| This thesis deals with questions and questioning in the institutional interactions of press conferences, with a special focus on question preface, i.e. the statement(s) preceding a question. Question preface in news interviews and press conferences has been analyzed by a number of studies, but those studies have not come up with a systematic framework for investigation of preface and some fundamental problems, including the definition and identification of preface, wait to be solved. No research has been carried out about question preface in Chinese. The present study hopes to fill in this gap and in carrying out a systematic analysis of question preface in the context of Chinese foreign press conferences, attempts to prove that preface can provide a new perspective for us to understand questions and questioning.The data for this study, the transcription of the routine press conferences held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, is collected from the website of the ministry. The data covers half a year, from October 2006 to March 2007, and is analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively to answer four research questions: (1) how frequently is preface used in the press conferences? (2) what can account for the use of preface? (3) what functions can preface perform? and (4) how is preface responded to by spokespersons?The thesis concludes that question preface offers a new perspective to understand both questioning and answering. Three functions of preface in the questioning of the press conferences are recognized and analyzed, namely preface can help contextualize questioning, journalists may use preface to tighten the agenda for their questions, and preface sometimes also embeds presuppositions. The thesis also explores the ways in which preface is manipulated by spokespersons. Spokespersons may attack the view presupposed or lexical items used in preface. Alternatively, they may choose to take the advantage of question preface to state their own views on certain issues.
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