THE CHANGING TENOR OF QUESTIONING OVER TIME

Abstract

This paper uses a single question form—the negative interrogative—as a window into the increasing aggressiveness of American journalists and hence the increasingly adversarial relationship between press and state in the United States. The negative interrogative in English is a type of yes/no interrogative (e.g., “Isn't it …”, “Don't you …”) often understood as asserting rather than merely seeking information. Its frequency in the construction of yes/no questions is an index of the propensity for journalists to depart from a formally neutral posture and express a point of view on the subject of inquiry. Previous quantitative research documented their growing use in US presidential news conferences since the 1950s, with the Nixon Administration as an historical turning point. Here we incorporate a more nuanced qualitative analysis of single cases in use. Beyond their growing frequency, negative interrogatives were increasingly mobilized to raise substantively adversarial matters, increasingly prefaced by adversarial assertions, and increasingly likely to treat such prefaces as presuppositionally given. Together these trends indicate journalists' growing willingness to highlight administration problems and failings and to hold Presidents to account, with Presidents since Nixon facing a harsher climate of journalistic questioning than did their predecessors.

Keywords:

• assertive questioning
• journalistic norms
• journalistic questioning
• news conferences
• negative interrogative
• news interviews
• press–state relations
• White House press corps

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (grant #SES-0112221), and the LeRoy Neiman Center for Study of American Culture at UCLA.

Notes

1. Margaret Warner's mention of “Jim” in line 5 is a reference to longtime PBS NewsHour anchor, Jim Lehrer.

2. In this case, the assertiveness of the N-I is mitigated by the initial frame of the question (“I wondered, Sir, if …”). A similar frame mitigates the assertiveness of the N-I in the next example (excerpt 11).

3. General Lucius Clay was American Commander during the Berlin Airlift of 1948 that relieved the Soviet blockade of the Western part of the city. In 1961, during the Berlin Wall crisis he returned to Berlin as special advisor to President Kennedy.

4. Vice President Agnew gave several speeches during 1969, vigorously attacking opponents of President Nixon's Vietnam policies and giving aggressive support to those policies.

5. The “Hyde Amendment” in question here bars the use of certain federal funds to pay for abortions. Introduced by Republican Congressman Henry Hyde in 1976 as a “rider” to annual appropriations bills, it primarily affects poorer patients whose needs are served through the Medicare program.