Defensive semiotic strategies in government: a multimodal study of blame avoidance

In this article, I argue that when officeholders try to avoid blame, they often engage in defensive performances which can be analysed in terms of how they exploit various multimodal semiotic resources to ward off (potential) criticism: the setting, appearance, and manner chosen for a particular interaction with an audience; and both verbal and non-verbal ways of arguing, legitimising, framing, and representing social actors and actions. I apply these analytic categories to interpret the data gathered during fieldwork at a major training event of British government communicators. By combining insights from multimodal discourse analysis, discourse-historical studies of organisational behaviour, and recent research into blame avoidance in public administration, I demonstrate how certain semiotic strategies used by officeholders have an effect of backgrounding the ideas about any possible norm violations that government communicators may have been associated with in the eyes of critical audiences, such as lying, spin doctoring, and using tax money for propaganda campaigns that may not actually serve the interests of the public. I suggest that analysts of government communication should pay more attention to the defensive practices of government insiders, and study in great detail how these practices are incorporated into everyday behaviour through professional training.