Parliamentary sessions: interlocking genres of law-making

This chapter scrutinizes political communication in the Parliament as a form of ‘public dialogue’ through which both professional and non-professional politicians work together to achieve power in a dialogic interaction. It characterizes the Parliament as an arena where specific actors, members of the Parliament, use language to enact multi-layered identities through inter-generic speech acts and speech events. It defines the contextual factors that limit the topical options of speakers, constrained by the requirements of an institution in regard to possible self-selection and length of turns. It also discusses the Parliament as a type of confrontational environment where speakers use their communicative competences to discredit other political counterparts. Finally, the chapter reviews the inter-generic nature of discourses in four types of Romanian parliamentary proceedings: opening sessions, festive sessions, impeachment sessions, and motion of no confidence sessions.