By tradition, parliament has developed into a prototypically institutional locus devoted to verbal confrontation between politicians representing opposite political parties who present arguments supporting the pros and cons of issues under discussion. For parliamentarians who participate in the political decision-making process by interacting and debating, speaking is acting. In Question Time sessions parliamentary acting consists in question-response sequences that display exchanges of challenging, accusatory, but also countering, defensive and ironical, remarks between Opposition MPs and Government MPs. An examination of the speech acts performed during Question Time can provide revealing insights into the confrontational nature of the relationships between opposition MPs and government MPs, as well as into their multifunctional and shifting rhetorical strategies. The present analysis focuses on the multiple functions of the speech acts performed by MPs, which can be used and misused in unpredictable ways, in various degrees and for different purposes.
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