Quoting as an evidential practice in Prime Minister's Question Time

我计划在美国加州大学圣巴巴拉分校社会学系进行为期4个月的研究，目的是为我目前的Habilitation论文项目“构建政治互动中的证据”（暂定标题）完成一个章节。本研究的一般兴趣是研究参与者（即首相、反对党领袖和议会后座议员）在英国下议院首相提问时间（PMQT）的问答序列中如何以及以什么目的要求证据，参考他们的感知经验、先前的演讲等，并为英语证据性研究做出理论贡献。该方法由互动语言学（一门以语言学、社会学和人类学为基础的跨学科研究项目）和修辞结构理论提供信息。拟议的项目涉及引文的使用，这是传统类型学研究中广泛记录的知识基础（例如Aikhenwald 2004）。在PMQT中，引用被视为一种相互作用的实践，以构建说话者的权威。具体来说，该项目将检查引用verbum dicendi say（例如，总理说）的语言结构以及它们在轮流和顺序中的位置。除了这些形式方面，它还将描述这些类型的引文的功能，包括回合的内部组织（例如，确认请求的理由）和顺序，以及实现互动和社会功能（例如，挑战总理的主张，从而质疑他的可信度）。该数据库包含大约600个实例的集合，检索自2003-2011年间的32次PMQT会话（大约16小时的视频记录）。该项目将有助于我们理解在英语中引用作为一种相互作用的实践，在这种语言中证据性是可选的，并有助于证据性的理论讨论。

The proposed 4-month research stay at the Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA, is intended to complete a chapter for my current Habilitation thesis project Constructing evidence in political interaction (working title). The general interest of this study is to examine how and to what ends participants (i.e. the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and backbench Members of Parliament) claim evidence during the question-answer sequences during Prime Minister's Question Time (PMQT) at the British House of Commons, making reference to their perceptual experience, prior speech, etc. and to make a theoretical contribution to the study of evidentiality in English. The methodology is informed by Interactional Linguistics, an interdisciplinary research programme grounded in Linguistics, Sociology and Anthropology, and by Rhetorical Structure Theory. The proposed project is concerned with the use of quotations, a base of knowledge widely documented in traditional, typological studies (e.g. Aikhenwald 2004). Quotations are treated as an interactional practice to construct the speaker's authority at PMQT. Specifically, the project will examine the linguistic structure of quotations with the verbum dicendi say (e.g. The Prime Minister is saying that) and their situated placement in turns and sequences. Along with these formal aspects it will describe functions of these types of quotations for the internal organization of turns (e.g. justification of requests for confirmation) and sequences and for the achievement of interactional and social functions (e.g. to challenge the claims of the Prime Minister and thus his credibility). The data base consists of a collection of ca. 600 instances of say, retrieved from 32 PMQT sessions between 2003-2011 (ca. 16 hours of video recordings). The proposed project will contribute to our understanding of quoting as an interactional practice in English, a language where evidentiality is optional, and to the theoretical discussion of evidentiality.