The Pragmatics of Political Discourse -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- The multilayered and multifaceted nature of political discourse -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The dynamics of political discourse -- The contributions -- Acknowledgement -- References -- I. Political discourse from above: Parliamentary discourse -- On the metapragmatics of British, German and Russian political questions and answers -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The types of critical meta-moves in political question-answer sessions -- 3. The types of meta-responses in political question-answer sessions -- 4. Patterns of metacommunicative counter-attacks in question-answer sessions -- 5. Concluding remarks -- References -- The discursive practice of addressing in the Romanian Parliament -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Previous work on parliamentary debates -- 3. Setting the scene -- 4. Description of the corpus -- 5. Initial discursive practices: Forms of address in the Romanian Parliament -- 6. Discussion -- 7. Conclusion -- References -- II. Political discourse mediated: Interviews -- Argumentation in broadcast election campaign discourse: Towards a rhetorical reconstruction -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Reconstruction procedures -- 3. Election campaign discourse -- 4. Towards a rhetorical reconstruction -- References -- Appendix -- Strategic manoeuvring in a political interview: The case of responding to an accusation of inconsist -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Accusations of inconsistency as a form of criticism -- 3. Exploiting commitments in political interviews -- 4. Strategic manoeuvering in practice -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- The communication of certainty and uncertainty in Italian political media discourses -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The study -- 3. Conclusions -- References -- Transcription notes -- Appendix.

Political irony: Constructing reciprocal positioning in the news interview -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Positioning -- 3. Direct and indirect positioning -- 4. Conclusion -- References -- III. Political discourse from below: Phone-ins and letters -- The effect of irony in radio talk-back programmes in Israel -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The effect of irony -- 3. Corpus -- 4. Analysis: Zehavi's use of irony -- 5. Conclusions -- References -- 'Motions of support' and the communicative act of thanking in political discourse -- Prologue -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Motions of support and the public-private sphere -- 3. Thanking as speech act or communicative act -- 4. Political discourse and sociocultural norms -- 5. Thanking in MoS: Towards a taxonomy -- 6. Wording and intention in MoS -- 7. Conclusion -- References -- Index of names -- Index of terms.