Manoeuvring strategically in responding to accusations of inconsistency in political interviews

This paper examines the consecutive perlocutionary consequences of the illocutionary act of accusation of inconsistency and illustrates how these consequences can be strategically performed in the context of political interviews in what can be reconstructed as the confrontation stage of a critical discussion. This examination is pursued in the framework of the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentative discourse that accounts for the attempts arguers make to resolve a difference of opinion in accordance with the standards for a critical discussion and at the same time to their benefit by employing what has been termed 'strategic manoeuvring' (van Eemeren and Houtlosser 2002).