The protesters’ demands: An analysis of (im)politeness of the Hong Kong Chief Executive in government press conferences

The study examines the politeness strategies applied in the responses by the Hong Kong Chief Executive to journalists’ questions. It analyses four pieces of spoken data from press conferences conducted following the initial march against the implementation of the Extradition Bill in June 2019, to the official Bill withdrawal announcement made in September 2019. By adopting pragmatic approach—relational work proposed by Locher and Watts (2005, 2008)—the analysis demonstrates how Carrie Lam verbally and non-verbally employs politeness strategies to refute journalists’ accusation. It also explores indirectness and verbal and non-verbal evasive strategies employed in her responses; these make her perform (im)polite verbal and non-verbal behaviour in press conferences. The results show how (im)politeness techniques such as evasion, indirectness, positivity, rejection and ignorance are employed in Carrie Lam’ responses when she was addressing face-threatening questions. This study provides new insight into how (im)politeness of interactants is evaluated in a discursive approach. It also provides a new direction for understanding the interactional language and strategies currently used in Hong Kong’s press conferences.