SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS IN POLITICAL DEBATES AT THE QUESTION/ANSWER INTERFACE

Abstract

The debates held during the Democratic Presidential Primary provided a rare opportunity to study the question/answer interface that arises in semi-adversarial discourse. These public events are held to help voters decide between similar candidates based on what are assumed to be accurate and representative answers to often confrontational questions posed by the moderators and the other candidates. However, this paper finds that the majority of responses by the three candidates studied were partial answers, with rare full answers in response to direct moderator questions, not questions posed by other candidates. This analysis is based on a database that codes Senator Sanders‘, Senator Warrens‘, and Mayor Buttigieg‘s responses over the June through February debates by the type of question and whether their responses was a non, partial, or full answer. Further study could enhance this analysis by considering the difficulty of the questions asked and the range of partiality in the answers.