Question Design and the Rules of Questioning in UK Prime Ministers Questions and Ghanaian Ministers Questions

Abstract

This paper examines how parliamentarians design their questions and flout parliamentary rules of questioning, leading to confrontations between parliamentarians (MPs) and (Prime) Ministers. A comparative corpus-assisted discourse analysis of UK Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) and Ghanaian Minister’s Questions (GMQs) indicates that GMQs are less confrontational than PMQs since Ghanaian Parliamentary Speakers prevent MPs from asking, for example, questions of opinion and argumentation, which contain strong emotions, generate attacks, accusations and counter-accusations. The paper argues that the confrontations and (counter-)attacks result from the way MPs design their questions. The paper suggests that “yobbery and public school twittishness” in PMQs could be curtailed if the Speaker would disallow questions that flout parliamentary rules of questioning as it is done in GMQs. The paper has implications for parliamentary interactions generally.