Speech Acts as a Stance-Taking Strategy in American Oversight Hearings: A Pragmatic Analysis

Parliamentary oversight hearings in the United States are discursive arenas where political actors assert authority, construct identities, and signal ideological alignment. This study investigates how speech acts function as tools for stance-taking in these institutional interactions, focusing on exchanges between questioners (QRs) and questionees (QEs) during House oversight hearings. Anchored in a critical pragmatic framework, the analysis draws on 40 question–answer sequences from hearings conducted in 2020 and 2024 across security and economic domains. Four primary speech act categories—representative, directive, commissive, and expressive—were examined to identify their strategic deployment in stance construction. Quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that QRs predominantly rely on directive and representative speech acts to assert control, impose ideological frames, and position QEs as accountable agents. In contrast, QEs favor representative and expressive acts to maintain credibility, reframe accusations, and align themselves with institutional norms. The findings demonstrate that speech acts are not merely functional but serve as rhetorical instruments that enable speakers to construct alignment, opposition, and authority within highly strategic communicative settings. Ultimately, the study underscores the centrality of speech act choices in shaping how political stance is articulated and negotiated in adversarial institutional discourse.