‘How can politicians successfully avoid giving unfavourable responses to questions in interviews?’
Introduction
There are easier places for politicians to find themselves in than the hot-seat of a political interview. Nevertheless, it is a demand of the job that politicians show up, prepared for scrutiny, in this often adversarial environment.
This module specifically aims to prepare politicians for the moments in interviews when certain answers cannot be produced, when the demands of the question to produce an answer must be rejected in favour of producing a 'non-answer'.
Utilising Conversation Analysis research (a full list of resources is available in the 'References' tab), this module will seek to develop evasion capacities. Although failing to produce an answer to a question is instinctively and structurally 'dispreferred', the skill of evasion is fundamental to the success of the modern politician.
Catching Hardballs
The term ‘Hardball’ is the popular characterisation of a question in an interview that aggressively progresses an adversarial viewpoint. There has been a marked increase in the prominence of hardball questions in interviews across recent decades, alerting politicians to the importance of equipping themselves adequately for adversarial encounters in interviews. This resource is designed specifically to illuminate techniques to soften the impact of hardballs and develop responses that are not answers.
Progression
This module is designed to introduce 3 foundational elements of evasive responses:
