Refusal

with Daniel Andrews

The previous sections have explored evasion techniques that seek to stealthily move away from providing a direct response. This section is designed to attend to the rare occasions when a politician may wish to overtly refuse to answer a question.

Failure to answer a question is inherently dispreferred in an interview, indeed in any interaction the failure to produce an answer is a moral and structural incongruence that risks the complete breakdown of the interaction itself.

Commonly, the account to remedy this dispreferred action is an explanation from the politician that they do not possess adequate knowledge to produce an answer, or they cannot comment because it is not their direct responsibility, however, this section will move beyond this to discuss techniques for openly refusing to answer.

A refusal in this context refers to a situation where a politician possesses the necessary knowledge to produce a response yet openly refuses to do so. The technique best used to execute this refusal is what Swedish communication scholar, Mats Ekström, has coined an ‘Announced Refusal to Answer’ (2009).

An announced refusal to answer involves openly admitting that there will be no answer provided by the politician, however, the crucial element is the announcement itself facilitating the non-production of an answer. This involves using modal auxiliary verbs that intrinsically imply the wrongness of the question, and thus the wrongness of a response - ‘I shouldn’t (answer the question)’ being a common example.

This announcement is supported by negatively connoted words that further undo the legitimacy of the question, positioning it as something that should not have been asked. Importantly this technique arms politicians with a weapon to destroy the question without actively undoing the affiliation (positive interpersonal alignment) with the interviewer.

Announced refusal to answer - preserving affiliation

This clip shows Daniel Andrews announcing his refusal to answer a question about who is responsible for a coronavirus outbreak in hotel quarantine. He says that he ‘could’ provide an answer, however, it would involve implicating a sick Victorian which he doesn’t think is morally right. This a relatively successful refusal as Andrews embeds an implicit announcement of the wrongness of answering – ‘I’m not going to do that’.

Importantly, Andrews makes an active effort to maintain affiliation with the reporter - ‘I’m not accusing you of attacking the person’ - instead focusing on attacking the question as something that cannot be answered because it is leading him to do something that he doesn’t think is ‘fair’.

Announced refusal to answer - abandoning affiliation

Leading questions are prevalent in political interviews and announced refusals to answer provide an evasion tactic that is incredibly robust in the defence against being led into an answer.

After a follow-up question, Andrews exemplifies the use of the announced refusal to forcefully stop a leading question.

He risks disaffiliation based on the severity of the connoted language used to describe the question and the emphasis on the word ‘you’ in his retaliation against the journalist. However, this disaffiliation is structurally mitigated by the appeal to the better morals of himself and ‘Victorians’ to do the ‘right thing’.

ABC, 2021

Key Learning 03

Announced Refusal

A strategic announcement of the imminent refusal is fundamental to successfully executing a refusal to answer.

This announcement should implicitly signal the 'wrongness' of the question through word choice, particularly modal auxiliary verbs, for example, "I shouldn't".

Announcements should, wherever possible, seek to preserve affiliation by signalling the wrongness of the question, rather than the interviewer.

Announcements prove particularly strong against leading questions, acting to stop the direction of a leading question by abruptly stopping the question/answer sequence