu, 16th March 2018
Finishing off your interviewee’s sentences
Interviewers are always looking for ways to hurry their interviewees along, so finishing off their ideas seems to be a nice way to do this with the added advantage that you get the floor back. Why wait for the slow speaker to finish when you can do the job in half the time!
Continue reading “Finishing off your interviewee’s sentences”
Slips of the Tongue
Two slips of the tongues here, courtesy of BBC presenters.
Quote of the week
Steel is steel. Without steel you don’t have a country.
Donald Trump, 8th March 2018
Closing an interview
In day-to-day conversation, closing a conversation requires both participants to clear the floor. That is, each has to offer the floor to the other and only when neither has anything more to contribute can the conversation close. If you have ever tried to get off the phone from a friend who doesn’t want to finish the conversation, you know how difficult this can be sometimes.
Quote of the week
Yo Theresa May, where’s that money for Grenfell?
Stormzy. 21st February 2018, The Brit Awards,
Ouch! Direct, focused questioning at its best
Andrew Neil was on fine form as he returned to hosting the Daily Politics on BBC1 on Wednesday. After chewing up Labour’s Andrew Gwynne, he turned his attention to Steve Baker, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Wycombe.
Continue reading “Ouch! Direct, focused questioning at its best”
Quote of the week
Everything’s simple when you’re a bit simple.
Terry Christian, 8th February 2018, BBC Question Time
Negotiation of the floor
In general, only one person can hold the floor in a conversation. When a debate is taking place, there are often periods where negotiation of the floor occurs. The current speaker will use rhetorical devices to try and maintain the floor while other participants in the debate will interrupt and overlap in an attempt to gain the floor.
Slip of the tongue
Slips of the tongue can be useful for understanding the psycholinguistic processing of speech output. Here is an interesting slip that occurred with a news reader on the BBC.
Quote of the week
“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”
EU/UK Progress agreement, 8th December 2017
Quote of the week
Interviewer: Are the Brexit talks in chaos, or are the actually making reasonable progress?”
Juncker: “They are.”
Jean-Claude Juncker, 24th November, 2017
Trite journalism?
Is it “trite journalism” to ask the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer what the country pays on its national debt? Should the shadow chancellor have these figures to hand, or can he rely on an iPad or advisor to tell him? John McDonnell doesn’t seem to think so.
