“It’s the National Assembly here, Madam!”

Abstract Parliamentary debates are adversarial in nature ( Ilie 2003 ). This paper focuses on interruptions, which have been described as a means by which to disturb the speech of an authorised speaker ( Truan 2016a ), and their subsequent reactions. Herein, we aim to examine the link between the use of address forms and the conflictual nature of parliamentary debates. Drawing on cross-cultural pragmatics, our study compares data from the Finnish Eduskunta , the French Assemblée nationale , and the German Bundestag . Cross-cultural differences were found in the frequency of address forms (31% in German, 20% in French, and 10% in Finnish), although pronominal and verbal address forms were more frequent than nominal forms of address (NFAs). Beyond the default V forms, T forms challenging institutional norms were also found. Pragmatically, NFAs served as markers of “courteous attacks” ( Fracchiolla and Romain 2015 ), resulting in a contrast between the courteous forms used and the conflictual nature of the exchange. Overall, address forms were important means for identifying the person(s) targeted by confrontational interruptions and their reactions to them.