<![CDATA[Political debates in Regional Head Elections (Pilkada) serve as strategic arenas in which candidates construct credibility, project leadership, and negotiate public image, yet research on subnational debates remains limited, with most studies focusing on national contests and isolated pragmatic dimensions. This study addresses this gap by examining the 2024 West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) gubernatorial debate through an integrated conversation-analytic and pragmatic framework. Using a qualitative interpretive design, the study analyzed verbatim transcripts of all three official debate sessions involving the three candidate pairs, examining turn-taking, interruptions, and adjacency pairs alongside speech acts, conversational maxims, and politeness/impoliteness strategies. The researcher served as the primary instrument, supported by a structured coding sheet, with data credibility strengthened through repeated verification against original recordings and peer checking. Findings reveal four interrelated patterns: interruptions and overlaps functioned as tools for interactional control and topic redirection; commissive and directive speech acts served as dominant persuasive resources for projecting commitment and challenging opponents; politeness strategies mitigated disagreement while impoliteness enabled credibility attacks; and candidates strategically observed or flouted cooperative maxims to manage accountability and control the debate agenda. The study concludes that political credibility in regional debates is constructed through an integrated system of interactional and pragmatic strategies shaped by local governance priorities, community values, and closer candidate-voter relationships, distinguishing subnational debates from national political discourse and warranting context-specific analytical attention.]]>
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