Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses Summer 8-17-2017 "First"-Matters: Projecting the Displacement of Responses to Questions in the Context of Presidential Primary-Campaign Debates Kristella Marie Montiegel Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the Political Science Commons, and the Social Influence and oliticalP Communication Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Montiegel, Kristella Marie, ""First"-Matters: Projecting the Displacement of Responses to Questions in the Context of Presidential Primary-Campaign Debates" (2017). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 3836. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.5730 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. “First”-Matters: Projecting the Displacement of Responses to Questions in the Context of Presidential Primary-Campaign Debates by Kristella M. Montiegel A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Communication Thesis Committee: Jeffrey D. Robinson, Chair L. David Ritchie John Hellermann Portland State University 2017 © Kristella M. Montiegel i Abstract This thesis takes a conversation-analytic approach examining the pragmatic functions of the linguistic marker “first (off/of all)” in second-pair-part (i.e., responsive) position relative to questions. Using data from question-answer sequences in the 2015-2016 U.S. Presidential Republican primary debates, I propose six claims regarding the composition, position, and action of what is referred to as the practice of “First”-prefacing. Analysis reveals that “First”-prefacing projects the displacement of a response (conforming or non-conforming) to a question. In projecting the displacement of a response, “First”- prefacing does two things: (1) it projects that the unit(s) of talk to come immediately next will be something other than a response, and thus this ‘first’ matter should not be heard as being designedly ‘responsive’ to the question; and (2) it claims that a conditionally relevant response to the question is forthcoming after the ‘first’ matter is resolved. Debaters largely used “First”-prefacing to temporarily ‘get out from under’ a question’s conditional relevancies in order to ‘reach back’ beyond the question and perform actions more properly sequentially fitted to earlier portions of the debate (e.g., defend themselves, make additional comments, counter-criticize other debaters). The more general function of “First”-prefacing as a misplacement marker is discussed, and its existence in ordinary conversation is briefly demonstrated. Keywords: Conversation analysis, media, debate, politics, Trump, sequence organization, misplacement ii Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my mother, father, and younger sister. Thank you for the unconditional love and support. I hope to always make you proud. iii Acknowledgements To my thesis chair and mentor, Dr. Jeffrey D. Robinson, who has been a constant source of knowledge and encouragement. I cannot thank you enough for the time and commitment you have given to this research and to my academic endeavors overall. I am grateful to have been your student. I would also like to thank Drs. David Ritchie and John Hellermann for their valuable insight and support towards the completion of this thesis. Lastly, my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Tanya Romaniuk, who kindled my academic curiosities and inspired me to pursue my ambitions. Thank you for giving me the future I have always dreamed of. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. i Dedication ........................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgments ........ .................................................................................................. iii Chapter 1: Introduction and Literature Review .................................................................. Background and Introduction ............................................................................... 1 The Adjacency Pair and Conditional Relevance .................................................... The adjacency pair: Question-answer sequences ..................................... 4 Conforming responses .................................................................. 6 Non-conforming responses ........................................................... 8 The difference between responding and not responding ........................ 10 Questioning and Answering in the Context of the Broadcast-News Interview .. 14 The interviewer: Norms and tasks .......................................................... 16 Question design .......................................................................... 17 The interviewee: Norms and tasks .......................................................... 19 Responsive turn design ............................................................... 20 Contextualizing the political-campaign debate ....................................... 22 The Present Thesis .............................................................................................. 25 Chapter 2: Method and Data ................................................................................................ Method: A Brief Review of Conversation Analysis ........................................... 26 Initial Motivations for Selecting Data ................................................................. 29 Initial Data-Selection Procedure ......................................................................... 30 Subsequent Data-Selection Procedure: The Evolution of the Research Focus ... 31 The 2015-2016 CNN U.S. Presidential Republican Primary Debates ................ 32 Chapter 3: Analysis ............................................................................................................. 4.1 Introductory Exemplars of “First”-Prefacing ................................................ 34 4.2 Excursus: The Practice of “First”-Prefacing and the Action it Implements.. 43 4.2.1 .............................................................................................................. 4.2.2 .............................................................................................................. 4.3.3 ......................................................................................................... 44 4.3.4 ......................................................................................................... 45 4.3.5 ......................................................................................................... 46 4.3.6 ......................................................................................................... 47 4.3 Participants’ Orientations to “First”-Prefacing as a Practice ............................ 4.3.1. Cases in which speakers orient to the action ................................. 49 4.3.2. Cases in which moderators orient to the action ............................. 59 4.3.3. Cases in which other candidates orient to the action ..................... 66 4.4 The Operation of “First”-Prefacing in Less-Clear Cases .............................. 70 Chapter 4: Discussion ...................................................................................................... 80 Future Research: Expanding the Scope of “First”-Prefacing .............................. 85 References ....................................................................................................................... 93 Appendices .......................................................................................................................... Appendix A: List of 2015-2016 CNN Republican Primary Debates ................ 112 List of 2015-2016 Republican Primary Debates ................................... 114 v Appendix B: Initial Data Collection .................................................................. 115 Appendix C: Transcription Conventions ........................................................... 124 1 Chapter 1: Introduction and Literature Review Background and Introduction In the 1960s, the sociologist Harvey Sacks (1992) proposed a set of ideas that challenged what social-scientific research had previously thought about conversation – that, rather than being disorderly, and thus unfit for systematic analysis (c.f., Parsons, 1937/1949), talk-in-interaction actually possesses a systematic and describable social organization (for review, see Heritage, 1984). In his published series of lectures, Sacks introduced what he called “rules” of both turn taking and conversational sequence (ibid., p. 4), and demonstrated that conversation can be studied at the level of both individual turns of talk and as sequences of turns. Furthermore, these rules – which apply in a multitude of different languages/cultures, and thus are rules for humans as a species (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974) – are some of the key building blocks of recognizable social action (Schegloff, 1988), and thus of human intersubjectivity (Heritage, 1984). These early ideas pioneered what would become the discipline of Conversation Analysis,