Interactional Strategies for Managing 'Me Too' Accusations in an Election Campaign: The Roy Moore Senate Race

This paper investigates the interactional techniques used to defend against accusations and to strategically manage threats to face in videotaped campaign speeches and related media events such as press conferences, Presidential briefings, news interviews, and TV call-in talk shows from the last few weeks of the Roy Moore Alabama Senate race in 2017. Roy Moore’s Senate campaign was complicated by accusations of previous inappropriate sexual behavior with underage girls. In this paper I will use conversation analysis to investigate how Roy Moore and others used membership categorizations, formulations and reformulations, indirect accusations and denials, affiliation and disaffiliation techniques and evasive answering techniques to discuss and respond to direct and implied accusations of misconduct. This proposed paper will show how utterances can be constructed strategically to create or avoid blame-worthy implications and attempt to present a positive face to the listening audience when facing accusations of sexual misconduct.