A Phono-Pragmatic Analysis of Speech Acts in Political Interviews: Evidence from Brexit Discourse

Despite growing interest in political discourse and prosodic pragmatics, integrated phono-pragmatic analysis of speech acts and intonation in political interviews remains underexplored, especially in Brexit discourse. This study aims to investigate the phono-pragmatic realization of speech acts in Brexit interviews with Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. The study is significant because it links pragmatic force with prosodic realization and shows how political meaning is strategically constructed in institutional media discourse. Using a qualitative design, the study examines forty excerpts, twenty from each interview. These excerpts were selected because they contain coherent speech-act sequences, while isolated words and disconnected utterances were excluded. The unit of analysis is the excerpt-level speech-act sequence, with the main speech act used for tone analysis. It applies an eclectic model integrating Searle’s (1969) speech act taxonomy, Ferrara’s (1980) discourse-functional relations, and Brazil’s (1997) discourse intonation model. Praat was used to identify falling, rising, fall-rise, and rise-fall tonal contours. Findings reveal that assertive acts predominate in both interviews, accounting for 68.97% and 64.95% of May’s and Corbyn’s speech acts, respectively, followed by commissives and directives. Expressives remain marginal, and declaratives are absent. Subordinate acts mainly operate through justification and amplification. Both speakers prefer proclaiming tones. May uses falling and rise-fall contours more evenly, indicating institutional control. Corbyn relies heavily on rise-fall patterns, producing a more emphatic rhetorical style. The analysis shows that intonation actively regulates illocutionary force. These results suggest that a phono-pragmatic framework offers a useful perspective for analyzing strategic spoken communication in institutional media discourse.