Kuinka Koivisto vakuutti äänestäjät presidentin valitsijamiesvaalien vaalitentissä 1982?

Authors

• Matti Leiwo

Abstract

In the presidential election of 1982 Mauno Koivisto got 43,1 % of the votes and was elected president. His pre-election interview on TV was watched by 82 % of the voters. According to ratings, he was regarded the most convincing of the presidential candidates. The present paper describes some aspects of the political interviews as discourse. In these interviews the topics are treated in a way unfavourable to the interviewee. The interviewer and the interviewee do not have a common goal, they are neither polite nor co-operative. The aim of the interviewee is to maintain his credibility while ignoring intepretations, implications and facts unfavourable to him. In this paper some submaxims of the co-operative principle are developed to describe the use of the question and the answers that deal with doxastic and other attitudes. The credibility of the interviewer and interviewee is discussed from the point of view of the breach of the co-operative and politeness principles and their verbal and nonverbal behaviour (hesitation, pitch, drawls and fragmented speech, breaks etc.). Further, some critical points of the interview — the opening of the discussion and the conclusion of the episodes dealing with socialism and Nato arms — are subjected to a detailed analysis as regards both the content and the presentation of the interlocutors.