La evasión en The House of Commons y el Congreso de los Diputados: un estudio intercultural

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to carry out an analysis of political discourse used by politicians in the House of Commons1 in the United Kingdom and El Congreso de los Diputados2 in Spain. This analysis will consist of a comparative study of question and answer sessions in the British and Spanish Parliaments, with the idea of comparing and contrasting linguistic and cultural differences between the two nations mentioned, the United Kingdom and Spain. The concept of “face”, an idea proposed by Goffman (1955, 1967), and subsequently developed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), and other authors such as R. Lakoff (1973), Leech (1983), and Fraser (1990) will be examined, and applied to political discourse. The phenomenon of equivocation, used in situations when people find themselves in a position where telling the truth could be hurtful and unnecessary, and telling a blatant lie could also be inappropriate, developed by Bavelas et al. (1990), will be thoroughly discussed and applied to the political debates analysed. The typology of equivocation put forward by Bull and Meyer (1993) will be thoroughly discussed, and we will see how the equivocation strategies which they propose are employed by the interviewees in the question and answer sessions of both the British and Spanish Parliaments. This will be followed by a discussion on the political similarities and differences between the two cultures, after which the pertinent conclusions will be drawn.