Politeness Strategies in the 1992 Vice Presidential and Presidential Debates

Feminine style in presidential debate discourse, 1960–2000

“…There were differences, however, in the relative degree of politeness in the highest face-saving strategies used between the first and third debate and Perot's lowest level face-saving strategy was more polite than either Bush or Clinton's (Hinck & Hinck, 2002).…”

“…Coding at the micro level of the sentence or phrase, while appropriate in other types of research (e.g., Hinck & Hinck, 2002;Roloff & Ifert, 1998), is inappropriate for the present investigation. The types of structures under examination, specifically anecdotes, personal experiences and inductive structure, are likely to overlap and take several sentences to complete.…”

“…Specifically examining message construction within vice-presidential and presidential debates, Hinck and Hinck (2002) found no difference among three presidential candidates (Clinton, G. H. W. Bush and Perot) on the most frequently used face-saving strategy in each 1992 presidential debate. There were differences, however, in the relative degree of politeness in the highest face-saving strategies used between the first and third debate and Perot's lowest level face-saving strategy was more polite than either Bush or Clinton's (Hinck & Hinck, 2002).…”

“…A response was defined as any statement from a candidate uninterrupted by a statement from a moderator, questioner, or another candidate. Responses have been successfully unitized in past research on presidential debates (Hinck & Hinck, 2002). Particularly given that most responses are replies to a single question or rebuttal of a particular statement by an opponent, using responses as the coding unit generally limits the unit to a single issue while also keeping the unit broad enough to allow for development of inductive reasoning or entire anecdotes.…”

“…Past content analyses of campaign discourse beyond functional analyses have focused on message explicitness (Bernstein, 2000), politeness strategies (Hinck & Hinck, 2002), ambiguity, use of evidence, jargon, analogies, fear appeals, and humor (Benoit & Wells, 1996). Bernstein (2000) found that respondents who read messages with an explicit statement of position on crime issues rated candidates as more competent in addressing crime than respondents who read messages that were less explicit.…”