Chapter II: Structural Peculiarities of Pre-election Debates as Conversation 2.

1 Methodology
Chapter II entitled Structural Peculiarities of Pre-election Debates as Conversation deals with the conversation analysis of the three presidential debates between B. Obama and J. McCain and one vice presidential debate between S. Palin and J. Biden in 2008, USA. During presidential elections in the United States, it has become customary for the main candidates (almost always the candidates of the two largest parties, currently the Democratic Party and the Republican Party) to engage in a debate [see Appendix 4]. The topics discussed in the debate are often the most controversial issues of the time, and arguably elections have been nearly decided by these debates (e.g., B. Obama and J. McCain). While debates aren't constitutionally mandated, it is often considered a de facto election process. The main target for these debates are undecided voters; those who usually aren't partial to either political ideology or party. The present Master Degree Thesis is based on the analysis of the three presidential debates from United States that took place in 2008: Friday, September 26, 9 p.m.: The first presidential debate took place at the University of Mississippi. The central issues debated were supposed to be foreign policy and national security. However, due to the economic climate, some questions appeared on this topic. The debate was formatted into nine nine-minute segments, and the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, introduced the topics; Tuesday, October 7, 9 p.m.: The second presidential debate took place at Belmont University. It was a town meeting format debate moderated by NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and addressed issues raised by members of the audience, particularly the economy; Wednesday, October 15, 9 p.m.: The third and final presidential debate was hosted at Hofstra University. It is focused on domestic and economic policy. Like the first presidential debate, it was formatted into segments, with moderator Bob Schieffer introducing the topics. One vice-presidential debate: Thursday, October 2, 2008, 9 p.m. EDT at Washington University in St. Louis Field House in the university's Athletic Complex in St. Louis, Missouri, moderated by Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent on The News Hour and moderator and managing editor of Washington Week on PBS. The vice presidential debate covered both foreign and domestic topics.
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As we have already noted, in order to interpret any natural language utterance within a normal human conversation, it is not enough to know the grammatical category of all the words in the utterance, nor the conventional meaning associated with each word, nor even how such meanings combine to form an overall sentential meaning. Before being able to ascribe a particular meaning (specifically that intended by the conversational implicature) to any utterance, a hearer must have a clear idea of the context in which such an utterance occurs. Due to the fact that one of our aims of the paper is to present a main characteristic of the conversation in the form of pre-election debate we have decided to use the taxonomy of communication units proposed by Hymes. These units are organized in the following structure (shown in Figure 1.2):

Speech acts Speech events Speech situations Figure 1.2 Hymes structure of communication The largest unit is the speech situation the social setting in which the conversation takes place, that is, the process of pre-election debates; the next size of unit is the speech event or activity, that is, the conversation that is taking place within the pre-election meeting; and the smallest unit is the speech act, that is, the disagreements within the discussion within the meeting that usually turn into the adjacency pairs. The linguistic trace of this process is the text. Yet, in the case of conversation, the text is jointly produced as discourse proceeded by overt interaction between two or more people that have controversial opinions towards a certain topic that contribute in such a way to the appearance of the debate. So, this is not so much how utterances are related to each other in a text, but how utterances combine together form larger discourse segments. On the basis of the speech situation, that is, the four pre-election debates that took place in 2008, USA we are going to analyze the speech event that occurs - the conversation as form of interaction between two or more discourses.

Firstly, we have analyzed the infrastructure of the conversation in the pre-election debate by analyzing its four elements: opening, turn taking, pre-enclosing and closing. Secondly the conversation has been analyzed at the level of the text and mainly the connection between sentences that only together receive a certain meaning. Secondly, there have been presented a detailed analysis of the Grices maxims (quantity, quality, relation and manner), which at their turn contribute to a cohesive and coherent development of the conversation. We collected data from the site of the Central Commission of Election 2008 where non-observances of the four maxims occurred. We looked at which of the four quality, quantity, relation and manner were broken in each pre-election debate and which were broken most frequently.

2.2 The Infrastructure of the Conversation in Pre-election Debates

In the previous chapter we have discussed about the methodology used in analyzing the conversation in the form of the debate, yet, the present chapter is focused mainly on the grammar preliminaries of the conversation. The conversation is a form of communication that provides a verbal interaction between people. Yet, people engage in it for entertainment, for accomplishing work or for arguing certain topics. It can be public or private; yet, day by day conversation can be personal while then we speak about public conversation we should use some additional concepts in order to determine the its destination e.g. legislative meeting, debate, presidential debate etc., they all are conversations but each of them has a certain purpose and cannot be equaled to others. We can say that one of the key aspects of the conversation of the punditocracy that goes relatively unnoticed is how childish so many of candidates are. By "childish" we have a specific meaning in mind. Children are taught that certain things are "right" and other things are "wrong." People who do right things are "good" and those who don't are "bad", this being a traditional custom of the whole people. The world, however, does not conform to the storybook version we give our kids in grammar school. Adults understand that, in fact, as Andre Gide once said, "the color of truth is gray." But that is often too complicated a notion to make it into contemporary debate. Yet, further we are going to realize the hypothesis of the present Master Degree Paper: to present how relatively perfect used words in a conversational debate can change minds, and especially how do they influence the voters minds even though the statistics demonstrate that the financial crisis could not be solved some ten years more and how some linguistic phrases had generated obligations for the following President of the United States of America, 2008-2012. More precisely, we are going to refer to the conversation that took the form of a debate, and mainly the pre-election debate: three presidential debates between the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and one vice-presidential debate between the Republican nominee Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, and the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden of Delaware. They are engaged in a debate which was given a subject matter that the candidates agreed to and their answers correspond with the subject. The first debate was based on the foreign policy and national security. However, due to the economic climate, some questions appeared on this topic; the second was centered mainly on economy and the third and the last presidential debate was focused
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on domestic and economic policy while fourth or the unique vice-presidential debate was basically a repetition of foreign and domestic topics. Anyway, in the present Master Degree Thesis we are not going to analyze the debate from the political perspective but from the linguistic one, and mainly we are going to analyze the conversational implicature which appears between candidates. However, some of the policy ideas will be revealed too, but at the superficial level. It seems surprising that political conversation should be organized by rules, the reason is that, as in most speech events, more attention is paid to content than to organization; yet, we take the organization of conversation for granted. A conversation can be viewed as a series of speech acts greetings, inquiries, comments, invitations, debates, accusations etc. and in order to accomplish the work of these speech acts, some organization is essential: mark the beginning and the ending of the conversation, we take turns at speaking, answer questions, and make corrections when they are needed. Due to the present fact, the linguists and non-linguists say that the infrastructure of the conversation is composed of four important elements: opening, turn-taking, pre-enclosing and closing. At its turn, the pre-election debate represents a conversation between two political people and a moderator or also called an extra authority that manages the time and asks questions and do not participate as a candidate of the debate but only as a third person of the political discussion plus the audience. And for this reason we are going to analyze further on the pre-election debates from the conversational perspective. So far, the presidential debate cannot be analyzed on the level of the dialogue, because it supposes that there are only two speakers while in conversation there are more than two and we will see that the extra authority in debate not only manages with the time but also he has questions, replies and of course we should not forget about the fact that there is also the active audience, which is another important element of the debate. Yet, according to the number of the participants the presidential debate that we are going to analyze further one take the form of conversation, but if we analyze it from the perspective of the topic discussed we may say that the conversation produced represents the formal type of the dialogue. The fact that demonstrate this are the major topic discussed: economical crisis, national and foreign policy which are vulnerable due to the Iran war. In the case of the minor topic that do not have a major importance for the society we say that the interlocutors are engaged in a conversation of the informal type of the dialogue usually such conversation are called casual conversation.
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So much about how we make distinction between a dialogue and a conversation, further on we will analyze the four elements of the pre-election conversation. The conversation begins with an OPENING, mainly with a greeting that is an expression of pleasure at meeting someone: Good evening from the Ford Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. I'm Jim Lehrer of the News Hour on PBS, and I welcome you to the first of the 2008 presidential debates between the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois [26-09-2008, The First McCain-Obama Presidential Debate] / Brokaw: Good evening from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm Tom Brokaw of NBC News. And welcome to this second presidential debate, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. [07-10-2008, The Second McCainObama Presidential Debate] / Schieffer: Good evening. And welcome to the third and last presidential debate of 2008, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates. I'm Bob Schieffer of CBS News. [15-10-2008, The Third Presidential Debate]. The potential speaker, Jim Lehrer, firstly, indicates that there is an availability and willingness to enter into a conversation and secondly, there is some recognition of with whom one will be conversing; the parties must recognize each other Republican nominee, John McCain and Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. Similar to the casual conversation is the fact that the opening is composed by the attentiongetter or so called vocative Good evening and the main information about the speaker his name; but different from informal conversation is the fact that the speaker introduces, too, the names of the other two debaters and the location where the presidential conversation takes place. The attention-getter at the beginning of the conversation represents a formal greeting and it captures the hearers attention, then it comes the use of a conversational parenthesis such as The Commission on Presidential Debates is the sponsor of this event and the three other presidential and vice presidential debates coming in October. Tonight's will primarily be about foreign policy and national security, which, by definition, includes the global financial crisis. It will be divided roughly into nine-minute segments. [26-09-2008, The First McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. So, the listeners know that this debate is the first one and till the day of elections there will come two more presidential debates and one vice presidential, yet, they will have the chance to analyze and to make his/her choice for a candidate or another. Or, another format of the conversational parenthetical is Tonight's debate is the only one with a town hall format. The Gallup Organization chose 80 uncommitted voters from the Nashville area to be here with us tonight. And earlier today, each of them gave me a copy of their question for the candidates. From all of these questions -- and
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from tens of thousands submitted online -- I have selected a long list of excellent questions on domestic and foreign policy. Neither the commission nor the candidates have seen the questions. And although we won't be able to get to all of them tonight, we should have a wide-ranging discussion one month before the election. Each candidate will have two minutes to respond to a common question, and there will be a one-minute follow-up. [07-10-2008, The Second McCainObama Presidential Debate] which is more appropriate to the event that happens at the moment. The role of the conversational parenthesis used in debate is to introduce the listeners as well as the present public to the topic that is going to be discussed; the rules that are going to be followed and time offered for each interlocutors speech. And this is not all - the end of the conversational parenthesis is common to all the pre-election debates The audience here in the hall has promised to remain silent, no cheers, no applause, no noise of any kind, except right now, as we welcome Senators Obama and McCain [15-10-2008, The Third Presidential Debate]. We consider this an intermediary part of the conversational parenthesis because it goes smoothly to realization of the second part of the adjacency pair, called greeting for greeting that, at its turn, is the main and important element of the conversation opening. Thus, these greetings need at their turn also greetings but the difference between a casual conversation and a formal one is that the second one do not need a usual greeting reply in turn as Good evening, but they are used to give mostly a reply in the form of thanking for the turn McCain: Well, thank you, Jim. And thanks to everybody. / Obama: Well, first of all, I want to thank Hofstra University and the people of New York for hosting us tonight and it's wonderful to join Senator McCain again, and thank you, Bob [07-10-2008, The Second McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. Different due to its informality is the turn-greeting that takes place between G. Ifill and S. Palin, and J. Biden in the vice presidential debates: IFILL: Good evening from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm Gwen Ifill of "The NewsHour" and "Washington Week" on PBS. PALIN: Nice to meet you. BIDEN: It's a pleasure. PALIN: Hey, can I call you Joe? BIDEN: (OFF-MIKE) PALIN: Thank you. Thank you, Gwen. Thank you. Thank you. IFILL: Welcome to you both.
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In comparison to the greeting from the presidential debates, this one implies a more relaxed and familiar atmosphere. Thus the candidates do not behave in a strict formal way but they try to feel more comfortable, so that, calling his opponent by his name, the interlocutor, Palin puts her and Biden at the same level. This approach is more closely to the interlocutor and to the public, too. So, we can see that as casual conversation, pre-election ones also are opened in socially recognized ways: conversationalists normally greet each other and convey the message I want to talk to you with the help of the adjacency pair greeting for greeting. Consequently, the person who starts speaking after the greetings are over in fact initiates the substance of the conversation by taking the next turn. And from this point the net step of the conversation comes TURN TAKING. It can be different by pause or by asking the second person a question. In presidential debates we come across mostly to a ruled turn taking, that is, the moderator who is considerate to be the king of the debate has to minimize the simultaneous speaking and the presence of too long pauses. Taking into account that turn-taking is one of the fundamental organizations of conversation and that the Conversational Analysis divide this system into two components: the turn constructional component and the turn allocational component, we decided firstly to represent on what we are going to focus further in the following figure:

Turn-taking
the turn constructional component Adjacency Pairs the turn allocational component Turn Construction Units

1. Request for information and Providing information 2. Assessment and disagreement 3. Summons and Acknowledgement

1. Current Speaker selects Next Speaker; 2. Next Speaker Self-selects as Next; 3. Current Speaker Continues

Figure 1.3 Structure of Turn-taking in the Conversation The turn constructional component describes mostly how the information is grouped into linguistic units while the turn allocational component describes how participants organize their interaction by selecting speakers in a conversation.

In the case of allocational part of turn-taking we have to say that the turns at talk are built out of turn construction units: these are syntactically bounded lexical, clausal, phrasal or sentential units. They are, loosely, the building blocks from which turns are constructed. In the conversation of the pre election debates, we focus mainly on the sentential units and analyze the conversation at the level of the context. The moderator is the one to introduce the participants into the discussion in pre election debates. Yet, the person that takes the first floor is usually the moderator that has to involve the rest of the speaker into discussion, too. It usually sounds like this: Lehrer: Let me begin with something General Eisenhower said in his 1952 presidential campaign. Quote, "We must achieve both security and solvency. In fact, the foundation of military strength is economic strength," end quote. With that in mind, the first lead question. Gentlemen, at this very moment tonight, where do you stand on the financial recovery plan? First response to you, Senator Obama. You have two minutes. Second response to Senator McCain [26-09-2008, The First McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. Jim Lehrer by using the quote provokes the candidates to speak and a very important element of the debate is that he names the person to be the first. At his turn, Senator Obama comes with a reply that is far away to be very familiar/ colloquial Well, thank you very much, Jim, and thanks to the commission and the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss, for hosting us tonight. I can't think of a more important time for us to talk about the future of the country [26-09-2008, The First McCain-Obama Presidential Debate], that is, he thanks for the question and for the hosting. We do not come across to such thanking when we are involved in a day by day conversation. This is another important and indispensable element that appears in the conversation as a form of presidential debate. Then, the answer to the question comes you know, we are at a defining moment in our history. Our nation is involved in two wars, and we are going through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. // So we have to move swiftly, and we have to move wisely. And I've put forward a series of proposals that make sure that we protect taxpayers as we engage in this important rescue effort. // Number one, we've got to make sure that we've got oversight over this whole process; $700 billion, potentially, is a lot of money. // Number two, we've got to make sure that taxpayers, when they are putting their money at risk, have the possibility of getting that money back and gains, if the market -- and when the market returns. // Number three, we've got to make sure that none of that money is going to pad CEO bank accounts or to promote golden parachutes. // And, number four, we've got to make sure that we're helping homeowners, because the root
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problem here has to do with the foreclosures that are taking place all across the country. // [Jim Lehrer, 26-09-2008, The First McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. We see that very smoothly Obama answers nicely to the question and very briefly announce his future priorities, or so called, political plan. In his speech, we can say that the presence of coherence and cohesion in the present discourse make it clear, more suitable for peoples mind and most appropriate to the resolutions of the financial crisis. Additionally, we remark that Obama uttering these expressions does not only refer only to the future state or affairs, but is doing so in the process of performing a kind of communicative act such as promise; so we face to a pragmatic meaning of the language represented by the illocutionary act. In such a way, Obamas objectives turn into obligation towards the people that are going to elect him obligations which are verbalized only when you run for the president of the country and actions when you are elected as the head of the state. Silently and smoothly, after Obamas speech, Senator McCain comes also with a reply to Lehrers first question: Well, thank you, Jim. And thanks to everybody. // I'm feeling a little better tonight, and I'll tell you why. Because we have finally seen Republicans and Democrats sitting down and negotiating together and coming up with a package. // This isn't the beginning of the end of this financial crisis. This is the end of the beginning, if we come out with a package that will keep these institutions stable. And we've got a lot of work to do. And we've got to create jobs. And one of the areas, of course, is to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil [First debate]. At his turn, McCain thanks for hosting and touches the theme of financial crisis, but different from Obama, his speech is shorter and we face to a locutionary act because he is uttering a sentence with a certain sense and reference, which is roughly equivalent to meaning in the traditional sense. In their opening remarks, B. Obama and J. McCain seem to be both promising and saying that they are promising by using the simplest and most straightforward sort of speech, that is, literally and directly. By being literal and direct, they impose a minimal load on the hearer in understanding what is said. Thus, the used illocutionary act and at the same time the use of locutionary act is successfully performed simply by uttering the right explicit performative sentence, with the right and concrete intentions and beliefs, and under the right circumstances financial crisis. In conversation the speakers usually signal that their turn is about to end with verbal and non-verbal cues. Usually, one speaker speaks at a time, and speaker transitions occur with little or no overlap. Moreover, this orderliness occurs regardless of the number of speakers, the size of the
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turns, the topic of the conversation, and so on. These are called Turn Construction Units due to the fact that speakers are able to recognize the right moment to take over in the conversation. These are grammatically complete units of language such as a sentence, clause, or phrase, which signal to the other speakers a potential gap in which to take over. This transfer of the floor can be gauged by participants in a conversation in three ways: current speaker selects next speaker, next speaker selects as next, or current speaker continues his speech. This can be realized in different verbal or non-verbal modes as: falling intonation; the end of a grammatical unit of conversation, or utterance in the form of a full sentence or question; pause; posture and gaze or eye contact, or even a direct invitation to one of the other participants to continue. Yet, we are going to analyze them: Current Speaker selects Next Speaker that is, the first speaker invites explicitly and more directly the second speaker calling him by name or by his social status: Ifill: Thank you, governor for the answer. Now, Senator, please? / Biden: Gwen, I don't know where to start, where the Governor is a Republican nominee Sarah Palin of Alaska, and the Senator is a Democratic nominee, Joe Biden of Delaware [02-10-2008, the Vice Presidential Debate]. Another case of selection is by naming: Brokaw: There are three -- health care, energy, and entitlement reform: Social Security and Medicare. In what order would you put them in terms of priorities, Mr. McCain? / McCain: I think you can work on all three at once, Tom. I think it's very important that reform our entitlement programs [The second debate]. As it has been seen, in order to show respect and order at the same time, the moderator uses at the end of the question the name of the next speaker Mr. McCain. This type of the selection of next person to speak is a common one in pre-election debates due to the fact that there is a moderator that knows the questions and whose role is to manage the time and to make each candidate to express his ideas. Additionally, the present turn taking is mostly used at the beginning and at the end of the conversation, because in the middle of the conversation there could appear some misunderstandings, or arguments and the candidates take the floor without naming the speaker. Next Speaker Self-selects as Next this type of construction unit is realized in two ways by using a complete sentence or a tag question by the first interlocutor. The first which is the most commonly used is a complete sentence, for example, McCain: We Republicans came to power to change government, and government changed us. And the worst symptom on this disease is what my friend, Tom Coburn, calls earmarking as a gateway drug, because it's a
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gateway. It's a gateway to out-of-control spending and corruption. and further comes the second speakers reply Obama: Well, Senator McCain you are absolutely right that the earmarks process has been abused, which is why I suspended any requests for my home state, whether it was for senior centers or what have you, until we cleaned it up. [26-092008, The First McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. The completeness of the sentences contributes to a coherent and cohesive presentation of the problem connected with the earmarks process. And we see that the next speaker himself takes the floor and continues speaking about the problem that the first speaker has begun; the moderator does not interfere and the floor is taken by Obamas initiative, in such a way, the conversation between the candidates grows in size. The right to take the floor is expressed by a complete sentence that end in a full stop the idea is ended and there are not any continuation possible. The second turn signal also used in the presidential debate is the ending of a sentence in a tag question Ifill: Let me clear something up, Senator McCain has said he supports caps on carbon emissions. Senator Obama has said he supports clean coal technology, which I don't believe you havent supported, have you? / Biden: I have always supported it. That's a fact, which explicitly invites the interlocutor to take the floor [02-10-2008, the Vice Presidential Debate]. This type of self taking floor is a little bit confusing being expressed by the tag question have you?, that is, this one does not choose expressively the next speaker, yet, it can refer to one person or as well as to some people at the same time. You in English language is used for both: you as one person, and you as two or more persons. From the example above we see that Ifill, the moderator, does not choose one person to answer, he analysis some ideas expressed by two opposite candidates B. Obama and J. McCain that run for the president and the tag question refers to both S. Palin and J. Biden that run for the vice-president and each of them supports Democratic or Republican party. So far, Biden is the first with the initiative to answer while Palin respecting the principle of politeness wait for her turn Palin: I also support carbon emissions [02-102008, the Vice Presidential Debate]. An interesting fact here is that J. Biden is a Democratic nominee and he supports at his turn Senator Obamas projects while S. Palin is a Republican nominee and at her turn supports Senator McCains projects, yet the complex question is addressed for both of them at the same time, but with the help of the tag question firstly the answer was got for the second part of the compound question even though there was not named the next speaker.
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Current Speaker Continues that is another way to signal the completion of a turn by pausing some minutes and then to continue in the case that no one has taken the next turn, for example, McCain: Let me give you an example of what Senator Obama finds objectionable, the business tax. Right now, the United States of American business pays the second-highest business taxes in the world, 35 percent. Ireland pays 11 percent, right Obama?/ [PAUSE] / So, if you're a business person, and you can locate any place in the world, then, obviously, if you go to the country where it's 11 percent tax versus 35 percent, you're going to be able to create jobs, increase your business make more investment, et cetera. I want to cut that business tax. I want to cut it so that businesses will remain in the United States of America and create jobs. [15-10-2008, The Third Presidential Debate]. In the present example we see how McCain explains why he wants to cut the business tax proposed by Senator Obama. The pause has been used in order to give the floor but due to the ignore received, Senator McCain continues with explanation of his cut taxes policy. In such a way the current speaker continues his idea and the turn taking is not realized. Thus, we have seen that in presidential debate as a form of conversation, due to the number

of interlocutors, the speaker holding the floor selects the next speaker by name or by asking a tag or general question, and in the case of pausing the turn is taking silently without asking by the current speaker. In this way, the candidates spoke directly to each other at times, but at other times they spoke as if their opponent were not on the same stage, a few feet away. Going deeper in the analysis of the turn-taking, we observe that certain turns have specific follow-up turns associated with them. For example, there are questions that request information take answers, or greeting also replies greeting etc. These sequences go together and they are called Adjacency Pairs. They represent a fundamental, if not the fundamental unit of conversations. They capture, in a very basic way, the interlocking nature of a stretch of talk. In its simplest and most basic form an adjacency pair represents two contiguous turns at talk, so, they constitute the second part of the turn taking called the constructional component. In the analyzed practical material we are going to see that the adjacency pairs are closely connected with the turn-taking and so far we come across to the most commonly used adjacency pairs, as: Request for information and Providing information: Brokaw: Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility? /

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McCain: I think it's a responsibility, in this respect, in that we should have available and affordable health care to every American citizen, to every family member. And with the plan that I have, that will do that. / Obama: Well, I think it should be a right for every American. In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills -- for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay her treatment, there's something fundamentally wrong about that [07-10-2008, The Second McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. The question above needed an answer by providing subjective information and additionally from Obamas response the interlocutor received some objective information, too, based on real facts, and proofs that support and supplement his point of view. The conversation so far transforms into a competition, that is, an exchange in which the power of mind, good sense and moral sentiments of the interlocutors come to be revealed in opposite ways. Brokaws question requests for information regarding the health care in America, so that the audience to be informed about what are their view towards important issues as health care, financial crisis or others. Assessment and disagreement: McCain: Well, again, while you (Obama) were on the board of the Woods Foundation, you and Mr. Ayers, together, you sent $230,000 to ACORN and you launched your political campaign in Mr. Ayers' living room. / Obama: That's absolutely not true. / McCain: And the facts are facts and records are records. / Obama: And that's not the facts. McCain: And it's not the fact that Senator Obama chooses to associate with a guy who in 2001 said that he wished he had have bombed more, and he had a long association with him. It's the fact that all the details need to be known about Senator Obama's relationship with them and with ACORN and the American people will make a judgment [15-10-2008, The Third Presidential Debate]. This adjacency pair shows up McCains judgement about Obamas relationship with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), that is a
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collection of community-based organizations in the United States that advocated for lowand moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. At his turn, Obama disagrees with the present idea and there appears a conflict of interests. Thus, we can see that the conversation has some elements of confrontation between the candidates and shows up some facts that were not known by the audience. The speaker of a dispreferred turn will provide an account so as to explain why it is a dispreferred rather than preferred action that is being performed, as can be seen in the example above. Summons and Acknowledgement: Ifill: Senator? / Biden: Yes Gwen; Ifill: Governor? / Palin: Ok! [02-10-2008, the Vice Presidential Debate]; Lehrer: Senator Obama... / Obama: Sure! Lehrer: Mr. McCain! / McCain: Yes, Jim [26-09-2008, The First McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. In the present case we come across to some turns taking that identify the person by his name or by his position in the society or so called political function because we face a presidential election debate. This adjacency pairs is different from others in that something always follows them; they have implications beyond the two turns of which they are comprised. This is because the person issuing the summons is obligated to respond to the answerer as we saw in the examples above. In all the three analyzed adjacency pairs we see that each of them is composed of two utterances long and are produced successively by the two candidates of the pre-election debate. They are such ordered that the first utterance belongs to the class of first pair part and the second utterance belongs to the second pair part. The first pair part often selects next speaker and always selects next action it thus sets up transition relevance and expectation which the next speaker fulfills, in other words, the first part of pair predicts the occurrence of the second. So, we can say that the adjacency pairs are contiguous and are uttered by different speakers, i.e. B. Obama, J. McCain, G. Ifill, J. Lehrer etc.; they are ordered, so that an answer to a question offered by the moderator or the audience had not preceded it, and they are matched, that is, they respect the principle of cohesion and coherence in speech performing a nice and clear speech / discourse. The use of adjacency pairs presents the language in action, and mainly joint action

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because a single individual cannot perform an adjacency pair, it must be performed by two different people who are orienting to each others actions. Further we have to say that when two people speak together (Obama and McCain), they speak not together, but each in turn: Obama says something, then stops, then McCain replies something else (or the same thing), then stops. The coherent discourse they carry on is composed of sequences that are interrupted when the conversation moves from partner to partner, even if adjustments are made so that they correspond to one another. The fact that speech needs to pass from one interlocutor to another in order to be confirmed, contradicted, or developed shows the necessity of interval, which has been very well managed by the moderators. The power of speaking interrupts itself, and this interruption plays a role that appears to be minorprecisely the role of a subordinated alteration. This role, nonetheless, is so enigmatic that it can be interpreted as bearing the very enigma of language: pause between sentences, pause from one interlocutor to another, and pause of attention, the hearing that doubles the force of locution. The use of turn takings in conversation imply a respect of the principle of politeness, but it could be too easy and perfect to analyze a conversation where the turn takings are not broken. It usually happens that in pre election conversation the turns are interrupted and this violation is called insertion sequence: Schieffer: Do either of you think you can balance the budget in four years? You have said previously you thought you could, Senator McCain. McCain: Sure I do. And let me tell you... Schieffer: You can still do that? McCain: Yes. Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I'm going to give a new direction to this economy in this country. I will balance our budgets and I will get them and I will... Schieffer: In four years? McCain: ... reduce this -- I can -- we can do it with this kind of job creation of energy independence [Third debate]. In the present adjacency pair called assessment and agreement we come across to a violation from the side of the moderator Bob Schieffer. Yet, he is not interested so much how J. McCain is going to deal with the budget in four years of leading the country, but he is interested if he can do it useful in four years, thus the insertion sequence takes the form of the question in order to receive the main answer in which the moderator is interested. Now let consider another violation of the turn taking:
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McCain: The next president of the United States is not going to have to address the issue as to whether we went into Iraq or not. The next president of the United States is going to have to decide how we leave, when we leave, and what we leave behind. That's the decision of the next president of the United States. Lehrer: Well, let's go at some of these things... Mccain: Senator Obama is the chairperson of a committee that oversights NATO that's in Afghanistan. To this day, he has never had a hearing. Lehrer: What about that point? McCain: I mean, it's remarkable. Lehrer: All right. What about that point? Obama: Which point? He raised a whole bunch of them. Lehrer: I know, OK, let's go to the latter point and we'll back up. The point about your not having been... Obama: Look, I'm very proud of my vice presidential selection, Joe Biden, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as he explains, and as John well knows, the issues of Afghanistan, the issues of Iraq, critical issues like that, don't go through my subcommittee because they're done as a committee as a whole. Lehrer: Well, thank you Senator Obama. Lets go to the nest question addressed to Senator McCain [First Debate]. Lehrer, the moderator of the presidential debate violates McCains speech asking what about that point? a question addressed to Obama. Anyway, the stubborn initiative of McCain let him expose his opinion till the end and finally by saying in an ironic way that is remarkable that Obama in his position of the chairperson of a committee that oversights NATO did not hear anything about the conflict from Afghanistan, lets the moderator to continue with the insertion sequence. Thus the insertion sequence violates the turn taking and it brokes at the same time the principle of politeness that it should be present in a conversation, no matter which type it belongs: formal or casual. As we faced a nice opening of the conversation and a correspondingly turn taking with trying to respect the principle of politeness, that is, without no violating too much turn takings, we see an appropriate closing. In the theoretical material analyzed, we come across to a division of the closing part of the conversation, that is, pre-closing sequence and main closing, because participants do not simply quit talking they have a highly ritualized way of bringing normal conversations to an end.
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The political debates at their turn also are based on these two closing sequences. Different from casual conversation, in pre election debates the PRE-CLOSING SEQUENCE does not end in a word or sentence but in a text. The pre-closing sequence at its turn has two parts in presidential conversation that has the form of a debate: the first part is initiates usually that the speaker has to terminate expressed by the moderator Lehrer: Few seconds. We're almost finished. Senator Obama you have 60 seconds while the second part takes the form of a 60 seconds discourse time offered for each candidate to make his last remarks Obama: Well, let me just make a closing point. You know, my father came from Kenya. That's where I get my name. And in the '60s, he wrote letter after letter to come to college here in the United States because the notion was that there was no other country on Earth where you could make it if you tried. The ideals and the values of the United States inspired the entire world. I don't think any of us can say that our standing in the world now, the way children around the world look at the United States, is the same. And part of what we need to do, what the next president has to do -- and this is part of our judgment, this is part of how we're going to keep America safe to send a message to the world that we are going to invest in issues like education, we are going to invest in issues that relate to how ordinary people are able to live out their dreams. And that is something that I'm going to be committed to as president of the United States. The second part of the pre-closing is continued by the second discourse offered by McCain: Jim, when I came home from prison, I saw our veterans being very badly treated, and it made me sad. And I embarked on an effort to resolve the POW-MIA issue, which we did in a bipartisan fashion, and then I worked on normalization of relations between our two countries so that our veterans could come all the way home. I guarantee you, as president of the United States, I know how to heal the wounds of war, I know how to deal with our adversaries, and I know how to deal with our friends [26-09-2008, The First McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. Each discourse of the candidates that have taken the form of pre-enclosing includes a conclusion to what have been said and debated during 90 minutes. For example, B. Obama puts the accent mostly on the education and the idea that can be caught from the message is that children are the future of the country whom there shall be invested more money and desire to learn, because the previous leading has been spoiled the American dream. So, B. Obama bases his victory on the young electors mostly, while J. McCain believes that will win with the help of the old electors. There are present two different strategies: Obamas speech being long considering the syntagmatic

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structure of the sentences and the second McCains speech which is shorter and touches the wounds of the war. The endings of the conversation are also things that have to be achieved speakers do not just stop speaking. The closing sequence can only occur when a topic has been ended and other speakers have agreed not to introduce any new topics and smoothly with the help of pre-closing of the conversation, we face the CLOSING SEQUENCE of the conversation. A conversation can be closed only when the participants have said everything they wanted to say. Due to this the last person to speak in presidential debate is the moderator Lehrer: And that ends this debate tonight. On October 2nd, next Thursday, also at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, the two vice presidential candidates will debate at Washington University in St. Louis. My PBS colleague, Gwen Ifill, will be the moderator. For now, from Oxford, Mississippi, thank you, senators, both. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night [26-09-2008, The First McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. Additionally to saying good bye, the most common element of the pre-election conversation is that there is a strong connection with the following one that is coming and the duty of the moderator is to announce the electors about the evolution of the presidential campaign. Ifill: That ends tonight's debate. We want to thank the folks here at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Commission on Presidential Debates. There are two more debates to come. Next Tuesday, October 7th, with Tom Brokaw at Belmont University in Nashville, and on October 15th at Hofstra University in New York, with Bob Schieffer. Thank you, Governor Palin and Senator Biden. Good night to everybody [02-10-2008, the Vice Presidential Debate]. At his turn, Iffil, the moderator of the Vice Presidential debate, announces the audience about the next presidential debates that are going to take place in October. Brokaw: We want to thank our hosts here at Belmont University in Nashville and the Commission on Presidential Debates. And you're in my way of my script there, if you will move. In addition to everything else, there is one more presidential debate on Wednesday, October 15, at Hofstra University in New York, moderated by my friend, Bob Schieffer of CBS News. Thank you, Senator McCain. Thank you, Senator Obama. Good night, everyone, from Nashville. [07-10-2008, The Second McCain-Obama Presidential Debate]. The red thread goes further on and is being caught by Schieffer: Senator Obama, Senator McCain, thank you very much. This concludes the final debate. I'm Bob Schieffer of CBS News, and I will leave you tonight with what my mother always said -- go vote now. It will make you feel big and strong. Good night to everyone [15-102008, The Third Presidential Debate].
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Concluding, we have to say that the political conversations are usually organized covertly, and the organizational principle provide a discreet interactional framework. Yet, the architecture of the conversation achieves in the end the following: organize turns so that more than one person has the chance to speak and the turn taking is orderly; allow interlocutors to anticipate what will happen next and how the selection is decided, and provide a way to repair glitches and errors when they occur. The adjacency pairs are the basic structural units of conversation. They are used for openings and closing of the conversation, and at the same time are very important during conversations both for operating the turn-taking system by enabling an interlocutor to select next action and next interlocutor, and also for enabling the next interlocutor to avoid both gap and overlap.

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1.3 The Conversational Implicature of Pre-election Debates

While linguistics restricted itself for a generation to a concentration on form, the study of meaning was left to linguistic philosophers, who concentrated on the sense, reference and implications of sentences in a text, and developed a new branch of linguistics called pragmatics. We have seen that conversation is a kind of joint activity, in which speakers produce turns according to a systematic framework, and that the contributions made by these turns include a presentation phase of performing a kind of action, and an acceptance phase of grounding the previous actions of the interlocutor. So far we have only talked about what might be called the infrastructure of conversation. But we have so far said nothing about the actual information that gets communicated from speaker to hearer in dialogue. While subchapter 1.2.3 from theoretical part of the thesis have showed how we can compute meanings from sentences, it turns out that in conversation, the meaning of a contribution is often quite a bit extended from the compositional meaning that might be assigned from the words alone. This is because inference plays a crucial role in conversation. The interpretation of an utterance relies on more than just the literal meaning of the sentences. As Grafinkel [Coulthard, p.30] observed, it is never possible to say what one means in so many words speakers require hearers to work to a greater or lesser extent to derive their message from the words uttered. Additionally, Grice is saying that language users assume that the speakers are following four maxims (quantity, quality, manner and relation) to articulate a conversational strategy for cooperatively conveying information. Thus, hearers will assume that speakers are following these maxims, and will interpret what speakers say, under this assumption. This will allow hearers to infer things beyond what is actually said, deriving a certain conversational implicature. In setting out to explore this phenomenon on conversational implicature we suggest for analysis the discourse of the candidates that participate in pre-election debates. The discourses belong to Senators B. Obama, J. McCain, S. Palin and J. Biden and the four moderators of the debates G. Ifill, T. Brokaw, B. Schieffer and J. Lehrer. Firstly, we will make some remarks on sentence meaning and illocutionary acts and, secondly, we will explicate the conversational maxims of relation, quality, quantity and manner, and we also will analyze how hearers use and exploit conversational maxims in order to infer non literal speaker meaning. As it has been previously mentioned our Master Degree Paper is analyzed through the Hymess taxonomy of communication. Its primary element is the speech acts that combined together form the speech event, which is a part of the speech situation.
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According to Austins theory that has big role in linguistics, when a speaker utters a sentence, s/he may perform three types of acts: locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. The locutionary act is an act of uttering a sentence with a certain sense and reference, which is roughly equivalent to meaning in the traditional sense. It is identified mostly in isolated proposition, while when united them together we get complete speeches that create the illocutionary act. The second type of speech act is one of performing some action in saying something, so that, by uttering, the speaker may be performing the act of informing, claiming, guessing, promising, reminding, warning, threatening, or requesting. And the last type of act is the perlocutionary act, that is, what speakers bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing, persuading, and deterring. Taking into account that our paper is based on the political issues, we see that the speakers of pre election debates express the propositions in a meaningful utterance, so that, they always attempt to perform an illocutionary act. This attempted performance is part of what the mean and intend to communicate to their audience in the context of their utterance. In performing illocutionary acts speakers relate propositions to the world with the intention of achieving a success of fit between words and things from a certain direction of fit. Thus successful illocutionary acts are satisfied under certain conditions. For example, let us the take B. Obamas end speech in the first presidential debate and part of what we need to do, what the next president has to do -- and this is part of our judgment, this is part of how we're going to keep America safe -- is to send a message to the world that we are going to invest in issues like education, we are going to invest in issues that relate to how ordinary people are able to live out their dreams. And that is something that I'm going to be committed to as president of the United States [First Debate]. Obama is performing an act of informing and promising at the same time; he informs about how America should be kept safe by naming some strategies and finally he takes this engagement under his control only if the condition to be elected as a head of the state is fulfilled. The same thing is seen in the last speech of Senator McCain in the first presidential debate, but the only one difference is that he performs an promising act by using I instead of we as in Obamas case I guarantee you, as president of the United States, I know how to heal the wounds of war, I know how to deal with our adversaries, and I know how to deal with our friends [First debate]; other difference is that Obama, by performing the act of promising, informs people how he is going to realize it, while McCain guarantees something but does not give some strategies that need to be followed. In order that a successful elementary illocutionary act be satisfied, it is not
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enough that its propositional content be true and fit the world. Thus, the success of fit between words and things must be achieved from the direction of fit of its force. In all three presidential and one vice-presidential debates, the conversationalists are oriented to and by an over-arching co-operative principle, that is, they make their conversational contribution such as is required the moderators ask questions and involve the candidates as well as the audience into conversation; at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which they are engaged each candidate expresses his opinion towards the topic discussed and the second candidate agrees or disagrees with it by giving available proves. In such a way the dialogue between the moderator that puts the questions and each interlocutor separately transforms into a conversation between three speakers and the audience if there is necessary to be involved. This principle implies decisions in four major areas: relation, quality, quantity and manner, and their significance is spelled out by four maxims: 1. Maxim of Relation be relevant; 2. Maxim of Quality a) do not say what you believe to be false; b) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence; 3. Maxim of Quantity a) make your contribution as informative as is required; b) do not make your contribution more informative than is required; 4. Maxim of Manner - a) avoid obscurity of expression; b) avoid ambiguity; c) be brief; d) be orderly. Thus, the present maxims have a big importance in politics because they control the discourse of each candidate and at its turn, a good discourse control and influence peoples minds in election campaign. This discursive influence may be due to context as well as to the structure of the conversation. The structure of the conversation has been analyzed in the previous chapter, so that the present one is destined to the analysis of the content and mainly we are going to make a distinction between what is said by a speaker of a verbal utterance and what is implicated, dependent on the assumption that the speaker is following certain rational principles of conversational exchange. Context is a relevant issue for the participants and for the audience, too. During interaction speakers orient to, and display to each other in the design of their turns, what they understand to be
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the salient features of their context. And in the same way that we can discover speakers own interpretations by examining the design of their turns, so we can discover what they take to be the relevant features of the context of their interaction. We can investigate if the participants turns are based on the principle of co-operation by respecting the four Grices maxims of conversational implicature.

Maxim of Quantity
Complex activities as election debates, by definition, contain a large amount of detail. When candidates speak to one another they leave information they feel is unimportant and emphasize information they feel is essential. This economy of communication is an example of speakers obeying Gricess maxim of Quantity: speaker should say no more and no less than what is needed. Each illocutionary act of the candidates of the pre-election conversation is a natural kind of use of language which can serve to achieve linguistic purposes in the course of conversations. From a logical point of view, an illocutionary act is of perfect quantity in the context of an utterance if and only if it is as strong as required to achieve the current linguistic purposes of the speaker in that context. On the other hand, whenever a speaker uses the maxim of quantity, he intends that the hearer make an inference on the basis of the hypothesis that the primary speech act performed in the context of the utterance is actually as strong as required to achieve his current linguistic purposes. Usually the conversational background is such that the speaker means to perform that primary act instead of other stronger speech acts that were also relevant at that moment in the conversation. Let us consider the following examples that open and close conversation: Lehrer: Good evening from the Ford Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. I'm Jim Lehrer of the NewsHour on PBS, and I welcome you to the first of the 2008 presidential debates between the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. / The Commission on Presidential Debates is the sponsor of this event and the three other presidential and vice presidential debates coming in October. Tonight's will primarily be about foreign policy and national security, which, by definition, includes the global financial crisis. It will be divided roughly into nine-minute segments. Direct exchanges between the candidates and moderator follow-ups are permitted after each candidate has two minutes to answer the lead question in an order determined by a coin toss. The specific subjects and questions were chosen by me. They have not been shared or cleared with anyone. The audience here in the hall has
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promised to remain silent, no cheers, no applause, no noise of any kind, except right now, as we welcome Senators Obama and McCain [First debate, p.1-2]. Jim Lehrer is the moderator of the first presidential debate and his discourse at the beginning of the debate takes 1 minute. In the present case the maxim of quantity is very well respected because the speaker does not form his utterances using the only possible set of words for the correct communication of his ideas, but packages what he says in a way he believes the hearer is most likely to understand in the context of the discourse situation. The packages are divided into three: first comes the presentation of the candidates at the debate - Jim Lehrer, Senators B. Obama and J. McCain; secondly the audience face the structure of the conversation referring to who is the sponsor and what is the time schedule and the third package is about the present audience so that the listeners of the radio and the ones of the TV set to see that there are more people than only three.

Dna Gheorghita aici cu maximele astea sunt confuza si nu stiu ce sa fac: de la inceput am vrut sa analizez fiecare discurs a fiecarei persoane in parte, adica analizez de expemplu 2-3 intrebari oferite de moderator si cum fiecare membru a raspuns - fiecare raspuns sa fie analizat din perspective maximelor- cantiate, calitate, relatie si maniera. O alta ide ar fi sa iau maximele fiecare in parte asa cum am analizat maxima cantitatii si sa le analizez, sa duc exemple si sa scriu cite 2 foi la fiecare si dupa asta sa analizez violarea acestora cum se realizeaza sis a aduc exemple. Ce si cum correct sa fac????? Puteti va rog dvs sa cititzi toata teza in integral (eu va trimit si partea teoretica) si sami spuneti cum ar fi mai correct de facut..ca eu sincer nu stiu, si ma gindeam ca e foaie verde la ureche sa analizez maximele dar nu este chiar asa fiindca trebu sa le analizez din punct de vedere lingvistic si in plus daca puteti paote sami spuneti cam ce parametri sau cum trebu de analizat maximele astea, ca eu in teorii gasesc numa ceea ce am scris in teorie dar analiza nu gasesc deloc.si adica nu stiu exact cear trebui sa analizez. Multumesc

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