Vy jste mi z té otázky utekl (analýza jednoho způsobu vymáhání odpovědi s využitím korpusových dokladů)

Abstract

An analysis of contemporary media dialogues demonstrates that guests on television or radio debates occasionally attempt to avoid answering questions posed by moderators. This article analyses the Czech expressions Vy jste mi z té otázky utekl / Vy mi z té otázky utíkáte (literally ‘You ran away from my question’ / ‘You’re running away from my question’), which are occasionally used by moderators in order to elicit an answer from the guest. Two questions are posed: a) In which texts does this expression occur? and b) Can it be considered a contemporary phraseme? The examples come from the Czech National Corpus, the DIALOG corpus and the archives of the Czech Radio and the archives of the Czech Television. This evokes the idea that the moderator’s question represents a space in which the guest has (involuntarily) found himself and from which he is trying to escape. The paper thus places this expression in the context of other phrasemes which express the idea of running away (an escape) from real as well as metaphorical spaces (e.g. utéci z učení, ‘to run away from one’s studies’), phrasemes which are to a certain degree synonymous (e.g. vyvléci se z otázky, ‘to slip away froma question’) as well as with the phrase utíkat od něčeho (e.g. od tématu, ‘to stray from the topic’). The number of occurrences is too low for the expression under review to be considered a contemporary phraseme.