Extreme case formulations in Spanish pre-electoral debates and English panel interviews

Abstract

This article is concerned with Extreme Case Formulations (ECFs) (Edwards, 2000; Pomerantz, 1986) in multiple-party TV programmes in two different languages: Spanish and English. I examine the role of ECFs in Spanish pre-electoral debates and in English panel interviews. English data is 77 minutes and 58 seconds long and comprises nine different panel interviews of political, socio-political and social issues and Spanish data is 78 minutes long and includes four political pre-electoral debates. The results will disclose that the number of ECFs found in the Spanish and in the English corpora differs considerably (48 versus 81). And in relation to the type of recording, the data will reveal that a) interviewers and interviewees deployed many more ECFs in political recordings (2.8 percent) than in socio-political (1.2 percent) or social recordings (1.3 percent); and b) politicians used more ECFs (4.8 percent) than any other type of interviewees (1.5 percent).