Studies in Language and Social Interaction In Honor of Robert Hopper
LEA's COMMUNICATION SERIES Jennings Bryant/Dolf Zillmann, General Editors Selected titles in Language and Discourse (Donald Ellis, Advisory Editor) include: Ellis • From Language to Communication, Second Edition Haslett/Samter • Children Communicating: The First Five Years Locke • Constructing "The Beginning": Discourses of Creation Science Ramanathan • Alzheimer Discourse: Some Sociolinguistic Dimensions Sigman • Consequentiality of Communication Tracy • Understanding Face-to-Face Interactions For a complete list of titles in LEA's Communication Series, please contact Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers
Studies in Language and Social Interaction In Honor of Robert Hopper Edited by Phillip J. Glenn Emerson College Curtis D. LeBaron Brigham Young University Jenny Mandelbaum Rutgers University
2003
LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS Mahwah, New Jersey London
Copyright © 2003 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or by any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, New Jersey 07430
Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Studies in language and social interaction / edited by Phillip J. Glenn, Curtis D. LeBaron, Jenny S. Mandelbaum. p. cm. Festschrift for Robert Hopper. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-3732-9 (alk. paper) 1. Sociolinguistics. 2. Interpersonal communication. 3. Social interaction. 4. Conversation. I. Glenn, Phillip J. II. LeBaron, Curtis D. III. Mandelbaum, Jenny S. IV. Hopper, Robert. P40.E93 2001 306.44-dc21 00-054879 Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability. Printed in the United States of America 1098765432 1
Dedication To Robert Hopper (1945-1998) Scholar, Teacher, Colleague, Friend
"Descriptions are the gifts observers give: Refraining patterns message bearers live."1
1
From poem by Robert Hopper, Observer: Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Communication Theory, 1991, 1, 267-268.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents 1.
An Overview of Language and Social Interaction Research Curtis D. LeBaron, Jenny Mandelbaum, and Phillip J. Glenn
PART I: ORIENTING TO THE FIELD OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL INTERACTION 2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
41
Extending the Domain of Speech Evaluation: Message Judgments James J. Bradac
45
Designing Questions and Setting Agendas in the News Interview John C. Heritage
57
Taken-for-Granteds in (an) Intercultural Communication Kristine L. Fitch
91
"So, What Do You Guys Think?": Think Talk and Process in Student-Led Classroom Discussions Robert T. Craig and Alena L. Sanusi
103
Gesture and the Transparency of Understanding Curtis D. LeBaron and Timothy Koschmann
119
PART II: TALK IN EVERYDAY LIFE 7.
1
Utterance Restarts in Telephone Conversation: Marking Topic Initiation and Reluctance Charlotte M. Jones
133
137
viii
8.
9.
CONTENTS
Recognizing Assessable Names Charles Goodwin
151
Interactional Problems With "Did You" Questions and Responses Susan D. Corbin
163
10. Managing Optimism Wayne A. Beach
175
11. Rejecting Illegitimate Understandings Samuel G. Lawrence
195
12. Interactive Methods for Constructing Relationships Jenny Mandelbaum
207
13. A Note on Resolving Ambiguity Gail Jefferson
221
14. The Surfacing of the Suppressed Emanuel A. Schegloff
241
15. Sex, Laughter, and Audiotape: On Invoking Features of Context to Explain Laughter in Interaction Phillip J. Glenn
263
16. Gender Differences in Telephone Conversations Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra
275
PART III: TALK IN INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS
289
17. Comparative Analysis of Talk-in-Interaction in Different Institutional Settings: A Sketch Paul Drew
293
18. Conversational Socializing on Marine VHF Radio: Adapting Laughter and Other Practices to the Technology in Use Robert E. Sanders
309
CONTENTS
ix
19. Law Enforcement and Community Policing: An Intergroup Communication Approach Jennifer L. Molloy and Howard Giles
327
20. Preventatives in Social Interaction G. H. Morris
341
21. The Interactional Construction of Self-Revelation: Creating an "Aha" Moment E. Duff Wrobbel
353
22. "A World in a Grain of Sand": Therapeutic Discourse as Making Much of Little Things Kurt A. Bruder
363
23. Modeling as a Teaching Strategy in Clinical Training: When Does It Work? Anita Pomerantz
381
24. Indeterminacy and Uncertainty in the Delivery of Diagnostic News in Internal Medicine: A Single Case Analysis Douglas W. Maynard and Richard M. Frankel
393
25. Body Movement in the Transition From Opening to Task in Doctor-Patient Interviews Daniel P. Modaff
411
PART IV: EMERGING TRAJECTORIES: BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT
423
26. The Body Taken for Granted: Lingering Dualism in Research on Social Interaction Jurgen Streeck
427
27. Action and the Appearance of Action in the Conduct of Very Young Children Gene H. Lerner and Don H. Zimmerman
441
x
CONTENTS
28. Speech Melody and Rhetorical Style: Paul Harvey as Exemplar John Vincent Modaff
459
29. The Body Present: Reporting Everyday Life Performance Nathan P. Stucky and Suzanne M. Daughton
479
30. Ethnography as Spiritual Practice: A Change in the Takenfor-Granted (or an Epistemological Break with Science) Maria Cristina Gonzalez
493
31. The Tao and Narrative Mary Helen Brown
507
32. Conversational Enslavement in "The Truman Show" Kent G. Drummond
521
33. On ESP Puns Emanuel A. Schegloff
531
PART V: ROBERT HOPPER: TEACHER AND SCHOLAR
541
34. Robert Hopper: An Intellectual History Jenny Mandelbaum
543
35. The Scientist as Humanist: Moral Values in the Opus of Robert Hopper Sandra L. Ragan
563
36. The Great Poem Leslie H. Jarmon
567
37. Phone Openings, "Gendered" Talk, and Conversations About Illness Wayne A. Beach
573
38. Nothing Promised James J. Bradac
589
CONTENTS
xi
39. The Last Word Robert Hopper
591
APPENDIX TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS
593
CONTRIBUTORS
597
AUTHOR INDEX
605
SUBJECT INDEX
623
This page intentionally left blank
1 An Overview of Language and Social Interaction Research Curtis D. LeBaron Brigham Young University Jenny Mandelbaum Rutgers University
Phillip J. Glenn Emerson College This book is an edited collection of empirical studies and theoretical essays about human communication in everyday life. The primary focus is on small or subtle forms of communication that are easily overlooked and too often dismissed as unimportant. Authors examine various features of human interaction (e.g., laughter, vocal repetition, hand gestures) occurring naturally within a variety of settings (e.g., at a dinner table, a doctor's office, an automotive repair shop), whereby interlocutors accomplish aspects of their interpersonal or institutional lives (e.g., resolve a disagreement, report bad medical news, negotiate a raise), all of which may relate to larger social issues (e.g., police brutality, human spirituality, death and optimism). The present collection is bound together by a recognition that social life is largely a communicative accomplishment, that people constitute the social realities experienced everyday through small and subtle ways of communicating, carefully orchestrated but commonly taken for granted.
2
INTRODUCTION
This volume represents Language and Social Interaction (LSI) perspectives on human communication. LSI is a popular umbrella term for scholarly work carried out within and across a number of academic disciplines. The label covers an array of assumptions, methods, and topics, which draw unity from certain family resemblances (discussed later). LSI research includes studies of speech, language, and gesture in human communication; studies of discourse processes, face-to-face interaction, communication competence, and cognitive processing; conversation analytic, ethnographic, microethnographic, ethnomethodological, and sociolinguistic work; dialect and attitude studies, speech act theory, and pragmatics. Within the field of communication, scholarship in LSI has flourished in recent years. There are large and active LSI divisions within the National Communication Association (NCA) and the International Communication Association (ICA); the journal Research on Language and Social Interaction (originally called Papers in Linguistics) is now a mainstay within the field; LSI research appears regularly in books (e.g., Ellis, 1999a) and a host of mainstream disciplinary journals (e.g., Leeds-Hurwitz, 1992); and a growing number of communication departments at major universities emphasize LSI in their curricula. The present volume originated as a Festschrift celebrating the intellectual career of the late Robert Hopper, a leading LSI researcher and an extraordinary teacher. Hopper completed his doctoral studies in 1970 at the University of Wisconsin and joined the faculty in Speech Communication at the University of Texas at Austin, where he remained until the end of his career. As author of eight books and dozens of published essays, he was known for his innovative thinking, lucid writing, and ability to bring together diverse scholars and perspectives. He taught more than 60 graduate courses and supervised more than 30 doctoral dissertations1. He received many awards2 for his research and teaching. Over the course of three decades, Hopper (and his students) pursued a rigorous speech science that led him to the forefront of approaches to LSI, as they were new to communication. He worked first with techniques for measuring language attitudes, then with discourse analysis, then conversation analysis, and finally explored microethnographic techniques for analyzing videotaped data. Each of these research traditions helped to shape the field of LSI, and each continues to make robust contributions to a rigorous science of speech in the communication field. By soliciting papers from Hopper's former students and 1
A chronological list of Robert Hopper's doctoral students appears in the Appendix to Chapter 34. For example, in 1983 Hopper became the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor of Communication at the University of Texas. In 1990 he was honored as one of three Outstanding Graduate Teachers at the University of Texas. In 1994 he received ICA's B. Aubrey Fisher Mentoring Award. In 1996 he received the Outstanding Scholarly Publication Award (from the LSI Division of NCA). In 1998 he was first to be honored by NCA's newly established Mentor Fund. Over the years, Hopper made an impressive collection of audio and video recordings of everyday interaction, known as the University of Texas Conversation Library, which in 1998 was officially named in his memory. 2
INTRODUCTION
3
close colleagues, therefore, we have collected a cross-section of cutting-edge LSI research. This volume, then, arises out of two interrelated rationales. One, it is designed to showcase the diversity of contemporary LSI research, altogether allowing for reflection on LSI as an established and expanding area of study. Two, it celebrates Robert Hopper and the trajectory of his intellectual career, which in many ways paralleled developments in the field of LSI, for which he provided impetus. To the extent that this volume forwards his ideas and interests, it will make important contributions to the study of human communication and social interaction. The remainder of this chapter explicates these two interrelated themes. First, we describe the emergence and influence of LSI within the field of communication3. The work of Robert Hopper embodies both the diversity of LSI research and the eclecticism of the communication field. Second, we describe the current state of LSI and discuss seven points of commonality and contention within the area—that is, seven points around which LSI scholars tend to rally in one way or another. Third, we preview the main sections of this book and comment on its organization.
THE EMERGENCE AND INFLUENCE OF LSI WITHIN THE FIELD OF COMMUNICATION LSI is a relatively recent area within the field of communication, which has been dominated by rhetorical and psychological approaches for almost a century. The field of communication traces its beginnings to 1914, when a group of speech scholars met in Chicago to officially break from their English (and theater) departments at various U.S. universities by organizing the National Association of Academic Teachers of Public Speaking (see O'Neill, 1915). Early publications show a division within the field: Many speech scholars advocated standards of positivistic science, with a psychological rather than a sociological bent (e.g., Winans, 1915; Woolbert, 1916, 1917); many others had a humanistic and rhetorical emphasis, mostly grounded in neo-Aristotelian philosophy (e.g., Hudson, 1923, 1924; Hunt, 1920). Within a few decades, a respectable research literature had been established (see Simon, 1951), but it was mostly concerned with individual performers of speech during situations of public address. After 1950, as the field matured, its domain extended to include a broad array of communicative phenomena within a wide variety of human activities. Several 3 By focusing specifically upon the field of-communication, we risk de-emphasizing LSI colleagues in other disciplines. As the terms "language" and "social interaction" suggest, LSI represents a convergence of concerns originating in linguistics, sociology, and anthropology. Nevertheless, LSI is especially strong within the field of communication, which is located at the crossroads of these interdisciplinary movements.
4
INTRODUCTION
scholars have documented the unfolding history and nature of the communication field (see Arnold & Bowers, 1984; Benson, 1985; Bitzer & Black, 1971; Gouran, 1990; Kibler & Barker, 1969). In the late 1970s, a series of groundbreaking publications set the stage for LSI's emergence within the field of communication (at that time called "speech communication"). Bringing together interpersonal communication and the detailed study of natural language, Nofsinger (1975, 1976) and Hawes (1976) demonstrated and advocated scientific analyses of naturally occurring speech without the use of statistical methods—an innovative proposition for the field of communication at that time. For instance, by drawing on conversation analytic work on presequences, Nofsinger (1975) identified a commonplace speech device he called "the demand ticket" (e.g., "Yuh know what?"), whereby a person may initiate a topic and at the same time secure the conversational floor. Nofsinger went on to suggest that utterances be understood according to their location within conditionally relevant sequences of talk, "rather than in terms of gross numbers of occurrences per unit of time or whatever" (p. 9). Philipsen (1975) drew on ethnographic methods pioneered by linguistic anthropologists Dell Hymes and Ethel Albert in his ground-breaking study of gendered patterns of speech in a blue-collar urban neighborhood (this essay won the NCA/LSI division's Outstanding Publication award in 1998). Two years later, in a special issue of Communication Quarterly (Summer 1977), naturalistic approaches (Pearce, 1977) to communication research were more thoroughly described, including ethnomethodology (Litton-Hawes, 1977), conversation analysis (Nofsinger, 1977), discourse analysis (Jurick, 1977), hermeneutic phenomenology (Hawes, 1977), and ethnography (Philipsen, 1977). Naturalistic methods were soon featured in other mainstream communication journals (e.g., Beach, 1982). Jackson and Jacobs (1980) combined detailed study of natural language with interests in rhetoric: They analyzed the structure of naturally occurring arguments and compared these to theoretical models of argument and the problem of "enthymemes" (missing or taken-for-granted premises of arguments), thereby illustrating the utility of discourse analysis to the field of communication generally and to rhetorical theory specifically. In an awardwinning essay, Hopper (1981b) expanded upon the issue of the "taken for granted" (TFG) in everyday communication and social life. He brought together a wide variety of linguistic approaches, showing how concern with TFGs is a communication issue. After reviewing the difficulties that TFGs have caused scholars across a variety of disciplines (enthymemes for rhetoricians, presuppositions for linguists, etc.), Hopper suggested that "there may exist a functional and principled incompleteness in language use" (p. 205) and he provided a schematic model for how people handle TFGs in everyday situations. In sum, these early publications pushed naturalistic methods into the mainstream of communication research, providing new ways of conceptualizing and
INTRODUCTION
5
analyzing communication, and bringing attention to phenomena previously overlooked. In the early 1980s, Robert Hopper and several other communication scholars interested in everyday language use participated in a series of conferences whereby the new research area (LSI) took shape. The first communication conference focusing on "conversational interaction and discourse processes" occurred in 1981 at the University of Nebraska (cohosted by Wayne Beach, Sally Jackson, and Scott Jacobs). The following year, two conferences occurred: one on language and discourse processes at Michigan State University (hosted by Don Ellis and William Donohue); the other on discourse analysis and "conversational coherence" at Temple University (cohosted by Karen Tracy and Robert Craig). Participants in the Michigan State conference produced a published volume about contemporary issues in language and discourse processes (Ellis & Donohue, 1986), which represented the wide range of LSI approaches (including speech act theory, discourse analysis, and conversation analysis) that were emerging at that time within the field of communication. For example, Hopper, Koch, and Mandelbaum (1986) described methods of conversation analysis, as the authors were coming to understand them. Participants in the Temple conference produced a published volume of original research (Craig & Tracy, 1983) that evidenced "a scholarly movement [with] radically different methods, databases, and conceptual frameworks for studying human interaction" (Knapp, 1983, p. 7). Each of the authors, including Hopper, examined the same data set: a careful transcription of a lengthy conversation between "B and K," two female undergraduate students who talked casually about their families, friends, food, holiday plans, horses, weather, and whatever else happened to emerge in the course of their interaction. Authors employed qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the structures and strategies of B and K's talk, providing detailed descriptions and accounts of the orderly and meaningful ways that competent speakers may show their talk to be coherently connected. For example, Hopper (1983) showed that coherence is an interactive accomplishment ("we can no longer rely upon a model of communication that emphasizes the role of the speaker over that of the listener" p. 84), across turns at talk ("the fundamental unit of interpretation is the pair" p. 80), whereby shared meanings systematically emerge and evolve ("the ordering of events in sequential time frequently seems an important tie to the interpretive process" p. 92). During the final decades of the 20th century, LSI scholars in communication brought together approaches and concerns from a number of related movements. Hopper's research exemplifies the eclectic interests which contributed to the emergence of LSI as a distinct area of study. Resonating with the field's origins in rhetorical theory, LSI research on speech evaluation sought to gauge audience responses to speakers and their messages (e.g., Gundersen &
6
INTRODUCTION
Hopper, 1984). Early message research employed sociolinguistic methods to examine the effects of speech on the listener by focusing on how listeners evaluated speakers on the basis of characteristics of the talk or the speaker (e.g., de la Zerda & Hopper, 1979; Giles & Powesland, 1975; Zahn & Hopper, 1985). The influence of ordinary language philosophy (e.g., Austin, 1962; Wittgenstein, 1953) prompted studies of "speech as action" (e.g., Hopper, 1981a). Concurrently, sociological studies reflecting the influence of symbolic interactionists directed attention to such topics as accounts and formulations under the umbrella term alignment talk (e.g., Morris & Hopper, 1987; Ragan & Hopper, 1981). An emphasis on issues of coherence and cohesion drawn from linguistics (Coulthard, 1977) combined with these other streams under a broader label of discourse analysis (e.g., Ellis, 1995; Hopper, 1983). At the same time, ethnographic approaches to communication were drawn from fields such as linguistic anthropology (e.g., Fitch & Hopper, 1983; Philipsen, 1975). Conversation analysis in the ethnomethodological tradition (e.g., Beach, 1982) provided alternative methods for studying structures and functions of everyday language use and, through such study, for investigating processes whereby people communicatively constitute everyday activities (e.g., Hopper & Doany, 1989; Hopper & Drummond, 1990, 1992; Hopper & Glenn, 1994; Hopper, Thomason, & Ward, 1993). More recently, continued technological developments (e.g., multimedia and digital video) have opened up new opportunities for conducting detailed studies of embodied interactions, thereby creating a parallel stream to continued research on the organization and workings of speech-in-interaction (e.g., LeBaron & Hopper, 1999). This parallel stream furthers a tradition of ethological study and context analysis exemplified in the work of Kendon (1990). Recent work in LSI also reflects and contributes to theory and research in performance studies (e.g., Hopper, 1993a, 1993b). For communication researchers using LSI methods, the essential feature of interest is human communication itself, which contrasts with scholars in related academic disciplines who use LSI methods but display ultimate preoccupation with language, society, or culture. The relationship between LSI and the field of communication has been mutually influential and beneficial. On one hand, LSI research has increased understanding of what communication is and how it is done. Arguably, the field of communication has been preoccupied with various factors that influence communication (such as individual dispositions, contexts, goals, gender, etc.), and with how communication influences a variety of factors (satisfaction, compliance, persuasion, social support, etc.), at the expense of examining the actual processes through which communication occurs. The LSI focus on discourse (or alternate terms such as speech, messages, talk, conversation, or interaction) has helped shape these issues as central to the communication discipline. On the other hand, traditions within communication studies have
INTRODUCTION
7
helped to shape LSI research. To illustrate, we identify the following four areas of mutual influence.
First: Moving Beyond the Sender-Receiver Model During the telecommunications boom associated with World War II, Shannon and Weaver (1949) proposed a model of communication based on their knowledge of how the telephone works. According to their model, communication begins with a source or sender, who encodes thoughts or feelings into a message that is then transmitted across a channel to a receiver, who in turn decodes the message and thereby understands the information transmitted. This model had immediate and widespread appeal as it perpetuated a psychological view and at the same time resonated with the traditional rhetorical topoi of speaker, message, audience, and context. Although the transmission model was useful and fruitful in many ways, and although it continues to be taken for granted by many social scientists and laypersons, much communication research acknowledges the importance of moving beyond the transmission model (e.g., see Goldsmith & Baxter, 1996). Arguably, too much research on communication has tried to isolate component parts of the transmission model, at the cost of seeing communication as a constitutive process through which interactants work together to construct lines of action. Three decades of LSI research have helped the field of communication to specify the details of the move beyond the transmission model and toward a social constructionist or constitutive view of communication. Using an array of empirical methods, LSI researchers have shown that: • Messages are not discrete from people—in some ways people are the message; • Notions of "self and "other" are constituted in and through discourse, and the boundaries between sender, message, and receiver are not always clear; • Meaning is not solely the product of the sender—rather, messages and meanings are joint creations, even if only one person appears to be doing most of the speaking; • Meanings may remain incomplete, emergent, and subject to retrospective modification; • Messages and context are mutually elaborative; • Context is invoked, oriented to, and constituted in interaction; • And conversely, context influences the organization of interaction; and so forth.
8
INTRODUCTION
Thus, LSI researchers have shown that human interaction is partly or largely constitutive of the component parts that the sender-receiver model takes for granted. That is to say, through communication participants perform and realize their relative roles, interactively negotiating the meanings of so-called messages, orienting toward some symbol systems as relevant and recognizable, in many ways constituting their communicative context (e.g., Hopper, 1992b; Hopper & LeBaron, 1998). (A constitutive view of communication is further discussed later.)
Second: Reexamining Cognitive and/or Theoretical Constructs Through different sorts of empirical investigation (often involving analysis of audio recordings, video recordings, and/or field notes), LSI researchers have reconsidered and respecified various theoretical constructs associated with the field of communication. Sometimes specific concepts have been the target of LSI investigation from the outset. That is, LSI researchers have occasionally set out to examine details of the empirical world with the express purpose of scrutinizing theoretically derived concepts. For example, researchers with a specific interest in social identity have collected and examined discourse to learn more about the interactive construction of identity in everyday life (e.g., Carbaugh, 1993; Mandelbaum, 1994; Tracy, 1997). Some ethnographers have reexamined the traditional and monolithic concept of culture, respecifying it as practices whereby culture is constructed through conduct (e.g., Fitch, 1998a). Through analyses of audiotaped and videotaped communication within classrooms and schools (e.g., McHoul, 1990; see also chap. 6, this volume), LSI researchers have shown that human minds extend beyond the skin as people depend upon social and material worlds to acquire knowledge and display intellectual ability. Therapeutic discourse has also been an object of study (e.g., Bavelas, 1989; Buttny, 1993, 1996; LeBaron & Hopper, 1999; Morris & Chenail, 1995; Perakyla, 1995) as LSI researchers have sought to emphasize social aspects of patients' mental or psychological states. In this way, theoretical concepts associated with the field of communication have guided LSI research, which has in turn influenced the field at large. Other times, theoretical constructs have come under scrutiny in the course of LSI research on a set of data already collected. Conversation analysts regularly advocate unmotivated looking (Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997; Sacks, 1984), such as through "data sessions," a process whereby data are analyzed in order to see "what is going on and how it is getting done," which routinely leads to discovering phenomena occurring "in the wild," perhaps warranting respecification of theoretical constructs in the end. For instance, practices of relationship construction or dismemberment have been respecified after examinations of data have shown an opportunity for doing so (e.g., Hopper &
INTRODUCTION
9
Drummond, 1992; Mandelbaum 1989). Processes through which gender becomes socially relevant have been similarly reexamined (e.g., Hopper & LeBaron, 1998; Lawrence, Stucky, & Hopper, 1990; see also chaps. 15 and 16, this volume). Philipsen (1975) used ethnographic methods to study Teamsterville culture and discovered that (and how) the value of speaking or fighting may vary significantly from one culture to another. In his book, Conversations About Illness, Beach (1996) noted that he did not begin with an interest in studying eating disorders or the social construction of illness—rather, he came across data providing a compelling entry into these issues and allowing for respecification of them. Through close examination of empirical data, then, LSI researchers have come upon opportunities to reconsider and respecify conceptual and/or theoretical constructs within the field of communication.
Third: Bringing Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Together Within the field of communication (and other social sciences), verbal and nonverbal forms of communication have traditionally been treated as separable, distinct areas of inquiry. Although scholars of various stripes have lamented this artificial separation (e.g., see Streeck & Knapp, 1992, who described the separation as misleading and obsolete), the field of communication generally has made little progress toward mending the rift. Recently, however, LSI researchers have employed methods that bring the two modalities together—or rather, have examined vocal and visible forms of communication without separating them in the first place. Through methods that rely on videotaped recordings of naturally occurring interaction, LSI researchers have been able to get at communication as it is holistically enacted by interlocutors in the first place (e.g., C. Goodwin, 1986; C. Goodwin & M.H. Goodwin, 1986; LeBaron & Streeck, 1997; Streeck, 1984, 1993, 1994, 1996). The field of communication and LSI research will undoubtedly continue to be mutually influential in this area.
Fourth: Appreciating the Poetics of Language After separating from English (and theater) departments in 1914, scholars attempting to establish a science of speech tried to distance themselves from the literary and theatrical traditions. Nevertheless, scholarly interest in performance and other humanistic approaches has flourished within the field of communication. Contemporary uses of the term performance within communication include (a) a research method for studying communication, (b) an important feature of communication, and (c) a useful metaphor for talking about communication. This abiding interest within the field has influenced studies of language and social interaction. Performance methods have proven useful in sociolinguistic studies of speech evaluation (Lawrence et al., 1990).
10
INTRODUCTION
Methods in LSI, which are notorious for close attention to discourse texts, invite noticing of poetic and performative features of everyday interaction. For example, Hopper (1992b) likened his own transcriptions to stanzas of a poem, and his scientific work was often inspirited with a poetic sense of social life (e.g., Hopper, 1991, 1992a, 1993a, 1995). Hopper and other LSI researchers have explored theoretical and theatrical applications of using transcripts plus recordings of naturally occurring interactions as scripts for staged performance (e.g., Crow, 1988; Stucky, 1988; see also chap. 29, this volume). This has led to a substantial body of performed and written scholarship on what has been called everyday life performance (ELP). Repeated applications have shown that ELP makes for lively and insightful theatrical productions (e.g., Hopper, 1996). Furthermore, the ELP processes help practitioners learn about self and others, about patterns of interaction, and about production nuances of everyday talk (Stringer & Hopper, 1997). Thus, LSI research has significantly benefited from and contributed to performance studies within the field of communication (e.g., Gray & Van Oosting, 1996). To summarize, we have briefly described the historical emergence of LSI research within the field of communication and have discussed a few areas of mutual influence between the division and the field. Robert Hopper, as much or more than any other scholar, has been central to this unfolding. We now turn our attention more specifically to current trends within LSI research. In the following section, we identify and discuss seven points of commonality and contention within the area—that is, contested points around which LSI scholars tend to rally in one way or another, points whereby LSI studies bear a "family resemblance" (Wittgenstein, 1953) to one another.
CURRENT TRENDS IN LSI: SEVEN POINTS OF COMMONALITY AND CONTENTION The field of communication is like a no-host party at an academic convention4. Communication scholars have come together and noisily organized themselves into various divisions or interest groups where they talk, sometimes to be overheard by other groups. Membership within each division fluctuates as scholars come and go, sometimes listening, sometimes talking, arriving after the discussion has already begun and leaving before it is complete. Although the organization of a particular division may be somewhat arbitrary, it is nonetheless consequential for those involved: What may be stated and how, who may state it
4
Our analogy is a crude adaptation of Burke's (1941/1973) parlor metaphor, where the human condition is likened to an "unending conversation" (p. 111).
INTRODUCTION
11
and when, depends largely upon the participants who subtly negotiate the trajectory of their conversation and the standards for appropriate participation. LSI is an eclectic group, boasting various intellectual pedigrees. Not only are a variety of research methods employed—including ethnography, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, micro-ethnography, and pragmatics—but some scholars choose to blend methods (e.g., Moerman, 1988; Tracy, 1995). Clearly, such diversity has had synergistic outcomes for the discipline, but it has also led to basic disagreements (e.g., see Beach, 1995a; Sanders & Sigman, 1994; Tracy, 1994) and self-contemplation (e.g., Craig, 1999; Ellis, 1999b; Sanders, 1999; Wieder, 1999) on the nature of the discipline. As we privilege one way of describing here, we recognize that there are countless other ways that the field could be described—chronologically, topically, ideologically, methodologically, demographically, logistically, and so forth. Our choices (perhaps biases) have consequences for the centers and margins of the field we depict, which may include or exclude colleagues in odd or unfortunate ways. Nevertheless, occasional stocktaking may help to promote synergistic outcomes and prevent or reconcile unnecessary fissures within the field. Despite the risks, our description may help newcomers who are preparing to join the lively conversation underway, or it may help active LSI scholars assess their discipline and participation. In recent years, especially with the start of a new millennium, LSI scholars have seen several stocktaking exercises in the form of papers, panels, and publications (e.g., see special issues of Research on Language and Social Interaction, such as the "Talking Culture" issue in 1990, and the "Millennium" issue in 1999). Because our description is only one of several, we hope that it will continue dialogue rather than discourage it, invite and include participants rather than exclude them. Our description is organized around key points—or contested concepts—we think underlie, unify, and galvanize LSI research. Specifically, we propose that LSI researchers tend to rally around the following interrelated points, agreeing and disagreeing with them in various ways, whereby LSI studies take on a recognizable relationship to one another: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
LSI research privileges mundane, naturally occurring interaction within casual and institutional settings. LSI research adheres to principles of an empirical social science. LSI research describes and explains. LSI research is inductive and abductive. LSI research treats communication as constitutive and consequential. LSI research emphasizes emic, participant perspectives. LSI research focuses on language in use.
12
INTRODUCTION
Why have we approached our description of LSI in this way? Because work in LSI is unusually eclectic and faces the ongoing challenge of holding to common ground while exploring new and different directions for scholarship. We acknowledge that our list of seven points may be incomplete and may at some stage become obsolete. Moreover, we strongly emphasize that adherence to any one of the seven points listed is not required for membership within the LSI "family." Rather, each point is a contested site of commonality within the field, and we present (herein) plenty of counterexamples for each point, showing that each has been contested by the very researchers that these points have generally brought together. As evidenced by the descriptions that follow, these seven points are interrelated—even overlapping, though not redundant.
Research on Language and Social Interaction Privileges Mundane, Naturally Occurring Interaction Within Casual and Institutional Settings A conversation between two people washing dishes in their kitchen, for example, may warrant examination as much or more than a televised presidential speech. The term mundane refers to communication that may be commonplace regardless of setting, is usually uncelebrated, and is too often dismissed as unremarkable or unimportant. The term also incorporates features of communication that are often ignored or regarded as peripheral, such as vocal restarts and hesitations (e.g., C. Goodwin, 1980), laughter (e.g., Glenn, 1989, 1992, 1995; Jefferson, 1994), and seemingly insignificant acknowledgment tokens such as "oh" (e.g., Heritage, 1984) and "okay" (Beach, 1993, 1995b). Communication is considered to be "naturally occurring" if it would have occurred whether or not it was observed or recorded (see Beach, 1990, 1994). Participant observations, field notes, and audio or video recordings of everyday speech events are considered premium data from which to make conclusions about human communication and social life. Sacks (1984) criticized a common concern among social scientists for finding supposed "good data" and "good problems." He observed: Such a view tends to be heavily controlled by an overriding interest in what are in the first instance known to be "big issues," and not those which are terribly mundane, occasional, local, and the like. . . . It is possible that detailed study of small phenomena may give an enormous understanding of the way humans do things and the kinds of objects they use to construct and order their affairs. (pp. 22-24)
Such emphasis on mundane and naturalistic communication diverges from a variety of other research traditions. LSI research contrasts with methodologies
INTRODUCTION
13
that (a) rely upon hypothetical or imagined exemplars of language use as a basis for linguistic claims, (b) focus exclusively upon mass-mediated events, such as a television drama, as a basis for conclusions about culture, (c) concentrate only upon "big" speech events, such as presidential speeches, which are supposed to be especially important to society, or (d) generate data through experimental methods, perhaps under laboratory conditions where subjects are removed from the social and material environments in which they typically interact. Although LSI research privileges mundane interaction, considerable attention has been given to popular and publicized speech events. For instance, Atkinson (1984) scrutinized the behavioral patterns (both vocal and visible) of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan during public speeches, and identified "devices" whereby the politicians cued audience applause and interactively performed "charisma." In a special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction, several scholars analyzed patterns of turntaking and interruption during an explosive television interview (or rather argument) between Dan Rather and George Bush, when Bush was campaigning for the U.S. presidency in the 1980s (e.g., Nofsinger, 1988). Bavelas, Black, Chovil, and Mullett (1990) examined equivocal statements that politicians use to cope with "no-win" situations—that is, when all direct messages would lead to negative consequences. Lynch and Bogen (1996) studied congressional procedure and testimony associated with the Iran-Contra hearings, showing how the "history" of illegal activities was contested and interactively produced. Carbaugh (1989) conducted an ethnographic study of the "Donahue" television show, depicting it as a portrait of American society. John Modaff (chap. 28, this volume) microanalyzed the "speech melody" of radio personality Paul Harvey, and identified rhetorical properties of his vocal inflections. These citations (and numerous others) notwithstanding, research on language and social interaction is overwhelmingly concerned with mundane features of mundane interaction. Although researchers occasionally focus on the communicative behaviors and cultural furnishings of politicians and other public performers, it is the behaviors and the furnishings themselves that warrant the LSI study—not the celebrities, nor their histories. Studies of the spectacular may inform us about what is commonplace. Mundane interaction (as we defined it) occurs in both casual and institutional settings. Beach (1996) argued that "families are the primordial institutional systems" (p. xi) and that interactions between, say, a grandmother and a granddaughter might reveal patterns of "interrogation" like those found in a courtroom. LSI researchers have entered an array of social institutions and organizations to explicate the everyday behaviors whereby institutions are interactively formed and sustained (e.g., Atkinson & Drew, 1979; Atkinson & Heritage, 1984; Drew & Heritage, 1992; Houtkoop-Steenstra & Antaki, 1997; Metzger & Beach, 1996; Morris & Cheneil, 1995; Tracy, 1995, 1997). For
14
INTRODUCTION
example, recent research on medical interviewing has addressed significant moments between doctors and patients (e.g., Beach & Dixson, 2000). Conversations about health and illness also occur at home, such as when family members discuss a loved one's diagnosis and treatment for cancer (chap. 10, this volume). Recently, the notion of naturally occurring has been indirectly and directly called into question. For instance, Pratt and Wieder (1993) conducted an "ethnography of public speaking" among the Osage Nation, a Native American community. Not only were public speeches prepared or scripted in advance, these researchers asked subjects to reperform speeches that they had given before during some prior ceremony or event of the Osage Nation. Pratt and Wieder argued that their data were sufficiently natural because the focus of their study was on the "formal features of the original" speeches and not the in-themoment contingencies (p. 358). Bavelas (1999) worked to broaden notions of "naturalistic" within the field of LSI. She argued that laboratory data should not be dismissed out of hand, because when people communicate under laboratory conditions, they necessarily employ the sorts of vocal and visible behaviors whereby they communicate everyday—there is no other way to interact. Moreover, Bavelas suggested that a laboratory may need to be recognized as a special site (with its own social and material affordances), but it should not be rejected as "artificial" just because it is built to serve researchers' ends—after all, every built space serves some social and micropolitical end. The notion of "naturalistic" has also been stretched by literary inclinations. In his book on gender and gender talk, for example, Hopper (in press) supplemented his tape recordings of naturally occurring talk with exemplars from other sources, including the following: •
•
•
Fiction. For obvious reasons, there are few candid recordings of moments involving sexuality, sexual harassment, codependent family interaction, and so forth. Films regularly portray such dialogue in a way that resembles everyday social interaction, which may serve as a resource for scientific inquiry. Self-reports. Ethnographers routinely interview people about their speech practices. Self-report data show few discourse features and they may be replete with social-desirability biases, but participants' recollections of social interaction have proven to be a useful resource. Hypothetical examples. In the absence of recorded data or firsthand observation, a writer may fabricate a hypothetical example to illustrate (precisely) a particular argument. Such fabrications often stand up through replication and critical scrutiny, perhaps due to the incredible overdetermined orderliness of language use and social interaction.
INTRODUCTION
15
Hopper openly acknowledged the risk of mixing evidence types. Of course scientists must be wary of generalizing from film to life, and self-report findings should be confirmed by fuller discourse renderings. Nevertheless, by mixing evidence types Hopper was able to address areas of theory and general concern for which limited data could be found. In another study, Drummond (chap. 32, this volume) participated in the dialogue between "real" and fiction: Using Hopper's (198la; 1981b) notion of taken-for-granted, Drummond explicated the idea of "interactional enslavement" within the movie The Truman Show. Points suggested by more literary sorts of evidence may be taken as a stimulus to collect more naturalistic examples of similar phenomena.
Research on Language and Social Interaction Adheres to Principles of an Empirical Social Science Research conclusions about communication, culture, and social life are properly supported by firsthand observations of human interaction. When LSI researchers present their findings in papers or reports, they usually include examples or excerpts of the phenomenon under investigation. Careful descriptions, field notes, transcriptions, photographs, videotapes, and other sorts of recordings are taken to represent the audible and visible behaviors that social interactants made available to each other (in the first place) and to analysts (who acted as overhearers and onlookers). Hence, all arguments are based on evidence that must pass the test of intersubjective agreement among researchers and readers (see Beach, 1990, 1994; Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997). A particular phenomenon is taken to exist, to the extent that data, analyses, and conclusions are reproducible or verifiable by others. At the same time that most language and social interaction researchers maintain an empirical stance toward their objects of study, we suggest that they necessarily engage in an ongoing interpretive process. Researchers are participants in the social world they analyze, both creating and interpreting human experience, moment to moment and day to day. Researchers do more than document patterns—they appraise the significance of behaviors documented. Geertz (1973) wrote: Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. (p. 5)
To some extent, all research on language and social interaction has kinship with the work of Geertz, who sought to understand human cultures through "thick description"—rather than explain them through theories of causation or natural
16
INTRODUCTION
law. Research on language and social interaction is itself suspended within the webs of culture that it brings to light. Forms of communication that may be empirically ascertained are also interpreted and thereby made meaningful to participants and analysts alike. Within the field of language and social interaction, some methods flaunt their interpretive stripes more than others. On one hand, ethnographers seek presence and participation within the speech communities they study, acknowledging their interpretive role and even relishing the flavor of their own influence. Their basis for selecting objects of ethnographic study is sometimes unsystematic and rather intuitive—by "design." For instance, Fitch (1994) observed that some ethnographers choose to examine cultural sites and communicative practices that contrast strikingly with their own. The best way to understand and accurately report on a culture, the ethnographic argument goes, is to fully experience and interpret it as do the cultural members themselves. In a study of culture within the southern United States, Fitch (1998b) recorded a conversation in which she participated; she then transcribed and analyzed the talk (including her own); and finally she contemplated (as part of her ethnographic report) the difference between her in-the-moment (subjective) experience and her later (objective) microanalysis of it. Hence, to change the ethnographer would be to alter the ethnographic outcome. On the other hand, conversation analysts may downplay and even deny their interpretive role. They rarely appear as participants within the data they choose to examine; they seldom rely on in-the-moment observations of speech events, choosing instead to focus on audio or video recordings; and they present their findings as being empirically evident, independent of the particular analyst. Hopper et al. (1986) described conversation analysis (CA) as "a search for patterns in the mode of natural science. As paleontology describes fossils to understand geological history, CA describes recordings to understand structures of conversational action and members' practices for conversing" (p. 169). Despite the empirical rigor that conversation analysts insist on (see also, Sacks, 1984, 1992), they ought to also recognize their subtle but substantive interpretive moves. Even before recorded messages are analyzed, recording itself is an interpretive act: Cameras and tape recorders must be placed, pointed, and turned "on," which is to make decisions about what is important or worth recording; transcripts are necessarily selective. Moreover, conversation analysts rely on "members' knowledge" (i.e., the interpretations that interactants show to one another in the course of their interaction) to understand what is being "displayed" within data. Some conversation analysts accept and even embrace their interpretive bent. For example, Hopper's (1992b) analysis of telephone conversation often waxed poetic. He encouraged readers to attune themselves to a primordial voice—the voice of poetry in conversation, "the great Poem,
INTRODUCTION
17
speaking us" (p. 190). Thus, even the most rigorous empiricist may orient to. listen to, and be inspired by the humanist within. Despite these variations within the field of LSI, there is a general commitment to empirical methods. After acknowledging the role of intuition in ethnographic research, Fitch (1994) recommended more systematic bases for ethnographic choices. And Hopper's (1992b) poetic treatment of telephone conversations was constantly based upon "empirical details displayed by participants to one another" (p. 20). Overwhelmingly, LSI researchers treat what they are doing as meriting scientific status, affirming the need for clear and repeatable methods to produce replicable results.
Research on Language and Social Interaction Describes and Explains By carefully and thoroughly describing human interaction, researchers begin to understand and explain it. Most LSI research provides straightforward (even matter-of-fact) accounts of phenomena, written as if the features of human interaction exist in the social world to be documented and interpreted. Nevertheless, description is not a neutral activity and data are not selfexplicating. The item(s) chosen for analysis represent important choices (whether conscious or unconscious) by the researcher. For this reason, LSI researchers tend to be reflexive about word choice, writing style, and presentation of data, recognizing that these are in part constitutive of the social phenomena under investigation. Conversation analysts seem especially particular about terminology. For example, when Pomerantz (1989) suggested that conversation analysts translate CA jargon into more commonsense lay terminology, so as to make it more accessible to more readers, Jefferson (1989) disagreed. Jefferson insisted that CA terminology is not "just a complicated way of saying what otherwise can be said with lay, commonsense, interactants terminology" (p. 427); rather, she insisted, CA terms are imbued with special ways of looking at and describing the social world. Data presentation is also an ongoing concern. Ochs (1979) observed that presentation tools such as transcription systems are inherently theoretical and should not be regarded as one-to-one representations of reality. Jacoby and Ochs (1995) emphasized that human interaction is "contingently dynamic and unfolding in interactional time" (p. 179) and that researchers who use recordings and transcriptions should not treat communication as a freestanding text. Jarmon (1996a) became frustrated with the presentational constraints of transcriptions and written descriptions, so she began using multimedia technology and eventually produced a dissertation on CD-ROM. Her dissertation proposed an amendment to the turn-taking model published by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974), who based their model on analysis of audio recordings.
18
INTRODUCTION
Through analysis of videotaped recordings, Jarmon concluded that "embodied actions" (such as facial expressions) are in some ways similar to grammatical units and may alter the projectability of turn boundaries or even function as a complete turn. Thus, the distinction between good description and good analysis blurs, as description documents and characterizes phenomena, providing both the basis and the impetus for analysis that follows in the wake. Even the term description may prove misleading or unduly limiting, to the extent that it buys into a representative view that there is a reality "out there" that may be described, in contrast to a social constructionist perspective that the act of attempting to write about "something" discursively constitutes that "something." Within the field of language and social interaction, description and explanation are regarded as worthwhile research goals or achievements in and of themselves. This contrasts with a hypothetico-deductive approach to communication research, which views description as only a first step that is incomplete unless followed by more substantive steps of developing theory, deriving hypotheses, and testing them experimentally. Descriptive research also contrasts with critical research, for which description may precede and set up a move to evaluation by practical, aesthetic, political, or moral standards. A third contrast is with applied research, for which description provides a starting point allowing a move to prescription, training, or pedagogy. There are plenty of examples of LSI research that do make critical or applied turns. Van Dijk's critical discourse analyses (1993, e.g.), like Conquergood's (1991) critical ethnography, seek to apply naturalistic methods to social problems. Likewise, LSI research on discourse within institutional settings (e.g., Drew & Heritage, 1992; Houtkoop-Steenstra & Antaki, 1997; Tracy, 1995, 1997) either explicitly makes or leads closer to deriving prescriptive applications from research findings. Nevertheless, even in these examples of LSI research, description and explanation remain the central tasks.
Research on Language and Social Interaction is Inductive and Abductive There is a general commitment among LSI scholars to avoid premature theory building. Rather than begin with a research question or hypothesis (from which data collection, analysis, and conclusions would logically follow), LSI researchers regularly begin with data: Naturally occurring communication is observed or recorded and analyzed, and from this process new (sometimes revolutionary) claims and conclusions emerge. Ethnographers have a long tradition of selecting speech communities to study without knowing in advance what sorts of findings might arise. Sacks (1984) recommended the following "bottom-up" approach to research:
INTRODUCTION
19
When we start out with a piece of data, the question of what we are going to end up with, what kind of findings it will give, should not be a consideration. We sit down with a piece of data, make a bunch of observations, and see where they will go. Treating some actual conversation in an unmotivated way, that is, giving some consideration to whatever can be found in any particular conversation we happen to have our hands on, subjecting it to investigation in any direction that can be produced from it, can have strong payoffs. (p. 27)
Although some readers may think Sacks is being idealistic—that is, to what extent can any examination be truly "unmotivated"? —many LSI studies indeed begin in this way. Soon researchers notice and take interest in some phenomenon, and "unmotivated" looking gives way to directed examination and explanation. As a research project takes shape, inductive methods tend to become more abductive. Analysts go looking for instances within naturally occurring data that may support a particular claim. The field of LSI is notorious for so-called "bottom-up" inquiry and inductive proof, whereby claims are consistently grounded by reference to evidence in data. Technology not only supports naturalistic research, it facilitates inductive inquiry and insight. A primary challenge for LSI researchers is to recognize what is commonly taken for granted: Because researchers are themselves embedded every day within forms of communication and culture, it may be difficult for them to look "at" the social world that they are accustomed to looking "through." Field notes, transcripts, photographs, audiotapes, films, videotapes, multimedia, and other forms of technology help to make the social world "strange," enabling researchers to perceive it, as Garfinkel would say, "for another first time." Bateson and Mead (1942) reported using photographs in their ethnographic work because photographs could capture and present behavioral events better than verbal descriptions. Sacks founded the field of CA after discovering recordings of telephone conversations, which "provided the proximate source for the focused attention to talk itself—perhaps the most critical step toward the development of conversation analysis" (Schegloff, 1992a, p. xvi). Kendon studied talk until 1963, when he "discovered" film and began to analyze embodied interaction: "It became apparent at once that there were complex patterns and regularities of behavior, and that the interactants were guiding their behavior, each in relation to the other" (Kendon, 1990, p. 4). Using multimedia technology, LeBaron (1998) digitized and then microanalyzed video recordings, and found recurring hand gestures that were identifiable because the computer provided a nonlinear environment within which to work, making it possible to analyze multiple videotaped images simultaneously, juxtaposing them on the computer screen. Moreover, technology allows for detailed and repeated examination of messages. It also affords the opportunity to manipulate
20
INTRODUCTION
messages so that analysts can see how the interaction changes when they slow it down or zoom in on different features of a visual image. Induction can serve both as a pattern for the research process and a pattern for the written research report (although these need not parallel each other). Reports tend to take shape as either (a) claims based on a collection of occurrences, each documented and discussed, that altogether warrant some subsuming claim about LSI within a speech community or culture (e.g., Coutu, 2000; C. Goodwin, 1980; ten Have, 1999), or (b) a detailed explication of some single, perhaps singular, occurrence that reflects upon the language and social interaction of a speech community or culture (e.g., C. Goodwin, 1979; Philipsen, 2000). What occurrence(s) a researcher chooses to report—or is able to report— depends on the LSI method being employed. With roots in a sociological method Znaniecki (1934) called "analytic induction," conversation analysts may assume the responsibility of identifying a structural pattern in a way that shows recurrence in the routine instances but also shows orientation to the regularity in the deviant cases (e.g., Schegloff, 1986). The aim is to provide an account of the phenomenon that holds beyond the particular instance, such an account thereby being both context sensitive and context free (Sacks et al., 1974). Discourse analysts' choices may be informed by a wide variety of influences, from linguistic categorizations and structures to whatever themes or beliefs subjects manifest through their situated discourse or through interviews with the researcher (e.g., Tracy & Muller, 1994). Ethnographic choices may be guided by the researcher's intuition or reflection, the subjects' disclosures or interpretations of occurrences, the community members' overall insights and reflections (as gleaned through interviews), or some universal theory (e.g., politeness theory) against which the ethnographer may work (Fitch, 1994). Despite obvious differences in these inductive methods, there is an abiding assumption that a priori theorizing risks diverting attention away from the central tasks of describing and explaining phenomena based on observable details (see Sanders & Sigman, 1994). A combined emphasis on description, explanation, induction, and abduction gives LSI work a basis for its empirical grounding. Not all LSI research is inductive. In his early programmatic statements about the ethnography of speaking, Hymes (1978) asserted that descriptive accounts of cultural ways of speaking could and should be followed by subsequent research in which hypotheses are developed and tested in the field. Sociolinguistic research on power and speaker style often operates under a deductive framework, drawing on preceding research to generate hypotheses for testing (chap. 2, this volume). Mulac, Bradac, and Gibbons (2001) draw on previous research to generate (and subsequently test) research questions and a hypothesis regarding gender-based differences in language use. Discourse analytic, conversation analytic, and ethnographic reports may make use of previous research to explicate features within a present set of data, and as
INTRODUCTION
21
findings accumulate, opportunities increase for applying generalized claims in making sense of newly encountered particular instances. Periodically a researcher may take stock of some line of research and make a generalized statement about a phenomenon (e.g., Morris, White, & Iltis, 1994). Moreover, some research focuses on a theory question that the data did not in the first place suggest; some analyses rely on data having turned up that happen to relate to a particular question or theory or practice. For example, Hopper and Drummond (1990) joined a theoretical discussion about romance "turning points" only after they found a telephone recording that happened to include a dating break-up. Nevertheless, the primary goal of most LSI research involves careful description and explanation, accomplished through the inductive and abductive process of gradually building generalized claims from analysis of particular cases of a phenomenon.
Research on Language and Social Interaction Treats Communication as Constitutive and Consequential The transmission model of communication (Shannon & Weaver, 1949), discussed earlier, typifies a representative view of communication, which sees language as reflecting a preexisting and external reality. Although the transmission model was widely accepted and continues to be taken for granted by most social scientists and laypersons, it has been repudiated by three decades of research on LSI, which shows that human interaction is partly or largely constitutive of the component parts that the transmission model presupposes. Even social conditions thought to be "stable" are contingent and constantly shifting as interlocutors co-construct their social worlds (Jacoby & Ochs, 1995) —including gender (Sheldon, 1996), ethnic identity (He, 1995), and individual competence (C. Goodwin, 1995). Setting aside the assumption that context exists a priori and that context unilaterally shapes communication, LSI research has shown how context may be invoked, oriented to, and constituted through social interaction at the same time that context may influence the organization of communication (e.g., see Drew & Heritage, 1992; Tracy, 1998). The LSI perspective that communication and context are mutually elaborative contrasts with more representative, static, or "external to message" (Hopper, 1992b) approaches. According to a constitutive view, then, communication is a primary means whereby social realities, cultural contexts, and the meanings of messages are interactively accomplished and experienced (Stewart, 1995). Commitments to a representative or constitutive view can operate at two levels. The first level is the extent to which researchers treat interactants as themselves constituting their social realities. Ethnomethodology, with its focus on how people construct social order, has informed conversation analysis and allied methods. Expounding on the work of Garfinkel, Heritage (1984) observed
22
INTRODUCTION
that messages are not inherently meaningful, because communicative behaviors are subject to inference and open to negotiation among participants: "Utterances accomplish particular actions by virtue of their placement and participation within sequences of action" (p. 245). In an examination of a videotaped business meeting, Streeck (1996) found that material objects—not just spoken and written messages—may become (situated) symbols through their appropriation and physical placement during face-to-face interaction. Among the things that interaction may accomplish is the instantiation of social roles (Schegloff, 1992b), everything from sender-receiver to mother-daughter (Hopper, 1992b). In analyses of storytelling, C. Goodwin (1984) and Mandelbaum (1987) identified patterns of talk whereby the roles of storyteller and hearer were jointly achieved. Button (1992) examined recordings of job interviews and identified question-and-answer structures of speech whereby people may perform the roles of interviewer and interviewee. Even built spaces (i.e., physical structures made of brick and steel) are given shape and significance through social interaction. LeBaron and Streeck (1997) examined a videotaped police interrogation in which participants moved their bodies in strategic ways, appropriating and interpreting the physical features of their interrogation room, making possible certain vocal arguments that eventually moved the suspect toward confession. The second level is the extent to which researchers explicitly acknowledge or problematize how research itself represents or constitutes the social phenomena under investigation. In other words, do researchers discover and represent the objects of their study, or does the research process itself bring "phenomena" into being? It is difficult to find examples of LSI research that take a radically constitutive stance at this second level by explicitly focusing on the researcher's role in constituting the objects of study. This provides a point of divergence for ethnographers working in the Hymesian ethnography of speaking tradition and those engaging in autoethnography (e.g., Bochner & C. Ellis, 1995). Likewise, some ethnomethodologists have criticized conversation analysts for failing to practice radical reflexivity (Pollner, 1991). Many discourse analytic, conversation analytic, and sociolinguistic studies tend to employ a "reporting" vocabulary and posture that minimizes explicit attention to the researcher as an active creator of meaning (see item 3, earlier). The ethnomethodological roots of some methods could nudge researchers toward viewing their work as constitutive. Conversation analysts, for example, avoid invoking labels or categories or contexts unless those are demonstrably relevant for participants. For instance, Button (1992) said that "in the face of multiple categorization possibilities for any person (an interviewer may be a father as well, for instance), the warrantable use of a categorization by a researcher resides in the participants' orientation to and constitution of their activities" (p. 230). Although such self-awareness among researchers has the blush of a constitutive view, conversation analysts regard their reflexivity as a
INTRODUCTION
23
form of rigor and see themselves as all the more accurate in their reporting. Occasionally LSI researchers turn their cameras and recording devices on themselves. For instance, Jarmon (1996b) examined videotapes of conversation analysts at work. While participating in a "data session," the analysts performed with their bodies what they saw in their data, tailoring their performances to display specific analyses and arguments. Jarmon discussed "the degree to which performance may play a part in how research is conducted" (p. 16), but her conclusions stopped short of a radically constitutive view of research. In another study, Modaff and Modaff (1999) talked to each other on the telephone, recorded their conversations at both locations, transcribed both recordings, and then analyzed both transcriptions using conversation analytic methods. After finding substantive differences between the transcriptions, the researchers questioned the accuracy of mainstream recording devices and hence the accuracy of LSI research that depends on such devices. Thus, Modaff and Modaff took a representative stance by arguing for more accuracy in LSI research methods— they did not assume a radically constitutive view of the researcher as one who more or less creates the phenomena under investigation. In practice, the representative view and the constitutive view are not mutually exclusive, freestanding alternatives; rather, they are ways of conceptualizing communication that have points of convergence. Within the division of LSI, or even within a particular research report, combinations of these views may be evident (e.g., see Tracy, 1998, who edited a special journal issue on "Analyzing Context," in which LSI researchers aligned with representative or constitutive views in various ways). To illustrate, consider the extent to which culture determines or is determined by everyday communication. Some LSI researchers (e.g., ethnographers) may implicitly or explicitly recognize that communication at any one moment is responsive to the history of interactional moments experienced by participants individually and collectively over time. Others (e.g., conversation analysts) may ignore or downplay the impact of established cultural or linguistic resources on a particular moment of interaction or on a phenomenon under investigation unless interactants show that they take them to be relevant. Moerman, who combined ethnographic and conversation analytic methods (e.g., 1988), observed that "the work of producing ethnicity and identity involves both durable culture and the momentary contingencies of interaction" (1993, p. 85). Sequeira (1993) conducted an ethnographic study of address terms (e.g., "you," "mom," "doctor," etc.), which were used in both conventional and unconventional ways, whereby social participants both reinstantiated their culture and constituted it anew. Thus, the interplay between representative and constitutive views within LSI research may be seen to resonate with the interplay among social interactants themselves.
24
INTRODUCTION
Research on Language and Social Interaction Emphasizes Emic, Participant Perspectives Social scientists who study communication and culture sometimes make the distinction between "emic" and "etic" forms of research5. The first (emic) reports the members' (or subjects') view of their communication and community; the second (etic) reports the outsider's (or researcher's) view. This distinction has been important within the LSI tradition, among scholars who avoid imposing their own theorized views on the social phenomena they examine, who strive instead to ground their descriptions and arguments within the social displays that the participants constitute and at the same time experience. Emic understandings may be uncovered in a number of ways. Through participant observation, ethnographers are able to speak and move within a speech community, pursuing depth and breadth of understanding through extended involvement, literally assuming the perspectives of those that they study. Some ethnographic work is coupled with detailed explications of small moments, whereby the many strands of members' understandings may be both teased apart and brought together within an ethnographic report. For example, Liberman (1995) explained: When doing studies of intercultural communication it is important to present to the reader the looks of the world for the participants, for that is what the participants are attending to and so are the only sociological "facts" worthy of the name. A faithful recording—faithful not to sociological (including ethnomethodological) principles but to the looks of the world for the participants themselves—necessitates laying out the contingent details of interactional events to a precision that readers may find tiresome. Some readers may be presented with more detail than they care to know. But there are no shortcuts to the lived world of social participants. (p. 119)
Ethnographers and sometimes discourse analysts choose to interview interactants about their experiences and understandings. Tracy and Muller (1994) studied academic discourse (e.g., during departmental meetings or colloquia) by recording and transcribing it, but they also interviewed the participants to more fully ascertain the "beliefs, attitudes, and evaluative expectations" (p. 321) that the participants brought to their social interaction. Moreover, these researchers 5
The terms "emic" and "etic" were derived from the linguistic words "phonemic" and "phonetic" (Pike, 1966). When a sound difference between two words produces a meaning difference, the linguistic difference is said to be "phonemic." When a sound difference between two words does not produce a meaning difference, the linguistic difference is "phonetic." Hence, emic research reports what is meaningful to the cultural member or participant, and etic research reports what is primarily meaningful or recognizable to the researcher or outsider.
INTRODUCTION
25
attended closely to discourse that occurred after a particular speech event, because it might be especially revealing: We would expect the beliefs to be most directly visible in people's aftertalk, the postmortem analyses of discussion occasions that occur in offices and hallways. That is, beliefs about what is appropriate (or what is not appropriate) would repeatedly be asserted, or implicitly assumed, in the criticisms and complaints people make about actual occasions. In this sense, the language of aftertalk is more similar to the language of interview-talk. (p. 344)
In response to Tracy and Muller, the journal editors (Sanders & Sigman, 1994) questioned whether interviewing was an appropriate way to study social interaction. The editorial comments displayed a preference by many LSI researchers to recover meanings and understandings as they are displayed or oriented to in situ by interactants (e.g., chaps. 14, 21, 22, this volume). Such focus on how communicators' understandings are located in specific characteristics of talk is sometimes called the "message-intrinsic view" of communication (Hopper, 1992b; Mandelbaum, 1991). In short, different notions of meaning and understanding result in different sorts of LSI research, all devoted to emic accounts of social interaction. Some strands of LSI research do not explicitly focus on participants' perspectives. In some discourse analytic approaches, where the goal is to lay out the usage of a conversational object, recovering participants' meanings may not be a principal objective. Rather, format may be seen as somewhat independent of the local situation in which they are found (e.g., van Dijk, 1993). Other research that does not explicitly focus on participants' perspectives nonetheless addresses issues of how the communication of one participant impacts another. For instance, research on speech evaluation shows how characteristics of a speaker's speech may result in particular evaluations of that speaker (e.g., chap. 2, this volume).
Research on Language and Social Interaction Focuses on Language in Use Although different approaches to LSI research may have different agendas, virtually all approaches regard language in use as central to communication and hence the study of communication. Ethnographers, discourse analysts, and conversation analysts typically start from the premise that language is used in orderly ways to enact particular activities, roles, and relationships. For example, Katriel's (1993) ethnographic study of Israeli communication and culture
26
INTRODUCTION
included consideration of lefargen—a way of speaking that some cultural members adopt. She wrote: Whereas parsing out the semantic features of lefargen would in itself be an interesting analytic task . . . my main interest lies in reflecting upon the larger contextual issues associated with the adoption (through lexical borrowing) and spread of the term as part of Israeli social semantics. I submit that in commending a person as someone who "knows how to express support" . . . speakers give voice to an ethnosociological model in which social relations and interpersonal patterns of a particular kind are verbally reified and valorized. (p. 33)
What some form of communication "means," Katriel's study illustrates, is largely what it is being used to do. The doing of communication is the means by which social life is constituted, moment to moment and turn by turn. Each LSI approach uses different research strategies to uncover the orderly ways that language is used. Studies of language attitudes take it that specific structures or features of language create certain impressions of speakers. Some approaches pay particular attention to how a given activity is undertaken. Others are more interested in why it is done. Nevertheless, a common feature of work within the LSI rubric is that its focus is on situated language, rather than language as an abstract commodity (e.g., Searle, 1979). Recently, LSI researchers have extended notions of language in use to include embodied processes, recognizing that "verbal" and "nonverbal" behaviors necessarily occur together, providing for their mutual performance and interpretation, making suspect any isolated examination or treatment of one (Moerman, 1990; Streeck and Knapp, 1992; chaps. 6, 25, 26, 27 and 29, this volume). Several researchers have documented people's orchestrated use of what have traditionally been regarded as separate "channels" of behavior. For example, C. Goodwin (1980) explicated subtle forms of coordination between utterance-initial restarts and shifts in participants' eye gaze (hence attention) toward the speaker. Heath (1986) studied the organization of speech and body movement (especially shifts in posture and eye gaze) during medical consultations, whereby patients may direct their doctor's attention toward parts of their bodies that need medical attention. Streeck (1993) showed how hand gestures may be "exposed" (i.e., made an object of attention during moments of interaction) through their coordination with indexical forms of speech (e.g., words such as this) and eye gaze (which may perform "pointing" functions). C. Goodwin (1996) examined grammar as interactionally situated—not limited to phenomena within the stream of speech, but encompassing structures and organization associated with "the endogenous activity systems within which strips of talk are embedded" (p. 370): (See also Atkinson, 1984; Bavelas, 1994; Curley, 1998; C. Goodwin, 1986; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986; Kendon, 1972,
INTRODUCTION
27
1980, 1987; LeBaron & Streeck, 2000; Schegloff, 1984.) In an analysis of girls playing hopscotch, C. Goodwin (2000) went beyond the human body to consider the entire "contextual configuration," which included "a range of structurally different kinds of sign phenomena in both the stream of speech and the body, graphic and socially sedimented structure in the surround, sequential organization, encompassing activity systems, etc." (p. 1). In sum, recent LSI research has taken up a more constitutive and holistic view of language in use. It is clear that LSI has emerged over the past two decades as a lively and substantive area within the study of human communication. There is no one principle that consistently unites or defines LSI research in contrast to other research traditions. The seven points we have outlined here represent recurrent and interrelated issues within LSI work. Altogether, they are more central to LSI "identity" than they are for those working in other traditions, topics, or methods. Nevertheless, plenty of counterexamples exist within LSI for each point that we have discussed. Thus, it is most helpful to think of the seven points presented, not as universally guiding principles within LSI, but as points of ongoing attention or concern. Call these, if you will, prominent themes in the conversation going on within the area of Language and Social Interaction.
OVERVIEW OF THE VOLUME This volume includes 32 original articles, which are grounded in LSI perspectives, research questions, and methods, plus 6 short pieces in the final section reflecting on Robert Hopper's teaching and scholarship. A majority of the articles employ conceptual and methodological approaches of ethnomethodological CA. This reflects Robert Hopper's legacy, for he as much as anyone worked to connect CA with the study of human communication. It also reflects the prominence of CA research within LSI. Other approaches that have kinship with CA and that are represented in the book include ethnography of communication, discourse analysis, sociolinguistic studies of language and power, and performance studies. Most of these report research on naturally occurring interaction. Others make theoretical or conceptual arguments. Some edited volumes begin with a conceptual scheme then invite individual articles to reflect component parts, resulting in a strong thematic coherence. In the present case, the call for papers invited authors to submit work they thought fitting for a tribute to Robert Hopper. We did not attempt from the outset to select pieces based on their relevance to a prearranged scheme. Rather, the organization of the book arose from an inductive process of sorting the articles by various similarities. We decided on five parts, clustering around distinct interests and approaches that related in particular ways to LSI as a field and to Hopper's work.
28
INTRODUCTION
The first part includes articles we selected to represent major research traditions within LSI. The second features studies of talk in everyday life, primarily casual discourse. The third part features studies of institutional discourse, particularly talk concerned with health and medical settings. The fourth part contains a relatively eclectic group of articles under the theme of future trajectories—in various ways, these articles move beyond current research topics and practices to explore and advocate innovative directions. The fifth part is a set of personal tributes to Robert Hopper. There are other ways to group the articles in this book, and it may be useful to the reader to consider some of these: •
•
•
•
Empirical studies: reports of new findings. Beach, Corbin, Craig and Sanusi, Fitch, Glenn, Goodwin, Heritage, Jefferson, Jones, Lawrence, LeBaron and Koschmann, Lerner and Zimmerman, Maynard and Frankel, Mandelbaum, Maxwell, Dan Modaff, John Modaff, Morris, Pomerantz, Sanders, Schegloff, Wrobbel. Review articles: summarizing areas of research, calling for new directions. Bradac, Brown, Drew, Gonzalez, Houtkoop-Steenstra, Molloy and Giles, Streeck, Stucky and Daughton. Theory pieces: working with or developing theoretical or philosophical positions. Brown, Drummond, Gonzalez, LeBaron and Koschmann, Molloy and Giles, Streeck, Stucky and Daughton. Applied research: dealing directly with practical life problems. Bruder, Maynard and Frankel, Daniel Modaff, Molloy and Giles, Pomerantz, Wrobbel.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Wayne Beach, Bob Craig, and Karen Tracy, who reviewed an earlier version of this chapter and provided many helpful suggestions. Bob Craig, Kent Drummond, Kristine Fitch, Anita Pomerantz, Jurgen Streeck, and Karen Tracy served as outside reviewers for the articles in this book. Alexander Kozin, Sam Thomas, and Stephanie Poole Martinez, doctoral students at SIU Carbondale, have been helpful in editorial assistant capacities. Thanks to the Department of Speech Communication and the College of Liberal Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale for providing office space, equipment, and staff support. We also thank the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University for providing office space, computer equipment, and support staff for this project. We are grateful to Rachael Deceuster of BYU for her assistance, as well as Hank Marew and Paul Kermis for their support. Our appreciation to Linda Bathgate, Marianna Vertullo, and Art Lizza for their assistance in bringing this
INTRODUCTION
29
project to completion. We are grateful to June Hymas (Robert Hopper's sister) for providing the photo of Robert. Thanks to Kay Hopper for ongoing encouragement throughout the development of this book. We were pleased that Robert Hopper was able to see an earlier version of it shortly before his death in December 1998. It is because of his ongoing influence in the lives of so many people that this book has come to fruition.
REFERENCES Arnold, C. C., & Bowers, J. W. (Eds.). (1984). Handbook of rhetorical and communication theory. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Atkinson, J. M. (1984). Our masters' voices. London: Methuen. Atkinson, J. M., & Drew, P. (1979). Order in court: The organisation of verbal interaction in judicial settings. London: Macmillan. Atkinson, J. M., & Heritage, J. (Eds.). (1984). Structures of social action. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bateson, G., & Mead, M. (1942). Balinese character. A photographic analysis. New York: New York Academy of Sciences. Bavelas, J. B. (1989). On integrating interactional points of view. The Counseling Psychologist, 17, 466-469. Bavelas, J. B. (1994). Gestures as part of speech: Methodological implications. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27, 201-221. Bavelas, J. B. (1999, May). Is there a place for social psychology in LSI? Paper presented at the 49th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, San Francisco. Bavelas, J. B., Black, A., Chovil, N., & Mullett, J. (1990). Equivocal communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Beach, W. A. (1982). Everyday interaction and its practical accomplishment: Progressive developments in ethnomethodological research. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 68, 314-327. Beach, W. A. (1990). Orienting to the phenomenon. In J. A. Anderson (Ed.), Communication yearbook 13 (pp. 216-244). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Beach, W. A. (1993). Transitional regularities for "casual" "okay" usages. Journal of Pragmatics, 19, 325-352. Beach, W. A. (1994). Orienting to the phenomenon. In F. L. Casmir (Ed.), Building communication theories: A socio-cultural approach (pp. 133164). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
30
INTRODUCTION
Beach, W. A. (1995a). Maps and diggings. In S. J. Sigman (Ed.), The consequentiality of communication (pp. 223-226). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Beach, W. A. (1995b). Preserving and constraining options: "Okays" and "official" priorities in medical interviews. In G. H. Morris & R. Chenail (Eds.), Talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of medical and therapeutic discourse (pp. 259-289). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Beach, W. A. (1996). Conversations about illness: Family preoccupations with bulimia. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Beach, W. A., & Dixson, C. N. (2000). Revealing moments: Formulating understandings of adverse experiences in a health appraisal interview. Social Science & Medicine, 4(4/5), 1-21. Benson, T. W. (Ed.). (1985). Speech communication in the 20th century. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Bitzer, L. F., & Black, E. (Eds.). (1971). The prospect of rhetoric. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bochner, A. P., & Ellis, C. (1995). Telling and living: Narrative co-construction and the practices of interpersonal relationships. In W. Leeds-Hurwitz (Ed.), Social approaches to communication (pp. 201-260). New York: Guilford. Burke, K. (1973). The philosophy of literary form. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Original work published 1941) Buttny, R. (1993). Blame-account sequences in couple therapy: Accountability for relational problems. In R. Buttny (Ed.), Social accountability in communication (pp. 66-84). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Buttny, R. (1996). Clients' and therapist's joint construction of the clients' problems. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29, 125-153. Button, G. (1992). Answers as interactional products: Two sequential practices used in job interviews. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work (pp. 101-34). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Carbaugh, D. (1989). Talking American: Cultural discourse on Donahue. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Carbaugh, D. (1993). "Soul" and "self: Soviet and American cultures in conversation. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 79, 182-200. Conquergood, D. (1991). Rethinking ethnography: Towards a critical cultural politics. Communication Monographs, 58, 179-194. Coulthard, M. (1977). An introduction to discourse analysis. London: Longman. Coutu, L. M. (2000). Communication codes of rationality and spirituality in the discourse of and about Robert S. McNamara's: In retrospect. Research on language and social interaction, 33, 179—212. Craig, R. T. (1999). Metadiscourse, theory, and practice. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32, 21-29.
INTRODUCTION
31
Craig, R. T., & Tracy, K. (1983). Conversational coherence: Form, structure, and strategy. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Crow, B. (1988). Conversational performance and the performance of conversation. The Drama Review, 32, 23-54. Curley, C. (1998). Teaching the body to make tea within social interaction. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 9, 151-178. de la Zerda, N., & Hopper, R. (1979). Employment interviewers' reactions to Mexican-American speech. Communication Monographs, 46, 126-134. Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (Eds.) (1992). Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, D. (1995). Fixing communicative meaning: A coherentist theory. Communication Research, 22, 515-544. Ellis, D. (1999a). From language to communication. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Ellis, D. (1999b). Research on social interaction and the micro-macro issue. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32, 31—40. Ellis, D., & Donohue, W. (Eds.) (1986). Contemporary issues in language and discourse processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Fitch, K. (1994). The issue of selecting objects of analysis in ethnographies of speaking. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27, 51-93. Fitch, K. (1998a). Speaking relationally: Culture, communication, and interpersonal connection. New York: Guilford. Fitch, K. (1998b). Text and context: A problematic distinction in ethnography. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 91-107. Fitch, K., & Hopper, R. (1983). If you speak Spanish, they'll think you're a German. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 4, 115-127. Geertz, C. (1973). Interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Giles, H., & Powesland, P. (1975). Speech style and social evaluation. London: Academic Press. Glenn, P. J. (1989). Initiating shared laughter in multi-party conversations. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 127-149. Glenn, P. J. (1992). Current speaker initiation of two-party shared laughter. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 25, 139-162. Glenn, P. J. (1995). Laughing at and laughing with: Negotiating participant alignments through conversational laughter. In P. ten Have & G. Psathas (Eds.), Situated order: Studies in the social organization of talk and embodied activities (pp. 43-56). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Goldsmith, D., & Baxter, L. (1996). Constituting relationships in talk: A taxonomy of speech events in social and personal relationships. Human Communication Research, 23(1), 87-114.
32
INTRODUCTION
Goodwin, C. (1979). The interactive construction of a sentence in natural conversation. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 97-121). New York: Irvington. Goodwin, C. (1980). Restarts, pauses, and the achievement of a state of mutual gaze at turn-beginning. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 277-302. Goodwin, C. (1984). Notes on story structure and the organization of participation. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action. (pp. 225-246). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C. (1986). Gestures as a resource for the organization of mutual orientation. Semiotica, 62(1/2), 29-49. Goodwin, C. (1995). Co-constructing meaning in conversations with an aphasic man. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 28, 233-60. Goodwin, C. (1996). Transparent vision. In E. Ochs, E. Schegloff, & S. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and grammar (pp. 370-404). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1489-1522. Goodwin, C. & Goodwin, M. H. (1986). Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word. Semiotica, 62(1/2), 51-75. Gouran, D. S. (1990). Speech communication after seventy-five years. In G. M. Phillips & J. T. Wood (Eds.), Speech communication: Essays to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Speech Communication Association. (pp. 1-32). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Gray, P. H., & Van Oosting, J. (1996). Performance in life and literature. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Gundersen, D. F., & Hopper, R. (1984). Communication and law enforcement. New York: Harper & Row. Hawes, L. C. (1976). How writing is used in talk: A study of communicative logic-in-use. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 62, 350-360. Hawes, L. C. (1977). Toward a hermeneutic phenomenology of communication. Communication Quarterly, 25(3), 30-41. He, A. (1995). Co-constructing institutional identities: The case of student counselees. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 28, 213— 231. Heath, C. (1986). Body movement and speech in medical interaction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Hopper, R. (198la). How to do things without words: The taken-for-granted as speech-action. Communication Quarterly, 29, 228-36.
INTRODUCTION
33
Hopper, R. (1981b). The taken-for-granted. Human Communication Research, 7, 195-211. Hopper, R. (1983). Interpretation as coherence production. In R. T. Craig & K. Tracy (Eds.), Conversational coherence: Form, structure, and strategy. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Hopper, R. (1991). Observer: Steps to an ecology of mind [poem]. Communication Theory, 1, 267-268. Hopper, R. (1992a). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation. Text and Performance Quarterly, 12, 113-124. Hopper, R. (1992b). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hopper, R. (1993a). Conversational dramatism and everyday life performance. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13(2), 181-183. Hopper, R. (Ed.). (1993b). Performance and conversation [Special issue]. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13(2). Hopper, R. (1995). Episode trajectory in conversational play. In P. ten Have & G. Psathas (Eds.), Situated order: Studies in the social organization of talk and embodied activities (pp. 57-71). Baltimore: University Press of America. Hopper, R. (1996, November). Presidency on the line: Lyndon B. Johnson's first month in office. Performance (Hopper as Director) at the Eighty-Second Annual Convention of the Speech Communication Association, San Diego. Hopper, R. (in press). Gendering talk. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Hopper, R., & Doany, N. (1989). Telephone openings and conversational universals: A study in three languages. International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 13, 148-170. Hopper, R., & Drummond, K. (1990). Emergent goals at a relational turning point: The case of Gordon and Denise. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9, 39-65. Hopper, R. & Drummond, K. (1992). Accomplishing interpersonal relationship: Telephone openings of strangers and intimates. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 3, 185-200. Hopper, R., & Glenn, P. J. (1994). Repetition and play in conversation. In B. Johnstone (Ed.), Perspectives on repetition (Vol. II, pp. 29-40). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Hopper, R., Koch, S., & Mandelbaum, J. (1986). Conversation analysis methods. In D. Ellis & W. Donohue (Eds.), Contemporary issues in language and discourse processes (pp. 169-200). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Hopper, R., & LeBaron, C. (1998). How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 59-74.
34
INTRODUCTION
Hopper, R., Thomason, W. R., & Ward, J. (1993). Demographic questions in telephone calls to the Cancer Information Service. Southern Journal of Communication, 58, 115-27. Houtkoop-Steenstra, H., & Antaki, C. (1997). Creating happy people by asking yes-no questions. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 30, 285-314. Hudson, H. H. (1923). The field of rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 9, 167-180. Hudson, H. H. (1924). Rhetoric and poetry. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 10, 143-154. Hunt, E. L. (1920). Plato on rhetoric and rhetoricians. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 6, 35-56. Hymes, D. (1978). What is ethnography? Sociolinguistic Working Paper # 45. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. Jackson, S., & Jacobs, S. (1980). Structure of conversational argument: Pragmatic bases for the enthymeme. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 251-265. Jacoby, S., & Ochs, E. (1995). Co-construction: An introduction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 28, 171-183. Jarmon, L. (1996a). An ecology of embodied interaction: Turn-taking and interactional syntax in face-to-face encounters. Doctoral dissertation, published on CD-ROM, University of Texas at Austin. Jarmon, L. (1996b). Performance as a resource in the practice of conversation analysis. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16, 336-355. Jefferson, G. (1989). Letter to the editor re: Anita Pomerantz' epilogue to the special issue on sequential organization of conversational activities, Spring 1989. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 427-429. Jefferson, G. (1994, May). A note on laughter in "male-female" interaction. Unpublished manuscript. Jurick, D. M. (1977). The enactment of returning: A naturalistic study of talk. Communication Quarterly, 25(3), 21-29. Katriel, T. (1993). Lefargen: A study in Israeli semantics of social relations. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 31-53. Kendon, A. (1972). Some relationships between body motion and speech. In A. W. Seigman & B. Pope (Eds.), Studies in dyadic communication (pp. 177-210). Elmsford, NY: Pergamon. Kendon, A. (1980). Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance. In M. R. Key (Ed.), The relationship of verbal and nonverbal communication (pp. 207-228). The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. Kendon, A. (1987). On gesture: Its complementary relationship with speech. In A. W. Siegman & S. Feldstein (Eds.), Nonverbal behavior and communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
INTRODUCTION
35
Kendon, A. (1990). Conducting interaction: Patterns of behavior in focused encounters. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Kibler, R. J., & Barker, L. L. (1969). Conceptual frontiers in speechcommunication. New York: Speech Association of America. Knapp, M. L. (1983). Series editor's forward. In R. T. Craig & K. Tracy (Eds.), Conversational coherence: Form, structure, and strategy. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Lawrence, S., Stucky, N., & Hopper, R. (1990). The effects of sex dialects and sex stereotypes on speech evaluations. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9(3), 209-224. LeBaron, C. (1998). Building communication: Architectural gestures and the embodiment of new ideas. Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin. (University Microfilms No. AAT98-38026.) LeBaron, C., & Hopper, R. (1999, February). The interactive achievement of deception detection in a therapy group for sex offenders. Paper presented at the Western States Communication Association annual convention, Vancouver, Canada. LeBaron, C., & Streeck, J. (1997). Built space and the interactional framing of experience during a murder interrogation. Human Studies, 20, 1-25. LeBaron, C., & Streeck, J. (2000). Gestures, knowledge, and the world. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (1992). Forum introduction: Social approaches to interpersonal communication. Communication Theory, 2(2), 131-138. Liberman, K. (1995). The natural history of some intercultural communication. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 28, 117-146. Litton-Hawes, E. M. (1977). A foundation for the study of everyday talk. Communication Quarterly, 25(3), 2-11. Lynch, M., & Bogen, D. (1996). The spectacle of history: Speech, text and memory of the Iran-Contra hearings. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mandelbaum, J. (1987). Couples sharing stories. Communication Quarterly, 35, 144-170. Mandelbaum, J. (1989). Interpersonal activities in conversational storytelling. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 114-126. Mandelbaum, J. (1991). Beyond mundane reasoning: Conversation analysis and context. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 24, 331-348. Mandelbaum, J. (1994, November). The search for self in interaction. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association, New Orleans. McHoul, A. (1990). The organization of repair in classroom talk. Language in Society, 19, 349-377.
36
INTRODUCTION
Metzger, T. R., & Beach, W. A. (1996). Preserving alternative versions: Interactional techniques for organizing courtroom cross-examination. Communication Research, 23, 749-765. Modaff, J., & Modaff, D. (1999). Technical notes on audio recording. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33, 101-118. Moerman, M. (1988). Talking culture: Ethnography and conversation analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Moerman, M. (1990). Exploring talk and interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 24, 173-187. Moerman, M. (1993). Ariadne's thread and Indra's net: Reflections on ethnography, ethnicity, identity, culture, and interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 85-98. Morris, G. H., & Chenail, R. J. (Eds.) (1995). The Talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of medical and therapeutic discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Morris, G. H., & Hopper, R. (1987). Symbolic action as alignment: A synthesis of rules approaches. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 21, 1-31. Morris, G. H., White, C. H., & Iltis, R. (1994). "Well, ordinarily I would, but": Reexamining the nature of accounts for problematic events. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27, 123-144. Mulac, A., Bradac, J. J., & Gibbons, P. (2001). Empirical support for the gender-as-culture hypothesis: An intercultural analysis of male/female language differences. Human Communication Research, 27(1), 121152. Nofsinger, R. E. (1975). The demand ticket: A conversational device for getting the floor. Speech Monographs, 42, 1-9. Nofsinger, R. E. (1976). On answering questions indirectly: Some rules in the grammar of doing conversation. Human Communication Research, 2, 172-181. Nofsinger, R. E. (1977). A peek at conversational analysis. Communication Quarterly, 25(3), 12-20. Nofsinger, R. E. (1988). "Let's talk about the record": Contending over topic redirection in the Rather/Bush interview. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 22, 273-291. Ochs, E. (1979). Transcription as theory. In E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.), Developmental pragmatics (pp. 43-77). New York: Academic Press. O'Neill, J. M. (1915). The professional outlook. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2, 52-63. Pearce, W. B. (1977). Naturalistic study of communication: Its function and form. Communication Quarterly, 25(3), 51-56.
INTRODUCTION
37
Perakyla, A. (1995). AIDS counseling: Institutional interaction and clinical practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Philipsen, G. (1975). Speaking "like a man" in Teamsterville: Culture patterns of role enactment in an urban neighborhood. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 61, 13-22. Philipsen, G. (1977). Linearity of research design in ethnographic studies of speaking. Communication Quarterly, 25(3), 42-50. Philipsen, G. (2000). Permission to speak the discourse of difference: A case study. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33, 213-234. Pike, K. (1966). Etic and emic standpoints for the description of behavior. In A. G. Smith (Ed.), Communication and culture: Readings in the codes of human interaction (pp. 152-63). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Pollner, M. (1991) Left of ethnomethodology: The rise and decline of radical reflexivity. American Sociological Review 56, 370-380. Pomerantz, A. (1989). Epilogue. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53(2), 242-246. Pomerantz, A., & Fehr, B. J. (1997). Conversation analysis: An approach to the study of social action as sense making practices. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction: Discourse Studies 2—A multidisciplinary introduction (pp. 64-91). London: Sage. Pratt, S., & Wieder, D. (1993). The case of saying a few words and talking for another among the Osage people: "Public speaking" as an object of ethnography. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 353408. Ragan, S. L., & Hopper, R. (1981). Alignment talk in the job interview. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 9, 85-103. Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on methodology. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 21-27). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. (2 vols., G. Jefferson, Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696-735. Sanders, R. (1999). The impossibility of a culturally contexted conversation analysis: On simultaneous, distinct types of pragmatic meaning. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32, 129-140. Sanders, R., & Sigman, S. (1994). An editorial caveat. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27, 419-21. Schegloff, E. A. (1984). On some gestures' relation to talk. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 266-296). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
38
INTRODUCTION
Schegloff, E. A. (1986). The routine as achievement. Human Studies, 9, 111152. Schegloff, E. A. (1992a). Introduction. In G. Jefferson (Ed.), Harvey Sacks: Lectures on conversation (pp. ix-xii). Oxford: Blackwell. Schegloff, E. A. (1992b). On talk and its institutional occasions. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work (pp. 101-134). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1979). Expressions and meaning. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sequeira, D. (1993). Personal address as negotiated meaning in an American church communication. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 259-285. Shannon, C., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sheldon, A. (1996). Constituting gender through talk in childhood: Conversations in parent-child, peer, and sibling relationships. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29, 1-5. Simon, C. T. (1951). Speech as science. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 37, 281-293. Stewart, J. (1995). Language as articulate contact: Toward a post-semiotic philosophy of communication. State University of New York Press: Albany. Streeck, J. (1984). Embodied contexts, transcontextuals, and the timing of speech acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 8(1), 113-137. Streeck, J. (1993). Gesture as communication I: Its coordination with gaze and speech. Communication Monographs, 60, 275-299. Streeck, J. (1994). Gesture as communication II: The audience as co-author. Research on Language and Social Interaction 27, 239-267. Streeck, J. (1996). How to do things with things. Human Studies, 19, 365-384. Streeck, J., & Knapp, M. (1992). The interaction of visual and verbal features in human communication. In F. Poyatos (Ed.), Advances in nonverbal communication (pp. 3-24). Amsterdam: Benjamins B. V. Stringer, J., & Hopper, R. (1997). Generic he in conversation? Quarterly Journal of Speech, 84(2), 209-221. Stucky, N. (1988). Unnatural acts: Performing natural conversation. Literature in Performance, 8(2), 28-39. ten Have, P. (1999). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. London: Sage. Tracy, K. (1994). Boundary drawing in language and social interaction study. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27, 423—425. Tracy, K. (1995). Action-implicative discourse anlaysis. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 14, 195-215.
INTRODUCTION
39
Tracy, K. (1997). Interactional trouble in emergency service requests: A problem of frames. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 30, 315-343. Tracy, K., (1998). Analyzing context: Framing the discussion. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 1-28. Tracy, K., & Muller, N. (1994). Talking about ideas: Academics' beliefs about appropriate communicative practices. Research on Language and Social interaction, 27, 319-349. van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Elite discourse and racism. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Wieder, D. L. (1999). Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, microanalysis, and the ethnography of speaking (EM-CA-MA-ES): Resonances and basic issues. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32, 163171. Winans, J. A. (1915). The need for research. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1, 17-23. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. (G. Anscombe, Trans.). London: Macmillan. Woolbert, C. H. (1916). The organization of departments of speech science in universities. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2, 64-77. Woolbert, C. H. (1917). Suggestions as to methods in research. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2, 12-26. Zahn, C. J., & Hopper, R. (1985). Measuring language attitudes: The speech evaluation instrument. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 4, 113-123. Znaniecki, F. (1934). The method of sociology. New York: Farrar & Rinehart.
This page intentionally left blank
I Orienting to the Field of Language and Social Interaction The first section of this volume includes five articles that represent major research traditions within the interdisciplinary field of language and social interaction (LSI): sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, ethnography, discourse analysis, and microethnography. Sociolinguists typically take some aspect of the social dimensions of everyday life (class, ethnicity, gender, etc.) and pair it with some aspect of spoken language (accent, rate, dialect, etc.), exploring the extent to which variation in social dimensions correlates with variations in language use (for an overview, see Fasold, 1990; for a foundational collection see Baugh & Sherzer, 1984). James Bradac's piece (chap. 2) summarizes work on speech evaluation, concerned with identifying features of speech that contribute significantly to hearers' judgments about speaker credibility, competence, and so forth. Based on his review, Bradac recommends that future research in this area shift from examining the evaluations hearers make of speakers under various conditions to more direct studies of perceptions of features of messages themselves. In this way, speech evaluation research would pay more attention directly to messages and less to people's perceptions thereof. Conversation analysis, in the ethnomethodological tradition, exemplified by John Heritage's article (chap. 3), treats audio- and videotaped naturalistic interactions as primary data. Recordings and transcripts provide resources for constructing detailed accounts of the activities interactants undertake in and through interaction. Heritage's early work on formulations opened the way for a growing body of research about the organization and accomplishments of news interviews (Heritage & Watson, 1979). In the current essay, he examines how interviewers employ questioning to take up particular positions vis a vis interviewees while managing competing pressures of the 41
42
PART I
interview situation. These pressures include on the one hand taking a somewhat adversarial stance, so as not to operate as a "mouthpiece" for the interviewee, while on the other hand maintaining a neutral stance, avoiding making their own opinions available in the way their questions are structured. He shows how news interviewers' questions are in fact "neutralistic": They have the appearance of neutrality but actually in various ways are not quite neutral. Researchers in the ethnography of communication tradition move from thick description of communicative phenomena to identifying underlying speech codes or cultural patterns (for overview, see Saville-Troike, 1989; also Carbaugh, 1990; Fitch & Philipsen, 1995). Kristine Fitch (chap. 4) advocates grounding claims about communication and culture in details of particular interactions. This echoes Michael Moerman's (1988) call for a "culturally contexted conversation analysis." Moerman's proposal for a union between ethnography and conversation analysis spawned much discussion, including a special issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction (1990/1991) edited by Robert Hopper, to which Fitch contributed an article. In the present piece, Fitch analyzes a transcript of a family mealtime conversation. It is an everyday life dramatic moment, a child negotiating a raise in allowance. Fitch's analysis shows that such critical moments in interaction where culture becomes an issue for participants may provide a resource for analysts to reexamine this elusive concept. Although discourse analysis is a term that means many different things (Tracy, 2001), here we use it to encompass studies that identify particular speech acts and their functions, focus on coherence as a feature of talk, or trace the actions performed through particular lexical items that occur commonly in everyday talk. Much contemporary LSI research (including some studies in the ethnography of communication tradition) reflects grounding in discourse analytic approaches and specifically in speech act theory. Why do speakers sometimes choose to say "I think that. . ." as preface to expressing an opinion? If we assume that all speech is connected in some way to cognitive activity, then conceivably one could precede anything one says with "I think." What gets marked at moments when speakers use the verb think? Robert Craig and Alena Sanusi (chap. 5) pursue these issues in videotaped data collected during student group discussions. Think is one of a number of items by which speakers can indicate standpoint or "footing" (Goffman, 1983) in relation to the words they are uttering. The authors show that uses of think include displaying online thought process to others, marking transition from presentation of canned to spontaneous material, inviting expression of online thinking from other participants, and displaying process when sense of process seems to be threatened. Their analysis links to the study of argument in everyday discourse.
PART I
43
The fifth chapter in this section represents a strain of LSI research we refer to as microethnography. By that term is meant close attention to details of embodied actions as a means of characterizing emic, participant-grounded ways of enacting and interpreting meaning in actions. Curtis LeBaron and Timothy Koschmann (chap. 6) examine the coordination of talk, body orientation, gaze, and gesture within small groups working toward a shared understanding about some issue or topic at hand. For example, when a group of medical and nursing students read and discuss the symptoms of a hypothetical patient, they encounter new clinical terms that some members don't understand. By gesturing in relation to their own bodies, informed students explain the new terms to uninformed students, who then perform the same gestures in the process of coming to understand. Participants achieve shared understanding (or at least shared understanding is displayed) only after (and arguably through) gestures repeatedly performed. The authors suggest a socially mediated and embodied notion of humans coming to understand.
REFERENCES Baugh, .J., & Sherzer, J. (Eds.). (1984). Language in use: Readings in sociolinguistics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Carbaugh, D. (Ed.). (1990). Cultural communication and intercultural contact. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Fasold, R. (1990). The sociolinguistics of language. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Fitch, K. (1990/1991). A ritual for attempting leave-taking in Colombia. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 24, 209—224. Fitch, K., & Philipsen, G. (1995). Ethnography of speaking. In J. Verschueren, J. Ostman, & J. Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of pragmatics (pp. 263— 269). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Goffman, E. (1983). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Heritage, J., & Watson, D. R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 123—162). New York: Irvington. Hopper, R. (Ed.). (1990/1991). Special section: Ethnography and conversation analysis after Talking Culture. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 24, 173-387. Moerman, M. (1988). Talking culture: Ethnography and conversation analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
44
PART I
Saville-Troike, M. (1989). The ethnography of communication: An introduction. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Tracy, K. (2001). Discourse analysis in communication. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. Hamilton (Eds.), Handbook of discourse analysis. Maiden: Blackwell.
2 Extending the Domain of Speech Evaluation: Message Judgments James J. Bradac University of California, Santa Barbara THE SCOPE OF SPEECH EVALUATION IN THEORY There is a flourishing research tradition in which the major objects of scrutiny are the kinds of evaluations that hearers make of speakers and the factors that affect these evaluations. Factors that have been examined include communication context, for example, formality of the situation in which a message is delivered (Street & Brady, 1982), and (crucially) speech style, for example, speaker accent and dialect (Cargile, 1997; Giles & Powesland, 1975; Hopper & de la Zerda, 1979). Evaluation is a basic, even primitive, psychological process, at its core entailing approach-avoidance tendencies and behaviors apparent in humans, canines, felines, reptiles, and unicellular organisms alike. In humans (at least), evaluation has a cognitive component in that thought, and more particularly verbalization, is often, even typically, inextricably bound to the process of acceptance or rejection of evaluationtriggering stimuli. Speech evaluation research has always exploited this cognitive component by using respondents who are aware of what they are doing, that is, evaluating speakers, and by asking respondents to make their judgments via verbal, often semantic-differential-type, scales (Bradac, 1990). Any stimulus or imagined stimulus can activate the evaluation process. In the arena of human communication, message recipients can evaluate speakers, their styles of speech, their messages, specific message features such 45
46
CHAPTER 2
as arguments, and more specific or idiosyncratic variables, for example, physical aspects of the communication situation and responses of other message recipients (booing or applause). Evaluations of communication stimuli or of any stimuli are made at specific times and places; that is, evaluation has a temporal/spatial dimension. This can be important because evaluations can vary systematically as a function of variations in occasions. For example, message recipients may be relatively negative when they are fatigued and they may be less attentive to message details, relying on various peripheral or heuristic cues to make judgments of communicators (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986); or a message that follows an initial message may be evaluated differently than if it had been presented in the initial position, as a result of perceptual contrast effects (Bradac, Davies, & Courtright, 1977). Additionally, evaluations have consequences for both evaluators and the persons (or other organisms) evaluated. A positive evaluation made of a communicator on one occasion may predispose the evaluator to respond positively on a second occasion as a result of a commitment effect; the positively evaluated communicator may view the message recipient's positive response as a signal to persist. Thus, in theory, speech evaluation covers the whole communication process, that is, any communication-related stimulus; it is affected by temporal/spatial variables; and it has consequences.
SPEECH EVALUATION RESEARCH IN PRACTICE In practice, research on speech evaluation has had a narrow focus, which has not been entirely disadvantageous because it has allowed a good deal of concerted effort resulting in some highly reliable findings. But there is room for expansion. Some of the earliest pertinent studies were conducted by Lambert and associates who investigated the effects of language and dialect differences on respondents' evaluations of speakers. For example, in an initial study Frenchand English-speaking monolingual respondents heard audiotapes of readings of a prose passage recorded in French and English by bilingual speakers and subsequently rated the speakers in terms of a number of traits, for example, intelligence and sociability (Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, & Fillenbaum, 1960). The English "guises" received more positive ratings on several traits from both groups of respondents. In a later study, Arab and Jewish respondents rated speakers who read passages in Arabic and Hebrew (Lambert, Anisfeld, & YeniKomshian, 1965). In this case, Arab respondents evaluated the Arabic guises more positively, whereas the Hebrew guises were evaluated more positively by the Jewish respondents, an example of ingroup favoritism. These (and other) studies were precursors of contemporary language-attitudes research, which has
SPEECH EVALUATION
47
continued to investigate evaluative consequences of different languages, dialects, and accents (Giles & Coupland, 1991; see also chap. 3, this volume). More recently, Mulac and associates have examined the "gender-linked language effect," a relationship among gender, language, and perception that demonstrates that there is a pervasive tendency for persons to rate women's language as high in Socio-Intellectual Status and Aesthetic Quality and men's language as high in Dynamism (e.g., Mulac, 1998; Mulac & Lundell, 1986). The research on this effect has used as an evaluation instrument the Speech Dialect Attitudinal Scale (SDAS), which reflects the three general dimensions just mentioned, uncovered through factor analysis (Mulac, 1975). Factor analysis was also used by Zahn and Hopper (1985) in their attempt to design an instrument that would be broadly useful in research on speech evaluation (the Speech Evaluation Instrument or SEI). Employing a variety of communication stimuli and a wide range of evaluative items to which persons responded following exposure to the stimuli, these researchers obtained three general factors, which they labeled Superiority, Attractiveness, and Dynamism. Despite the different communication stimuli and respondents used in constructing the two instruments, the factor structures of SDAS and SEI are quite similar, although SEI exhibits a relatively large number of items representing each factor. Both Superiority and Socio-Intellectual Status include items such as literate/illiterate and white collar/blue collar; Attractiveness and Aesthetic Quality include sweet/sour and nice/awful; and the two Dynamisms include strong/weak and active/passive. The first two factors of both instruments appear to be specific manifestations of the highly general Evaluation factor obtained by Osgood and associates in their semantic-differential research on the connotative meanings of a diverse array of concepts (Osgood, May, & Miron, 1975). The two Dynamism factors appear to combine Osgood, May, and Miron's Activity and Potency factors. The factor structures of SDAS and SEI are also similar in some respects to factor structures obtained in early studies of communicator credibility and attitude change; for example, Authoritativeness, Character, and Dynamism (or variants thereof, e.g., Competence, Trustworthiness, and Dynamism) are dimensions that emerged in factor analytic research and were used subsequently to measure attitudes toward message sources (McCroskey & Mehrley, 1969).1 The research on speech evaluation measurement (coupled with the work on source credibility) reveals a strong pattern: Speaker status and attractiveness (in a general sense) are pervasive evaluative dimensions, as is perceived dynamism. The status/attractiveness distinction is related to two basic 1
Zahn and Hopper (1985) also noted similarities between Osgood and associates' Activity dimension and the Dynamism dimension of speech evaluation, and between source credibility measures and measures of speech evaluation.
48
CHAPTER 2
dimensions of interpersonal relationships: power and solidarity (Brown & Gilman, 1960). Giles and Ryan (1982) noted the importance of the status and attractiveness dimensions and suggested that when collectivistic concerns are salient, hearers will perceive speakers in terms of social status and group solidarity; on the other hand, when individualistic concerns are prominent, hearers will focus on speaker competence and attractiveness. The similarity of the dimensions of status/competence and solidarity/attractiveness to the major dimensions of communicator credibility call attention to the likelihood that in the many studies of speech evaluation that have used SDAS or SEI (or related items), respondents were making judgments of or attributions about speakers rather than evaluating speech per se: The speaker was intelligent, likable, active, and so on. It may be much more usual for persons to judge message sources than to judge messages or message style; there may be something like a "fundamental attribution error" in the realm of speech evaluation, where message sources are unduly prominent (Bradac, 1989; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). But, on the other hand, sometimes message recipients focus on messages per se or features of messages; in some important communication contexts, message sources are obscure or unknown, as in the case of reading newspapers, and sometimes even where sources are known, messages will be examined closely and judged. It may be useful to think about and investigate message judgments in order to correct an imbalance in our research that has tipped the scales in favor of message sources.
FILLING THE GAP BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE: MESSAGE EVALUATION The bias toward source evaluation may be to some extent a product of the research paradigm exploited in speech evaluation studies. Prototypically, respondents hear one or more audiotaped messages delivered by a speaker (or speakers) exhibiting a standard or nonstandard dialect or accent and subsequently they complete evaluative scales representing the dimensions described in the previous section. The content of the messages processed is bland (sometimes described as "neutral") and respondents have little involvement with this content or with its evaluation. An underlying belief seems to be that the use of "neutral" message content will allow respondents to focus on the stylistic variable of interest, which may be the case, but this use also heightens the attributional prominence of the speaker. And specific scales representing the dimensions of status/competence and solidarity/attractiveness force a speaker attribution, for example, intelligent, friendly, and trustworthy.
SPEECH EVALUATION
49
But in some communication contexts, persons are inclined to scrutinize the substance of an utterance or utterances, to attend to how an utterance is constructed, or to make a global judgment of message quality. The specialized context of a public-speaking class is one example; here evaluators, for example, instructors, examine arguments, message structure, and message style as a consequence of their training. Indeed, Becker (1962) factor analyzed 10 "speech quality" rating scales designed for speech classes and found evidence of three dimensions: content, delivery, and language.2 In this case no "speaker" factor was obtained. In less specialized contexts also, given particular constraints, the focus will be on messages, not speakers. The meaning of speaker (and the attached attributes of status, etc.) is clear, but the meaning of message is less obvious, although this is not the place to offer a detailed discussion of definitional issues. Bradac, Hopper, and Wiemann (1989) suggested that messages, compared to other entities, are high in "symbolicity" (to use Cronkhite's 1986 term), coherence, and intentionality. Additionally, messages often have a point or points that are inferred by message recipients. The notion of coherence suggests that messages are perceived as units; they are bundles of significance. But the boundaries of these bundles shift or even change drastically as message recipients change perspectives and purposes. For example, a film constitutes a message for many casual viewers, and global judgments of this message are made: "The Negotiator was really good." On the other hand, for film students analyzing a film closely, particular scenes will constitute messages, even short scenes: "That visual transition is excellent—it establishes appropriate expectations." A film analyst's significant scene may not even be noticed by the casual viewer. Messages are meaningful units, the boundaries of which vary across occasions, purposes, and recipients; these units are sometimes evaluated. Although message judgments have been neglected compared to judgments of speakers, some exceptions and suggestive possibilities are apparent in communication research and theory. The message variable "argument strength" is one example. When exposed to persuasive messages, persons may attend to arguments that are offered and evaluate them along a strong-weak dimension. In research on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion (Gibbons, Busch, & Bradac, 1991; Holtgraves & Lasky, 2
Becker's (1962) study represents a particular tradition of speech evaluation research with a long history, namely, research on evaluation in the communication classroom. This is applied research designed to investigate problems pertaining to evaluating public-speaking effectiveness and effectiveness in group discussion, for example, the reliability and validity of speech ratings scales used by communication teachers, halo effects in the rating process, and effects of order of presentation of speeches (Becker, 1953). Most of this research involves judgments reflecting special training and special conceptions of effective speech, in contrast to the naive social judgments that are the focus of this essay, so this research tradition will not be discussed at length.
50
CHAPTER 2
1999), respondents' evaluations of argument strength have constituted merely a manipulation check of strong- and weak-argument messages. These messages are ultimately intersected with high- and low-relevance conditions, for example, to create differential message processing in respondents (specifically, central and peripheral processing). Evaluations of argument strength have been subservient to attitudes toward the speaker's proposal, the theoretically important measure from the standpoint of ELM, but they demonstrate that arguments are, or at least can be, evaluated along the dimension of strength; strong arguments are better than weak ones for most purposes. Judgments of argument strength pertain to a specific message feature. Other message judgments are global—general impressions of a message as a whole. In special cases, global judgments are made of clusters of messages: "I thought the debate was uninteresting." Referring to a specific class of messages, Dillard, Wilson, Tusing, and Kinney (1997) suggested that "social actors naturally evaluate influence messages in terms of three distinct and conceptually orthogonal features: explicitness, dominance, and argument" (p. 317). Explicitness refers to the directness of the influence attempt, dominance refers to the level of control attempted, and argument refers to the extent to which reasons are offered in support of a proposal. Dillard et al. further suggested that "[t]hese three constructs lie midway between the relatively microscopic objective features of messages (such as word choice) and more macroscopic evaluations of messages (such as judgments of politeness)" (p. 303). Perhaps explicitness, dominance, and argument are best conceptualized as qualities of influence messages that social actors naturally perceive, rather than as evaluations that naturally occur, because it is difficult to think of these qualities in terms of an unambiguous good-bad criterion that is a necessary feature of all evaluations; indeed, at one point, Dillard et al. referred to the three qualities as "percepts" (p. 320). It is useful to distinguish between perception and evaluation in research on message processing (Street & Hopper, 1982). On the other hand, politeness, which is Dillard et al.'s criterion variable in the research that they reported, is clearly evaluative. Dillard et al. found that there was a negative association between perceived dominance in influence messages and judgments of politeness; by contrast, there was a positive association between judgments of politeness and perceptions of both explicitness and argument. A dimension of message perception that is closely related to the dominance dimension just discussed is "power." There is evidence that messages exhibiting hedges, hesitations, and tag questions are rated as relatively low in power (Bradac & Mulac, 1984; Holtgraves & Lasky, 1999). It may be that a perception of high- or low-power messages is more accurately described as an evaluation, because in the particular case of linguistic power it appears that connotations of good-bad are inevitably attached; a good deal of research on
SPEECH EVALUATION
51
high- and low-power styles indicates that "what is powerless is bad." In any case, a high-power style appears to produce judgments of high communicator competence and attractiveness, whereas Dillard et al's dominant messages produced judgments of low message politeness. Is this contradictory? Or is it possible for a communicator to be judged as attractive when delivering an impolite message? Probably yes to the latter. It would be useful to obtain politeness ratings of high- and low-power styles in future research; it may be that a high-power style will trigger perceptions of high dominance, which will reduce politeness ratings. Kellermann and associates have proposed two additional types of message judgments that revolve around the meaning of messages. The first is coherence judgments, which occur "when activated knowledge structures are consonant with the perceived nature of the discourse" processed by message recipients (Kellermann & Sleight, 1989, p. 122); "coherence is an evaluative judgment of meaningfulness of discourse" (p. 105). In most contexts most people expect communicators to make sense, to produce meaningful utterances, so a judgment that takes the form "That message was coherent" is probably rare, occurring mainly when for whatever reasons persons expect an incoherent message. A judgment of incoherence probably occurs more frequently because of the pervasive expectation of coherence; incoherence is the marked case, so it will be noticed and evaluated negatively. Also there are degrees of incoherence: "The last part of the film was baffling" or "The statement wasn't completely clear." Another type of message judgment is informativeness, which is "a judgment that is concerned with the importance or relevance of either the parts or whole of a message" (Kellermann & Lim, 1989, p. 118). It is also probably the case that messages that are judged to be informative are substantively novel: "I never would have guessed that." So, the perceptions of importance, relevance, and novelty may contribute to evaluations of informativeness. There may be an inverse relationship between perceptions of novelty and judgments of coherence such that something that is radically unfamiliar may make little sense; a particular message may be judged to be quite informative and relatively incoherent (perhaps like this essay). Another message judgment that seems to occur fairly frequently can be labeled stimulation-value. Some messages are arousing or exciting, whereas others are soothing or dull. There appear to be positively and negatively valenced high arousal ("exciting" and "grating," respectively) and positively and negatively valenced low arousal as well ("relaxing" and "boring"), so this is a relatively complex message judgment (cf. J.K. Burgoon, Kelley, Newton, & Keeley-Dyreson, 1989). Stimulation-value judgments are not bound to messages uniquely in the way that politeness judgments, for example, appear to be. Both roller coaster rides and action films are potentially exciting. Also the
52
CHAPTER 2
judgment made by a given message recipient will depend on her preexposure level of arousal; when preexposure arousal is high, a stimulating message may be evaluated more negatively than when preexposure arousal is low. This message judgment appears to be more clearly dependent on the cognitive and emotional states of message recipients than are the judgments discussed previously. As a final example, some messages may be evaluated along a sociability dimension. This judgment corresponds to the speaker attribution of solidarity, but it is a message-centered evaluation: "That was a kind remark" or "That was a friendly overture." An interesting possibility is that a speaker judged to be generally low in solidarity may produce a message judged to be extremely high in sociability. Such an occurrence may cause the message recipient to reassess the judgment of low speaker sociability or to search for an explanation for the discrepancy between the message judgment and the judgment of the speaker. Probably more typically, at least in first-impression situations, a highly sociable message will lead directly to a judgment of high speaker solidarity, unless this message is perceived as manipulative or patronizing (Giles, Fox, & Smith, 1993). Thus, a given supermessage may be evaluated as polite, powerful, coherent, informative, stimulating, and sociable, whereas its dark opposite may be judged to be impolite, powerless, incoherent, uninformative, boring, and unsociable. Probably in most situations most message recipients would approach the former message and avoid the latter, although no doubt across the globe there are scattered individuals who generally prefer impoliteness, powerlessness, incoherence, a lack of information, boredom, and unfriendliness. Informativeness and coherence seem to be at the base of a message-judgment hierarchy because they are pertinent to all messages; stimulation-value is at the next level because it is pertinent to many types of messages; and at the level above that are politeness, power, and sociability, which appear to be relevant to specific message types. There are certainly other levels, and within levels there are other judgment types. Messages are likely to be the objects of primary scrutiny when message recipients are involved with message content and when this content is relevant to them, at least in the case of persuasive messages (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Many specific variables are associated with relevance and involvement, for example, decisions hinging on message content or need to transmit the content to another person. It is worth noting that relevance and involvement have not been manipulated in studies of speech evaluation; in fact, relevance and involvement typically have been low, which has probably led evaluators to focus more on speakers than on messages. It is also the case that specific roles will predispose persons to focus on messages. To give a specialized example, film
SPEECH EVALUATION
53
critics are required to analyze films and to make global judgments. Noncritics, that is, naive viewers, commonly eschew analysis of films but easily offer quick judgments: "It was exciting" or "It didn't make sense." The film-going experience requires message evaluation, although this evaluation may be implicit and may remain unexpressed. Particular occasions will also precipitate message evaluation. An interesting case in point is President William Jefferson Clinton's speech to the nation about a sexual relationship, which was delivered at the time of this writing (August 17, 1998). Many nonspecialists offered opinions about his message, its content, and its presentation: "It wasn't (was) satisfying," "It was too short," "It was too general," "It had a blurred focus," and so on. On this occasion, there was a great deal of interest in what the speaker would say; opinions about the speaker himself, his power and his character, were already well formed. Finally, sometimes particular message features will cause message recipients to focus on messages, specifically, features that violate expectations (M. Burgoon, 1990) or features that are marked, for example, a low-power language style (Gibbons et al., 1991).
MORE GAPS BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE: CONCLUSION So, message evaluation, that is, the process and structure of naive judgment, has been seriously neglected, compared to speaker evaluation. Particular types of evaluations, for example, coherence and informativeness judgments, barely have been investigated. The interaction between message evaluations and message genres remains essentially unexplored: Particular dimensions of evaluation are likely to be especially, even uniquely, relevant to specific genres or types of messages. Apart from the issue of message judgment, it was mentioned at the beginning of this essay that evaluations of all sorts are situated temporally and spatially, but this fact has been largely ignored in speech evaluation research; the time and place of evaluation has been imposed upon respondents for the purpose of coordinating an experiment. It would be very useful at this point to discover where and when speech evaluation naturally occurs—outside of the laboratory—and to discover how different settings and temporal factors affect evaluations of speakers and messages (cf. Duck, Rutt, Hurst, & Strejc, 1991). Additionally, as suggested earlier, evaluations have consequences for evaluators and persons evaluated, but in the typical speech evaluation experiment, evaluations are made in a vacuum. Would respondents who evaluate a speaker as high in power, status, and competence choose not to interact with her? Under what circumstances will respondents' self-esteem affect this interaction
54
CHAPTER 2
decision? How will speakers react if they are evaluated as high in competence but low in attractiveness? How will they react if their messages are judged to be informative but incoherent? Investigating temporal/spatial factors in speech evaluation, along with evaluative consequences for communicators and message recipients, could extend the domain of speech evaluation research in important ways. And, almost certainly, the speech evaluation research domain will be extended fruitfully by shifting attention to the dimensions underlying message judgments, to the interactions between dimensions and message genres, and to the many communication variables that systematically affect dimension-relevant evaluations.
REFERENCES Becker, S. L. (1953). The ordinal position effect. Quarterly Journal of Speech,39, 217-219. Becker, S. L. (1962). The rating of speeches: Scale independence. Speech Monographs, 29, 38-44. Bradac, J. J. (1989). On coherence judgments and their multiple causes: A view from the message-variable paradigm. In J. A. Anderson (Ed.), Communication yearbook 12 (pp. 130-145). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Bradac, J. J. (1990). Language attitudes and impression formation. In H. Giles & W. P. Robinson (Eds.), Handbook of language and social psychology (pp. 387-412). Chichester, England: Wiley. Bradac, J. J., Davies, R. A., & Courtright, J. A. (1977). The role of prior message context in judgments of high- and low-diversity messages. Language and Speech, 20, 295-307. Bradac, J. J., Hopper, R, & Wiemann, J. M. (1989). Message effects: Retrospect and prospect. In J. J. Bradac (Ed.), Message effects in communication science (pp. 294-317). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Bradac, J. J., & Mulac, A. (1984). A molecular view of powerful and powerless speech styles: Attributional consequences of specific language features and communicator intentions. Communication Monographs, 51, 307319. Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T.A. Sebeok (Ed.), Style in language (pp. 253-276). New York: Wiley. Burgeon, J. K., Kelley, D. L., Newton, D. A., & Keeley-Dyreson, M. P. (1989). The nature of arousal and nonverbal indices. Human Communication Research, 16, 217-255.
SPEECH EVALUATION
55
Burgeon, M. (1990). Language and social influence. In H. Giles & W. P. Robinson (Eds.), Handbook of language and social psychology_(pp. 51-72). Chichester, England: Wiley. Cargile, A. C. (1997). Attitudes toward Chinese-accented speech: An investigation in two contexts. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16, 434-443. Cronkhite, G. (1986): On the focus, scope, and coherence of the study of human symbolic activity. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 72, 231 -246. Dillard, J. P., Wilson, S. R., Tusing, K. J., & Kinney, T. A. (1997). Politeness judgments in personal relationships. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16, 297-325. Duck, S., Rutt, D. J., Hurst, M. H., & Strejc, H. (1991). Some evident truths about conversations in everyday relationships: All communications are not created equal. Human Communication Research, 18, 228-267. Gibbons, P., Busch, J., & Bradac, J. J. (1991). Powerful versus powerless language: Consequences for persuasion, impression formation, and cognitive response. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 10, 115-133. Giles, H., & Coupland, N. (1991). Language: Contexts and consequences. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Giles, H., Fox, S., & Smith, E. (1993). Patronizing the elderly: Intergenerational evaluations. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 2, 129150. Giles, H., & Powesland, P. F. (1975). Speech style and social evaluation. London: Academic Press. Giles, H., & Ryan, E. B. (1982). Prolegomena for developing a social psychological theory of language attitudes. In E. B. Ryan & H. Giles (Eds.), Attitudes towards language variation: Social and applied contexts (pp. 208-223). London: Edward Arnold. Holtgraves, T., & Lasky, B. (1999). Linguistic power and persuasion. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 18, 196-205. Hopper, R. & de la Zerda, N. (1979). Employment interviewers' reactions to Mexican American speech. Communication Monographs, 46, 126-134. Kellermann, K., & Lim, T. (1989). Inference-generating knowledge structures in message processing. In J. J. Bradac (Ed.), Message effects in communication science (pp. 102-128). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Kellermann, K., & Sleight, C. (1989). Coherence: A meaningful adhesive for discourse. In J. A. Anderson (Ed.), Communication yearbook 12 (pp. 95-129). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
56
CHAPTER 2
Lambert, W. E., Anisfeld, M., & Yeni-Komshian, G. (1965). Evaluational reactions of Jewish and Arab adolescents to dialect and language variations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2, 84-90. Lambert, W. E., Hodgson, R., Gardner, R. C., & Fillenbaum, S. (1960). Evaluational reactions to spoken languages. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 60, 44-51. McCroskey, J. C., & Mehrley, R. S. (1969). The effects of disorganization and nonfluency on attitude change and source credibility. Speech Monographs, 36, 13-21. Mulac, A. (1975). Evaluation of the speech dialect attitudinal scale. Speech Monographs, 42, 182-189. Mulac, A. (1998). The gender-linked language effect: Do language differences really make a difference? In D. Canary & K. Dindia (Eds.), Sex differences and similarities in communication (pp. 127-153). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mulac, A., & Lundell, T. L. (1986). Linguistic contributors to the genderlinked language effect. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 5, 81 101. Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Osgood, C., May, W., & Miron, M. (1975). Cross cultural universals of affective meaning. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag. Street, R. L., Jr., & Brady, R. M. (1982). Speech rate acceptance ranges as a function of evaluative domain, listener speech rate, and communication context. Communication Monographs, 49, 290-308. Street, R. L., Jr., & Hopper, R. (1982). A model of speech style evaluation. In E. B. Ryan & H. Giles (Eds.), Attitudes towards language variation: Social and applied contexts (pp. 175-188). London: Edward Arnold. Zahn, C. J., & Hopper, R. (1985). Measuring language attitudes: The Speech Evaluation Instrument. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 4,
113-123.
3 Designing Questions and Setting Agendas in the News Interview John Heritage UCLA In news interviews, unlike speeches, lectures or other forms of monologic communication, public figures overwhelmingly give information and express opinions in response to journalists' questions. The news content that results is thus a joint construction, whether collaborative or conflictual, that emerges from the confluence of the questions journalists choose to put and the responses that those questions engender.1 For this reason, questioning is central to the practice of news interviewing, and skill in question design is at the heart of the interviewer's (IRs) craft. The limits of questioning play a significant part in defining the parameters of the permissible in mass media content, and innovations in question design often embody efforts to redefine these parameters. In designing questions, IRs ordinarily attempt to strike a balance between two competing journalistic norms. On the one hand, IRs are expected to be impartial, objective, unbiased, and disinterested in their questioning of public figures. They are expected to have respect for the facts and the perspectives that interviewees (IEs) communicate, and to work to bring these into the public domain. On the other hand, IRs also subscribe to a norm of adversarialness. They should actively challenge their sources, rather than being simply mouthpieces or ciphers for them. This second norm is one that pushes IRs not to let the interview be a kind of platform or soapbox from which public figures can get away with their own spin on events.
1 Schudson (1994) gives a nuanced account of the emergence of the news interview as a medium of journalistic practice, dayman and Heritage (2002a) describe its development in British and American broadcasting.
57
58
CHAPTER 3
In part, the management of the tension between these two norms is handled by questioning itself. Questioning is conventionally understood as an action that does not take up a substantive position—involving either agreement or disagreement—vis-a-vis the IE. For this reason, IRs work hard to package their actions as questions, and may invoke this packaging to defeat IE claims that they are pursuing some kind of personal or institutional agenda. In the following case, for example, ABC journalist Sam Donaldson defends himself against such a claim in just this way: (1) [U.S. ABC This Week: October 1989: Darman] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
IR: -> Isn't it a fact, Mr. Darman, that the taxpayers will pay more in interest than if they just paid it out of general revenues? IE: No, not necessarily. That's a technical argument— IR: -> It's not a-- may I, sir? It's not a technical -> argument. Isn't it a fact? IE: No, it's definitely not a fact. Because first of all, twenty billion of the fifty billion is being handled in just the way you want -- through treasury financing. The remaining— IR: -> I'm just asking you a question. I'm not expressing -> my personal views. IE: I understand.
This example is from an interview about alternative ways of financing losses from collapsed savings and loans companies, and the IE—Richard Darman—is a treasury official in the Bush administration. Faced with insistent questioning from Donaldson (Lines 1-3, 5-6), he responds that "twenty billion of the fifty billion is being handled in just the way you want—through treasury financing." (Lines 8-10), thus implying that Donaldson is advocating a specific policy preference. It is just this departure from journalistic norms that Donaldson is quick to rebut at Lines 11-12 with "I'm just asking you a question. I'm not expressing my personal views." Darman responds with an acceptance of this account (Line 13). As this example illustrates, questioning is a vehicle by which broadcast journalists can sustain a "neutralistic" stance vis a vis interviewees, and defend themselves against charges that they have overstepped their role as elicitors of information (dayman, 1988; Heritage & Greatbatch, 1991).2 However, as the term neutralistic suggests, news interview questioning is not, and cannot be, strictly neutral. Because questions unavoidably encode 2
The term "neutralistic" is used in parallel with Robinson and Sheehan's (1983:34) distinction between 'objective' and 'objectivistic' news reporting. In their usage, 'objectivistic' describes a manner or style of reporting, while the term 'objective' is treated in the conventional sense of a judgement about balance, truthfulness and the absence of bias in the news.
DESIGNING QUESTIONS
59
attitudes and points of view (Harris, 1986), IRs must still design their questions to strike a balance between the journalistic norms of impartiality and adversarialness. The particular balance that is achieved between these two norms can be a distinctive, and even defining, characteristic of particular interviewing styles. In turn, distinctive styles of question design are an important element of the public personae of IRs ranging from Walter Cronkite to Ted Koppel to Larry King in the United States, or Sir Robin Day to Jeremy Paxman to Jimmy Young in Britain. The significance of question design as a "signature" feature extends from IRs as individuals to the news programs of which they are a part (e.g., PBS's "Newshour" vs. ABC's "Nightline"), and ultimately to whole periods that are characterized by what may be termed dominant styles of interviewing. This chapter discusses question design in the news interview, and addresses some of the resources through which IRs manage the balance between impartiality and adversarialness in this context.
A HISTORICAL CASE Consider the following 1951 interview of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who has called a general election and just returned to London to begin his election campaign. The interview is conducted at the London rail station where Mr. Attlee has just arrived. The following transcript represents the complete interview: (2) [UK BBC Interview with Clement Attlee (British Prime Minister 1945-1951)] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
IR: IE: IR: IE: IE:
IR: IR:
Good mor:ning Mister A:ttlee,=We hope (.) you've had a good journey, (0.2) Ye::s excellent. h (0.2) Can you:- (.) now you're ba:ck hhh having cut short your: lecture tour::. (.) tell us [something [°Mm.° of how you- (0.2) vie::w the election prospects? (0.2) Oh we shall go in t'give them a good fi.:ght, (0.2) very good, (0.4) very good cha:nce of >winning,=We shall go in confidently,=We always do,< (0.7) U:::h And- (.) on wha:t will Labour take its sta:nd. (0.4) We:11 that we sh'll be announcing shortly. (0.2)
60 19 IR:
CHAPTER 3 What are your immediate pla:ns: Mister Attlee [:.
20 IE: 21 22 23 24 25 IE: 26 IR: 27 28
29 IE: 30
31 IR:
[My immediate plans are
to a committee t'deci:de on just that thing, .hhh (.) >soon's I can get away from here.< (0.2) °°hheh .hh°° Uhm, hh (.) Anything else you would> ca:re t'sa::y about (.) th' coming election. (.)
NO:, (0.6)
Uhm,
( 0 . 4 ) Uhm, ( ( e n d of interview segment))
The IR's questioning in this interview has a number of noticeable features: • First, his questions are all very "open." Questions like "Can you . . . tell us something of how you view the election prospects" (Lines 6-9) and "On what will Labour take its stand" (Line 15) permit the IE enormous latitude in developing responses. • Second, the questions are not the prefaced, multi-sentence questions that are common today, where prefatory statements are used to establish context and background for what follows. Rather Attlee is presented with simple inquiries that treat the immediate context of the interview—the impending election—as the only thing necessary to understand the questions that follow. • Third, the IR does not materially shift topic. The context of the interview is the Prime Minister's arrival in London to strategize for national elections, and the IR does not diverge from that. There are no shifts to discuss Britain's relations with foreign powers, or disagreements within the Labour Party. The IR's questions remain tied to the immediate context of the interview—the election and Mr. Attlee's view of it. • Fourth, even though Attlee gives noncommittal, if not downright evasive, replies to his questions, the IR makes no attempt to pursue more specific responses. Rather he simply accepts the response that he is given and moves on. • Fifth, the design of the questions is fundamentally deferential to the power and status of the Prime Minister. This is expressed through conventional indirectness (Brown & Levinson, 1987; dayman & Heritage, 2002b). Questions like "Can you . . . tell us something of how you view the election prospects" (Lines 6-9) and "Anything else you would care to say about the coming election" (Lines 26-27) evidently treat Attlee's responses as optional
DESIGNING QUESTIONS
61
rather than obligatory. They indicate that Attlee will not be pressed by this IR if he does not "care" to respond. • Finally, the deferential style embodied in the IR's questions is reciprocated in Attlee's brusquely, noncommittal responses. Attlee is not merely unafraid to decline the questions, he clearly feels under no obligation to respond to them. Indeed, he is quite happy to imply (at Lines 22-23) that the interview itself is preventing him from getting on with more important election matters. No modern politician entering an election campaign today would dream of addressing an IR (or the voting public) in this way. Interviews like this one are a valuable historical benchmark. They tell us about the extent to which present day broadcast interviews differ from those of the past. And they are evidence of quite different relationships between broadcasters and politicians than exist today. The modern political interview differs from this one in every major respect. This chapter examines some of the ways in which IEs struggle with IRs over the terrain that is constructed through news interview questioning. We begin with an exploration of some of the basic features and objectives of question design in the news interview.
ANALYZING QUESTION DESIGN: SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS News interview questions are often very subtle and complex constructions. They express particular aspects of the public roles of IR and IE, and they can index elements of the personal identities of both (Roth, 1998a). They can be primarily geared to the concerns and preoccupations of either the questioner, the answerer, or the overhearing audience members, or all three of these to varying degrees. They can embody complex grammatical and rhetorical constructions to engage in the widest range of tasks designed to support or undermine the positions of public figures on issues of the moment. It is obvious, therefore, that they can be examined from many different angles. We can begin by observing that, at the minimum, IRs' questions have the following features: First, they establish particular agendas for IE responses. Second, they tend to embody presuppositions and/or assert propositions about various aspects of the lE's actions, interests, opinions, and the social and political context of these. Third, they often incorporate "preferences," that is, they are
3 Attlee could afford to adopt this stance because the audience for this broadcast was miniscule: less than one per cent of the British public had access to a television set in 1951.
62
CHAPTER 3
designed so as to invite or favor one type of answer over another. Similarly, lEs can formulate their responses in ways that accept or resist (or reject altogether) any or all of these. Thus IEs' responses engage (or decline to engage) the agenda set by IRs' questions, confirm (or disconfirm) its presuppositions, and align (or disalign) with its preferences. These possibilities are displayed in Table 1:
Table 1 : Dimensions of Questioning and Answering IR Questions:
IE Responses:
Set Agendas: (i) Topical agendas (ii) Action agendas
Engage/Decline to engage: (i) Topical agendas (ii) Action agendas
Embody presuppositions
Confirm/Disconfirm presuppositions
Incorporate preferences
Align/Disalign with preferences
These three dimensions are fundamental and inexorably relevant characteristics of question design and production.4 Because it is not possible to avoid them, IRs' questions can only select between different possibilities for agenda setting, presuppositional content, and preference design. These selections are crucial for the work that questions do, the nature of the interview that is built through them, and the IR and news show identity that is sustained by these means.
SIMPLE AND PREFACED QUESTION DESIGNS These three dimensions of question design are made more complex in prefaced questions. These are questions that are preceded by one or more statements (dayman, 1988; Heritage & Greatbatch, 1991; Heritage & Roth, 1995). These prefaces were quite absent in Example 2, but they are very much a part of the modern news interview. Their manifest function is often to contextualize and provide relevance for the questions that follow, sometimes for the IE and often for the news audience. Example 3 is a clear case of this:
See Boyd and Heritage (in press) for a parallel discussion of these issues in relation to questioning in medical interviews.
DESIGNING QUESTIONS (3) 1 2 3
63
[ U . S . ABC Nightline: 22nd July 1985: South Africa] IR: P-> .hh Two- two members of your organization (.) Supposedly arrested today: Q-> d'you feel in some danger when you go back
Here the prefatory statement (Lines 1-2) establishes a context that gives meaning and point to the subsequent question, which otherwise might seem to come out of the blue, and indeed be incomprehensible for many members of the news audience. A prime difference between simple and prefaced questions concerns the degree to which they embody initiative in establishing a context for the question to follow (dayman & Heritage, 2002b). Most simple questions draw on resources from the prior answer to provide for their relevance and intelligibility. The following is a case in point. Here a British Labour politician with overall responsibility for his party's defense policy explains why he walked out of the defense debate at his party's annual convention. In his first turn, he says that he was angry because the person chairing the debate did not "call" him to speak and allow him to reply to attacks on him. The IR then asks him whether the chair's action was "intentional" (Line 8): (4) [UK BBC TV: Nationwide: 30 September 1981: Labour Party Conference] 1 IE: Well I walked out because I was ang:ry at not being 2 called by the chairman after two personal attacks 3 .hhh had been launched on me from the rostrum.=I 4 don't complain about those attacks. .hhh But I 5 think that any fair chairman would have given me an 6 opportunity of replying to them. 7 (0.4) 8 IR: -> Was it intentional not to call you? 9 IE: .hhh Well i- (.) I don't think it was mali::gn,=but 10 It was intentional in the sense that he he referred 11 at the e:nd to the fact that I had put in a note 12 asking to be calle:d, .hh and couldn't be called.= 13 =So it obviously was intentional.=It wasn't .hh an 14 o:versight on his part.
This simple follow up question raises something that is implicit in the IE's previous answer, especially the IE's reference to what a "fair chairman" would have done (Lines 5-6), and it is explicit in introducing the issue of the chair's "intentions" as a relevant matter to be addressed by the IE in his next turn at talk. It does not require prefatory remarks because it transparently draws on, and projects an extension to, the IE's immediately previous talk. The IE responds by devoting his next turn to asserting the intentional nature of the chair's action, beginning with a pre-emptive denial that its intent was "malign." However, journalists may often find themselves in circumstances where a simple follow-up question that explores some dimension of a prior answer is
64
CHAPTER 3
quite undesirable. Under these circumstances, prefaces are an essential resource for resetting the context for the question to come. In the following case, for example, a journalist uses a prefaced question design to put a topical issue raised by the IE (about "blacks against blacks" violence in South Africa) on hold. This needs prefatory statements: (5) [u.s . ABC Nightline: 22 July 1985: South Africa] .hhhh The: urgent an' pressing: need hh the: ( ) IE: 2 tch .hhh uh immediate one: is to stop 3 violence. ( ) violence perpetrated by blacks upon 4 blacks. ( ) This is what we have to end (.) to get 5 to: uh situation .hhh where we can start ( ) 6 talking. Where we can start 'n uh peaceful manner 7 ( ) to haff (.) political dialogue, 8 IR: 1- tch .hhh Arright lemme get tuh that blacks against 1- blacks question in uh minute but first lemme ask 9 2- you it seems to me nobody dispu:tes .hhh thet thuh 10 2- power in south africa (0.2) is with thuh white 11 2- goverment. .hh An it seems to me that within thuh 12 2-> rule of law: that could be do:ne. 13 14 Why duh laws haftuh be suspended in order to stop 15 thuh violence. 16 IE: .hhhh Uhm (.) seems to me: uh- eh and always has 17 been: a balance between freedom ( ) an disorder.... 1
18 19 20
.... [35 lines of talk omitted]
21 IR: 3-> =Arright ]lemme talk about this question then fer a 22 3-> moment of violence (.) of blacks against blacks.(.) 23 We live here in thuh United States
In addition to using prefatory statements (l->) to place the IE's immediately preceding statements on hold, the IR deploys additional statements (2->) to set up a question about the necessity of suspending the rule of law in South Africa, and then further statements (3->) to return to the "blacks against blacks" issue raised earlier by the IE. Journalists may also use prefatory statements, not merely to give background for a question (as in Example 3), but to provide a motivational context for the IE's answer. In the following case, discussed in Roth (1998a), dealing with proposals to arm the British police, the personal experience of the IE—a policeman who was shot by a criminal while unarmed—is invoked to convey to the audience that the question has a special relevance for him. (6) [UK BBC TV Newsnight: 21 Oct 1993] 1 2 3 4 5 6
IR:2
IE:
...You as I say have been shot yourself in thuhin thuh line of duty, ahm Let's just look at thuh question of arming thuh police first of all. Is it your view that the police should now be armed? .hhh But definitely. .hhh Ahm we w- (.) have no
DESIGNING QUESTIONS 7 8
65
rights as a society to expect young men to enter situations....
Here the question preface provides that the IE's experience of being shot is the presumptive foundation of his perspective in answering it, and may privilege that experience as having a special weight and significance for the audience's understanding and evaluation of his response to the question. In sum, prefaced question give IRs room to maneuver. Whereas simple questions leave the IE's last response as the context for the next question, prefaced questions allow IRs to escape from this constraint and construct a context of their own choosing for the question they are about to put into play. The shift toward the use of complex question designs has been relatively marked in both the United States and the United Kingdom from the 1950s to the present, and it embodies a real growth in the scope, power, and autonomy of IR questioning. Additionally, as we see later, the manifest function of prefaced questions—providing context for the subsequent question to the news audience —provides justification and "cover" for very much more hostile and aggressive questioning strategies than were dreamed of in the early days of news interviewing.
DIMENSIONS OF QUESTIONING Questions Set Agendas The claim that IR questions set agendas for IEs involves three features of their design that constrain IEs. First, questions set agendas by identifying a specific topical domain as the appropriate or relevant domain of response. As a classical form of adjacency pair, they achieve this by making non-responses (e.g., silence) or failures to address the question's topical agenda noticeable and accountable (Schegloff, 1972). Under such circumstances, the questioner has the right to repeat the question or to solicit an answer in other ways (Heritage, 1984: 245-51). Moreover, failure to respond appropriately attracts special inferences: in particular, that the answerer is being evasive, or has something to hide. This latter sanction is particularly important when there may be millions of people watching on TV. These constraints are quite compelling for IEs. Silence in the face of news interview questioning is incredibly rare! When asked a question, IEs always try to respond in some way, and most often attempt to look as if they are answering the question (dayman, 1993, 2001).
66
CHAPTER 3
Notwithstanding the fact that the term topic is loose and difficult to define (Jefferson, 1984; Sacks, 1964-1972/1992),5 it is plain that IEs are oriented to the fact that there are real boundaries to the topical agendas set by questions. In Example 7, a British Labour politician is asked about the significance of a right-wing leadership success for the future of his party. He begins by responding to the question as put, and then adds a comment (Lines 1418) about the future actions of the losing left-wing politician. (7) [UK BBC TV: Panorama: 28 January 1981] 1 IR: Roy Hattersley .hhh _is it right to interpret this 2 as a move back .hh to the right.=This er victory by 3 such a narrow marg[in of Denis Healey.] 4 IE: [.hhhh N o ] I don't 5 believe it i:s. in some ways I wish I could say 6 that. .hhhh But I don't believe it i:s. I believe 7 it's a mo:ve back .hhh to the broad based 8 tolerant representative Labour Part(h)y, .hhh the 9 Labour Party in which Neil Kinnock and I: who 10 disagree on a number of policy issue:s .hh can 11 argue about them .hh without accusing each other of 12 treachery:, .hhh without suggesting that one or 13 the other of us is playing into the Tories' ha:nds. 14 -> .hhh And let me say something about the next year 15 because that was your original question, .hhh I 16 think Tony Benn would be personally extremely 17 foo:lish to sta:nd for the deputy leadership 18 again? ...
The IE explicitly marks his additional comment as distinct and as departure from the question's agenda, and he goes out of his way to justify this departure by reference to an earlier question asked by the IR (cf. dayman, 2001). Here, the IE is clearly oriented to the topical domain set by the IR's question. Second, questions not only identify the topical domain to be dealt with in a response, they also identify actions that the IE should perform in relation to the topical domain. In Example 8 for instance, British Prime Minister Edward Heath is asked by David Frost if he likes his main political rival of this period, Harold Wilson. Twice in this sequence, Heath responds by addressing the topic of the question—Wilson—but he does not respond in terms of the action agenda that the question called for—a yes/no response on whether he "likes" Wilson (cf. Raymond 2000). Instead he avoids the issue by talking in terms of "dealing with" him and, more evasively still, "working with other people who are in politics":
5
See in particular Sacks' lectures of March 9, 1967, and April 17, 1968. See also Spring 1970, Lecture 5; Winter 1971, February 19, and Spring 1971, April 9.
DESIGNING QUESTIONS (8) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
67
[UK BBC TV Omnibus: Frost-Heath Interview] IR: IE:
IR: IE:
IR: IE:
Do you quite li:ke him? (.) .hhh .h .h We:11 I th- I think in politics you see: i- it's not a ques:tion of going about (.) li:king people or not, hh It's a question of dealing with people, °°h .h°° a:n::d u::h (.) I've always been able to deal perfectly well with Mister Wilson,=as indeed: uh- he has with me, (0.4) <But do you like> him? (.) .hhhh Well agai:n it's not a question of uh (.) li:kes or disli:kes. I::t's a question of wor:king together:: with other people who are in politics, (0.6) But do y'like him. (0.4) .hhh (.) That'll have to remain t'be see:n won't it.
Heath's avoidance of the question's action agenda licenses Frost to renew it, and he does so in a most pointed way at Line 10, and again at Line 16. Frost's "<But do you like> him?" establishes a contrast (with the "but") between Heath's response and what he wants to know, and the repetition of his original question sets aside that response and clearly indicates (both to Heath and, more important, to the television audience) that Heath's response was inadequate, and that he has avoided the question. Third, the agenda-setting function of questions involves decisions about how narrowly or broadly defined the IE's response should be. In Example 8, the agenda was set pretty narrowly by means of a yes/no question that made Heath accountable to respond in these terms (Raymond, 2000). Yes/no questions are recurrent sites of conflict between IRs and IEs, as in Example 9, in which a Serbian commander who is suspected of war crimes in the Bosnian conflict is pressed about whether he will deal with United Nations personnel who are responsible for investigating war crimes: (9) [UK BBC TV Newsnight: 11/02/93(IR Jeremy Paxman; IE Dragoslav Bokan)] 1 IR: 2 3 4 DB: 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
...Mister Bokan, are you prepared to make yourself available to U N investigators? (.) .hhhh Ah: first of all: I: just want to say that it's you know, very strange you know, to hear all those accuses.=And ah: .hhh ah: it's v(h)ery strange to be in thuh (passive) role:: o:f hearing, an:d ah .hh ah not to have an opportunity you know to:: say anything: uh .hhh ah about yourself or: you know your: ah go:als. In war. .hh An:d [ah:
68 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
CHAPTER 3 IR: DB:
IR: DB: IR: DB:
-> [I'm not interested in your goals Mister Bokan.= -> =Thuh question wa:s: are you prepared to make -> yourself avai:lable to U N investigators. .hhh You know uh- you know: the answer, you know: uh maybe better than ah m:yself. .hhh Because: o::f >you know from the beginning of war,< .hhh I: have just uh one goal an:d that's t'defend you know my people: from thuh (lynch.)= -> =Is that a yes or a n:o? (0.5) Uh: Is it a cour:t. (.) Or: a: interview. -> So- you are: prepared to make yourself available -> to U N investigators or no[:t. [Of Course.
Here, the IE repeatedly avoids the question (Lines 4-11, 15-19, 22). As the IR's series of pursuits (arrowed) illustrates, the significance of yes/no and alternative questions is not that IEs are necessarily forced to say 'yes' or 'no' right away. Rather it is that these questions lay down a marker, making a yes/no response accountably avoided if it is not forthcoming. This in turn establishes the IR's right to renew the question,6 and IRs can and do avail themselves of this right (dayman, 1993). In a notable case, the interviewer in Example 9, Jeremy Paxman, asked a question 14 times of a British cabinet minister on network televison!7 Thus IEs know that visible evasions license an IR to press them subsequently to answer yes or no, and that this pressure may be heard as reasonable by the TV audience if they seemed evasive in the first place. This kind of IR pressure may be heard as particularly relevant and appropriate when there is the suspicion of wrongdoing, and/or where there is an issue about the public accountability of the IE's actions. In contrast, wh- questions—especially what, why and how questions— can set the parameters of response more broadly.8 For instance, Example 10 sets up a very open range of responses from General John Vessey about his trip to Hanoi to negotiate over information about U.S. MIAs from the Vietnam War. (10) [US PBS: Newshour: 10/23/92] 1 2 3
IR:
.hhh With us no:w for a newsmaker interview: is thuh delegation chairman former chairman of the joint chiefs of sta:ff retired army general John Vessey.
6 In this particular instance, the IR further narrowed the agenda of the question at Lines 20-21 by renewing his question as an explicitly disjunctive yes/no question. In this way,, he sharpened the degree of constraint on the IE, and further underscored the IE's previous evasiveness as requiring this narrowing. 7 This interview took place on May 13, 1997. Paxman subsequently won an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for the interview. 8 Not all wh- questions are equally open. In general, what, why, and how questions can enable more exposition than who, when, and where questions, and are, in this sense at least, more open.
DESIGNING QUESTIONS 4 5 IE: 6 IR: 7 8 IE: 9 10 11 12 13
69
General, welcome. Thank you. -> .hhhh Sir h:ow would you descri:be thuh significance -> of this_: (.) agreement. .hhhhh Thuh Vietnamese:: uh: (0.2) foreign minister and thuh Vietnamese prime minister (0.3) described it to me: .hhh as a turning point. (0.3) i:n (0.4) reh-resol:ving thuh fates of our missing. (0.5) And I think that's what it is. It- .hh in thuh las:t uh fi:ve years::....
Here, the agenda for General Vessey's response is very under-specified. Almost any on-topic response would have likely counted as a valid and appropriate answer to the question. In general, yes/no questions are potentially more constraining to an IE, whereas wh- questions can normally be successfully answered in a wider range of ways and using a wider range of resources.
Tightening Question Agendas: Using Prefaces As we have already suggested, the manifest function of question prefaces normally involves giving background information to the audience, or managing topic shifts of various kinds. However, question prefaces can also be used to make the agenda of a question more complex, constraining, or problematic. In the following case, a British conservative politician, Michael Heseltine, is asked about his views on closer ties with Europe, an issue that had become a source of conflict within his party: (11) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
IR:
IE:
[UK BBC TV: Newsnight: 1989] .hh What Missus Thatcher has been saying: is that there is a danger (.) .h of a socialist superstate being imposed (0.5) from Brussels (0.2) and what Mister Heath and others are saying is (0.2) that is (.) is an illusory fear.= =Where do you: line up on that is:sue. Well: (eh) technically, becaus:e (.) eh these decisions are y:et to be ta:ken, it can go either wa:y, ...(continues)
Here, Heseltine is not simply asked about his opinion on the creation of a "socialist superstate." Instead, by means of the question preface, the audience is instructed about the existence of two conflicting positions on this issue that are held by two of the most senior members of the Conservative party. Within this framework, the question was made more pointed and newsworthy by its invitation to Heseltine to say where he 'lines up' in that conflict. Here the question preface describes the parameters of the dispute and its primary movers, making the nature of his political dilemma very clear to a viewing audience that
70
CHAPTER 3
may have known little about the then-emerging disputes within the Conservative party on this issue. Prefatory statements may also be used to tighten the agenda being set for an IE by blocking certain types of answer. The following segment comes from an interview with Margaret Thatcher —also on closer ties with Europe: (12) [UK BBC TV: Newsnight: 1989] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
IR:
IE:
Now turning to the exchange rate mechanism you: have consistently said or the government has said .hh that you will joi:n when the ti:me is right but people are saying: .hh that that means never. Could you defi:ne the ki:nd of conditions when you think we would go in. Uh no I would not say it means never. For the policy ...
The IR's question (Lines 5-6) is aimed at pinning down Thatcher to a specification of circumstances in which she would agree to join the exchange rate mechanism. He establishes the agenda for this question with a preface that contrasts vaguely worded statements by Thatcher concerning entry "when the time is right" with an interpretation of that statement, attributed to unidentified "people" (dayman 1992), as "never" (Lines 1-4). The preface provides a platform from which the question itself can be launched, while blocking a response that, like the quoted "when the time is right," would be vague and anodyne. Still more complex is the following question preface to Senate majority leader, Robert Dole. Here three main prefatory statements, all attributed to Dole, are used to set problems for Dole's stated objectives as a budget cutter: (13) 1 2 3 4
IR:
5
IE
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
IR IE IR
() IE
[ U . S . NBC Meet the Press: 8 Dec 1985] You can't have it both ways e_ither.=>On this program< you have said that you don't think, .hhh that you'll eliminate thirty to f i f t y programs, [ a n ' ] Senator Packwood says you have t o , = [( )]
=.hh Number two you say you hope you will not have uh tax increase, [.hhhh And] number[But I do.] =and number three you say you h:ope you can have a:1[m o s t ] three percent on: .hhh on: on defe:nse, [( )] .hh And yet you hafta cut fifty billion next year. Now which o'those three's gunna give Senator,
In this case, the interviewer uses a series of prefatory statements to create a complex dilemma for Dole. The statements describe three aspects of Dole's position—his admitted inability to eliminate programs (Lines 2-4/6), his desire to avoid a tax increase (Lines 6-7), and his hope to increase the defense budget
DESIGNING QUESTIONS
71
(Lines 9-10). All three are incompatible with Dole's objective of cutting $50 billion from the federal budget. These three statements are prepared for with a fourth at Line 1 ("You can't have it both ways either.") that, among other things, projects (to Dole and the news audience) that the subsequent statements will identify contradictions that are troublesome to his position. At the end of this lengthy preface, Dole is invited to back down from one of his stated objectives (Line 12). This kind of agenda could not be constructed without the prefatory materials.
Questions Embody Presuppositions In addition to setting agendas, questions often assert propositions and they embody presuppositions with varying degrees of explicitness. This is so for both simple and prefaced questions. Most prefaced questions incorporate explicit contextualizing propositions. Once the prefatory proposition is in place, the subsequent question can build from it and can embody additional embedded presuppositions (Harris, 1986). Both of these features can be clearly seen in the next case, which concerns an election in progress in which Labour politician Tony Benn was ultimately the loser. Here the prefatory statement guardedly asserts (with the evidential verb seems, Chafe, 1986) two propositions: the likely result of the election is (a) close, and (b) against Tony Benn. (14) 1. IR: 2 3 4
[UK BBC TV: DLP: Hanna-Lansman] The result seems t' be very close but (.) on th' who:le it ( 0 . 2 ) doesn't look very good f o r : : (.) Tony Benn. Who do you bla:me for this?
The subsequent question "Who do you bla:me for this?" builds from this platform to project "blame" and its allocation as the primary agenda for the IE's response. Quite clearly, it embodies the presupposition that a nameable set of persons can be held responsible for the impending election defeat, and that these persons can and should be relevantly blamed by the IE for this.9 Presuppositions vary in the extent to which they are embedded within a question. To assess the degree of this embeddedness, we can consider whether
9
The IE, Jon Lansman, was a supporter of Tony Benn's. Thus the perjorative term "blame" here also indexes his affiliation with Benn as the losing party in the election. As a matter of historical record, the question likely invites the IE to name Neil Kinnock, at that time a left-inclined Labour party figure whose vote againt Benn (together with those of a few supporters) may have tipped the balance. After these events, Kinnock rapidly moved to the center of the Labour Party, later becoming its leader.
72
CHAPTER 3
the respondent can address a question's presuppositions, while still responding to its agenda. In Example 14, the respondent could have directly answered the question by responding that no one was to blame. In this way, he would have responded to the question's overt agenda, while also denying its basic presupposition. Thus the presupposition that persons are responsible and blameable for Benn's defeat is relatively close to the "surface" of the question's design. This contrasts with other more embedded cases in which, if respondents wish to contest a question's presuppositions, they must depart from directly "answering" the question as put. In Example 15, for instance, this more embedded form of presupposition is present. This interview took place during a period in which health care reform was on the U.S. congressional legislative agenda. Here an advertising professional who ran a TV advertising campaign against the Clinton proposals is questioned about the timing of her campaign. Embedded in the question shown is the presupposition that this campaign has been initiated "early" relative to the timing of the legislative program for health care reform: (15) [US PBS Newshour 21 October 1993; Health Care: the IR, addressed by name at Line 6, is Margaret Warner] 1 2 3 4 5 6
IR:
IE:
=Mizz Jenckes, let me start with you. Ah: y:ou've started all (of) this I think, thuh health industry association.>Health insurance association, .hhh Why:: so early in this debate when there's not gonna be:: a vote on it ih- f'r maybe a year? Margaret (.) health care reform is well under way...
In this case, the presupposition is buried a little deeper than in Example 14: The IE begins her response with an initial move to deny the question's presupposition that the campaign was started "early." Subsequently, she develops this response into an answer that more explicitly justifies the timing of the campaign (data not shown). A similar form of embedding is found in the following two cases—also involving wh- questions: (16) [US ABC Nightline: 15th October 1992 (concerning Bush's attacks on Clinton's character during the 1992 U.S. election campaign)] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
IR: IE:
But, Mister Cicconi, >what do you what d'you make of thuh fa::ct that (.) the audience, thuh voters, don't seem to like that? .hhh Well I- ih: I didn't get that from the audience at all, Chris. I thought- I thought thuh point that thuh president ma::de about .hhh who can you trust in a crisis, who....
DESIGNING QUESTIONS
(17) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
IR:
IE: IR: IE:
73
[US PBS Newshour: 21 October 1993] ( S i m p l i f i e d ) ] (Let me- Let me ( j u s t ) ask Mandy Grunwald one other question. =How do you explain: that (.) public support for thuh President's plan has dropped off rather sharply since he announced it a month ago?= =We haven't seen those sharp drops, at all. In fact w e ' v [ e seen [So your internal p[oiling doesn't [Our- our internal polling has seen sustain:ed ah: support for thuh plan,
In each case, a presupposition embedded in the question's design and treated as "given information" is contested by the IE who, as a result, did not so much "answer" the question as "respond" to it. In Example 17, it is noticeable that the IR pursues the discrepancy between her assumed information and that of the IE by asking about the IE's alternative source of information ("internal polling"). Deeply embedded presuppositions can be put to damaging effect in what have been usefully termed quandary questions (Nevin, 1994). These are questions of the "when did you stop beating your wife" variety in which highly hostile presuppositions are so deeply embedded in the question's design, that any response that directly answers the question will also confirm the question's presupposition(s)—with damaging consequences for the IE. Wh- questions are generally the most favorable environment for deeply embedded "quandary" type presuppositions. The following is a case in point: (18) 1 2 3 4 5 6
IR: IE:
[UK BBC Radio: World at One: 13 March 1979] .hhh er W h a t ' s the difference between Your marxism And Mister McGarhey's communism. er The difference is that it's the press that constantly call me a ma:rxist when I do not, (.) and never have (.) er er given that description of myself. ...
Any response by the IE, left-wing miners' leader Arthur Scargill, that addresses "the difference" between his views and those of McGahey would confirm the embedded presupposition of the question that he is a marxist. Here, although Scargill starts his response within the frame of the question ("The difference is"), he subsequently moves to undercut that presupposition. However he can do so only by failing to respond to the question as put. Yes/no or polar alternative questions, although they offer specific propositions for direct response, still normally contain embedded presuppositions. For instance, Example 19 presupposes that Clinton's character is problematic—something that the IE, Clinton supporter James Carville, explicitly contests in his response:
74
CHAPTER 3
(19) [US ABC Nightline: 15 October 1992) U . S . Presidential campaign)] 1 2 3 4 5
( ( O n the 1992
IR: -> =.hhh Mister Carville: should Governor Clinton's -> character now be o f f : limits somehow? IE: Well I don't know anything about his character being off limits thuh man has magnificent character...
And in the following case, the two alternatives (arrowed "a" and "b") that are presented for the IE to endorse are presented as exhaustive of his motives, and presuppose that there can be no others. The question concerns Texaco's agreement to settle out of court on charges that the company systematically discriminated against its African-American employees. (20) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
[US NBC Nightly News: 11/15/96:1]
IR:
.h Mister Bijur w h a t ' s pro:- what prompted this settlement? .hh a-> Thuh fact that you concluded your company was a-> in fact discrimina: tings b-> or thuh prospects of: (.) more economic losses. IE: To:m it was that we wanted to be f:air: to ah all of the employees involved, w e ' r e a: wonderful: gr:oup of people and family in this company, en we wanta be equitable with everybody.
Here, as Roth (1998b) has noted, the or construction presupposes the correctness of one or other of the candidate answers, simply leaving it the IE to confirm whichever explanation is appropriate. This is something that the IE, a Texaco corporate executive, understandably resists. It is notable in this example that the IE begins his response at Line 6 by addressing the IR by name ("To:m"), "summoning" him into recipiency (cf. Schegloff 1968). By this means, he projects that his subsequent action will be a "volunteered" first action, reducing its status as a "second" action that should properly fall within the terms of the prior question (see also Example 15).10 In sum, all news interview questions embody presuppositions of some kind. For the most part, these presuppositions are clearly shared between IR and IE and, quite commonly, they have been established in earlier interview talk. Because of this, the presuppositional basis of many IR questions can easily be overlooked and taken for granted. The nature of IR presuppositions becomes most visible when, as in most of the previous cases, they are rejected by IEs. In
10
See dayman (1998) for a general account of the use of address terms in news interviews and Heritage (2002) for other practices for reducing the responsiveness of second-position actions.
DESIGNING QUESTIONS
75
these incidents—and especially in quandary questions—the "difficulty" or "hostility" of the question's presuppositional content emerges quite clearly.11 The hostility embodied in IR questioning can be further shaped by aspects of question design that favor one type of response over another, and it is this aspect of question design to which we now turn.
Questions "Prefer" Particular Responses Though many news interview questions are not designed to favor particular answers, some evidently are. This is important because the more strongly the IR designs a question to favor one response over another, the more nearly their neutralistic posture may be compromised. A number of practices of question design—largely associated with yes/no questions—can achieve this outcome. What these practices have in common is some procedure for designing questions so as to invite—or, in conversation analytic terms, "prefer" (Heritage 1988; Pomerantz, 1984; Sacks, 1973/1987; Schegloff, 1988)—particular responses. This practice treats alternative IE responses as nonequivalent, and establishes a higher threshold of accountability if the IE chooses to respond with the dispreferred option. When preference organization is mobilized against the likely position of IEs, the latter may find themselves responding in a more defensive or self-justifying way than might otherwise be the case. Questions can be shaped to prefer particular responses through the design of the question itself, or through prefatory statements, or by a combination of the two. Conveying preferences through the design of interrogatives. Various aspects of questions can be designed to favor or facilitate particular IE responses. Some of these involve features of interrogative syntax itself. Although it might be thought that interrogatives are "safe" and "neutral" because they do not express positions, this not always the case. For example, questions that are framed using negative interrogative syntax—such as Won't you . . ., Isn't this . . ., and so on—are routinely treated as embodying very strong preferences about answers. Indeed IEs recurrently respond to such questions as opinion statements to be agreed or disagreed with (Heritage, in press). The following is a case in point. Here the IE is the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa: (21) [US PBS Newshour: 22 July 1985] 1 2 3 4
IR: -> But isn't this (.) d- declaration of thuh state of emergency:: (.) an admission: that the eh=South African gover'ment's policies have not worked, an' in fact that the um- United States (0.2)
11 See also Maynard (1985) for a discussion of how presuppositions become progressively disembedded in argument sequences involving children.
76 5 6 7 8 9
CHAPTER 3 administration's policy of constructive engagement (.) has not worked. IE: -> I do not agree with you .hhhh that the approach we have taken (.) toward South Africa is- a- is an incorrect approach...
The IR's negative formulation "Isn't this . . . " is clearly treated by the IE as asserting an opinion when he replies "I do not agree with you..." This is the only type of interrogative to which IEs recurrently respond in this way. Given that negative interrogatives are often understood as opinion statements, a return to our first example suggests an interesting kind of disingenuousness on Sam Donaldson's part: (1) [US ABC This Week: October 1989: Darman] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
IR: -> Isn't it a fact, Mr. Darman, that the taxpayers will pay more in interest than if they just paid it out of general revenues? IE: No, not necessarily. That's a technical argument-IR -> It's not a-- may I, sir? It's not a technical -> argument. Isn't it a fact? IE: No, it's definitely not a fact. Because first of all, twenty billion of the fifty billion is being handled in just the way you want -- through treasury financing. The remaining-IR: -> I'm just asking you a question. I'm not expressing -> my personal views. IE: I understand.
Here, it can be noticed that not only is Donaldon's first question a negative interrogative of the type that is frequently treated as an opinion statement, but also that at Lines 5-6, Donaldson directly disagrees with the IE (with "It's not a technical argument."), and then effectively reasserts that opinion a second time with a renewal of his earlier negatively formulated question. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the IE treats him as having "taken a position" on the issue (Lines 7-10). And it is this that makes Donaldson's subsequent defense (that he was "just asking you a question") distinctly disingenuous! Other aspects of interrogative syntax can also be designed to prefer particular responses. Straightforward cases involve the [statement] + [tag] question design. The statement describes a state of affairs and the tag invites agreement or disagreement with the statement. The use of this format is designed to promote the IE's agreement with the statement, thus agreement with the statement is preferred. Example 22 exhibits this construction: (22) [UK BBC Radio: World at One: 13 March 1979] 1 2 3
IR: IE:
=I
=Do you ascri:be to Marxist economic philosophy. = would say that there: er: the: (.) philosphy of Marx as far as the economics of Britain is
DESIGNING QUESTIONS 4 5 6 7 8
IR: IE:
77
concerned is one with which I find sympathy.=and would support it.=Yes. (.) -> Well that makes you a Marxist doe[sn't it.] [Not nece]ssarily
Example 23 similarly illustrates the device in reverse form: (23) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
[UK BBC Radio: Today: 1993]
IR:
-> IE:
Now there's talk that thuh cabinet will announce some sort of am:nesty for people who've committed crimes: ah racially motivated crimes presumably. .hh Uhm under thuh ah over thuh last few years. That wouldn't be acceptable to thuh A . N . C . would it? .hhh Question of amnesty's a very difficult situation. ...
Here, agreement with the statement prior to the tag is still facilitated but, because the initial statement is negatively formulated, an agreeing "No" answer is preferred. Other aspects of question design can also embody preferences of this kind. For example negative polarity items (Horn 1989) such as any embody a preference for a "No" answer, as the following case in which the journalist relays other people's descriptions of prison camps in Bosnia to the IE, a representative of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), and then asks "Do you believe there's any justification for that at all?" (24) [UK BBC Radio Today: Bosnia Camps] 1 2 3 4 5
IR:
.hhh People have u::sed thuh phrase concentration camps: and thuh Bosnians themselves have used that phrase. -> Do you believe there's any justification for that at all?
Here, the final question-formatted segment of the IR's turn incorporates the negative polarity terms any justification and at all. This question, asked early in the Bosnia conflict and before Serbian war crimes had been confirmed and publicized, and directed to a representative of an organization noted for its caution and probity in making partisan accusations,12 is "cautiously" designed for a negative answer.
12 Earlier in the interview, the IR and IE collaborated extensively in establishing that the organization that the IE represents is at independent and impartial in the way it deals with human rights issues.
78
CHAPTER 3
Finally, incorporation of terms like seriously or really can also embody preferences for particular answers. When they are used, as they normally are, in questions that prefer responses that contrast with IEs' known positions, they strongly challenge them to defend those positions. For example, in the following case, Ross Perot is interviewed about his candidacy in the 1992 U.S. Presidential election, and his position on the growing U.S. federal budget deficit. Earlier in the interview he had justified his candidacy as a means of getting the main political parties to take the deficit seriously. (25)
[US PBS Newshour: 18 September 1992]
1 2 3 4
IR: RP:
Alright n-, let's talk about some of the things you propose. R r a i s i n g the tax on gasoline ten cents a yea:r for the next five y[ears f i f t y cents. [Yes
5
RP:
Yes.
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
IR: RP: IR: RP: IR: RP: IR: RP:
A: :h a gallon after five y[ears. [A:fter five years. Eh: taxing all but fifteen percent of the social security benefits of recipients that e:arn over twenty five thousand dollars a year. Exactly.= =Now you're endorsing that. Yes. -> Do you (.) s:eriously believe that President Bush, -> or Bill Clinton again is going to endorse either -> [one of those. [(I thought) they feel the American people don't have the stomach for fair (0.2) shared (.) sacrifice. (1.2) The facts are the American people dp=That's the point we're trying to make.
Here, after listing two potentially unpopular tax measures, the incorporation of the word seriously into the IR's question is designed for a "no" answer—and is thus hostile to Perot's political position. If he is to be consistent with his earlier stated position, his answer to this question must be "yes", it must be accounted for, and he must do so in competition with the skepticism that the interviewer's question conveys. Designing Preference Through Question Prefaces. In addition to the interrogative component of question design, question prefaces can also be built to prefer particular responses. One straightforward method of doing so is to invoke others who take a particular view of the issue (dayman, 1992). In Example 26, for instance, the IE (who works for a human rights organization) is asked whether he would describe prison camps in Bosnia as "concentration camps." (26) 1
IR:
[UK BBC Radio: Today: Bosnia Camps] -> .hhh People have u : : s e d thuh phrase concentration
DESIGNING QUESTIONS 2 3 4 5 IE: 6 7 8 9 10
79
-> camps: and thuh Bosnians themselves have used that -> phrase. Do you believe there's any justification -> for that at all? .hh I think in thuh case of some of thuh larger camps there are, that's certainly accurate .hh ah if you count .h torture and execution as hallmarks .h of concentration camps .h then thuh reports we've received ah would seem to suggest that is an accurate description for some of them.
This is obviously a delicate question for a human rights worker to answer. As noted previously, in an earlier part of the interview, the IE had been at pains to stress the apolitical and nonpartisan nature of his organization. The design of the IR's question reflects an orientation to this issue. He introduces the question by referring to anonymous "people" who have used the term concentration camps, and then augments this with the assertion that the "Bosnians themselves" have used the same term, thus favoring a "yes" answer. The final question asks if there is "any justification" for the use of this term. Although the question itself, as we have seen, is designed for a negative answer, the referencing of others who would answer affirmatively establishes a favorable environment for an affirmative answer. Overall then, whichever way the IE responds, he will be seen to have responded to a carefully and judiciously formulated question, and can match it with an equally judicious answer. It is just such a response that the question receives (Lines 5-10). A rather more overt mobilization of preference is exhibited in Example 27. Here the interview concerns pending legislation to reduce the time limit for legal abortions. The IE, British Conservative MP Jill Knight, is in favor of the proposed legislation. (27) [UK ATV: Afternoon Plus 1979 Abortion] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
IR:
IE IR IE IR IE IE
... Can we now take up then the main issues of that bill which r- (.) remain substantially the same. (.) and indeed (0.2) have caused great deal of concern. (0.4) But first you'll note .hhh is the clause about (.) time limits h in which h abortions can be .h legally= =°(Yes)°= =ha:d. And the time limit h (.) according to the bill has now dropped .h from twenty eight weeks .h (.) to twenty wee[ks. [Yes.= -> =Now [.hh How concerned are you. [°Yeh° .hhh uh: ( .) I think this is right. I think that um: .hh again one's had a lot of e:uh conflicting evidence on this but .hh what has come ou::t h an' I think that .h the public have been concerned about this, .hhh is that there have been th'most distressing cases...
80
CHAPTER 3
The IR's lengthy question preface (Lines 1-10) shifts topic (Lines 1-4) and describes the proposed reduction of the legal abortion period (from 28 weeks to 20 weeks). It culminates in the observation that "a lot of people are very concerned about this" (Line 12). The final interrogative component of the IR's turn invites, or challenges, the IE to address that concern. Here the IE is invited to address the "concern" of people about the reduction in the time limit for abortions, when this is something that she herself favors. The compelling power of this hostile question preface is shown by the IE's rather convoluted effort to harness the term concern to issues on her—anti-abortion—side of the argument. The "distressing cases" she goes on to describe involve the destruction of wellformed fetuses. In this way, the IE establishes a superficial lexical connection between her comments and the agenda set by the IR's question, and thus manages to twist the terms of the question in a fashion that is more helpful to her position.13 In these cases, preference is established by a statement prior to the IR's question. A similar effect can be achieved by a statement positioned after the question as in Example 28, where a member of the governing Conservative Party is questioned about the upshot of his disagreements with the Thatcher administration: (28) [UK BBC TV Newsnight: 14 October 1981] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
IR: IR: IR:
But won't you have to consider threatening to vote against the government,= -> =That's surely what (.) what all the critics now -> have to face. We: :11 I don't know, no I- I think the: the we're still at the (.) stage of the intellectual argument which I think .hh we're winning,=because what they've put forward is just the same old stuff. =Which nobody believes and it hasn't worked.
Here the initial question component of the IR's turn, a negative interrogative that is itself strongly weighted to expect an affirmative answer (see the earlier discussion of Example 21), is further supported by the flat assertion that all the (internal) government critics "now" have to consider threatening to vote against the government. The practice of prefacing questions with statements that are designed to favor particular responses response can be developed to the point that IRs present positions as effectively incontrovertible, and then invite IEs to deny them. This practice is common in cases where IEs are engaged in defensive "stonewalling." The following is a case in point. Here, the U.S. Deputy Defense
See dayman (2001) for further examples of this process.
DESIGNING QUESTIONS
81
Secretary is interviewed about the "Gulf War Syndrome" and its possible origin in seron gas used during the conflict. The syndrome is now the focus for claims for compensation by war veterans: (29) [US CBS 60 Minutes: Gulf War Syndrome] 1 IR: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 IR:
Secretary Deutch you say there .is no evidence. .hh You've got ca:ses where: khh theh- Czechs: say: that they Dfoun:d seron. You say they didn't, th:ey say: (.) that they did. .hh You have soldiers say:ing: that they experienced burning sensations after explosions in the air. That they became nauseous, that they got .hh headaches. .hh You have two hundred fifty gallons of chemical agents that were found in:si:de Kuwait. .hh You had scuds that had seron in the warheads. (1.0) If that's not evidence what is it.
Deutch's defense is, of course, oriented to the federal government's vulnerability to medical and other damages claims, which could be very extensive. The IR contrasts Deutch's position with the statements of Czechs, the reported symptoms of soldiers, and other observations that are presented as "fact." The final interrogative simply challenges the IE to deny the evidential status of these various reported statements and assertions. In the way that this evidence is compiled, the IR manages to exert very strong pressure on the IE's position.
Hostile Questioning: Splits, Forks, and Contrasts Perhaps the most hostile questioning that IRs can engage in involves constructing IEs as some form of disagreement or self-contradiction. This can take two main forms: IEs can be presented (a) as in disagreement with their political allies, or (b) as in a situation of inconsistency or self-contradiction in their own positions. We have already seen the first of these maneuvers in several earlier examples (e.g., 11 and 28). It is very common in Britain where the parliamentary process places a premium on party loyalty, and consistency in voting with the party leadership. It is less common in the United States where congressional voting is less constrained by party loyalties. British journalists sometimes refer to this style of questioning as "split hunting." A very overt case is the following. The context of this interview is a developing disagreement within the Conservative Party over Britain's relations with the European Union. The Conservative right, led by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was hostile to closer relations. Her position was opposed by ex-Prime Minister Edward Heath, who led a faction favoring closer ties to Europe. The conflict seemed likely to impact the political succession to Thatcher—if the left
82
CHAPTER 3
prevailed, the IE in the following example, Michael Heseltine, would have been the likely next leader of the party. In this case, the IR attempts to induce Heseltine to take up a public position that is opposed to Thatcher's (and aligned to Heath's) on three successive occasions and, in the subsequent parts of the interview, the same topic is pursued in more subtle ways. In fact, the entire 7minute interview is devoted to split hunting. We begin at the beginning of the interview, where the IR's first question refers to a filmed report that had just been shown: (30) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43
IR:
IE:
IR: IE: IR: IE: IR:
IR:
[UK BBC TV Newsnight: 1989] Well Michael Heseltine let's begin: with one of the comments towards the end of Margaret Gilmore's report. -> Was Philip Stevens of the Financial Ti:mes right -> (.) to place you: (.) in this argument closer to -> Mister Heath (.) than to Missus Thatcher.= =.hhh Well you know one of the reasons that I: wanted to (.) come on you:r pro:gra:m .hh is precisely to refu:se to invo:lve the personalities: in this issue. I think Mister Heath has done his own cause a disservice .hh in: EU: the way in which he has spoken. This is not a matter of personalities and the conservative party is not going to have th- the sort of row that the media will enjoy:. .Hhh but it is impo:rtant .h that (.) the conservative party and the country (.) discuss the ideas. And I wholly reject the analysis that this will do us harm in the po:lls. I believe it'll do us good (.) because we shall be telling the British people what the options are, (.) what the alternatives are, (.) and there will be no doubt in my mi:nd they will want conservatives to pursue: whichever one we select. -> But on: the substance of the ar:gument are you -> closer to: to Mister Heath= =No you're [back on the [sa:me si [tuation and what [b[No [I'm ahyou're gonna try and do and you're not gonna succeed if we sit here all night, you are not going to get me into a personality [divisive process, .hh [hm I will ta:lk about the ideas of Europe. My:- my- I cannot overstress(f) to you (.) the European issue is going to dominate the next deca:de, and if we try to conduct it on a sort of personality divisive basis .h we will divert the industrial'n commercial companies away from the real challenges they face. -> Well often uh (.) politics reach: the public uh (.) -> through personality, .hh what Missus Thatcher has -> been saying: is that there is a danger (.) .h of a -> socialist superstate being imposed (0.5) from -> Brussels (0.2) and what Mister Heath and others are -> saying is (0.2) that is (.) is an illusory fear.=
DESIGNING QUESTIONS 44 45 IE: 46
83
-> =Where do you: line up on that is:sue. Well: (eh) technically, becaus:e (.) eh these decisions are ye: t to be ta:ken,
In the first yes/no question (Lines 4-6), the IR constructs an agenda for Heseltine's response that presupposes the conflict between Thatcher and Heath as its primary reference point, and is designed for a "Yes" response. When Heseltine attempts to reformulate the issue in terms of "discussing the ideas" and "options" (Lines 16-17, 18-21), the IR's subsequent question (Lines 24-5) pursues the original question of Heseltine's alignment. He does so, with the but preface, and the virtual repeat of the terms of his earlier question at Line 4, in such a way as to formulate Heseltine's previous response as an evasion (see the earlier discussion of Example 8). This question is also designed for a "yes." Finally, after Heseltine again declines to respond in terms of "personalities" (Line 36), the IR reinstates the issue for a third time in terms of a substantive disagreement between Heath and Thatcher (Lines 38-44), albeit with a question that is neutral in preference terms. Although this case is quite egregious, it embodies characteristic features of British political interviewing that are applied to senior figures in all three political parties. A close relative of split-hunting questions are those that place the IE in a dilemma or "fork." Most commonly, these are shaped as "disjunctive" questions. For instance, in Example 31, a British Labour politician is discussing his party's defense policy: Across a number of earlier turns, the IR has been pressing his respondent on the issue that the party would like to be rid of nuclear weapons: (31) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
IR: IE:
IR: IE: IR:
(UK: BBC TV Newsnight: 1989) So what will you be pushing for tomorrow, what is your: bottom line as you said earlier? Well I think there'll be a number of (0.2) proposals put by different colleagues, but the bottom line has to be that if things go well and talks procee:d wuh, as we would want them to, over the first two or three years, both on strategic arm:s, and on the question of a nuclear free Europe ... then, of, course we'd have achieved our objective slightly more slowly than we used to deba:te, but (.) as part of a: an international change, which would be welcome and would contribute to the safety of the world, .hh if we don't get that, then I think some of us have to sa:y in- in all credibility .hh that we would want Britain to be able to remove those weapons .hhh independently, unilateral[ly if tha[t's the way= [In uh[In uh=you'd like to put it.= =In other words, I don't understand the logic of this:, uh Mr. Blunkett, a-> if things are going well, and the, the atmosphere a-> of international detente continues (.) you're quite
84
CHAPTER 3
23 24 25
26 27 28 IE: 29
abbbb-
happy to negotiate the weapons away, but if things (.) go badly, and I assume by that you mean some kind of return, to some kind of cold war atmosphere, then you'll (.) give them away [anyway. [Well I: I I'm not talking about giving anything away , ...
Here the IE's lengthy statement about his party's nuclear weapons policy (Lines 3-16) straddles policy conflicts within his party between those who wish to remove nuclear weapons as part of a negotiation, and those who would prefer to remove them unilaterally. The IR's summary formulation (Heritage, 1985) simply sharpens this into an explicit contradiction, suggesting that the party will remove nuclear weapons under any conditions. This implies either that the party has no coherent negotiating position or, worse, that it remains committed to the politically unpopular policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. A rather different kind of fork is manifested in Example 32. Here the IE—then-Senate leader Robert Dole—is invited to explain the fact the President Reagan's political programs are "in trouble." In the question preface, the IR offers two anonymous and third-party-attributed formulations of the situation. The first is that Reagan's programs, though not the President himself, are "in trouble." The second offers an explanation for that trouble in terms of ineffective legislative leadership. The latter explanation, which engenders a little laugh from Dole, is explicitly offered as implicating Dole himself. (32) [US NBC Meet the Press: December 1985] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
IR: IR: a-> a-> a-> IR: b-> b-> b-> b-> IE: IR: b-> IR:
Senator (0.5) uh President Reagan's elected thirteen months ago: an enormous landslide. (0.8) It is s::aid that his programs are in trouble, though he seems to be terribly popular with the American people. (0.6) It is said by some people at thuh White House we could get those programs through:: if only we ha:d perhaps more: .hh uhffective leadership up on thuh hill an' I [suppose] indirec'ly that might ( ) [hhhheh ] relate t'you as well:. (0.2) Uh whaddyou think thuh problem is rilly. Is it (0.2) thuh leadership as it might be claimed up on thuh hill, er is it thuh programs themselves.
In the final formulation of the question, the IR draws on this extensive question preface and explicitly invites Dole to identify "the problem" in terms of either the (de-)merits of the programs, or ineffective legislative leadership. These were presented as exhausting the possible explanations for Reagan's legislative
DESIGNING QUESTIONS
85
difficulties. As in Example 20, neither option can possibly commend itself to a Republican Senate leader, and Dole's response avoids these options in favor of a response that cites the weakness of his majority in the Senate (data not shown). Finally, in a convergence of the "split" and the "fork" formats, IRs may contrast the conduct of the IE with the conduct of another individual who is allied to the IE. In these kinds of contrasts, the conduct of the second individual is normally used as a kind of "moral template" for appropriate conduct (Smith, 1978). A notable use of this kind of question occurred when then Vice-President (and presidential candidate) George Bush was interviewed by Dan Rather "live" on CBS's "Evening News."14 The film report preceding the interview focused heavily on the Iran-Contra scandal, and ended with a description of contacts between Bush's long-serving national security aide Donald Gregg and Contra middleman Felix Rodriguez. Rather's opening question took up this topic. (33) [CBS Evening News: 1/25/88 Bush-Rather] 1 IR: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 IE: 12
Mister Vice President, thank you for being with us tonigh:t, .hh Donald Gregg atstillserves as your trusted advisor, He was deeply involved in running arms to the contras, 'n 'e didn't inform you. .hhh Now when President Reagan's (0.3) trusted advisor: Admiral Poindexter: (0.5) failed to inform him::, (0.7) thuh President (0.4) fired 'im. (0.5) Why is Mister Gregg still:: (0.2) inside thuh White House 'n still a trusted advisor. Because I have confidence in him, .hh 'n because this matter Dan:, as you well know:, ...
Here the IR, building from the film report, begins by asserting that Gregg "still serves" Bush as a "trusted advisor." He continues by depicting Gregg's conduct as untrustworthy: running arms to the Contras without informing Bush. This state of affairs is then contrasted with the morally appropriate action that President Reagan took when his "trusted advisor" Admiral Poindexter engaged in actions that breached that trust (Lines 5-7). The contrast between Reagan's and Bush's conduct is clearly drawn. The similarities between the advisors are established point for point, and Bush's conduct is presented as clearly differing from Reagan's. This contrast is particularly pointed. Not only is Reagan Bush's political ally and superior, he is also President of the United States, and a role model for the position that Bush is currently campaigning for. Bush can thus be directly asked to explain the contrast between his conduct and that of his superior—the occupant of the supreme position to which he aspires. This is, of course, what the IR's question (Lines 9-10) proceeds to do.
14 See dayman and Whalen (1988/1989), Schegloff (1988/1989) and Pomerantz (1988/1989) for other treatments of this interview.
CHAPTER 3
86
CONCLUSION This chapter has argued that, although "questioning" may generally be understood as a neutralistic activity in the news interview context, neutralism is not to be confused with neutrality. News interview questioning is very far from being a neutral activity. As we have seen, the IR holds the initiative when it comes to the topics that the IE will be questioned on. There can be no neutrality in the selection of these topics and contexts: rather the selection will be more or less favorable (or, which is not necessarily the same, more or less desirable) from the IE's point of view. Further, the IR can manage questioning so that particular presuppositions are incorporated in the design of questions and at varying levels of embeddedness. These presuppositions may be more or less problematic for an IE's position, and their degree of embeddedness may create greater or lesser difficulties for the IE in formulating a response. Finally, the IR can manage questions so that particular audience expectations for the IE's response are mobilised: expectations that the IE may need to resist, and where such resistance may incur an additional burden of explanation than might otherwise be the case. News interview questioning, then, cannot be neutral but only neutralistic. It can be more or less pointed, more or less fair, more or less balanced in its approach to its subject matter. Much of the evaluation—by the IE and, especially, by the news audience—of these characteristics of IR questioning is likely to be shaped by perceptions of the relevance of particular questions. For both the IE and the news audience, the prevailing consideration in relation to each question is "why that now" (Sacks, 1992). The conclusions that are drawn by the IEs (and, just as important, the news audience) about the "why that now" issue will shape how the questioner's purpose is understood and, relatedly, whether a question is judged to be appropriate or fair.15 This chapter has aimed at laying out some basic features of question design in the news interview context, and to describe their deployment in a range of instances. Underlying some of these observations is the suggestion that innovation in question design can be an important element of social change in the news interview context, and broadcast journalism more generally. In particular the emergence and growth of the prefaced question design, while initially developed and used to inform the news audience about important
For example, Dan Rather's questioning of George Bush was widely judged to be inappropriate and had substantial negative consequences for Rather and, indirectly, for CBS news (dayman and Heritage, 2002a).
DESIGNING QUESTIONS
87
contextual details, represents a formidable extension of the interviewer's initiative and power. Many of the more hostile questions discussed in this chapter simply could not be launched in any other way. In a nonrandom, but wide-ranging, sample of 639 questions from British and American interview data, Heritage and Roth (1995) found that nearly half of the total questions asked were prefaced questions. In a recent study of presidential press conferences dayman and Heritage (2002b) also found that simple questions fell from 44% of the total during Eisenhower's first term to 21% during Reagan's first term. During the same period "hostile" question prefaces multiplied by a factor of 450%. Although the relative absence of follow-up opportunities may encourage journalists to produce more complex questions in the press conference context, these figures are nonetheless striking, and may index a parallel underlying growth in the deployment of prefaced questions in the U.S. news interview context as well. If this is so, it is clear that journalistic initiative has expanded considerably during the past 40 years and, in all probability, that this is directly associated with a growth in adversarialness, which, by common consent, has also grown significantly during this period. The growth of prefaced questioning may, however, have different institutional histories in Britain and America. In Britain, legislative regulation and oversight of broadcast journalism has historically been more intense than in the United States. Moreover, until 1958 when the BBC's monopoly position in broadcasting was replaced by a duopoly, there were no competitive pressures that might fuel a reduction in deference and a rise in adversarialness. In the United States, by contrast, FCC oversight and regulation of news program content has been minimal, and competitive pressures have impacted broadcast journalism from the outset. It may be conjectured then that in Britain there was a more dramatic growth in prefaced questions, beginning in the 1960s, whereas in the United States growth was more steady and gradual and began from a higher baseline. This in turn suggests that news interview questioning may never have been as deferential in the United States as it was in Britain during the 1950s. Thus the Attlee example (2) with which this discussion began may truly represent one of the more extreme cases of deferential interviewing that one could find in the anglophone broadcasting context.
REFERENCES Boyd, E., & Heritage, J. (in press). Taking the patient's personal history: Questioning during verbal examination. In J. Heritage & D. Maynard (Eds.), Practising medicine: Structure and process in primary care encounters. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
88
CHAPTER 3
Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Chafe, W. (1986). Evidentiality in English conversation and academic writing. In W. Chafe & J. Nichols (Eds.), Evidentiality: The linguistic coding of epistemology (pp. 261-272). Norwood NJ: Ablex. dayman, S. (1988). Displaying neutrality in television news interviews. Social Problems, 35(4), 474-492. dayman, S. (1992). Footing in the achievement of neutrality: The case of news interview discourse. In P. Drew and J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work (pp. 163-198). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, dayman, S. (1993). Reformulating the question: A device for answering/not answering questions in news interviews and press conferences. Text, J3,(2), 159-188. dayman, S. (1998, Novermber). Some uses of address terms in news interviews. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, New York. Clayman, S. (2001). "Answers and evasions." Language in Society 30: 403-442. Clayman, S. & Heritage, J. (2002a). The news interview: Journalists and public figures on the air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clayman, S. & Heritage, J. (2002b). "Questioning presidents: Journalistic deference and adversarialness in the press conferences of Eisenhower and Reagan." Journal of Communication 52 (4). Clayman, S. & Whalen, J. (1988/1989). When the medium becomes the message: The case of the Rather-Bush encounter. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 22, 241-272. Harris, S. (1986). Interviewers' questions in broadcast interviews. In J. Wilson & B. Crow (Eds.), Belfast working papers in language and linguistics (Vol. 8, pp. 50-85). Jordanstown, Ireland: University of Ulster. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Heritage, J. (1985). Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In T. A. Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis (Vol. 3, pp. 95-119) New York: Academic Press. Heritage, J. (1988). Explanations as accounts: A conversation analytic perspective. In C. Antaki (Ed.), Understanding everyday explanation: A casebook of methods (pp. 127-144). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Heritage, J. (in press). The limits of questioning: Negative interrogatives and Hostile question content. Journal of Pragmatics. Heritage, J. (2002). Oh-prefaced responses to assessments: A method of modifying agreement/disagreement. In Cecilia Ford, Barbara Fox, & Sandra Thompson (Ed.), The Language of Turn and Sequence, (pp. 196-224) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DESIGNING QUESTIONS
89
Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1991). On the institutional character of institutional talk: The case of news interviews. In D. Boden & D. H Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and social structure (pp. 93-137). Berkeley: University of California Press. Heritage, J., & Roth, A. (1995). Grammar and institution: Questions and questioning in the broadcast news interview. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 28(1), 1-60. Horn, L. (1989). A natural history of negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jefferson, G. (1984). On stepwise transition from talk about a trouble to inappropriately next-positioned matters. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 191-221). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Maynard, D. W. (1985). How children start arguments. Language in Society,14, 1-29. Nevin, B. (1994). Quandary/abusive questions. The Linguist Discussion List, 5754. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 57-101). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pomerantz, A.M. (1988/9). Constructing skepticism: four devices used to engender the audience's skepticism. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 22, 293-313. Raymond, G. (2000). The structure of responding: Conforming and nonconforming responses to yes/no type interrogatives. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Roth, A. (1998a). Who makes news: Descriptions of television news interviewees' public personae. Media, Culture and Society, 28(1), 79107. Roth, A. (1998b). Who makes the news: Social identity and the explanation of action in the broadcast news interview. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Sacks, H. (1987). On the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organization (pp. 54-69). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation (2 vols.) (G. Jefferson, Ed.). Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell. Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in Conversational Openings. American Anthropologist, 70, 1075-1095.
90
CHAPTER 3
Schegloff, E. A. (1972). Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In D. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in social interaction (pp. 75-119). New York: Free Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1988). On an actual virtual servo-mechanism for guessing bad news: A single case conjecture. Social Problems, 35(4), 442-457. Schegloff, E. A. (1988/9). From interview to confrontation: Observations on the Bush/Rather encounter. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 22, 215-240. Schudson, M. (1994). Question authority: A history of the news interview in American journalism, 1830s-1930s. Media, Culture and Society 16, 565-587. Smith, D. (1978). K is mentally ill: The anatomy of a factual account. Sociology, 12,(1), 23-53.
4 Taken-for-Granteds in (an) Intercultural Communication Kristine L. Fitch University of Iowa In a pair of articles (Hopper, 198la, 1981b) synthesizing theory and research from diverse areas of social science and philosophy, Robert Hopper formulated the nature and functions of taken-for-granteds (TFGs), unspoken yet ordinarily understood between-the-lines aspects of talk. Emphasizing that TFGs were not to be equated with nonverbal messages, Hopper noted the essentially incomplete and often telegraphic nature of much face-to-face interaction. He pointed out similarities between missing premises in enthymemes, pragmatic implications of utterances inferred from felicity conditions and conversational maxims, and other well-studied categories of unspoken messages as the parts that when presumed to form coherent patterns, constitute communicative frames (Bateson, 1972; Goffman, 1974). The concept of TFGs put forth in those articles has proved a powerful analytic tool in communication studies and related disciplines, and was recently the theme of a Northwest Communication Association convention. This essay illustrates one kind of TFGs in everyday talk: cultural premises, that is, unspoken assumptions drawn from a specific communal system of symbolic resources. This analysis draws upon a tradition within the ethnography of speaking that begins from an assumption that people's ways of speaking are structured by cultural codes (Philipsen, 1992) that are in turn assumed to vary across cultures. This assumption is not contradictory to the emphasis on structure and organization of talk typical of conversation analysis (CA). It is worth noting, however, that ethnographies of speaking generally proceed under the assumption that speakers draw upon cultural codes of meaning that are constructed across time in order to communicate in a given 91
92
CHAPTER 4
conversational moment. Unlike CA, then, there is an expectation in ethnographies of speaking that such codes will most often be invoked implicitly, rather than being referred to explicitly, in most instances of everyday conversation. I focus this discussion of TFGs around a conversation in which distinctive cultural codes form the bases for contrasting proposals for action, despite speakers' agreement about the objective these proposals are meant to accomplish. Although elucidating TFGs can illuminate identification and understanding of culture in talk, which provides the analytic vigor of the concept, I argue that making them explicit through metacommunication during interaction can be problematic. That said, the power of the TFG construct lies in revealing the ambiguity and enigma inherent in talk, and the possibilities such incompleteness leaves open for multiple, often productive, alternative framings of interpersonal events.
AN INTERCULTURAL DINNER TABLE CONVERSATION Family dinner table conversation has been recognized for some time as a particularly rich setting for talk that is more obviously culturally situated than in some other settings and activities (see, e.g., Blum-Kulka, 1997; Ochs, Smith, & Taylor, 1989). Talk within families is a primary vehicle for socialization of children into a speech community. That talk may be implicitly instructive, as parents model desired ways of speaking and correct children's deviations from them ("Erica, Gabe is talking, you need to wait your turn"). It may also be quite direct, as parents give voice to cultural norms for behavior and, at times, to the understandings that underlie those norms ("It's rude to talk when someone else is talking, it seems like what they're saying isn't important enough for you to listen to.") A third way in which cultural norms and premises (described by Philipsen, 1997, as cultural codes) are discernible in dinner table talk is through examination of such talk for TFGs that are relevant to the matter at hand in some culturally situated way. What counts as a culturally specific or relevant TFG is discussed in more detail later. For now, I propose that a case can be made that a particular instance of talk is consistent with, and counts as an enactment of, a cultural system of belief. Making such a case, however persuasively, does not constitute ruling out other explanations, particularly if it is made on the basis of a single fragment rather than a collection of similar instances. It does, however, provide a starting place for pursuing cultural codes through their subtle appearances in everyday talk.
TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDS
93
The transcript that follows is the first few minutes of a family dinner table conversation that lasted approximately 15 minutes in total. Just before the recorder was turned on, the son asked for an increase in his allowance. The participants are the mother (M), the father (F), the 9-year-old son (S) and the 7year-old daughter (D). Some side sequences have been edited out for length. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38
S . but uh REASonable (.) mount (.) that I'm gonna spend (1.5) M. What I? think is you need (.) two: (.5) containers fer mo?ney (.) one tht you kin draw on t'spend f r things like bake sales an' one that you don't touch (.5) .hh one that you just (.) keep building up until you have enough to go to the bank. (2.5) (4 lines deleted) M. but (.) the WAY YOU have yer ((cup clinks)) finances situated right now (.) Y Y'MIGHT PUT YER WHOLE ALLOWANCE IN THERE BUT THEN THE NEXT DAY YOU GO AND GET ALL OF IT ?OUT (1.0) S. »yeah but one thing« (.5) If I did tha:t ((swallows)) I don't (.) I make LES:SSh: than (.) ten dollarsh (.) a month (2.5) (with th'llwance I'm getting) (.) right now (2.0) M. THREE DOLLARS A WEEK? WELL TWO DOLLARS A WEEK, WHAT YOU'RE GETTING NOW, YOU'RE RIGHT, THAT'S less than ten dollars f a month 1 S. Leight dollajrs (1.5) M. If you gotta raise t'three dollars you'd be making twelve dollars a month ? . hhm S. sou::nds good (2.5) D. Wo?: :hh (.5) M. Well? outta that twelve dol?lars I wancha t'be saving (1.0) EIGHT of it (.5) S. M: :?kay (5.0) F. Fsntre seis?l y ocho Between six? and eight
39
S . Luh : : : mj
40 41 42 43 44
D. S.
He (.) the:n he could have [four dolllars to spend [sounds good] (1.5) S. (right) (.5) soun?ds good (3.5)
94 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83
CHAPTER 4 F.
S. F. F. S. S. S.
M. F.
S? F.
M.
S.
M. M.
(1 line deleted)1 [_Me dan los (ahorros) a mij y yo los Give me the (savings) and I'll take guardo (.5) Los ahorros gue van a ir para el banco= care of them(.5)the savings that will go to the bank= =okay (.5) fSEE?l THAT'S? WHAT= yo los man Ltengo)J(.B) I'11 keep them =y nadie puede tocarmelos= =and no one can touch them= =THAT'S WHAT «I TRI:fifo(.5) once]» (1 line deleted) =1 said (.) will you? I keep i (2 lines deleted) That's what I tried (1.0) that's what I asked you to do once and then (.) "Will you keep my allowance? for a coupla weeksh?" You're right? And I was not willing to (be uh) Pero es que yo lo unico que voy a guardar es lo que But the only thing I'm gonna take care of is that sta guardao guardado (.) Lo que va a ir para el which is saved saved (.) that which is going to the banco (.) Lo o?tro no bank (.) The re?st no (1.5) hm hm hm Porque tienen que aprender a manejarlo because they have to learn to manage it Well? I'm (.) I think if somebody's hangin onto it for im he's not? learning ta (.5) hm hm hm (1.5) ((softly, through food)) manage it (2.5) but if it would help? im out (.5) IF IT WOULD HELP YOU OUT TO LEARN TO MANAGE YOUR MONEY FOR Papa to hang onto it then (.5) who'm I? t'stand in the way a' progess.
Immediately obvious from this transcript is that S does not get a straight answer to his request. In fact, when the topic shifts at the end of segment presented here, there has been no clear indication of whether or not he will get the desired increase in his allowance. Rather than a yes or no answer, M responds to his request with a proposal for how S should manage his money more generally. In some contexts, between some participants, the relevance of this response could 1 The side sequence that begins here and ends at Line 59 involves D stating her intention to go to her room to change the page on her calendar. M vetoes the idea, asking D to finish her dinner first.
TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDS
95
be questioned. M does not specify how the proposal is connected to the request; perhaps the increase will be contingent on S agreeing to adhere to it. She does go on to make more explicit the basis for the proposal, noting a problem with S's current money management practices: 10 M. 11 12 13
but (.) the WAY YOU have yer ((cup clinks)) finances situated right now (.) Y Y'MIGHT PUT YER WHOLE ALLOWANCE IN THERE BUT THEN THE NEXT DAY YOU GO AND GET ALL OF IT ?OUT
Comparing the present state of affairs—"the next day you go and get all of it out"—with the preferred alternative "you just keep building up until you have enough to go to the bank" (Lines 6-7)—suggests that the habit M wishes to correct is S spending all of his money, rather than saving some of it. Certainly this is a common theme of parental instruction to children. Of note here is M's emphasis on the actions and choices of the child himself, signaled by her repeated use of the pronoun you: You need two containers, one that you can draw on, one that you don't touch, one that you build up until you have enough to go to the bank. Assuming that goodies bought at a bake sale have more allure for a 9-year-old than a container of money waiting to be taken to the bank, adhering to this proposal will also require (and may be intended to instill) significant self-restraint. Perhaps calculating the degree of self-restraint that he will be expected to exercise, S notes that if he follows M's proposal he ends up with less actual cash in hand than he currently has (getting $2 a week and essentially being free to spend all of it, as opposed to getting $3 a week and having to put $2 of it into the bank's container). In Line 26 M emphasizes the vast amount of money he would be receiving, "twelve dollars a month," to counter this objection. Although the children initially agree to their mother's stated expectation, after a lengthy pause the father moderates it—"between six? and eight." His mitigated proposal comes in Spanish, at the same moment that the son seems to reconsider his agreement to saving all $8. D quickly figures what spending money would be left under this plan, whether as an endorsement or as a demonstration of her mental math skills. Neither child misses a beat in these responses; whatever else may be said about the father's use of Spanish (a matter that is explored more fully later), language choice itself does not draw a reaction of any kind. It seems to be unmarked, typical behavior for talk at this dinner table to go on in two languages simultaneously. In Lines 46-54, F offers a counterproposal to solve the problem of S spending all of his money. There is a clear stylistic contrast between M's proposal andF's:
96
CHAPTER 4
46 F.
Me dan los (ahorros) a mi y yo los guardo Give me the (savings) and I'll take care of them
3 4
What !_? think is you need (.) two: (.5) containers fer mo?ney
M.
M seems to have offered a suggestion that may be taken merely as an opinion: "What I? think you need . . . " Whereas F's utterance sounds like a command: "Give me. . . . " Translation is tricky here, however, and the ambiguity is not one that can be resolved from hearing the tape. In Spanish, pronouns are often optional, particularly at the beginning of a sentence. F may be offering a suggestion as well, with the initial pronoun/verb left implicit, as in: F.
(Pueden) darme los ahorros ... (They can) give me the savings ...
Whatever the illocutionary force of the utterance, the substance of the proposal also contrasts with the one offered earlier by M. Rather than assigning a container the job of holding onto the savings until enough money has accumulated to go to the bank, F suggests (or declares) that he will take on that role. S's reaction is immediate enthusiasm: This is exactly what he wanted all along, what he tried to get M to do for him once. There is a note of accusation in the dramatic replaying of his appeal: 58 S.
... that's what I asked you to do once and then (.) "Will you keep my allowance? (.) for a coupla weeksh?"
When M confirms that she has previously rejected the plan F is supporting, F interjects with clarification of his role. He will not be in charge of ALL of the child's money, only that which is going to the bank. Although M has not voiced a reason for her refusal to cooperate with S's earlier attempt to instantiate this system, F anticipates that it is a parent's involvement with the child's money that was the basis for her objection. In Line 71, he suggests a point of agreement between him and M, a commonality despite their contrasting proposals: F.
Porque tienen que aprender a manejarlo because they have to learn to manage it
M.
Well? I'm (.) I think if somebody's hangin onto it for im he's not? learning ta ... manage it
TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDS
97
M's immediate response is to disagree, not that "they" (both children, perhaps all children) need to learn to manage money, but that if "somebody"—certainly F, since he has just offered to do so—hangs onto (part of) the money, S is not learning to manage it. In her view, the plan F has proposed does not count as teaching S, or perhaps any child, to manage money. Her discontent with the role he has offered to play is mitigated by applying her objection to "somebody"— not to him specifically, which would create an accusatory tone. When this disagreement is met with silence (Line 79), M closes the topic with what sounds on one level like an immediate reversal of field: (2.5)
79
80 81 82
83
M.
but if it would help? im out (.5) IF IT WOULD HELP YOU OUT TO LEARN TO MANAGE YOUR MONEY FOR Papa to hang onto it then (.5) who'tn I? t'stand in the way a'
progess.
It is precisely this quick juxtaposition of the stated view that "if somebody's hangin onto it for him he's not learning to manage it" with the (louder) opposite "IF IT WOULD HELP YOU OUT . . . " that marks the latter as sarcasm. The parting shot is an idiom—a prepackaged, and thus hard to object to, formulaic construction. Drew and Holt (1988) noted that idioms frequently occur at the end of complaint sequences, serving as a figurative summing-up of a grievance that brings the matter to a close. Although their exploration of idioms shows a number of cases in which the function of the utterance is to bring the speaker and recipient into some kind of alignment, M is clearly not expecting to elicit agreement with her point of view. In speaking sarcastically, she is in fact complaining that her proposal has not been supported by F or gotten uptake from the children. Assuming she has not really changed her mind from one phrase to the next, she is conceding defeat (at least in this conversational moment), but not without first commenting on the irrationality of the proposal that has been greeted with more enthusiasm than her own.
CONTRASTING CODES: CULTURALLY SITUATED TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDS In what sense, and to what extent, is this conversation among family members intercultural communication? What conversational features mark this (or any conversation) as an instance of contact between members of different speech communities? The most obvious answer seems, accurately, too easy: There are two languages used, Spanish by one of the participants and English by the other three. Although language differences may be readily observable boundaries
98
CHAPTER 4
between speech communities, Hymes (1972) noted that members of a single speech community may well share two languages. The three English speakers in this conversation plainly have no trouble understanding what is said in Spanish, so these four could be part of a bilingual speech community in which mixing languages is in itself unmarked behavior. There is a noticeable disagreement in this exchange, however, in which contrasting proposals are put forth. An attempt to state common ground that might align the two plans is rejected. This disagreement, I suggest, reveals the existence of different assumptions about personhood and relationships as enacted in money management practices. Those TFG assumptions, left unstated as is most often the case, can be shown to be part of distinctive cultural codes. It is the contact between those codes that makes this intercultural communication. There are two questions at hand: What are the TFGs behind the distinct proposals, and what is there to suggest that those TFGs are cultural premises? As noted earlier, M's proposal emphasizes the child's actions and his (autonomous) responsibility for them. Dividing the allowance and keeping one part of it out of the spending loop is to be a matter between S and two containers, physical objects that cannot praise him for compliance, reproach him for lapses, or remind him of his promise (and thus reinforce it) at moments of temptation. By contrast, F's proposal that he, a human being endowed in a 9year-old's mind with both power and wisdom, take charge of the money allows S to draw upon the strength of another person when his own willpower flags. M's references in Lines 10-13 suggest that S has unhappy experience with just such lapses. The remedy she suggests, perhaps with a view toward underscoring the importance of willpower generally, relies on increasing S's ability to control and restrain his impulses. F's remedy allows him to rely on another person for help. Left unsaid in this particular conversation are ideals of reliance on oneself as an individual versus reliance on other people, premises that are readily recognizable as a common contrast between cultural systems. The fact that this contrast suggests that M comes from an individualist culture and F comes from a collectivist one (Triandis 1988; Triandis et al. 1988) does not, however, illuminate very much that is specific to either culture. In what sense, then, is this observation any more helpful than the obvious and unremarkable one that these people are speaking different languages? A problem with durable dichotomies like individualism/collectivism is that, although resonant and often useful, they are too broadly conceived to be more than blunt instruments. They hack out the most obvious differences between cultures without giving clues about how, when, and how often such dimensions of belief actually shape people's talk and other actions. Based on one conversation with one family, this contrast cannot be a well-developed
TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDS
99
account of specific cultural themes that distinguish M's cultural background (U.S. middle class) from F's (Colombian middle class). Nonetheless, this contrast is a readily hearable TFG in this exchange. Its presence suggests that with a collection of talk, a catalogue of specific instances that draws upon similar as well as discordant notes to establish cultural patterns (When does the father urge self-reliance? When does the mother offer participation as assistance? To what extent are the varied instances part of a system, and how may that system be described?) could be the basis for a more nuanced picture of contrasting cultural premises. The theoretical contribution of the TFG concept is to suggest that such description would necessarily be grounded in examination of implicit messages. The theoretical contribution of cultural explanations such as this one is to suggest that there is a system of meaning there to be discovered: Although implicit and subtle, cultural premises can be discerned in everyday talk, and often become most visible when they come in contact with a different system of premises—as is by definition the case in interculrural communication. Interlocutors, even when they are well aware that they are interacting with someone whose cultural premises are different from their own, are highly unlikely to make those premises explicit. "I want you to use two containers so you'll become an autonomous individual, which in my cultural belief system is the only kind of self that counts as a whole and healthy one" would have been an awkward thing for M to say in this (or any) conversation, as would "I want you to depend on me so you'll learn that you are incomplete on your own, that you need other people's help to do anything in the world, which in my cultural belief system is the only . . .," and so on. The reasons why this is so, in intercultural communication as in other kinds, are a useful point with which to conclude.
TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDS IN CULTURAL CODES AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION It is well known, or at least widely suspected, that dissimilar TFGs are at the heart of many misunderstandings and disagreements between members of different speech communities. Speakers leave those elements of talk unsaid that they presume to be shared knowledge. When they come from different systems of belief, there are quite understandably different approaches to communicative goals, divergent interpretations of action, and other serious muddles related to language use and meaning. If the problem were not in these implicit, betweenthe-lines aspects of talk, the only distinctive feature of intercultural communication would be language differences, relatively solvable (if hardly simple) through fluency and attention to strict accuracy of expression. The
100
CHAPTER 4
notion of TFGs emphasizes how much of culture, and how many difficulties in intercultural communication, come down to ideologies subtly hidden (because they are never given voice to) in and around spoken language. A common route to discovering such cultural differences, and working through areas of misunderstanding, includes prescriptions to discuss TFGs in order to make explicit that which is unsaid. The conversation examined here, and Hopper's observation in the TFG articles that interpretation may be forever enigmatic and incomplete to some degree, make it clear that there is a definite limit to which explication of that kind is practical in everyday talk. Alignment mechanisms are available, ranging from those that are so indirect that they go unnoticed by participants, to those that are quite direct, clarifying TFGs by way of making them explicit. It seems very likely, however, that some premises are too delicate to put into words. They must remain unspoken for a variety of reasons. One of those is the potential face threat involved: To make explicit something that a competent hearer could be assumed to know calls into question how competent this particular hearer actually is. Another reason has to do with the nature of cultural premises. Making explicit a cultural premise can paradoxically call it into question. Part of the enormous weight of cultural codes to shape action and interpretation comes from their pervasive unspokenness. Members of a speech community hear talk in well-worn grooves of inference. When human agency (for example) is spoken of in ways that emphasize autonomy and individual selfhood ("you . . . you . . . you . . . you" ) it becomes difficult to imagine other ways the (social) world could be arranged. Besides increasing the difficulty of articulating them (a significant factor in itself), this customary implicitness of cultural premises increases the risks involved in holding them up to conversational daylight. For M to insist explicitly that children must develop individual self-restraint would be to open a slot for resistance, contradiction, a counterproposal that interdependence among intimates was a more legitimate principle to instill, and other forms of disagreement. It is far safer to argue over procedures for reaching a particular goal, especially when the goal itself is not questioned, than it is to debate the fundamental, sacred symbols underlying social life more generally. A final reason TFGs must ordinarily be left implicit has to do with a further paradox, this one related to Grice's maxims (Grice, 1975). Given speakers' abilities to search indirect utterances for meaning by inference on the basis of quantity, quality, relevance, and truth, it is not surprising that direct utterances would be subjected to a similar kind of scanning. Suppose that M, aware after many years of conversation with F that included discovery of cultural patterning in the disagreements between them, had explored his proposal for the cultural premises underlying it. "Is this how Colombians teach
TAKEN-FOR-GRANTEDS
101
children to manage their money?" she might have inquired. However benign— even generous—the intention behind the question, the contrast with her own position raises a face threat similar to the competence challenge just mentioned. Regardless of the phrasing, a metacomment that attributes the meaning of an utterance to membership in a category to which the hearer belongs and the speaker does not carries a strong suggestion that the comparison is critical or sarcastic, dismissive of the hearer's faculties to reason as an individual, along the lines of "Isn't that just like a wo/man?" The interpretation of competing codes I have offered here rests on cultural differences. There are certainly other readings of this conversation that might be offered. Among those, a gender difference perspective, in which F's more forceful proposal supersedes M's, undercutting the legitimacy of her position and drawing the children's support away from her, is undeniably plausible. There is even room to argue that the difference of opinion here, and the ways in which participants express their competing views, is idiosyncratic. Sorting through these possibilities, each of which entails TFGs based in distinctive kinds of shared knowledge, would require a great deal more examination of other conversations between this couple and in other families, perhaps with similar configurations of cultural background. The careful excavation of everyday talk that would entail is, appropriately enough, Robert Hopper's signature contribution to the field.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to the members of the Discourse and Rhetoric Group in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University for their very useful discussion of the transcript presented in this chapter.
REFERENCES Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Chandler. Blum-Kulka, S. (1997). Dinner talk: Cultural patterns of sociability and socialization in family discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Drew, P., & Holt, E. J. (1988). Complainable matters: The use of idiomatic expressions in making complaints. Social Problems 35, 398—417. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper-Colophon.
102
CHAPTER 4
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic in conversation. In P. Cole & J.L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Vol. III. Speech acts (pp. 41-58). New York: Academic Press. Hopper, R. (198la). How to do things without words: The taken-for-granted as speech action. Communication Quarterly 29, 228-236. Hopper, R. (1981b). The taken-for-granted. Human Communication Research, 7(3), 195-211. Hymes, D. (1972). Models of the interaction of language and social life. In J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics: The ethnography of communication (pp. 35-71). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Ochs, E., Smith, R., & Taylor, C. (1989). Detective stories at dinnertime: Problem solving through co-narration. Cultural Dynamics 2, 238-257. Philipsen, G. (1992). Speaking culturally. Albany: State University of New York Press. Philipsen, G. (1997). A theory of speech codes. In G. Philipsen & T. Albrecht (Eds.), Developing Theories in Communication (pp. 119-156). Albany: State University of New York Press:. Triandis, H., Bontempo, R., Villareal, J., Asai, M., & Lucca, N. (1988). Individualism and collectivism: Cross-cultural perspectives on selfingroup relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54, 323-338. Triandis, H. C. (1988). Collectivism vs. individualism: A reconceptualization of a basic concept in cross-cultural psychology. In G. Verma & C. Bagley (Eds.) Cross-cultural studies of personality. London: Macmillan.
5 "So, What Do You Guys Thinkl?: Think Talk and Process in Student-Led Classroom Discussion Robert T. Craig University of Colorado at Boulder
Alena L. Sanusi University of Colorado at Boulder This study examines certain uses of "think talk" (expressions such as / think and What do you think?) in student-led classroom discussions on controversial issues. Data are drawn from recorded discussions in several undergraduate critical thinking classes at a large, western-U.S., public university, 1996-1998. Students in this course were instructed in critical thinking techniques and participated in practical exercises, one of which involved working in a small group to prepare and lead a full-class discussion of a current, controversial issue such as capital punishment, sex education, or media ethics. The official purpose of the discussion was to facilitate critical thinking on the issue, not necessarily to reach consensus. 18-25 students, including the group of 4-6 leaders, usually participated. A graded assignment for the leaders, the discussions were observed and recorded by the instructor, who otherwise did not officially participate. The leaders selected and researched an issue and conducted a 40-minute class discussion. Background readings were sometimes assigned by the leaders in advance of the discussion. The discussions followed variations of a standard format. The leaders usually sat together at the front of the classroom with other participants either 103
104
CHAPTER 5
facing them or completing a large circle. Usually, the leaders would open with a formal presentation, based on their research, introducing the issue and providing background information. Often they would then break the class into small groups assigned to discuss briefly particular questions, aspects, or points of view on the issue. General discussion, sometimes structured around reports by small groups, sometimes structured by a series of questions posed by leaders to the class as a whole, sometimes more free-flowing or managed by the leaders in apparently ad hoc ways, would follow the opening presentation and/or small- group discussions. When time was up, the leaders would end the discussion, sometimes abruptly, more often with some attempt to summarize and conclude. Previous studies of these discussions have examined the use of critical thinking terminology to mitigate the interpersonal implications of disagreement and criticism (Craig, 1997), co-construction of "the issue" as a metadiscursive object and its use in presenting standpoints and managing the discussion (Craig, 1999a, 1999b), the use of animated mock figures in the construction of arguments (Muller, 1999a, 1999b), and a problematic transition from an opening presentation to subsequent class discussion (Sanusi, 1999). Craig and Sanusi (2000) showed how I'm just saying and related discourse markers (Schiffrin, 1980, 1987) are used by participants to constitute contributions to the discussion as expressions of continuing, consistent standpoints on the issue. The present study in a sense complements Craig and Sanusi's (2000) analysis of continuity markers. If participants in group discussion routinely use tokens such as I'm just saying to display their contributions as expressions of unchanging viewpoints, how do they also display the relevance of their contributions to the ongoing process of discussion? Group discussion involves "online" talk—talk that responds to the current state of the discussion and occasions further such responses by others, thus moving the process along. How is this accomplished? Our analysis focuses on the use of / think and related expressions as markers of online process. / think, especially in the opening stretch of a turn at talk, can be used to indicate a particular kind of relevance to ongoing talk that characterizes the process of group discussion. In such cases, it marks the turn in progress as a presentation of the speaker's response to the currently relevant group topic, but not necessarily as a response to anything said about the topic by other speakers. In our data, the relevant group topic is usually the discussion issue or some more immediate question or statement presented by a discussion leader. Discussion leaders often invite these reactions by the use of expressions such as What do you guys think? in presenting a topic to the group. / think marks the current turn as one in a possible series of different individual reactions to the topic. As such, the current turn may not be relevant at all to the immediately
CLASSROOM DISCUSSION
105
preceding turn, except by virtue of being the next in a series of expressions of opinion by different members of the discussion group. The following sections present data illustrating how think talk is used by discussion participants to index their own statements of opinion as expressions of online thinking situated in the ongoing discussion, to mark transitions between canned and online discussion and invite expressions of online thinking from other participants, and finally, to maintain a sense of process when process seems threatened by a lack of potential for controversy on the topic. In a concluding section, we reflect on the implications of this analysis for understanding the semantics and pragmatics of I think, and for further studies of interaction in classroom discussions and related institutional settings.
/ THINK AS A MARKER OF PROCESS Example 1, an excerpt condensed from a transcript of a discussion of sex education, exemplifies the density of I thinks that can occur in such discourse.
(1 )
(Condensed) Jack? Jack: I think that (.) um: (.) well two things. One I don't think we can rely on family structure, our family structure, (I think) in the United States is (.) really screwed up. ((about 13 lines deleted)) Now if you're ge- an I don't think that- that way you're not attacking (.) religious or moral values but (.) well. I- I guess in a way but at least regardless of whether or not you believe in it you still have ta (.) accept that it's out there. (And you don't like it.) Shelley: I think just even more so going on with that I think that (.) um people are so opposed to things like homosexuality is because- (.) I mean- likelike out they're just ignorant about it I mean they think that (.) you know it's all abou:t (.) just sex or whatever an- (.) y'know but it's more than that. It's about like relationships and things like that an- you know like every other heterosexual relationship and I think that (.) things like that to be taught are important for people are (.) you know, a-homosexual but they're too afraid to come out and this will give them (.) like a way ta- to have better self-esteem about themselves and feel better about themselves. (.) F?: SO (.) ( ) Jennifer: I was gonna say I think it's of importance that they define things like abortion and homosexuality
1 M: 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
106 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51
CHAPTER 5
F?: Brooke :
because we probably all knew somebody in high school who's just totally naive: (.) about everything. You know, and, whether we were those people or (.) we- were friends with those people there are people in (.) high school that are totally naive, to what those things even mean. Really. You know, and I think it's really important that not necessarily they push one side or the other. But that they really define them so students know. What (.) it means? (.) What it is. ( ?) Na- I was just wanted to say that to say that uh-I agree with that I think that like- things like um: (.) maybe: : if- if someon- if you have to write a paper or like (to have) a presentation like this. Stuff like that in high school I think is really important but you can't really just teach you know, you can define but- (.) w- where would you even begin to teach about (.) abortion when there's so many different sides? But I think it is important to do stuff like (.) you know have an opportunity like this ((turn continues))
In this stretch of discussion, / think is used to mark each turn as one in a series of expressions of opinion on the topic of sex education. Prior to this segment, a discussion leader (Tad) posed the question "(Wul/But) do you guys think like (.) heated topics like homosexuality:, and abortion:, should be something that (.) the government should be able to:: (.) talk about?" After some elaboration by Tad (seven lines) and some brief transitional business, Jack is called on by a leader (Line 1) and takes the floor (Line 2). Initiating his turn with / think, Jack argues, in what can be heard as an implicit response to Tad's question, that sex education in public schools is necessary because "I don't think we can rely on family structure," and that topics like homosexuality should be included because "whether or not you believe in it you have to accept that it's out there." Also (like Jack) opening with "I think" (Line 12), Shelley begins speaking and positions her turn as the next in a sequence by contrasting it with the preceding ("I think just even more so going on with that I think").1 "Even more so going on with that" indicates broad agreement with the preceding turn and that the following remarks will extend the preceding topic in some unspecified way. The following "I think," however, shifts the topical focus from Jack's view back to Shelley's. Her subsequent contribution, although it continues The transcript, based on an audio recording, omits nonverbal behaviors that were available to the participants. It is quite possible that Shelley did not self-select as next speaker but was nonverbally selected by Jack or a discussion leader in response to her nonverbal bid for the floor (such as a raised hand). The omission of possibly relevant nonverbal details, especially in turn transitions, should be kept in mind when reading these transcripts.
CLASSROOM DISCUSSION
107
Jack's just preceding topic of homosexuality, does not respond to his specific points. Rather, in arguing that teaching about homosexuality is needed because the reasons for opposing it are based on ignorance and it will help homosexual students to feel better about themselves, Shelley can be heard as presenting another view in response to the question earlier posed by a discussion leader (Tad). Two following speakers in succession, Jennifer and Brooke, present further views on the topic of teaching about homosexuality in schools. Each opens her turn by marking a temporal disjuncture ("I was gonna say" [Line 28]; "Na-1 was just wanted to say" [Line 41]) between the sequential position of her turn and the unspecified recent moment in the discussion that immediately occasioned what she is about to say. Each speaker prefaces her contribution with "I think." Each continues topical threads of previous turns (a pro-sex education stance, societal ignorance of homosexuality, the value of specific learning experiences) while not responding to specific points made by previous speakers. In the linguistic literature, / think appears most regularly in discussions of modality and hedging (e.g., Coates,1987; Galasinski, 1996; Turnbull & Saxton, 1997). In Example 1, however the phrase does not appear to be used primarily as a hedging or downtoning device. Note the appearance of the word important/ce in the propositions with parenthetical / think in the following excerpts: I think that (.) things like that to be taught are important for people are (.) you know, a-homosexual (Lines 20-22). I was gonna say I think it's of importance that they define things like abortion and homosexuality (Lines 29-31). I think it's really important that not necessarily they push one side or the other. But that they really define them so students know. What (.) it means? (.) What it is. (Lines 3639) . Stuff like that in high school I think is really important but you can't really just teach you know, you can define but- (.) w-where (Lines 45-47). But I think it is important to do stuff like (Lines 49-50).
It would seem unlikely that a speaker would be downtoning a proposition for which she is claiming importance. In these cases, the / think might be understood as contributing modality, that is, a sense of speaker commitment, in a fairly literal way, as a lexical verb. More noticeable to us, however, is the flowing quality of the talk and how / think is used to mark each in a series of expressions of opinion. The
108
CHAPTER 5
opinions presented in Example 1 are all generally favorable to sex education but are otherwise diverse. Each turn links sequentially and topically to prior turns but does not primarily build on or respond to previous speakers' opinions. Each advances the discussion primarily by contributing the speaker's own view on the current topic. Notably, there is little to suggest that speakers in this free-flowing segment of discussion are expected to build tightly on one another's comments any more than they actually do. Their expressions of opinion are not markedly hesitant, apologetic, or qualified; they generally display the features of preferred rather than dispreferred turn shapes (Pomerantz, 1984). In short, there is no evidence that participants in this stretch of discussion, in expressing whatever opinions on the topic happen to occur to them in the moment, are doing anything other than what they apparently ought to be doing in the situation. / think seems to function in such routine, unproblematic stretches of talk neither especially to modify illocutionary force (either to boost or downtone), nor to express politeness or deference, but rather primarily to mark contributions as expressions of online thinking within the discussion process. / think indicates a relevant response to the current discussion topic but also licenses a certain topical disjuncture as the discussion jumps from one individual point of view to another. / think marks an expression of opinion on a shared topic but from an individual point of view, distinct from succeeding and following points of view, occasioned by the current state of the discussion. It marks process.
TRANSITIONS BETWEEN CANNED AND SPONTANEOUS TALK In Example 2, students deal with the problem of speaking on behalf of a group rather than on one's own behalf. Talk produced while a student is speaking as a spokesperson is noticeable for its very lack of / thinks. The only / think in Sally's (the spokesperson's) talk is the initial / think, whose syntactic parallelism with Jack's question marks her talk as designed as a response to his question and what follows as her sense of the discussion that had occurred in the group in which she was participating. (2) l 2 3 4 5 6
Jack:
I hope we've kinda outlined each one of these (.) conclusions an hh reasoning why I asked y'guys what y'guys think (.) whether you guys are on the opposite sides or (.) bring up points and also y' know- y' go specifically into the (.) examples the Ramsey case or (.) any uh these, hhh what do you
CLASSROOM DISCUSSION 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
109
guys think like the Globe pictures that were published, (.) pt what do you guys think of that. (2.4) Sally: I think right now I mean there's like a little bit of miscommunication cause our group (.) primarily dealt with (.) with issues [that were:-] that were= [((cough)) M: Sally: =false or exaggera:ted or you know like what's been taken out of context and those things like I would say you know (.) sure I- I'd like to know about things going on in the press as long as they're true n that (.) n- n yes I agree the public has the right to know I agree with a lot of those things as far as the First Amendment is concerned .hhh but we were more focussing o: :nweren't we? Ml: Mm hm. = M2: =((murmurs [ of agreement)) ] [ focusing on that? ] w(h)e(h)e Sally: we(h)e(e)re focusing on, .hhh like taking things out of context an- an- (.) I mean- making up stories or y'know or compensating for a lack of facts (then, ) (.) but
In Example 2, Jack asks other participants what they think as a way of transitioning from the presentation of canned (prepared) material to open discussion. Similar uses of What do you think? or What do you guys think? occur quite frequently in our data (also see Example 5, later). Such expressions invite reports of online thinking in reaction to some stimulus. In this case, Jack is speaking as one of a group of students who have been assigned to lead a discussion of media ethics. The group has just finished presenting a series of reasons for and against increasing restrictions on the press. The presentation has been prepared by the group members as a summary of breakout small-group discussions that they led, in order to serve as a stimulus for a discussion that is now to occur among the entire class. Think is used by Jack to mark this transition from canned to spontaneous discussion by inviting expressions of opinion, and then by Sally, marking her turn as a response to Jack's invitation. Sally goes on, however, to explain that she is unable to make an acceptably relevant response. Her small group, she says, didn't focus on the kinds of examples Jack just referred to, so she has no thoughts to express on those issues. Sally's extended turn at talk, including a short stretch of side talk with members of her group, is interesting in a number of ways. Our main interest at this point in the analysis is what her response suggests about the interactional properties of What do you think? What do you think? invites expressions of opinion in reaction to something presented or indicated by the speaker. It projects nothing about the contents of the reactions except that they will be reactions to that something and
110
CHAPTER 5
that they will be reactions, that is, expressions of online thinking from presumably differing individual points of view. Sally's account in Example 2 displays not only her online reaction but also her awareness that the thoughts invited by Jack are expected to be reactions specifically to the kinds of examples he has presented. Sally's talk in Lines 10-29 also provides evidence that What do you think? invites online rather than canned expressions of opinion. Sally indicates in a variety of ways that she is responding to Jack not just as an individual but on behalf of her small group, but this spokesperson role becomes rather problematic for her. If think is about in-process reactions rather than canned presentations, then reporting on behalf of a group becomes a potential trouble point, because the group's thoughts are either previously agreed upon (canned) or have to be negotiated on the spot, which would require a frame shift or "time out" from discussion in the larger group. Sally's orientation to this problem is reflected in her tense shifts, her use of / think to mark her immediate thoughts and her nonuse of it in other contexts, her explicit checking with the group that she is representing their views accurately (Lines 21-22), and her laughed speech in Lines 25-26. Example 3 is a similar exchange from a discussion on health insurance reform, in which M initially tries to speak on behalf of "us guys" (implying canned talk, i.e., the presentation of a view already discussed within the group) but quickly resorts to / think, marking his talk as spontaneous. (3) l 2
3 4 5, 6 7 8 9
F: M:
How do you guys feel about that. um how do we feel about that ((several people laughing softly)) (.) oh we we think it's a moral responsibility and stuff but I think that seeing from other countries trying to do this and seeing how it has it hasn't had any positive effects and p then ( ) bring it back to our our current plan I think that ah it's just it will be more abused than it will be used ((turn continues))
M responds to F's question, directed to his small group, as to how they "feel" about the moral responsibility to provide health care to people in need, with talk laden with signs of trouble including false starts, hesitation, and side interaction (including soft laughter) with members of his group. His response is first marked by we feel (arguably displaying himself as cooperative in that he takes up F's focus on how you guys feel; Galasinski, 1996), then shifts (still uneasily, with a false start) to the less evaluative we think and then to / think. In all of this, M displays the awkwardness of expressing an online group reaction as he retreats to (and proceeds with) expressions of his own individual online reaction.
CLASSROOM DISCUSSION
111
MAINTAINING CONTROVERSY Examples 1-3 have illustrated some ways in which think talk is used in contexts where the processual aspect of discussion is threatened or needs to be emphasized, including: sequences of diverse, loosely related opinions, transitions from canned talk to open discussion, and shifts from speaking on behalf of a group to speaking as an individual. We now turn to evidence for yet another threat to process in the context of a class discussion: lack of controversy. (4) 1 2 3 4 5 6
Emily: Do you guys?- Wul it seems- wul it seems to me tha:t like most of us agree: an- you know we all kind of we agree that (.) people need to be aware, and- and it's gonna happen anyway whatever, (.) Why do you guys think that it's such: (.) like a controversial thing among parents. I mean
Example 4, from the same sex education discussion as Example 1, illustrates another environment that can constitute a threat to the discussion process, namely agreement. Agreement among all participants in a discussion can threaten the continuation of the discussion process, because once the group has reached a point of agreement, unless the group is following a prepared agenda, there may be nothing immediately at hand to discuss. As we can see in Example 4, a discussion leader may invite further discussion by marking points of agreement, presenting a new question or item of information, and inviting reactions with some variation of What do you think? When a topic for discussion threatens to be uncontroversial, leaders may do considerable work to mark it as open to various opinions and therefore potentially controversial when inviting opinions, as in Example 5. (5) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Condensed Emily: So. But. Um. I guess we'd like to know, what you guys think about, whether [or not sex Tad: [Before- be- before we wanta know what you guys think ? •. mm hh- huh -huh Tad: I just wanted to make sure that- I 'mean wer- werwe're presenting ourselves (.) in sort of a biased standpoint because we did the whole condom exercise and we passed out condoms an' (.) we talked about how condoms should be distributed in school, so, we may: be: showing you guy:s that that we're for: sex e:d, which we are, (.) but (.) sex ed in schools is
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
x a 5 h a d n e a different thing, b'cause, I think ((turn continues, 30 lines deleted)) (.) but this kind of gives like a:duasex and uh whal leap into the actual talking about sex and uh what goes on in (children's lives)? (.) Emily: (Well?) So! What d'ya guys think. We were going to break you guys into groups but (.) Tad: we figured that that's been overworked a lot in this class? so we figured we have a kinda jus- = Emily: = ( )= =have a open? (.) discussion? (.) and maybe just Tad: (.) what you guys feel? because I mean my- my views: (.) F? : °I know:o (.) have changed a little bit, as far as (.) sex Tad: education should be taught in schools because I don't think it is up to the government to (be forcing) something like this, (.) I think it's more parents and more religion, (.) °then)° (.) Emily: Alright! [ ] So whataya guys think! [(°uh°)] Tad:
Example 5 occurs at the end of a long introductory segment in which Emily, Tad, and other members of the group assigned to lead this class discussion on sex education have presented a large amount of canned information about the topic. Emily at Line 1 initiates a transition from canned presentation to open discussion with a markedly hedged expression of interest in "what you guys think." Tad interrupts and proceeds to talk at some length, emphasizing that, even though the leaders are "presenting ourselves in a sort of biased standpoint" in favor of sex education, the topic really is controversial. (Thirty lines have been deleted from Tad's long turn.) At Line 19 Emily recycles the question, more confidently than before, but Tad again interrupts to report that the leaders have decided against using an "overworked" approach, that open discussion is wanted, and, again, that the topic really does warrant discussion as evidenced by the fact that Tad's own views "have changed a little bit" (Line 30). What is interesting about Tad's / think and / don't think is less his attitude as speaker toward his own propositions, but the way he puts forward those markers of thought-in-process in the service of presenting something to be reacted to in a situation that threatens an end to the talk. Emily then repeats her question a second time, still more emphatically than before, after which open discussion begins (finally!). In this segment, Tad displays great concern to repair a condition that may render Emily's invitation to open discussion unsuccessful, the
CLASSROOM DISCUSSION
113
condition being that the topic is uncontroversial. Think talk again is occasioned by agreement as a threat to the discussion process.
DISCUSSION In summary, we have described several ways in which think talk is used to index online thinking and expressions of opinion in the discussion process. "I think" can be a token that a speaker uses to bypass conditional relevance of her contribution to the immediately preceding talk in favor of the contribution's relevance as one of a series of individual reactions to a leader's question. Think talk also can be used to mark transitions between canned and open discussion, and to maintain a sense of process when the potential for further discussion on the topic seems threatened. We conclude with a brief discussion of some possible implications in regard to the semantics and pragmatics of / think, and further research on classroom discussion and related forms of institutional discourse.
/ Think, Modality and Politeness Our analysis finds that think may function as meta-talk (Schiffrin, 1980) in that it focuses attention on the status of the talk. However, it does so in ways that have little to do with the semantics of the verb think and more to do with a need to display what kind of talk it should be taken to be. It is only by freeing ourselves from the expectation that words contribute semantically rather than pragmatically that we can see the way these phrases, in the examples we have presented, have been put to a metadiscursive task that is not clearly predictable from the semantics of the words. In the linguistic literature, as we noted earlier, / think most often appears in discussions of modality and hedging (e.g., Coates,1987; Galasinski, 1996) or of modality as it functions to do facework (e.g., Brown & Levinson, 1987; Turnbull & Saxton, 1997). As Holmes (1984) pointed out, these represent the two primary reasons why a speaker would want to modify the illocutionary force of a speech act: "to convey modal meaning or the speaker's attitude to the content of the proposition, and to express affective meaning or the speaker's attitude to the addressee in the context of the utterance" (p. 348). In these functions, / think seems to draw on the implications (e.g., rationality, intentionality, and their social implications) of the semantic content of the lexical verb think, so that a speaker using / think would be referring to and characterizing a consciously held opinion or intent.
114
CHAPTER 5
Curiously, / think resists categorization as either a downtoner or a booster (Holmes, 1984) of speaker commitment because, like / believe, depending on its intonation pattern, it may either hedge or intensify/highlight the speaker's commitment to her utterance. Perhaps this ambiguity accounts for why / think is absent from Schiffrm's (1987) discourse marker model of discourse, although semantically, as a lexical verb, it would seem to have a place with such discourse markers as you know and / mean, whose verbs appear to refer to a particular way of "holding" a kind of cognitive entity.2 However, Schiffrin (1990) noted that although modality, or speaker commitment to a proposition, may be marked in a variety of (perhaps redundant) ways both linguistically and metalinguistically, there may in fact be no such marking at all. This of course raises the question of whether the overt marking of modality through / think might have some other discursive or communicative functions. Given that it can usually be taken that what one says is what one thinks (as can perhaps be inferred by the fact that what is usually explicitly marked is deviation from that expectation), why bother to explicitly metalinguistically mark the expected? We recognize that / think no doubt often participates in meaning making through the semantic contribution of the verb think (as Schiffrin, 1987, in fact argued to be the case for you know and / mean), but we would like to suggest that / think may also be used in a way that is quite independent of the semantic content of the verb. We suggest that there is evidence in our data that / think may be doing interactional work much in the fashion of tokens like oh (Heritage, 1984, 1998) and okay (Beach, 1995), which do important interactional work despite their scant semantic content. If we can see / think as a relatively semantically empty token that might be doing some work besides referring to and characterizing mental states, the question arises what that work might be. It appears to us that / think, particularly in its (sequentially more or less distant) relationship to a discussion leader's question posed roughly in the form, What do you guys think?, points to the speaker's making this contribution as a second pair-part made relevant by that question. As such, / think also serves to "disconnect" the current contribution from any interpretation in terms of the immediately preceding turn. In doing so, / think seems to be a participant's resource for the performance of discussion, where crafting one's contribution in terms of the content and form of the previous utterance is less useful than 2
Interestingly, though, Schiffrin's structuralist approach to discovering the meanings of you know and / mean through examining their complementary functions roughly parallels our own approach: whereas Schiffrin (1987) found that you know and I mean work to shift orientation between speaker and hearer, we argue that I'm (just) saying and / think can serve complementary functions of maintaining personal standpoint continuity and keeping the discussion going.
CLASSROOM DISCUSSION
115
crafting one's contribution (via / think) as just one more answer—"my answer"— to a leader's topic-based question. In claiming that / think is a participant's resource for doing this kind of interactional work, we are not claiming that this is the only function that / think prefacing can perform, nor are we claiming that no other mechanisms exist for accomplishing this same interactional task. Our claim is the limited one, that this is one interactional function that / think appears to be performing in the data we have examined.
Implications for Further Research This research should be extended to examine the functions of other markers of process and continuity in the conduct of classroom discussions. We wonder, for example, what might be the distinction, if any, between I feel and / think, which alternate in interesting ways in our data (see Example 3; Example 5, Lines 2635). The significance of preliminary observation is that it opens up the possibility of research that focuses on communicative problems in particular settings. In these student-led classroom discussions, one salient problem is to maintain the flow of talk as required both to fill time and to "cover ground" for purposes of evaluation by the teacher. Rather different problems may be expected to be more salient in group discussions oriented to arriving efficiently at a consensus or decision for purposes of action. It would be interesting to see whether / think is often used in school board meetings or jury deliberations, for example, in ways we have noted in these classroom discussions. In these other settings, no less than in classroom discussions, discussion process as well as continuity of standpoints in the expression of opinions is surely important, but the process demands of the other settings are probably quite different. Within the classroom setting itself, the interactional problems of teacher-led discussions undoubtedly differ from those apparent in our student-led discussions. Whereas participants in our discussions are of essentially equal status, even though some perform a differentiated role of discussion facilitator, teacher-led discussions involve a more marked differentiation of power and authority. Huspek's (1989) study of the differential use of / think and you know in working-class speech suggests one interesting point of comparison. The preponderance of / think and the relative scarcity of you know markers in our data contrasts with the overwhelming preponderance of you know sequences in the speech of Huspek's working-class respondents. The pattern of our data is consistent with the predominantly middle-class status of our students. It may also reflect the lack of salient power differences in these student-led discussions
116
CHAPTER 5
along with the situational demand for participants to assert their individual opinions (indexed by / think), whereas in other circumstances they might do more to highlight common ground (indexed by you know). These possibilities can be explored empirically in studies of different groups and settings, including teacher-led classroom discussions. So, what do you guys think?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the annual convention of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA, May 29, 1999.
REFERENCES Beach, W. A. (1995). Conversation analysis: "Okay" as a clue for understanding consequentiality. In S. J. Sigman (Ed.), The consequentiality of communication (pp. 121-161). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Coates, J. (1987). Epistemic modality and spoken discourse. Transactions of the Philological Society, pp. 110-131. Craig, R. T. (1997). Reflective discourse in a critical thinking classroom. In J. F. Klumpp (Ed.), Argument in a time of change: Definitions, frameworks, and critiques (Proceedings of the Tenth NCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation) (pp. 356-361). Annandale, VA: National Communication Association. Craig, R. T. (1999a). Metadiscourse, theory, and practice. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32, 21-29 Craig, R. T. (1999b, July 30). "The issue" as a metadiscursive device in some student-led classroom discussions. Paper presented at the Eleventh AFA/NCA Summer Conference on Argumentation, Alta, UT. Craig, R. T., & Sanusi, A. L. (2000). "I'm just saying": Discourse markers of standpoint continuity. Argumentation, 19, 425-495. Galasinksi, D. (1996). Pretending to cooperate: How speakers hide evasive actions. Argumentation, 10, 375-388.
CLASSROOM DISCUSSION
117
Heritage, J. (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 299-345). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J. (1998). Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry. Language in Society, 27, 291-334. Holmes, J. (1984). Modifying illocutionary force. Journal of Pragmatics, 8, 345-365. Huspek, M. (1989). Linguistic variability and power: An analysis of YOU KNOW/I THINK variation in working-class speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 13, 661-683. Muller, H. L. (1999a, Noverber 6). Creating expectations of appreciation by animating mock figures. Paper presented at the annual convention of the National Communication Association, Chicago. Muller, H. L. (1999b, July 30). Hypothetical examples in student arguments: Animating mock and cited figures. Paper presented at the Eleventh AFA/NCA Summer Conference on Argumentation, Alta, UT. Pomerantz, A. M. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. C. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 57-101). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sanusi, A. L. (1999). Maintaining formation: An instance of frame transition. Paper presented at the November 2000 annual convention of the National Communication Association, Seattle, WA. Schiffrin, D. (1980). Meta-talk: Organizational and evaluative brackets in discourse. Sociological Inquiry, 50(3-4), 199-236. Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse markers. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schiffrin, D. (1990). The management of a co-operative self during argument: The role of opinions and stories. In A. D. Grimshaw (Ed.), Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations (pp. 241-259). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tumbull, W., & Saxton, K. L. (1996). Modal expressions as facework in refusals to comply with requests: I think I should say "no" right now. Journal of Pragmatics, 27, 145-181.
This page intentionally left blank
6 Gesture and the Transparency of Understanding Curtis D. LeBaron Brigham Young University Timothy Koschmann Southern Illinois University Most research on language and social interaction (LSI) has been decidedly action focused, more concerned with what people do (i.e., vocal and visible behaviors) and how they do it (e.g., through mutual orientation and coordination), less concerned with subjects' possible cognitive states (e.g., intentions, motivations, and understandings). Conversation analysis (CA) especially has been touted as an empirically rigorous alternative to mentalistic perspectives that regard language as a way to study underlying psychological states, structures, and competencies. Robert Hopper (1997), for example, described himself as a "cognitive agnostic." Though not denying the existence and potential importance of cognition, he insisted that researchers "should distinguish between calculated speech and most social interaction . . . distinguish what actors do from what theorists may infer" (p. 6). Hopper's agnostic stance was consistent with CA as it has generally been described and applied. Heritage (1990/1991) observed that "conversation analysts have sought, wherever possible, to avoid a terminology of social action that invokes mentalistic predicates and thereby anthropomorphizes processes that may be less anthropomorphic than we conventionally believe" (pp. 328—329). (See also Heritage, 1984; Hopper, 1989, 1990, 1992; Hopper, Koch, & Mandelbaum, 119
120
CHAPTER 6
1986; Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Jacobs, 1988; Levinson, 1983; Pomerantz, 1990; Psathas, 1995.) We agree with and indeed celebrate the efforts of Hopper, Heritage, and others to place CA work on a rigorous foundation, one that does not allow ungrounded speculation with respect to interactants' hypothesized states of mind. In our own studies of classroom interaction (cf., Koschmann, Glenn, & Conlee, 2000; LeBaron, 1998; LeBaron & Koschmann, 1999; LeBaron & Streeck, 2000), however, we have been brought to examine how participants avow and ascribe mentalistic predicates to themselves and to others in the course of their joint and ongoing learning activities. A question for us, therefore, has been how can we as analysts document the practical methods by which these activities are accomplished without abandoning the standards of warrantability set forth by the founders of our field? Such questions and issues have already been raised by other researchers, who have proposed discursive or praxiological approaches to the study of "psychological" matters. Social psychologists with an interest in discourse and conversation analysis (e.g., Edwards, 1997; Edwards & Porter, 1992), for example, have considered cognitive phenomena through detailed study of talk-in-interaction. "Rather than treating cognition as prior to, and separable from, interaction, it is treated as something that is managed in, constituted in, and constructed in interaction" (Potter, 1998, p. 35). Some conversation analysts working within the ethnomethodological tradition (e.g., Coulter, 1990; Lynch & Bogen, 1996) have regarded cognition as largely public and observable rather than purely private and mental. Coulter (1979) observed that "members of a culture mundanely traffic in cognitive categories and predicates . . . and have practical ways of making subjectivity-determinations" (p. 51). He was early to propose a program of research to determine "how—on the basis of what culturally available reasonings and presuppositions—do members actually avow and ascribe mental predicates to one another?" (p. 37). An example of one such mental predicate is the verb to understand. Following the work of ordinary language philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1949), Coulter observed that understand is not a process-verb like play, but rather a terminusverb like win. An avowal that one understands, therefore, does not describe a "temporally-extended course of action" (p. 37), but instead serves "to mark out a success-claim" (p. 37). Coulter noted that Wittgenstein joined Ryle in treating understanding as other than a private, mental experience. Wittgenstein (1953/1968) wrote with regard to an individual's claim to understanding, "One might rather call it a 'signal'; and we can judge whether [the claim] was rightly employed by what he goes on to do" (para. 180). Coulter concluded, "The criteria for understanding, for having understanding, cannot be private, inner mental or experiential states or processes, but must be scenic" (p. 39).
GESTURE
121
We use the phrase transparency of understanding to suggest that participants' understandings within classrooms (and we think other settings) may be publicly performed, sequentially organized, made available for others' (and analysts') inspection, altogether "accountable" . The scenic features whereby understandings are enacted are not restricted to the linguistic, but include the mediation of artifacts, situated practices of inscription, and various embodied forms of communication. Communicating bodies arguably have primacy over talk—bodies of understanding may occupy and move within social space, appearing first and lingering long after a conversation has died. In the data presented here, a transparency of understanding is interactively achieved through recurring hand gestures that are coordinated with talk and other body movements in understandable or "recognizable" (Sacks, 1965/1992, p. 226) ways. Our approach to studying gesture and human understanding should not be confused with earlier work of a psycholinguistic bent (e.g., Goldin-Meadows, Alibali, & Church, 1993; McNeill, 1985, 1992) that treated gesture as a window into cognitive processes. Instead, we have adopted a microethnographic perspective that draws upon the traditions of CA and context analysis (cf. Kendon, 1990) to explore how gesture contributes to shared forms of understanding as an interactional, rather than cognitive, achievement.
"CAN YOU DEFINE THRILLS?" Our videotaped record shows eight people involved in a problem-based learning (PEL) exercise (Koschmann, Kelson, Feltovich, & Barrows, 1996) associated with a medical school in the midwestern United States. The participants were divided into two groups that communicated via a video-conferencing system. Although physically separated by approximately 100 miles, the two groups were virtually brought together as one televised image that all participants could see and hear (see Fig. 6.1). A faculty "coach" and three medical students were seen in the picturein-picture (PIP) window on the lower right of the screen. The four students shown in the full screen were enrolled in a nursing program. At both locations, participants sat in a semi-circle around a large table so that they could easily orient toward each other, toward a common workbook (i.e., their medical case study), and toward the video-conferencing equipment (camera and monitor) that enabled communication with the other group.
We use the term in the sense suggested by Garfinkel (1967), that is, "Any setting organizes its activities to make its properties as an organized environment of practical activities detectable, countable, recordable, reportable, tell-a-story-aboutable, analyzable—in short, accountable" (p. 33).
122
CHAPTER 6
Fig. 6.1: Four nursing students, three medical students, and one faculty coach participate in a problem-based learning exercise, via a videoconferencing system. Within this educational setting, participants were routinely called upon to display their medical "knowledge." One task facing the students was to interpret what their workbook said. The medical students, who had not yet had any clinical experience, looked to the nursing students to explain various clinical terms and concepts found in the workbook. Typically, a medical student asked a question and one or more nursing students provided an impromptu answer. Such knowledge displays were usually marked by hesitations, restarts, silences, colloquial speech, self-repair, and other features typical of "explainmg-in-themoment" (Crowder, 1996). Moreover, knowledge displays were often interactive accomplishments. That is, respondents often failed to complete their answers alone and instead paused, shifted gaze, changed body orientation, or gestured toward another person, and thereby invited (or at least created opportunity spaces for) others to collaborate in the knowledge display. Koschmann, et al. (2000) observed a recurrent structure within PBL exercises that they termed a "knowledge display segment" (KDS), defined as "a topic-delimited segment of instructional discourse in which participants raise a topic for discussion and one or more members elect to display their understanding of that topic" (p. 55).
GESTURE
123
For instance, at one point during their discussion, the students came across the term thrills and one of the medical students (Jack) asked a question that some of the nursing students (e.g., Bill) elected to answer. The moment has been transcribed as follows (a complete transcript appears at the end of this chapter):
(l) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Jack: Bill: Susan: ' Bill:
Can you defi:ne thrills (1.0) Thri:ll is what you fee:1 (.) like is: (.) ya could- (0.4) If- if you happened to have uh huge murmur (0.4) you could put your hand on (your) chest and [feel it l_Feel the upbeat
Although Jack's utterance was ostensibly a "closed" question (which could have been answered with "yes" or "no"), Bill treated it as a prompt to display his knowledge by providing a definition of thrill. As Bill began speaking (Line 3), he also raised his left hand and began gesturing (see Fig. 6.2). With his hand elevated and hence made available for others' view, he repeatedly wiggled the fingers of his left hand. By coordinating this gesture with the lexical affiliate "feel" (Line 3) Bill's gesture was recognizable as a tactile representation—that is, his moving fingers were performing the behavior or experience of feeling with the hand.
Fig. 6.2: Bill attempted to define the word thrill
124
CHAPTER 6
However, Bill failed to complete a coherent response alone. He did not produce an utterance that was bearably complete. As the transcription (Line 3) shows, he repeatedly paused during his turn at talk, and he restarted his utterance to change the trajectory of his explanation. His first restart was marked by the words "like is" (Line 3); a second restart occurred with the words "ya could" (Line 4). Moreover, each of these restarts was coordinated with a shift in the shape of his gesturing hand. When Bill said, "like is," his fingers stopped wiggling and came together in a rounded shape. When he said, "you could," Bill moved his left hand down and scratched the side of his neck, and his eye gaze simultaneously shifted away from the monitor and down to the workbook, withdrawing from the interaction (see Fig. 6.3). Thus, Bill's knowledge display came up short: His hand gesture dissolved into a neck scratch at the same time that his talk was suspended and his eyes dropped.
Figure 6.3: Susan performs a heart murmur gesture. Susan (on Bill's right) picked up where Bill left off. By repeating the word feel (Line 7), Susan made her talk recognizable as a continuation of the knowledge display Bill initiated—that is, he also used the word feel (Line 3). However, Susan's utterance was more hearably complete. The syntactic and prosodic structure of her talk indicated a transition relevance place (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974) after the words "feel it" (Line 7). Moreover, her utterance was coordinated with a recognizably coherent gesture. At the beginning of her utterance (with the words "if- if), she lifted her right hand to her chest, locating it where a heartbeat might be felt. .With the words "you could" (Line 6) she lifted her flattened hand a few inches from her chest (see Fig. 6.3) and then
GESTURE
125
returned her hand to her chest. Altogether, Susan performed a hand-felt heartbeat (albeit exaggerated). Notice Bill's alignment with Susan's behavior. Bill collaboratively completed Susan's utterance with his words "feel the upbeat" (Line 8). His collaborative completion evidenced that he heard and understood her description sufficient to complete it in overlap with her. Moreover, Bill's own hand movements changed to correspond with the gesture that Susan now performed. After scratching his neck, Bill looked toward the monitor where Susan's hand was visibly flattened against her chest, at which point Bill lowered his hand toward his own chest and spread his fingers in flattened form (see Fig. 6.4).
Fig. 6.4: Bill flattens his hand after looking toward Susan's. Bill performed a gestural shape in conjunction with Susan's production. Through such vocal and visible displays of alignment, Bill showed that Susan's performance was an appropriate continuation of the knowledge display that he had initiated. Continuing their response to Jack's question about the term thrills, the nursing students further coordinated their vocal and visible behaviors. After collaboratively completing (Line 8) Susan's description, Bill elected to continue: (2) (1.1)
10
11 12
Bill:
It's like (.) flui:d that's getting caught on somethin' and it's (.) twisting arou:nd the
126 13 14 15
CHAPTER 6 Jean: Bill:
vessel or ar[tery or whatever (.Turbulence It's tur bulence yeah
After a brief silence (Line 10), Bill added to the talk about the term thrill (Lines 11 through 13), but again failed to produce a coherent explanation that was bearably complete. Notice the form and content of his talk: An utterance-initial hedge ("it's like"), followed by hesitations (pauses) and nondescript words ("somethin" and "whatever"), came together in a rather odd narrative about blood within the heart getting "caught" and "twisting around"—action words not usually associated with fluids. Nevertheless, Bill's vocal behaviors were coordinated with a hand gesture that was evidently consequential. With his index finger extended, he rotated his left hand in the air to iconically represent the movement of fluid within a chamber (see Fig. 6.5).
Figure 6.5: Bill performs a "turbulence" gesture. Jean (on Bill's left) watched his gesture (see Fig. 6.5) before speaking the word turbulence (Line 14). By speaking in overlap, Jean participated in Bill's knowledge display. By speaking only after Bill's gestural performance but before the end of his utterance, Jean showed recognition of Bill's embodied actions. Whether or not Bill was searching for the word turbulence, Jean provided it (Line 14) and Bill then repeated it (Line 15)—literally incorporating it into his description of thrills. Through repetition of Jean's word, Bill treated Jean's interjection as collaborative. The group's understanding of the term thrills was not a private achievement, nor was it a hidden psychological condition inaccessible to
GESTURE
127
analysts. Rather, a transparency of understanding was publicly and interactively achieved among the nursing students, through visible and audible behaviors carefully orchestrated. Through coordination of their talk, embodied actions, especially recognizable hand gestures, and ongoing use of material objects and mediating tools within an organized space, the nursing students interactively performed an understanding of the term thrills that the medical students silently observed and thereby corroborated. The participants' collaboratively completed each other's utterances, repeated terms of each other's talk, reproduced each other's hand gestures, and in other ways cooperated in a collective display of understanding. Eventually, the nursing students stopped talking and oriented away from the television monitors and back toward their workbook (or toward each other, whispering quietly), thereby showing themselves to be satisfied that an understanding of thrills had been adequately provided or accomplished. Moments later, one of the medical students elected to speak, transcribed as follows: (3) 23 24
Marie:
Thrill is just the: (.) you're feeling the murmur (.) you can feel it with your ha:nd
Marie's description or definition of thrills came off as relatively succinct, hearably complete, perhaps polished—at least compared to Bill's earlier attempts to define the term, which involved hesitations, restarts, and eventually Susan and Jean as overlapping collaborators. Nevertheless, Marie's ostensibly individual display of understanding must rightly be regarded as a group achievement as her performance represented a composite of the nursing students' immediately prior vocal and visible behaviors. Marie used words that had already been spoken: feel (Lines 3, 7, 8, and 17), murmur (Lines 5, 19, 21), and hand (Line 6). Moreover, her utterance was coordinated with a gestural sequence that unmistakably resembled Susan's (and Bill's) prior performance: With the word thrill (Line 23), Marie placed her flattened hand onto her chest; with the word feeling she lifted her hand a few inches from her chest before returning it. Thus, her ostensibly individual display of understanding was an embodied "formulation" (Heritage & Watson, 1979) of sorts that summarized or performed the gist of prior interaction—both talk and gesture—and thereby displayed a certain understanding of that prior interaction, altogether advancing the transparency of understanding within the group. Marie's participation served to bridge the telecommunications divide of the group's videoconferencing session—that is, she helped to constitute the eight participants as being of "one mind" by registering within the PIP window a sequence of behaviors with a recognizable pedigree of social interaction from the larger frame.
128
CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION Through microethnographic study of classroom activity, such as briefly represented here, we have documented various forms of communication, including gesture, whereby a transparency of understanding may be interactively accomplished. Gestures may literally take shape as new understandings publicly emerge and evolve within a group. Gestures may be observably shared—even repeatedly performed—by those who move jointly toward a transparency of understanding. Among the several studies of gesture conducted within the field of LSI in recent decades (e.g., Bavelas, 1994; C. Goodwin, 1986; C. Goodwin & M. H. Goodwin, 1986; Kendon, 1972, 1980, 1987; LeBaron & Streek, 2000; Streeck, 1993, 1994), our study seems to compare and contrast most interestingly with one: Schegloffs (1984) examination of gesture and "projection." Using conversation analytic methods to explicate empirical (transcribed) details of talk, Schegloff found that gestures almost always occur within the same turn as their "lexical affiliates," but also tend to precede their lexical affiliates, thereby constituting a "projection space"—that is, a processing period between the earliest indication of a communicative behavior and its eventual delivery. Through study of iconic gestures, he sought "an independent estimate of the possible size of the projection space" (p. 288), which might shed light on other sorts of phenomena such as projection and conversational repair. Although Schegloff flirted with issues of cognitive processes as he focused on singular utterances of individual speakers , he carefully wrote with the voice of a cognitive agnostic: Words such as intention were displaced by terms like projection; words such as recognized were recast as "displayed recognition of; if the term preference was used, it was redefined as a structural rather than a psychological condition; when words such as think appeared, they were corralled by quotation marks; and so forth. Our study of gesture involves some notable (and we think complementary) differences. By focusing on strips of social interaction (i.e., knowledge display segments) rather than individual utterances or even utterance pairs, we see how the life span and the meaning of a gesture may extend across See Moerman (1990), which criticized Schegloffs (1984) study because it was "interested in mental, not social matters . . . in cognitive processing and forms of thought" rather than interactive processes (p. 8); because it related "movements to words and ideas [and did not] describe those gestures in their social context" (p. 19); because it focused upon isolated or single utterances "treated more as sentences composed by individuals than as the products of interaction" (p. 20); and because it based "the meaning of a gesture on its correspondance with its affiliated word" (p. 40).
129
GESTURE
multiple turns at talk among multiple participants. We find gestures to be strongly affiliated—not only with specific lexical items—but with parts and wholes of utterances, other participants' utterances, other gestures, other participants' gestures, participants' embodied use of space, and so forth. Viewed from such a perspective, the ways in which gestures are employed in interaction are highly relevant to the task of explicating how participants routinely make their understandings visible to themselves and others. It is in this sense that we speak of the transparency of understanding, not as a private mental event, but as an embodied, public, and, hence, analyzable achievement.
APPENDIX 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Jack: Bill: Susan:
Bill: (?) : Bill:
Jean: Bill: Jean: Bill: Susan: Bill: Marie:
Can you defi:ne thrills (1.0) Thri:ll is what you fee:1 (.) like is: (.) ya could- (0.4) If- if you happened to have uh huge murmer (0.4) you could put your hand on (your) chest andIfeel it l_Feel the upbeat Right (1.1) It's like (.) flui:d that's getting caught on somethin' and it's (.) twisting arou:nd the vessel or arftery or whatever [Turbulence It's tur [bulence yeah [Turbulence You can feel a thri:ll or you (0.2) auscultate a bruit which youTcan hea:r Lor a murmur (0.2) Or IT a murmur (0.8) Thrill is just the: (.) you're feeling the murmur (.) you can feel it with your ha:nd
130
CHAPTER 6
REFERENCES Bavelas, J. (1994). Gestures as part of speech: Methodological implications. Research on Language and Social Interaction 27(3), 201-221. Coulter, J. (1979). The social construction of mind. London: Macmillan. Coulter, J. (1990). Mind in action. Oxford, England: Polity Press. Crowder, E. (1996). Gestures at work in sense-making science talk. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 5, 173-208. Edwards, D. (1997). Discourse and cognition. London: Sage. Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (1992). Discursive psychology. London: Sage. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Goldin-Meadows, S., Alibali, M., & Church, R. B. (1993). Transitions in concept acquisition: Using the hand to read the mind. Psychological Review, 100, 279-297. Goodwin, C. (1986). Gestures as a resource for the organization of mutual orientation. Semiotica, 62(1/2), 29-49. Goodwin, C. & Goodwin, M. H. (1986). Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word. Semiotica, 62(1/2), 51-75. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Heritage, J. (1990/1991). Intention, meaning, and strategy: Observations on constraints on interaction analysis. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 25, 309-330. Heritage, J., & Watson, D. R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 123-162). New York: Irvington. Hopper, R. (1989). Conversation analysis and social psychology as description of interpersonal communication. In D. Roger & P. Bull, (Eds.), Conversation (pp. 48-66). Avon, England: Multilingual Matters. Hopper, R. (1990). Ethnography and conversation analysis after Talking Culture [Special section]. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 25, 161-162. Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hopper, R. (1997, June). A cognitive agnostic in conversation analysis: When do strategies affect spoken interaction? Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Montreal.
GESTURE
131
Hopper, R., Koch, S., & Mandelbaum, J. (1986). Conversation analysis methods. In D. Ellis & W. Donohue (Eds.), Contemporary issues and discourse processes (pp. 169-186). New York: Erlbaum. Hutchby, I., & Wooffitt, R. (1998). Conversation analysis: Principles, practices, and applications. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Jacobs, S. (1988). Evidence and inference in conversation analysis. In J. A. Anderson, (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 11 (pp. 433-443). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Kendon, A. (1972). Some relationships between body motion and speech. In A. W. Seigman & B. Pope (Eds.), Studies in dyadic communication (pp. 177-210). Elmsford, NY: Pergamon. Kendon, A. (1980). Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance. In M. R. Key (Ed.), The relationship of verbal and nonverbal communication (pp. 207-228). The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. Kendon, A. (1987). On gesture: Its complementary relationship with speech. In A.W. Siegman & S. Feldstein (Eds.), Nonverbal behavior and communication (pp. 65-97). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Kendon, A. (1990). Conducting interaction: Patterns of behavior in focused encounters. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Koschmann, T., Glenn, P., & Conlee, M. (2000). When is a problem-based tutorial not tutorial? Analyzing the tutor's role in the emergence of a learning issue. In C. Hmelo & D. Evensen (Eds.), Problem-based learning: Gaining insights on learning interactions through multiple methods of inquiry (pp. 53-74). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Koschmann, T., Kelson, A., Feltovich, P., & Barrows, H. (1996). Computersupported PEL: A principled approach. In T. Koschmann (Ed.), CSCL: Theory and practice of an emerging paradigm (pp. 83-124). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. LeBaron, C. (1998). Building communication: Architectural gestures and the embodiment of new ideas. Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin,.University Microfilms NO. AAT98-38026. LeBaron, C. & Koschmann, T. (1999, May). The conversation of gestures: interaction and learner articulation. Paper presented at the 49th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA. LeBaron, C., & Streeck, J. (2000). Gestures, knowledge, and the world. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and Gesture. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
132
CHAPTER 6
Lynch, M., & Bogen, D. (1996). The spectacle of history: Speech, text and memory of the Iran-Contra hearings. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McNeill, D. (1985). So you think gestures are nonverbal? Psychological Review, 92, 350-371. McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moerman, M. (1990). Studying gestures in social context. Senri Ethnological Studies, 27, 5-45. Pomerantz, A. (1990). Conversation analytic claims. Communication Monographs, 57, 231-235. Potter, J. (1998). Cognition as context (whose cognition?). Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 29-44. Psathas, G. (1995). Conversation analysis: The study of talk-in-interaction. London: Sage. Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson's University Library. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation (2 vols., G. Jefferson, Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696-735. Schegloff, E. (1984). On some gestures' relation to talk. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 266-296). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Streeck, J. (1993). Gesture as communication: Its coordination with gaze and speech. Communication Monographs, 60, 215-299. Streeck, J. (1994). Gesture as communication II: The audience as co-author. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27(3), 239-267. Wittgenstein, L. (1968). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.). Oxford: Blackwell. (Original work published 1953).
II Talk in Everyday Life It is perhaps not incidental that people have not devoted their lives to studying sentences like "I had a good breakfast this morning" or "How are you?". There are more or less defensible reasons for not studying such sentences. Not studying such sentences, however, may have real consequences. The question of what language can do, what people can do with language, what the results of an analysis of "I had a good breakfast this morning" would involve, what kind of program it poses for a field—all these things remain absolutely open. —Sacks, 1984, p. 24 One of the hallmarks of language and social interaction research is keen interest in ordinary, commonplace interpersonal communication. Sacks, the founder of conversation analysis (CA), observed that the mundane, trivial talk people do in living their everyday lives risks being slighted by social scientists more concerned with finding prima facie "important" topics for study. Countering this trend, LSI research has shown convincingly that routine interaction serves as a locus for instantiations and negotiations of identity, relationships, social structure, and culture. The LSI interest in the everyday reflects not only a theoretical assumption about its importance but also an ideological commitment to appreciating and even celebrating routine human communication. Robert Hopper actively sought to open communication scholars' eyes to the everyday, resisting a too narrow concern with what he termed "the great words of great people." The articles in this section present empirical studies of casual interaction. They primarily reflect conversation analytic methods. As others (Psathas, 1995; ten Have, 1999) have noted, the name "conversation analysis" proves unduly restrictive, for the methods have proven useful to approach a variety of types of interactions beyond conversation. Nevertheless, most of the discourse examined in these articles occurred in casual (non-institutional) situations: among acquaintances, friends, and family members. 133
134
PART II
Charlotte Jones (chap. 7) examines restarts in conversation, where a speaker begins an utterance, abandons it, then begins again. She extends prior work by Goodwin (1980) and Schegloff (1987), who showed how restarts can work to attract the attention or gaze of an interlocutor. Jones finds that some restarts may direct the interlocutor's attention to a particular activity, specifically beginning a new topic, or presenting a sensitive or delicate matter. Charles Goodwin (chap. 8) examines how a speaker may "drop" the name of an "assessable" object in such a way that a hearer can recognize the assessable character or special status of the referenced item. He shows how speakers produce some assessables in such a way as to project for the recipient how they should be assessed, whereas the production of others can constitute an assessment "test" for the recipient. Goodwin draws on and extends previous CA research on assessments (e.g., Pomerantz, 1984). Susan Corbin (chap. 9) argues that questions containing the wording "did you" may present particular interactional problems, in that the wording can indicate that the asker expects that something should have been done. Therefore, such questions may carry an accusatory sense that makes relevant subsequent talk that addresses the accusation. Data for the study come from both recorded conversations and field notes. She analyzes both logical and pragmatic presuppositions inherent in these questions, noting that the majority of "did you" questions do not receive only a "yes" or "no" but an elaborated answer, often with accounts. The tenth chapter examines conversations about illness outside of the doctor's office. The vast majority of social scientific research on medical interaction has focused on professionals communicating and working with patients. By contrast, Wayne Beach legitimizes the role of laypersons in issues of health and healing. He studies telephone conversations between family members of cancer patients, who update, assimilate, and commiserate about the diagnosis and treatment of their loved one. Whatever news or instructions patients may receive from an expert at a medical facility, the information is necessarily understood and given shape through the everyday relations of people communicating at home. Through his analysis, Beach ties abstract notions such as "stages of grieving" and "having hope" to specific social actions identifiable within transcribed data. His study of everyday talk about cancer bears kinship with his (1996) research on bulimia, which was based on a naturally occurring conversation between a bulimic young woman and her grandmother, who recognized and dealt with the granddaughter's eating disorder. Samuel Lawrence (chap. 11) takes up the issue of how interactants deal with "unwanted" understandings. He provides a case study of one participant's rejection of another's understanding. In effect he examines an instance in which what Drew (1987) called a "po-faced" receipt of a tease may have implications
PART II
135
for the relationship between interactants. He contrasts this with practices of third-position repair. In chapter 12, Jenny Mandelbaum investigates ways that people accomplish interpersonal relationships through their interactions. She presents detailed analysis of two cases to show methods through which people foreground relationship while continuing talk and related activities. "Tit for tat" and conversational repair allow participants to focus attention on some prior bit of talk produced by another speaker. Relational communication is always implicitly present; this analysis locates moments in which it becomes explicit and thus more directly available to analysis than in the flow of relationally unmarked discourse. It offers a bridge from LSI to relational communication research interests. Gail Jefferson (chap. 13) describes how interactants may clarify a possible ambiguity without explicitly doing so. On occasion when an alternative possible hearing could be available in the talk of a speaker, that speaker continues talk in such a way as to clarify which of the alternative hearings is meant. In that this is done without explicit self-correction (Schegloff, Jefferson & Sacks, 1977), it poses an analytical puzzle. Conversation analysts typically rely upon interactants' displayed orientations to the ongoing activities in talk. This chapter illustrates how a researcher may deal with a phenomenon for which these resources are elusive, raising issues about the process of analysis and offering some suggestive findings. Also addressing a methodological conundrum, in chapter 14 Emanuel Schegloff raises the issue of how analysts might trace the suppression of an item and its apparent later surfacing. The instances involve a speaker beginning a turn constructional unit in which a next word, relatively clearly projectible, is not produced at that moment. However, the possible word in question appears in that person's talk shortly thereafter, but used in a different sense. This analysis goes beyond prior conversation analytic work that has addressed the issue of noticeable or hearable absences of actions (e.g., second pair parts following first parts of adjacency pairs). Here, Schegloff accounts for the absence, and subsequent reappearance, of particular words. Conversation analysts have argued that in order to invoke some feature of context to account for details of interaction, the researcher must demonstrate its relevance for participants (Schegloff, 1987). Through analysis of a single instance, in Chapter 15 Phillip Glenn provides evidence that laughter, by features of its production and placement, may reveal participant orientation to gender. Thus laughter, like other micro features of interaction, "shapes and renews" context (Heritage, 1984, p. 242)—in this case, a gendered context. How people orient to and constitute gender in talk is one example of the larger issue of
136
PART II
connections between discourse and context, which continues to play a central role in much LSI research. Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra (chap. 16) uses conversation analytic methods for gathering and transcribing recordings of naturalistic interactions. She builds upon and extends previous research by Schegloff, Hopper, herself, and others, concerning patterns of identification and recognition in telephone interaction openings. Beginning with data to support an argument for systematic differences between Dutch and American calls, she then explores possible explanations. She develops an intriguing claim about historic change in the ways Dutch tend to self-identify in phone openings. Further elaborating the analysis, she then reports research suggesting that there are sex differences within the Dutch data. Thus, her chapter suggests that variations in how people answer the phone and accomplish identification may reflect culture, sex, and changes through time.
REFERENCES Beach, W. (1996). Conversational about illness: Family preoccupations with bulimia. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Drew, P. (1987). Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics, 25, 219-253. Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Psathas, G. (1995). Conversation analysis methods: The study of talk in interaction. Thousand Oaks: Sage Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on Methodology. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies of conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Between macro and micro: Contexts and other connections. In J. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, & N. Smelser (Eds.), The macro-microlink (pp. 207-234). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for selfcorrection in the organization of repair for conversation. Language, 53, 361-382. ten Have, P. (1999). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide. London: Sage
7 Utterance Restarts in Telephone Conversation: Marking Topic Initiation and Reluctance Charlotte M. Jones Carroll College Restarting an utterance is a common practice in natural, everyday conversation (Schegloff, 1987). Restarts (or recyclings) regularly occur at turn beginnings and serve a variety of functions, including attention-seeking (Goodwin, 1980; Heath, 1984; Schegloff, 1987). Schegloff (1987) argued that "recycled rum beginnings" function to repair the possible impairment of overlapped talk. That is, "identical repeats of turn beginnings . . . occur regularly when there has been an overlap of the turn beginning with the prior turn" (p. 7). He provided an example from a face-toface encounter: R: Well the uhm in fact they must have grown a culture, you know, they must've- I mean how long- he's been in the hospital for a few days, right? Takes a bout a week to grow a culture [ ] K: I don' think they grow a I don' think they grow a culture to do a biopsy.
Schegloff observed that K's recycle begins exactly at the point where her talk is no longer being overlapped or emerges "in the clear." Thus, her recycled turn beginning orients to the end of the overlap and the coming of the listeners' attention. Goodwin (1980) discovered that certain restarts seek recipient gaze as a sign of attention. He noted that speakers have the task of constructing turns for 137
138
CHAPTER 7
hearers. That is, a speaker must have a hearer's attention and participation. Collaborative efforts by speaker and hearer are fundamental. Goodwin demonstrated this idea with face-to-face data illustrating speakers' use of restarts and pauses to request and gain hearers' gaze before continuing their turns. Goodwin illustrated: Tommy: You agree wi d- You agree wi'cher aunt [ Pumpkin: X
In this instance, Pumpkin, the hearer, is not gazing at the speaker, Tommy. After the restart, Pumpkin directs her gaze (shown by ) to Tommy. At this point, with the hearer's gaze and attention, the speaker continues his turn. In short, restarts and pauses can function as attention-getting devices in face-toface encounters. But, do restarts serve different functions in a limited communicative channel such as the telephone? Restarts in such circumstances may function differently than Goodwin and Schegloff implicate. Do such restarts function to solicit a listener's attention? Hence, this project investigates restarts in telephone conversations (see Hopper, 1992), a medium in which participants cannot rely on attracting recipient gaze. Several points should be considered. First, as recipient gaze is not possible over the telephone, how does an interactant know that she or he has secured a listener's attention over the telephone? Second, a number of recycled turn beginnings with overlaps were found in a large corpus of telephone interactions. However, putting these aside, another group without overlaps still remained. Do restarts in telephone discourse serve any other functions besides repairing overlap or seeking gaze? This chapter attempts to answer this question by examining restarts at turn beginnings in telephone conversations. Turn beginnings have been found to have particular implications (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 1987). Schegloff argued that turns project, "from their beginnings, aspects of their planned shape and type" (p. 2). Concerning shape projection, he stated, for instance, that a turn that begins with "If..." may project a "contingency clause" of a particular length and a similarly sized "consequence clause." Question projection (e.g., "wh- word" turn beginning), quotation projection (e.g., "He says" turn beginning), and disagreement projection ("I don't think" turn beginning) are all examples of turn type projections. Thus, "turn beginnings are important to turn-projection" (p. 2). Recycled turn beginnings or restarts, then, may mark or signal to the listener that there is something in particular about to happen in the speaker's remaining utterance. It is argued in this study that certain telephone restarts can
UTTERANCE RESTARTS
139
function to project a marked topic or issue as viewed and exhibited by a speaker. Two cases of markedness identified thus far include restarts of utterances that (a) initiate new topics and (b) indicate a reluctance to ask or respond to particular issues (i.e., sensitive or delicate). That is, telephone utterance restarts can serve to summon the listener's attention to a particular part of the conversation—a new topic, or a request or response concerning a perceived sensitive or delicate issue.
RESTARTS AS INDICATORS OF TOPIC INITIATION Speakers, then, can signal at the beginning of their turns what it is that they are interested in doing. For example, a speaker may explicitly announce an abrupt topic shift by starting a turn with, "Not to change the subject, but." Similarly, a speaker may use a list-initiating marker to project-as-upcoming a multi-unit turn (Schegloff, 1981). That is, beginning a turn with, for instance, "First of all," thereby projects "that after the turn-unit in which the first is done, more will follow" (p. 75). Speakers may also use less explicit methods of signaling to listeners their intent, for instance, the intent to change the topic. During an attempt to change a topic is clearly one point where a speaker would want a hearer's attention. In fact, Schegloff (1979) argued that if a topic-initial sentence by a speaker is not marked in some way for the listener, then in the majority of cases the listener will initiate a repair in the next turn. He provided an example: B:
hhh A : n : d uh, ( 0 . 5 ) M e : h ,
B:
Oh Sibbie's ssistuh hadda ba:by bo:way.
A:
Who?
(0.2)
In this instance, B initiates a new topic, Sibbie's sister, without including any type of repair device within the turn such as a descriptor or modifier to key the listener. Without such identifying information, A didn't follow the new line of talk and hence, exhibited a repair. To successfully initiate a new topic without explicitly marking it as such, a speaker must somehow signal to the listener this intent. Schegloff uncovered one method, topic-initial turns that contain a self-initiated repair with a descriptor or modifier, but there may be others. Thus, in instances where a restarting telephone speaker is introducing a new topic, the restart may function to secure the listener's attention. In the following segments, one can observe
140
CHAPTER 7
utterance restarts being produced as speakers rather suddenly change topics. The restarts occur precisely at the points when speakers initiate topic changes. (1)
UTCL A10.14 1 JES: he took off and said he was goin to 2 see some people (1.1)
3
4
RIC:
5
JES:
=>
Yeah (0.9)
6 7
Really
RIC:
Hm: : : :
8 JES: So- I don't know wher:e he is or what he's 9 doing 10 (1.0) 11 RIC: So wha a- what are you doing tonight 12 (0.4)
13 JES:
Nothin
In Instance 1, Rick and Jessie are talking about a friend's whereabouts. In Line 11, Rick restarts "what are" as he mentions Jessie's plans for the evening in the form of a topic initial elicitor (Button & Casey, 1984). Button and Casey noted that "topic initial elicitors regularly take the form of inquiries into what is new" and "In so doing, they provide for new topicalizable material as dislocated from prior topical talk . . ." (p. 174). Even though it's new topically, Jessie understands his question and follows his lead as evidenced by her answer of "Nothin." We can similarly observe a restart marking a topic change in Instance 2: (2)
UTCL A10.15 1 RIC: Lotta gigglin hh hhh hhh [ ] 2 BIL: Yeah? 3 4 5
=>
6
=>
7 8 9
RIC: He's gettin in «that Christmas spirit>> hh BIL: 0:h shit RIC: pt hh hh [ . BIL: hh When u: :h [ RIC: hh uh huh= BIL: =When a you- when are you goin home (0.9)
UTTERANCE RESTARTS 10 RIC:
141
U: : : :h the
t-
[
11
(beep)
In this segment of conversation, Rick and Billy are discussing the behavior of a friend, which they assess using a potentially topically terminal assessment ("O:h shit") and laughter in Lines 4 and 5. At Line 6, Billy initiates the topic of going home. However, Rick continues to laugh at Line 7, overlapping Billy's rum, which he then abandons. At Line 8, he restarts "when are you" twice. It appears that Rick's laughter leads to Billy's first restart. That is, his talk is now "in the clear." Considering that the second restart isn't serving this overlap function, it instead seems to be related to attention-seeking for the new topic. And in Instance 3: (3)
UTCL D8 . 12 1 PAM: I haven't talked to my mother in a 2 lo::ng ti::me. (0.4) >(°Tex 0 U weekendo)< 3 (0.7) 4 RIC: phhuh 5 PAM: I talked to my da:d. 6 (1.8) 7
RIC:
hu:h
8
PAM:
hu h
9 10 11
RIC:
[ =>
PAM:
Do you hav- do you have any other blobrothers or sisters I have a sister.
In Instance 3, Rick and Pam are discussing Pam's parents' potential reactions to a letter she had written them. At Line 9, Rick brings up the topic of possible siblings of Pam's. He does this while restarting his utterance beginning "do you have." Pam's response, "I have a sister," shows that she understands his question and follows his lead topically. In all of the preceeding instances, restarts occur as a speaker initiates a topic change. Schegloff (1979) noted that when topic-initial utterances display no hitches, repair initiations are common in the next turn. In these restart cases, the hearer is able to follow the proposed topic and continue it; no repairs occur. A restart by the speaker ensures the hearer's attention at a turning point in the conversation. Thus, I posit that the restarts are functioning successfully to alert the listener to a new topic.
142
CHAPTER 7
In addition to marking topic initiation, utterance restarts can function to project speaker reluctance.
RESTARTS AS INDICTATORS OF RELUCTANCE Participants in everyday conversations routinely make and respond to requests. However, at times, speakers may exhibit in some fashion a reluctance to inquire about or reply to certain issues. For instance, some people may understandably be hesitant to discuss topics such as sexual activity or personal finances, considering them to be of a sensitive or delicate nature. Schegloff (1980) identified one way in which participants show an orientation to talk as sensitive or delicate—they first exhibit a pre-delicate. That is, a question projection is followed by a question that is marked in some fashion as a delicate one. For example, before asking a question that might be considered sensitive for some reason, a participant might first say "Can I ask you a question?" or more explicitly, "I want to ask you a question that may seem a bit indelicate, but I have to know." Restarts may provide speakers with another, perhaps less explicit or less marked, way to display forthcoming talk as sensitive or delicate. One group of telephone utterance restarts in this study involves both requests and responses to requests. Restarts can be seen as functioning to signal or mark some type of talk as being reluctantly produced. In the following first set of instances, the speaker exhibits a restart as she or he is responding to a previous speaker's utterance and is revealing information that she or he may consider potentially damaging, risky, or embarrassing in this particular circumstance (e.g., personal finances, setting conditions on a friend's request). That is, speakers' restarts show a reluctance to grant or respond to a certain type of requests (i.e., delicate or sensitive). (4) UTCL 1
Fl.l
MOM:
2
-And he has a ra:nch for us to look a:t so we're gonna go just look at it
3
DAU:
4
=>
just [ ] How mu : ch
(0.4)
5 6
MOM: .hhhh We:11 I- I don't know I don' know h- (.) don't wanta dis- discuss it on the telepho:ne=
7
DAU:
=O:h.
In this segment, a mother and daughter are discussing the mother's possible purchase of a ranch. The daughter inquires about the price of the ranch in
UTTERANCE RESTARTS
143
Line 3. The mother displays a reluctance to reply. After a pause, a delay (i.e., an inbreath), and an appositional (i.e., "We:ll"), the mother restarts "I-" and also repeats "I don' know." Additionally, she restarts the word "discuss" as she metacommunicatively expresses that she doesn't want to discuss the matter while on the telephone. Thus, the mother exhibits an utterance restart (as well as other delay devices) at the point where a potentially delicate issue—personal finances—arises. (5)UTCL A10.5
=>
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
RIC: RIC: FLA: RIC:
FLA: RIC: FLA:
Is there any way I can borrow somebody's moped (16 lines omitted) •hbhhhhhhhhh It'll probly take me twenty minutes When he gets- when he gets back from the bank you can u- you can borr' it Who (0.2) Natan (0.4) When's he leaving (0.4) Oh he'll pro'ly back in like fifteen minutes and it'll pro'ly take him fifteen twenty minutes he'll he'll pro'bly be done forty minutes and then you use it
In Instance 5, Rick has asked to borrow Flarety's moped, which is currently being loaned to someone else. In Line 4, Flarety agrees to let him borrow it, but exhibits the relatively short restart "when he gets" while doing so. With this and his later comments, he seems to be setting conditions for or potentially refusing the borrowing by Rick. One could argue that potentially refusing or setting conditions on a friend's request could be considered socially risky and potentially damaging to the friendship. That is, Flarety may be reluctant to offend his friend. As mentioned earlier, not only can speakers reveal a reluctance to respond to particular requests, but they can also show a reluctance to make such requests. In the following segment, we can observe an utterance restart produced as the speaker asks the recipient to reveal information about herself that is potentially damaging, socially risky, or embarrassing (e.g., sexual activity). That is, the speaker's restart shows a reluctance to ask a certain type of question:
144
CHAPTER 7
(6) UTCL A10.14:4 1 JES: .hhhhh Uh we had it like at eight thirty 2 (0.5) => 3 RIC: Ye- did j- wu- did you spend the night there 4 last night
In this segment, Rick and Jessie are discussing their workout times interwoven with Jessie's anger at her dating partner (i.e., also Rick's friend). At Line 3, Rick asks Jessie if she spent the night at her dating partner's place of residence. He restarts "wu- did you" as well as pausing before the utterance. Asking people to reveal where they spend their nights (especially specifying a dating partner) is a personal and private matter. Thus, it can be argued that Rick is showing reluctance to inquire about this delicate matter. We have examined several instances of requesting and of responding to requests that involve restarts. They all appear to show a reluctance or hesitancy to inquire or respond to issues that can be considered of a sensitive or delicate nature. That is, speakers and listeners display an orientation to the talk as potentially problematic. Sometimes these displays cluster together. In the following instances, we can observe both participants displaying reluctance when talking about a particular issue: (7)
=> =>
UTCL A10.14:6 1 JES: I told him I didn't want him to swim: Rick 2 Was that mean 3 (0.6) 4 RIC: Whasat? 5 JES: I told him that I didn't want him to swim 6 (1.1) 7 RIC: Well what do ya- what do you mean 8 (0.7) 9 JES: I tol- I jus- (0.4) you know: I just go:: 10 (0.2) we were talkin about it or something 11 and I just go:: I don't want you to swim hhhhh
In Instance 7, Jessie and Rick are discussing a prior conversation between her and the man she's dating, Billy, about his swimming for the collegiate team. He is also a good friend and swimming teammate of Rick's. At Line 7, Rick exhibits a short restart, "what do you," in his metacommunicative response to Jessie's prior announcement or disclosure (including the possibility of having hurt her dating partner). In addition to proffering a query about a sensitive topic, Rick does the delicate work of not showing alignment with a conversational
UTTERANCE RESTARTS
145
partner by displaying agreement or an agreeing assessment with Jessie's announcement. Rick's restart, then, may be serving a dual purpose, displaying a dispreferred turn shape as well as reluctance to discuss the topic. After a short pause, Jessie then exhibits a restart involving another short pause and "you know:" before the actual restart of "I just." Her utterance can be seen as socially risky in that she is revealing a serious request she made of her intimate partner, to not participate on the university swim team. Asking a college athlete to quit his or her sport would seem to be a significant request. Jessie notes her orientation to her request as delicate in Line 2 when she asks Rick if he thought it was a "mean" thing to say. As mentioned previously, revealing this information to a friend and teammate of Billy's seems chancy in that Rick may get upset with her for possibly hurting his friend and the team. Jessie's restart may also be displaying a sensitivity to the lack of alignment in Line 7 from her hearer. Thus, both participants show a mutual orientation to this topic as delicate and sensitive. An additional interesting feature about this instance is the use of "ya know" and a pause before the beginning of the restart. Pomerantz (1984) found that dispreferred seconds (e.g., disagreements when agreements are preferred) typically include delay devices such as pauses and tokens (e.g., "uh," "well"). She noted that these delay devices display "reluctancy or discomfort" (p. 72). Thus, the delay devices evident in this segment (as well as in Instance 4) seem to function as part of the delicate and tentative nature of the talk. And in Instance 8: ( 8 ) C I S 271.1 1 CAL: Okay- .hh this would be an AIDS patient h 2 IS: Oka : y => 3 CAL: I- th- is there any type[ ] . => 4 IS: hhh Is i- is- are5 are you calling for this patien:t um:= 6 CAL: =Yes uh huh=
In this segment, the caller to a Cancer Information Service has requested to talk with someone about nursing home placement for an AIDS patient. At Line 3, the caller restarts "is there," the beginning of a question. However, she stops and relinquishes her turn to the Information Specialist. In Lines 4 and 5, the Information Specialist attempts to find out if the caller is the patient or if she is representing the patient. She displays a delay (i.e., an inbreath) and recycles her turn beginning twice in pairs (i.e., "Is i-" and "are- are"). One might hypothesize that she is starting to say "Is it you?" and then changes it as the former might be considered too direct. Even in this semimedical situation, asking someone to reveal whether she or he has a
146
CHAPTER 7
terminal illness such as AIDS is potentially a socially risky question. This is especially so considering the current stigma associated with AIDS (Sontag, 1989). This segment is interesting in that both participants' restarts could be orienting to the sensitive nature of that talk, but considering the overlap, they also could be trying to get the floor. That is, the restarts may also be serving an attention-seeking function here. Both participants' utterances aren't changing the topic (as in our first group of restarts), but are showing orientation to different aspects of the topic. Thus, it is possible that telephone utterance restarts may serve dual purposes simultaneously.
CONCLUSIONS This chapter describes various functions of restarts at utterance beginnings in telephone conversations. Particular recycled turn beginnings were found to serve two attention-seeking functions. That is, a speaker initiating a new topic or showing reluctance when making or responding to a request may signal to the other that "something is up" by using a restart. These restarts occurred precisely at places where speakers were introducing new topics or were displaying reluctance to discuss particular issues (e.g., sexual activity, personal finances, potential refusal to lend items, dating issues, illness disclosure). These findings expand our previous knowledge of the functions of recycled turn beginnings as attention-seeking devices. Schegloff (1987) claimed that they serve an overlap-repair function, whereas Goodwin (1980) argued for a gaze-requesting function. Considering the absence of recipient gaze in telephone conversations, this chapter argues that restarts may also serve different forms of attention-seeking functions—to indicate or mark the initiation of a new topic or a reluctance to make or respond to delicate requests. Thus, a restart may best be considered as a multifunctional conversational feature, capable of varying sequential work. Employing Mandelbaum's (1990) distinction, restarts—as an interactional feature of the "practices of conversation"—serve to accomplish multiple "practices in conversation" such as gaining attention, getting the floor, shifting topics, and marking delicacy. However, there are other conversational features of the "practices of conversation" that interactants may employ to accomplish these same social or pragmatic "practices in conversation." These features may include more, or less, explicit or marked ways of solving interactional problems and can be viewed on a continuum. At one end of the continuum, interactants may choose fairly implicit, less marked means to achieve a conversational action with little disturbance to
UTTERANCE RESTARTS
147
the expression of an utterance or to the conversation's surface (Jefferson, 1996). For instance, a speaker may choose to gradually change a conversational topic over the course of several turns via a stepwise transition (Jefferson, 1984; Sacks, 1992). At the other end of the continuum, interactants may choose fairly explicit, more marked ways to accomplish actions such as gaining attention, shifting topics, or displaying delicacy. For example, the young woman in the following face-to-face segment employs a rather direct way to summon her listeners' attention: UTVL 8 Moonlight Pizza MOU:
She was sitting right here like this Y ' A : : L L look at m e : .
Rather than displaying a restart to attract gaze and attention (Goodwin, 1980), MOUSE commands her listeners with the explicit "YA::LL look at me:.", using added stress, sound stretches, and increased volume to further emphasize her demand. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, a speaker may start a turn with, "Not to change the subject, but" as a way to announce an abrupt topic shift, or first query a conversational partner, "Can I ask you a question?" to explicitly mark a subsequent sensitive or delicate question or request. However, there are potential dangers in employing such marked features. First, in some cases, a speaker may be perceived as abrupt, demanding, or socially inept. Second, opportunities for the conversation to get momentarily or completely sidetracked or for a bid to change the tone or mood of the conversational moment are made available. For instance, in response to a serious "Can I ask you a question?", wisecracks such as "You already did" or "What, another one?" (Schegloff, 1980) may sidetrack and disturb the serious tone a speaker is attempting to set. It may then take several subsequent turns to reestablish the direction or to get out of the side sequence, so one might argue that more marked actions are potentially less conversationally economical. Third, an interactant may be flatly refused before the other even hears the question or request, "No, I don't answer personal questions" or "No, you may not," perhaps especially when in an argumentative encounter. In comparison, restarts may pose less conversational danger than more marked actions. First, being less explicit, restarts may be less likely to be perceived as abrupt or demanding. Second, considering sequential implicativeness (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), it would be much more difficult for wisecracks or refusals to emerge with the use of restarts alone. Regarding the marking of delicate, sensitive matters or topic shifts on the telephone, restarts seem to be in the middle of the continuum when it comes to such activities as refusing a request, asking a personal question, or initiating a
148
CHAPTER 7
new direction in the conversation. Thus, telephone restarts express middleground options by speakers. They illustrate how we as interactants can produce an action to fit the specific needs of the moment-by-moment unfolding of an encounter. Moreover, restarts show us that one form can have many functions. Future research in the area might uncover yet other "practices in conversation" that restarts serve in addition to gaining attention, getting the floor, shifting topics, and marking delicacy. Furthermore, although instances in the present study included both casual, everyday and institutional telephone talk, a more focused study of different types of institutional interaction could reveal differences regarding the use of restarts. For example, the use of explicit, marked forms of actions or more implicit, less marked forms may vary in, for example, medical or therapeutic interviews versus corporate business interactions. It would also be interesting to discover if restarts serve any of the aforementioned functions in face-to-face encounters. Moreover, investigating the occurrence or lack thereof of restarts in particularly sensitive environments such as arguments may prove worthwhile. For instance, might the absence of restarts display a specific stance in an argument, such as certainty or hostility to the other?
REFERENCES Button, G., & Casey, N. (1984). Generating topic: The use of topic initial elicitors. In J. H. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 167-190). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C. (1980). Restarts, pauses, and the achievement of a state of mutual gaze at turn-beginning. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 272-302. Heath, C. (1984). Talk and recipiency: Sequential organization in speech and body movement. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 247-266). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jefferson, G. (1984). On stepwise transition from talk about a trouble to inappropriately next-positioned matters. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 191-222). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, G. (1996). On the poetics of ordinary talk. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16, 1-61.
UTTERANCE RESTARTS
149
Mandelbaum, J. (1990). Communication phenomena as solutions to interactional problems. In J. Anderson (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 13 (pp. 216244). Beverly, CA: Sage. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. H. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 57-101). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation (Vol. II) (G. Jefferson, Ed.). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696-735. Schegloff, E. A. (1979). The relevance of repair to syntax-for-conversation. In T. Givon (Ed.), Syntax and semantics, Vol. 12: Discourse and syntax (pp. 261-288). New York: Academic Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1980). Preliminaries to preliminaries: "Can I ask you a question?" Sociological Inquiry, 50, 104-152. Schegloff, E. A. (1981). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of "uh huh" and other things that come between sentences. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Analyzing discourse: Text and talk (pp. 71-93). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Recycled turn beginnings: A precise repair mechanism in conversations turn-taking organization. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organization (pp. 70—85). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. In R. Turner (Ed.), Ethnomethodology (pp. 233-264). Baltimore: Penguin. Sontag, S. (1989). Aids and its metaphors. New York: Doubleday.
This page intentionally left blank
8 Recognizing Assessable Names Charles Goodwin UCLA Robert Hopper's work has been centrally concerned with the question of how human beings produce action in concert with each other by deploying the resources and practices used to organize talk-in-interaction (e.g., Hopper, 1988, 1989, 1992, 1999; Hopper & Chen, 1996; Hopper & Glenn, 1994; Hopper & LeBaron, 1998). The present chapter explores one facet of this process, focusing on the way in which culturally relevant understanding of the names used to identify valued objects is made visible through specific interactive procedures. What is investigated here is the ability of a hearer to "spontaneously," "on his own," recognize the assessable character of an object being named (a Cord, a particular type of car built before World War II). The name is dropped in a "deadpan" fashion, without alerting the hearer to its assessable status, and thus poses a recognition test for the hearer.1 Is he a competent member of the domain of discourse indexed by the name, such that he can recognize on his own the special status of the item that speaker has just named? Indeed, in the data examined herein, there are two hearers, only one of whom passes this test.
in that talk about cars in this fashion is explicitly marked by the participants themselves as a distinctively gendered, male practice, I use the male pronoun to talk about an addressee of this talk. 151
152
CHAPTER 8
SIGNPOSTED ASSESSMENTS This practice of producing assessable names as recognition tests must, however, be seen as part of a larger family of practices that also includes alternative procedures used by speakers to explicitly signal their hearers that an assessable is about to be produced. As a point of departure for the phenomenon explored in this chapter, some of these are briefly described. In earlier work, Marjorie Goodwin and I (C. Goodwin & M. H. Goodwin, 1987) investigated how turns at talk containing assessments can be organized as a multiparty interactive activity. Thus in the following, as the speaker pronounces an assessment adjective "good," the entity being assessed—"asparagus pie" —is formulated as a highly valued object through a range of both talk and embodied displays by both speaker and hearer:
(1) Nancy: Jeff made en asparagus pie. It was s::so [: goo:d. Tasha: [I Love it.
Here, the hearer simultaneously produces a positive evaluation at the very moment that the assessment adjective is spoken. She doesn't wait until after speaker has said "good," but instead starts to evaluate it before the speaker has even stated her own evaluation. What interactive practices make such concurrent assessment possible? Before producing the talk that constitutes the peak of the assessment, the speaker "signposts" its upcoming arrival with an intonationally enhanced intensifier "s::so:". The hearer can use this prepositioned evaluative frame to project what is about to happen, and indeed she does so by starting her own assessment at the very end of the intensifier. In Example 1, the projective signpost took the form of an intensifier ("s::so:") and the assessment peak occurred at the place where the speaker produced an assessment adjective. These slots can, however, be filled with other types of units. For example, one very common type of assessment is formatted as a noun phrase within which an assessment adjective, such as beautiful precedes a description of the object being assessed. (2)
Paul:
Tell Debbie about the dog on the golf course t'day. ((intervening talk omitted)) Noun Phrase Eileen: An this beautiful, (.) [Irish Setter I[rish Setter ((rev erently) )
ASSESSABLE NAMES
153
(3) Curt:
This guy had, a beautiful, thirty two Olds
The assessment adjective tells the recipient that the object about to be described is being assessed in a particular way. Moreover, though the entity being assessed may indeed be relevant to a larger sequence of activity, such signposting is a local operation. Example 2 occurred in the midst of a story. Paul and Eileen had played golf together, and Paul asked Eileen to tell the others present how "a dog" stole the speaker's golf ball. Eileen's pronunciation of "Irish Setter," just after the assessment adjective "beautiful," is overlapped by an intonationally enhanced, appreciative version of the same name by Paul. Note how Paul's treatment of the Irish Setter as an assessable differs markedly from the way in which he formulates this same dog within the frame of the report being made by the larger story, that is, as a protagonist in a laughable event (see C. Goodwin & M. H. Goodwin, 1987, for more detailed analysis). By placing signposts before the peak of the assessment the speaker informs the recipient of what is about to happen, with the effect that when this talk is actually spoken, the recipient is already in a position to treat it as an assessment. Signposting is, however, but one of many ways in which assessments can be organized as an interactive activity. One of these alternatives is examined next. Instead of announcing to the recipient that what is about to be said should be assessed in a particular way, speaker produces the assessable "out of the blue." In that the talk containing the assessable has not been categorized as such (e.g., with an anticipatory signpost), the recipient is faced with the task of discovering that an assessable has been produced on his or her own. The following provides an example. In these data, the participants are car buffs. Curt is trying to restore a Model T and asks Mike where he can get a rear spring for the car: (4) 1 2
Mike:
3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Lemme ask a guy at work. He's gotta bunch a' old clunkers. (0.2)
Mike: Mike: Mike Curt: Mike: Curt: Mike:
Well I can't say that they're ol: clunkers= eez gotta Co:rd? (0.1) Two Co:rds, (1.0) [And [Not original, (0.7) Oh yes. Very original, Oh:: reall[y? [Yah. Ve(h) ry origi(h)nal.
154
CHAPTER 8 15 Curt: 16 Mike:
'Awhh are you sihittin m [e? [No I'm not.
In Lines 5-7 Mike describes a particular type of car, a Cord, without explicitly assessing it. However his recipient, Curt, treats such a car as a very highly valued object with a series of elaborate displays in Lines 10, 13, and 15, for example, asking Mike "are you shittin me." Once Curt uncovers the assessable character of the car, Mike joins him in displaying appreciation of it. Thus Curt initially treats what Mike said as so remarkable that it can hardly be believed by saying "not original," a proposal that if true would diminish the assessable status of the cars being evaluated. This question provides an opportunity for Mike in Line 12 to emphasize that they are indeed original, and in so doing to display his own appreciation of the cars. Note the placement of the word "Very" before "origi(h)nal," the enhanced intonation with which both of these words are spoken, and the emphasis provided by placing "Oh" before "yes" at the beginning of the turn. The process of assessing the cars thus becomes a mutual, collaborative activity. The assessment-relevant nonvocal behavior that occurs in this sequence merits special comment. While saying "Oh yes'" in Line 12, Mike shakes his head from side to side. Rather than contradicting the "yes" in his talk, this head shake simultaneously displays that he is disagreeing with the assessmentdiminishing proposal just made by Curt (that the Cords were "not original") and constitutes a form of assessment activity in its own right, an "oh wow" headshake. Because these phenomena have already been described in detail elsewhere (M. H. Goodwin, 1980; Schegloff, 1987) they are not discussed further here. In these data, Curt is able to recognize the exalted status of a Cord without being explicitly told that it is an assessable by Mike. This suggests that speakers have available to them at least two alternatives for introducing an assessable into talk: 1. Announce to recipient that what is about to be said is an assessable. For example put an assessment adjective like beautiful before it. 2. Produce an object without marking it as an assessable and thus place recipients in a position where they must recognize its assessable status on their own.
ASSESSABLE NAMES
155
RECIPIENT RECOGNITION AS AN INTERACTIVE PROCESS For clarity, recognition of an unmarked assessable has so far been treated as something done entirely by the recipient working alone. I now want to explore the possibility that the process through which the recipient recognizes even an unmarked assessable can itself be organized as an interactive activity.
Seeding the Ground for an Assessable In Example 4, despite the speaker's deadpan production and lack of explicit assessment terms, there are in fact some features of the talk that might guide the recipient to see what is about to be said as an assessable. Mike first describes the cars of his friend as "old clunkers," but then says that they are not old clunkers: (4) 1 2
Mike:
3
4 5 6
Lemme ask a guy at work. He's gotta bunch a' old clunkers. (0.2)
Mike:
Well I can't say that they' re ol: clunkers= eez gotta Co:rd? (0.1)
The recipient is thus instructed to hear what is about to be described as something that stands in marked contrast to "old clunkers." Through the operation of such contrast organization, the assessable name in Line 5 emerges within an environment that has already been subtly shaped by its presence; the shadow of its properties become visible before the object itself. Though not explicitly marking the name being produced as an assessable, Mike has nonetheless seeded the ground for its recognition.
Holding the Name Available Despite the way in which its status has been foreshadowed, when the word "Coird?" is actually spoken it is not treated as an assessable. Mike ends his pronunciation of the word with a rising contour (indicated in the transcript by a question mark), an act that frequently functions as a solicit for a response from the recipient, and leaves a space after producing the word for the recipient to respond. However, the recipient does nothing and in Line 6 a gap ensues. Mike thus produces a response-relevant object that does not receive an appropriate response. He now employs a standard procedure available to
156
CHAPTER 8
speakers for pursuing a response: rather than moving his talk forward into new material, he redisplays this object for his recipient (Line 7): (4) 4 5 6 7
Mike: Mike:
Well I can't say that they're ol: clunkers= eez gotta Co:rd? (0.1) Two Co:rds,
Indeed, in the present case Mike upgrades the assessable from "a Cord"' in Line 5 to "Two Cords'" in Line 7. Continuing to hold the assessable available in this fashion both extends the time available to recipient for producing a response2 and also subtly signals (e.g., through the reiteration of the assessable and its upgrade) that further response is relevant. Mike also performs a nonvocal gesture that helps to solicit a response. To look at how this gesture operates it is helpful to consider the actions of the third party present during this exchange, Gary. Recall that the sequence began with Curt asking for help in finding a high arch spring for his Model T. Right after Mike mentions his friend with the "old clunkers," Gary offers the name of someone else (it is later revealed that this person builds street roadsters and is thus a possible source for the spring): (4)
1 Mike: 2 -> Gary: 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Lemme ask a guy at work. He's gotta bunch a' old clunkers. Y'know Marlon Liddle? (0.2)
Mike: Mike: Mike Curt:
Well I can't say that they're ol: clunkers= eez gotta Co:rd? (0.1) Two Co:rds, (1.0) [And [Not original,
Just as Mike reveals that the cars are not old clunkers, Curt orients to the fact that Gary has just said something by shifting his gaze noticeably away from Mike and toward Gary. He continues to gaze away from Mike until after Line 7. Thus throughout the time that Mike is announcing the presence of the Cords, Curt is looking away from him. As Mike says "Two Cords" in Line 7, he moves
2
See C. Goodwin (1981, chapter 3) for other analysis of how speakers add new segments to their talk in order to coordinate the unit production of that talk with relevant actions of their recipients.
ASSESSABLE NAMES
157
his hand forward with two fingers extended in a V (i.e., a hand gesture for the number two) toward Curt and then back to his own face. This very noticeable gesture occurs right at the point where Mike is upgrading his assessment and appears to act as an additional solicit to Curt (for more detailed analysis of how gestures can be used to attract the gaze of nongazing recipients, see C. Goodwin, 1986b). Very shortly after this happens, Curt brings his gaze back to Mike with a movement that also shows heightened attentiveness to what has just been said (e.g., while moving, Curt raises his head). When this movement is completed, he begins his vocal response to the assessable in Line 10, intercepting Mike's appending "And." Note that Curt's head movement occupies the silence in Line 8 with the beginning of his response. Thus, unlike the much shorter silence in Line 6, it is not a gap, but instead becomes a space filled with assessment relevant activity.3 In brief, here Curt, unlike Gary, is able to display his ability to independently recognize the exalted status of a Cord. However that "independent" display has in fact been made possible through a subtle interactive process of prompting from Mike, who has worked hard to hold the assessable name available until Curt can see its import and react appropriately to it. More generally, here we find an instance of what seems a more general strategy of downplaying something before its emergence, and then dropping it as a bomb, so that its unique assessable character is highlighted by its sudden emergence within a relevant but unlikely environment. Indeed, one can speculate that the ideal way this sequence would have run off would have been for Curt to have asked what kind of "old clunkers" "the guy" had, and then received "a Cord" in response. Note that unlike the congruent assessments in Example 1, where both participants were enthusiastically evaluating the assessable, the current strategy is characterized by asymmetry in participation, with each party displaying markedly different affect. The party dropping the bomb, here Mike, talks with deadpan, cool nonchalance. By way of contrast the recipient of the bomb displays shocked, elaborated amazement.
3
For other analysis of how nonvocal assessment activity can occupy silences, see M. H. Goodwin (1980).
158
CHAPTER 8
CONCLUSION: ASSESSMENTS AND THE INTERACTIVE ORGANIZATION OF CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE Recognition of assessable names, and the tasks it sets its recipients, sheds interesting light on the organization of cultural knowledge as an interactive phenomenon. One of the central themes that has motivated research in cultural anthropology from Malinowski through contemporary studies of cognition, is the question of how members of a society recognize and properly interpret in a culturally meaningful way events in their phenomenal world. Building a response to an unmarked assessable is relevant to this process in a number of different ways. First, in order to deal with the assessable properly recipient must recognize the object that speaker is talking about. This is by no means a trivial matter. For example, one person viewing these data heard the car that Mike was talking about as a (Honda) Accord, something that led her to become quite puzzled about Curt's reaction to it. Being able to properly identify items such as this is one of the things that establishes within the talk of the moment a participant's competence, and indeed membership (or non-membership) in a specific culture. In the present data, the cultural world at issue is that of car buffs, but equivalent recognition tests can be posed in almost any domain of discourse, for example, science, politics, farming, sports, and so on. Frequently names are used to describe assessable objects in talk, and a very interesting literature on the interactive organization of reference and name recognition now exists (c.f. Clark, 1996; Clark & Schaefer 1986; Clark & Wilkes-Gibbes, 1986; Isaacs & Clark 1987; Sacks & Schegloff, 1979; Schegloff, 1972). Second, in order to find the assessable status of what is being talked about, the recipient must know how to rank and evaluate the object once it has been identified. A response to an assessable can contain an alignment display of some type (e.g., Curt's treatment of the Cords as highly valued objects). Therefore, mere recognition of the name and the entity it refers to is not sufficient to build an appropriate response to an assessable. In addition, the recipient must be able to evaluate the recognized object and properly place it within the larger cultural domain that it inhabits. Third, the results of these operations can be publicly scrutinized by other participants. The recipient is performing the tasks of recognition and evaluation in order to build an appropriate response to the unmarked assessable. That response will display to others whether he or she did or did not recognize the assessable and how he or she evaluated it. Others can and do choose to disagree with a speaker's assessment of a particular entity. For example, shortly after the sequence being examined here, Curt proposed that a "thirty-two Olds'" should be treated as an exalted, highly valued object in much the way that the Cord here
ASSESSABLE NAMES
159
is, but Mike refused to go along with this proposal (for detailed analysis of these data, see C. Goodwin & M. H. Goodwin, 1987). Recognition and evaluation of a referent are frequently conceptualized as purely internal, psychological processes. Here, however, it becomes possible to analyze how performing these actions can be subjected to public scrutiny, confirmation, and challenge within systematic processes of interaction. The public, interactive practices through which a name is both recognized and evaluated are quite relevant to central issues posed in the analysis of culture. For example, they permit empirical investigation of the process through which members of a society come to "share" a culture in the sense that separate individuals form judgements about the events they encounter that are congruent with those of their co-participants, but differ radically from the interpretations of these same phenomena made by members of another group. By viewing processes of categorization and evaluation within an interactive matrix, it becomes possible to shift analysis from specific cultural categories, that is, a list of fixed, stable entities argued to constitute the "culture" of the group, to the underlying social processes through which such categories are formed, tested, used, and changed as constitutive features of the activities the participants are engaged in. Fourth, insofar as the identifications and judgments one makes can be scrutinized by others, and used to assess one's competence and membership in a particular culture, these processes provide a built-in motivation for members of a group to learn the background information, ways of speaking, and so on, necessary for appropriate participation in a specific domain of discourse. Talking about cars for these speakers is very serious business, and indeed one of the ways in which they negotiate and establish their competence and standing vis-a-vis each other. The same is true for many other domains of discourse. These interactive processes thus provide structures for both testing and motivating acquisition of particular bodies of knowledge. Fifth, such considerations raise the question of how participants learn relevant information about a domain of discourse in the first place. Clearly a multiplicity of acquisition processes are involved.4 The present data shed light on how assessments might be relevant to such issues. Someone listening to this talk who had never heard of a Cord before could find from the way in which it is treated by Curt and Mike (a) that a Cord is a type of car, (b) that it is a very highly valued object in this culture, and (c) something about the criteria used to evaluate such phenomena in this particular domain of discourse, for example,
4
For a very subtle example of learning within the midst of conversation, see Jefferson (1987).
160
CHAPTER 8
that the status of a car as "original" is a most relevant attribute for judging it (i.e., this is the first question Curt raises about the Cord in Line 10). The sequence thus provides information about both the status of particular objects in this culture and ways of invoking these objects and their relevant attributes within talk. Such phenomena provide a practical resource for parties involved in the interaction. Indeed one of the men participating in this interaction, Gary, is not able to display the competence about the world of cars that Mike and Curt exhibit, and one can in fact see him trying to learn how to talk about them appropriately as the conversation unfolds (see Goodwin, 1986a). The self-explicating resources provided by assessments are available not only to participants but also to ethnographers and analysts. Such structures provide a way of getting information about the content of a culture without querying participants. Use of methods such as this seems especially important because membership in a culture involves not merely recognition of content items, but also particular ways of talking about these items, appropriate alignment displays to them, and so on. The phenomena investigated here provide one demonstration of how fine-grained cultural knowledge is built, organized, and deployed through precise use of the practices used to build action within talk-in-interaction.
REFERENCES Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press. Clark, H. H., & Schaefer, E. F. (1986). Collaborating on contributions to conversations. Language and Cognitive Processes 2(1), 19-41. Clark, H. H., & Wilkes-Gibbes, D. (1986). Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition, 22, 1-39. Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press. Goodwin, C. (1986a). Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text, 6(3), 283-316. Goodwin, C. (1986b). Gesture as a resource for the organization of mutual orientation. Semiotica, 62(1/2), 29-49. Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M. H. (1987). Concurrent operations on talk: Notes on the interactive organization of assessments. IPrA Papers in Pragmatics, (1) 1-52. Goodwin, M. H. (1980). Processes of mutual monitoring implicated in the production of description sequences. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 303317.
ASSESSABLE NAMES
161
Hopper, R. (1988). Speech, for instance: The exemplar in studies of conversation. Language and Social Psychology, 7(1), 47—63. Hopper, R. (1989). Sequential ambiguity in telephone openings—What are you doin. Communication Monographs, 56(3), 240-252. Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hopper, R. (1999). Going public about social interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32(1-2), 77-84. Hopper, R., & Chen, H. (1996). Languages, cultures, relationships: Telephone openings in Taiwan. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29(4), 291-313. Hopper, R., & Glenn, P. (1994). Repetition and play in conversation. In B. Johnstone (Ed.), Repetition in discourse: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Vol. 2, pp. 29-40). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Hopper, R., & LeBaron, C. (1998). How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31(1), 59-74. Isaacs, E. A., & Clark, H. H. (1987). References in conversation between experts and novices. Journal of Experimental Psychology; General, 116(1), 26-37. Jefferson, G. (1987). Exposed and embedded corrections. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 86-100). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons and their interaction. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 15-21). New York: Irvington. Schegloff, E. A. (1972). Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In D. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in social interaction (pp. 75-119). New York: The Free Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: An exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50(2), 101-114.
This page intentionally left blank
9 Interactional Problems With "Did You" Questions and Responses Susan D. Corbin University of Texas at Austin "Did you" questions are ubiquitous in everyday talk. The examples used in this project are taken from recordings of actual conversations or from overheard conversations noted by the author. A collection of "did you" questions and observations of their use and characteristics was made from which the examples in this chapter were drawn. In this collection, it was noted that "did you" questions are used in many ways. For example, "did you" questions can be used to begin a conversation upon first meeting a known other: (1) [Corbin, FN] (Student to student) S: K:
Hi Kim, did you get that tape from the Speech Lab? Yes, thank you so much for doing that
to continue a conversation when a previous topic has been talked out: (2)
[UTCL A35d. l5] HNK: KRS :
( W i f e to husband)
pt .hhhh Did get the deal sold though Great.=
HNK:
= So ( 0 . 4 )
KRS:
Did you get your account straightened out
to introduce a previously unmentioned mentionable: (3)
[UTCL A35a.l2] KRS:
(Daughter to mother)
.hhh Okay well you have a good day, did you have a good time over at Joyce's last night?
163
164
CHAPTER 9
to remind someone of an intended action: (4)
[Corbin, FN] (Mother to teenage daughter) Mom: D:
Did you bring in the trash can? Yes, I did.
Occasionally, the recipient of a "did you" question shows that the question is problematic: (5) [Corbin, FN]
(Co-workers)
Pizza worker 1: Pizza worker 2: Pizza worker 1:
(6) [DP 4] C:
E:
Did you grate this cheese? What's wrong with it? Well, you were supposed to put Saran Wrap on it.
Did t You go in this morning? (2.0) U:h no, my back was hurtin too much
Recipient response indicates how she or he has taken the question. In example 5, an exchange between two people working in a pizza palor, the asker does not use any vocal intonation that might cause the question to sound as if he is accusing the recipient of anything. However, the recipient's response indicates he appears to have heard an accusation ("What's wrong with it?"). In Example 6, the response shows a problem by the dispreferred-shaped response (Pomerantz, 1984). The next two examples show that another researcher has noticed that both hearers and askers of "did you" questions may find them problematic (Tracy & Naughton, 1994). In example 7, in an interaction between faculty and graduate students at a graduate seminar, Beth displays that she has problems with Sam's "did you" question: (7)
[Tracy & Naughton, 1994, pg 2 9 4 , excerpt 12] SAM: BEH:
Did you, have any dilemmas of choice in terms of experimentation here? Did you, did you sacrifice uh uh external validity for control at any point? Uh yeah the, well I, our readings, I mean when they, when they read the conversations or read the scenarios
Tracy and Naughton characterized Beth's disfluent answer as showing that Beth "recognize[s] a difficulty" (p. 295) with the question. Tracy and Naughton (1994) also showed an example demonstrating that askers may indicate that they recognize the problematic nature of "did you"
INTERACTIONAL PROBLEMS
165
questions. They noted that to ask a "did you" question of someone is to indicate that the action questioned is something that could be expected to have been done: (8) [Tracy & Naughton, 1994, p. 287, Excerpt 1] ROY:
SUE: ROY:
... Did you, are you aware, I would assume that, that studies looking at self attributions and other attributions of competence generally show a pretty high correlation? hmm mm That, that is generally true? That, that person's own self rating of competence correlates pretty highly with ratings of those surrounding?
Roy's question concerns Sue's research presentation. He starts his question as a "did you" question, which inquires about the recipient's actions. If one continues along his "did you" line of questioning and combines it with the end of his question, one arrives at the conclusion that Roy was going to ask whether or not Sue had found other studies reporting that self-attributions and other attributions of competence show a correlation. Tracy and Naughton (1994) argued that "to ask if they did something suggests it is an activity that could be expected" (p. 287). That is, it would be expected for Sue to find research reporting the high correlation and perhaps untoward if she had not found this research. However, Roy changes his "did you" to "are you aware," which asks about the recipient's state of knowledge at the time of the question. Before completing his question, he amends his statement to "I would assume that," which refocuses the knowing about the attribution studies from the student to himself. Tracy and Naughton (1994) argued that Roy's reformulation of his "did you" question from "did you" to "are you aware" and finally to "I would assume that" "suggests he does not want to imply that she (the student) should know what he is asking" (p. 287). That is, the successive amendments move the asker away from the "did you" format and softens the potential offence (or face threat) in the question. These four examples show that both speakers and hearers demonstrate in talk that they recognize the problematic nature of "did you" questions. However, note that there is only a potential for "did you" questions to be problematic. Of course, not every "did you" question is going to be a problem for every recipient, as seen in Examples 1 through 3. Certainly vocal intonation and sequential location have a lot to do with the problematic potential of a "did you" question. As each example is discussed, these features are noted.
166
CHAPTER 9
This chapter discusses three characteristics of "did you" questions, any one of which might induce a problematic response to a "did you" question. They are: 1. The use of "did you" at the beginning of the question indicates it is about a recipient's past action (or possible past action) and may be heard by the recipient to have problematic linguistic logical presuppositions. 2. A "did you" question can be highly indexical; that is, the referent of the question is underspecified yet the question's structure shows that the speaker believes that the recipient will understand the sense of the question. This high indexicality may lead to a recipient's hearing a problematic linguistic pragmatic presupposition. 3. The "did you" question is grammatically packaged to elicit a "yes/no" response, but usually receives an elaboration as well as the "yes/no." A lack of expansion may lead to an asker's pursuit of an expansion, which can cause interactional problems. In the present collection, no one problematic "did you" question contains all three of these aspects. The following sections include discussions of these problematic aspects of "did you" questions in more depth with examples from actual conversations.
PRESUPPOSITIONS The notion of presuppositions in language has been discussed by linguists since the 1950s. Levinson (1983) noted that "there is more literature on presupposition than almost any other topic in pragmatics" (p. 167). He also observed that there is an ordinary notion of presupposition that"describes any background assumption against which an action, theory, expression or utterance makes sense or is rational" (p. 168). Contrasted with the ordinary notion of presupposition is the linguistic notion that is "restricted to certain pragmatic inferences or assumptions that seem at least to be built into linguistic expressions and which can be isolated using certain linguistic tests" (p. 168). The most common linguistic test for logical presuppositions is the constancy under negation test, which states that the presuppositions of a statement remain true whether the statement is true or false. Keenan (1971) proposes that there is also a pragmatic presupposition which is that there is a clear relation between the statement and its context. If a statement's context is not clear to a recipient, she or he may conclude that the speaker is being ironic, silly, or stupid. Examples and discussion of problematic "did you" questions involving logical and pragmatic presuppositions follow.
INTERACTIONAL PROBLEMS
167
Logical Presupposition According to Levinson (1983), "questions will generally assume the presuppositions of their assertive counterparts" (p. 184). Consider the "did you" question from Example 6. (6)
=>
[DP 4] E:
E: C: E:
Actually (0.2) I think he will, there's- (0.5) because Shawn (0.7) has been he did the same thing, walked in, he said that was a- ((noise)) they didn't say anything to im. (0.8) When he went in this morning Did |you go in this morning? (2.0) U:h no, my back was hurtin too much
Cathy asks if Evan went in to work that morning. Her vocal emphasis indicated by a raised tone on the word you indicates a shift of emphasis from Shawn's going to work to Evan's going to work. E's answer to her question in the disperferred turn shape of a long pause and the filler "Uh" indicates he has a problem with the question (Pomerantz, 1984). The assertive counterpart of C's "did you" question is "Evan did/did not go in to work this morning." C's "did you" question generates at least one possibly problematic presupposition: "Evan had work to go to this morning." According to the linguistic test, this statement remains true whether or not he actually did go to work. If a recipient hears the presupposition in the "did you" question as problematic, the recipient's answer will probably reflect this, as in example 6, by giving a justifying reason for not going to work that morning. The assumptions that people make about other's actions may be seen in the logical presuppositions of their "did you" questions. If the recipient hears the presupposition as problematic, she or he may answer the question in a manner indicating a problem.
Pragmatic Presupposition The knowledge that people in relationships share is an integral part of understanding problems with the indexical aspect of the "did you" question. Pragmatic presuppositions, according to Keenan (1971), require that the question be uttered in an understandable context. For recipients to understand a "did you" question's pragmatic presupposition, the recipient must understand and
168
CHAPTER 9
recall the shared knowledge of the question's topic. If the recipient does not recall the question's indexed shared knowledge, the recipient's answer may indicate problems. Context may be clear in at least two ways and can be shown in these examples of nonproblematic "did you" questions. One, as seen in example 9, is that the "did you" question refers to the current topic: (9)
[DP 4] C: E: C:
Yeah but they're so
[(tacky) [Did you tell them to take their (0.8) sandwich and sh- stick it No because I had a (0.8) I had two cards (0.4) right?
C has no trouble understanding the context of the "did you" question because it does not change the topic of conversation. She complains that the counter people at the sandwich shop were unpleasant to her ("they're so (tacky)"). E's "did you" question asks if she decided to purchase a sandwich despite the unpleasantness ("Did you tell them to take their (0.8) sandwich and sh- stick it"). C shows that she has no problem understanding the context of the "did you" question in her immediate answer and the continuation of her story. A second way context is clear in "did you" question asking is by the separation of the "did you" question from the previous topic with some kind of conversational boundary. Example 3 shows a "did you" question during a preclosing in a mother-daughter telephone call: (3)
[UTCL A35a.12] KRS:
=>
... you just pick up (.) dad and Timmy n from work and come over. MAB : Oka:y. KRS: .hhh Okay well you have a good day, did you have a good time over at Joyce's last [night? MAB: [Yeah, we did, it was real ni:ce? (0.4) KRS: Well t h a t ' s good to hear.
Before KRS asks her mother the "did you" question, she and MAB have begun to close the telephone call: =>
MAB : KRS:
Oka:y. .hhh Okay well you have a good day,...
Schegloff and Sacks (1984) described the closing of a telephone call as working in a step wise fashion to allow the introduction of "unmentioned mentionables" (p. 80). With the exchange of "okays," KRS and MAB have aligned
INTERACTIONAL PROBLEMS
169
contributions toward closing the encounter. A preclosing moves the partners to closing unless one of them thinks of something else to mention. In this instance, the preclosing separates the new topic introduced by the "did you" question from the previous topic. The preclosing helps make it clear to the recipient that the "did you" question is a new topic. Pragmatic presupposition problems can occur in conversations when recipients do not understand the reference of the "did you" question. Example 10 shows problems with the pragmatic presupposition of a "did you" question. Two female friends are at the beginning of a telephone call negotiating a first topic: (10)
[UTCL A 2 4 . 5 ] CAR: BET:
My roommate is such a bitch Why
CAR: BET:
huh c(h)ause .hhh what-
CAR: =>
BET: CAR: BET: BET: CAR: BET: CAR: BET:
rare you doing L-Are you (guys) being
serious?= =No .hh- (0.3) wha'a you doin (0.4) Nothin Oh. Did you find it ( ) (0-4) (Oh) did I find what (0.5) The shorts Huh? The shorts (0.4) . hhhh O: h no: .
CAR's "did you" question ("Did you find it") is problematic on two counts. First, it is an abrupt change of topic. She does not indicate to her interlocutor in any way that she is changing topics from "what are you doing" to "finding it." CAR appears to be trying to find any topic for them to talk about other than that her roommate is a "bitch." When "what are you doing" does not produce a topic, she shifts immediately to "did you find it": CAR: =>
BET: CAR:
=No .hh- (0.3) wha'a you doin (0.4) Nothin Oh. did you find it
170
CHAPTER 9
The second problematic aspect of CAR's "did you" question is the unclearly indexed "it" in the question. BET indicates this is her problem in the way she asks for clarification ("did I find what") (see Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). BET uses the word what to indicate that "it" is where she is having problems understanding CAR's "did you" question. Example 10 shows that "did you" questions can be problematic if the pragmatic presupposition of context through topic shift and pronoun reference is not clear to the recipient.
ANSWERS TO "DID YOU" QUESTIONS As mentioned in the introduction, "did you" questions are grammatically packaged to elicit a "yes" or "no" answer. Yet, in a collection of "did you" questions, the majority are answered with more than just "yes" or "no." Some "did you" questions are answered with expansions of the "yes/no" answer, whereas others are answered with accounts, that is, reasons for having done or not having done the action the question concerns. Expansions often look like the answer MAB gave KRS in Example 3: KRS: MAB:
... did you have a good time over at Joyce's last night? Yeah, we did, it was real ni:ce?
MAB answer with a "Yeah" and expands the answer with "it was real ni:ce." Accounts often look like the answer that E gave C in Example 6: C: E:
Did |you go in this morning? (2.0) U:h no, my back was hurtin too much
E answers with "no" and an account, "my back was hurtin too much." Very often, this expansion or account addresses a problematic logical presupposition of the question, such as the presupposition that Evan had work to go to that morning. Not only can the "did you" question itself be problematic for interactants due to presuppositions, but also the pursuit of an expansion or account to the answer of a "did you" question can be problematic for a recipient.
Pursuit of Expansion In the next example, from a videotape of a couple's dinnertime conversation, Tom asks Abbie a "did you" question that she answers with a simple "no." Tom
INTERACTIONAL PROBLEMS
171
asks for an expansion of the "no" answer and is successful in getting an expansion. However, he also receives a very marked response: (11)
[DP2]
=>
T:
=>
A: T: A:
*
T: A:
Have y- did ya do anything today fo:r (a) (0.6) finance oclasso (1.0) For what? For finance class did you get anything done No (0.3) Nothing at |all (0.6) Nada. (0.5) I haven't done anything I've been gone, since ten o'clock this morning
Tom's first "did you" question (first arrow) concerns whether Abbie has prepared anything for the finance quiz they plan to study for later in the evening ("Have ydid ya do anything today fo:r (a) (0.6) finance 0class0"). His interutterance 0.6second pause and very quiet utterance finish may be what leads Abbie to ask for clarification of his question ("For what?"). He starts his repeat question (second arrow) with the non-understood section of his question ("For finance class did you get anything done"). There is no particular intonation in this question to indicate that he was accusing her or doing more than asking for information. Abbie shows none of the problematic features seen in other "did you" question answers, such as a hesitation or "uh" filler. However, she answers without an expansion ("No"). Tom asks for more than her negative answer by with his next comment ("Nothing at tall"). The raised inflection of the word all may indicate surprise that she has not done anything. Although Abbie does not appear to find the original "did you" question problematic, she does appear to have problems with the pursuit of an expansion of her "no" answer. She pauses 0.6 seconds before she answers and then reinforces her negative answer with two more negatives ("Nada" and "I haven't done |anything") before she offers an account for not having done anything ("I've been gone, since ten o'clock this morning"). Her emphasis on "gone" shows that it has been impossible for her to do anything for finance today. This example demonstrates that if interactional problems do not occur with the asking of the question itself, problems may occur if the asker pursues more than the "yes/no" answer offered. In the next example, the recipient of the "did you" question also answers the question of her actions without an explanation of those actions.
172
CHAPTER 9
Grammatically, she has answered the question. However, pragmatically, her recipient appears to expect more than her "no" answer: (12) => *
[UTCL D 9 : 3 ] GOR: Did you: give Suzy the advice I suggested? (1.2) DEN: NO GOR: Are you going to? (0.2) DEN: No (0.5) GOR: I don't believe you (6.0) DEN: You're irritable
Unlike Abbie's response in the previous example, Denise appears to find the "did you" question problematic as seen by her 1.2-second post-question pause (see Pomerantz, 1984). When she does answer, she gives the least amount of information that answers the question ("No"). The "did you" question asker can choose at this point to go on to something else, to as Garfinkel (1967) noted "let it pass," or to pursue an expansion to the "did you" question. Gordon chooses to pursue more ("Are you going to?"), perhaps in search of an explanation to the logical presupposition that he believes Denise had an opportunity to pass on his advice to Suzy. Denise pauses very slightly and tells him "No" again with no expansion. At this point, Gordon expresses disbelief: GOR: DEN:
I don't believe you (6.0) You're irritable
Denise's utterance concerning Gordon's irritability shifts the conversation's topic from Denise's past actions to Gordon's present actions and the explanation of her "no" answer to the "did you" question is dropped. These examples show that a "did you" question can be problematic for interactants when an asker wants an expansion or an account that is not forthcoming. The pursuit of an expansion can be as problematic as the "did you" question itself.
CONCLUSION This chapter has shown that "did you" question can be problematic for interactants. Not all "did you" questions are problematic, but enough are that they are recognized as being problematic by recipients and speakers (Tracy & Naughton, 1994). This chapter also shows that there are three aspects of a "did
INTERACTIONAL PROBLEMS
173
you" question that can foster problems for recipients. The first is that "did you" questions are rich in logical presuppositions and pragmatic presuppositions. A specific "did you" question may not be problematic, whereas the truth of the underlying logical presupposition may be a problem. Given the presupposition richness, "did you" question may not suffice to indicate understandable context, a violation of pragmatic presuppositions. The final problematic aspect of "did you" questions is the pursuit of an expansion to the "did you" question and the problems this may cause the recipient. Questioning the expected past actions of another would not, on the surface, appear to be the source of a problematic interaction. However, closer inspection of actual "did you" questions reveals aspects with problematic potential.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to extend a special thanks to Robert Hopper for reading innumerable drafts of this chapter as both a second-year doctoral project and a comprehensive exam question.
REFERENCES Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodolgy. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Keenan, E. L. (1971). Two kinds of presuppositions in natural language. In C. J. Fillmore and D. T. Langendoen (Eds.), Studies in linguistic semantics (p. 44-52). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Levinson, S. B. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson, & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (p. 57-101). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 50, 696-735.
174
CHAPTER 9
Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1984). Opening up closings. In J. Baugh & J. Sherzer (Eds.), Language in use (p. 69-99). New York: PrenticeHall. Tracy, K., & Naughton, J. (1994). The identity work of questioning in intellectual discussion. Communication Monographs, 61, 281-302.
10 Managing Optimism Wayne A. Beach San Diego State University Examining how family members talk through a loved one's cancer on the telephone reveals, as a central concern, the interactional construction of hopeful and optimistic responses to uncertain and potentially despairing cancer circumstances. I refer to such recurring moments as "managing optimism"1 in talk about cancer. This chapter focuses on an initial collection of seven excerpts wherein optimism emerges as a resource for family members as they update, assimilate, and commiserate about cancer diagnosis and treatment. These materials are drawn from a set of 54 recorded and transcribed phone calls comprising the first natural history of a family talking through cancer, from Mom's initial diagnosis until her death, some 13 months later.2 Only phone ' It was Robert Hopper who coined the phrase "managing optimism" to depict a wide range of moments for dealing with bad and uncertain news by remaining "hopeful" about his health condition. This description first emerged within weeks following a diagnosis of colon cancer, during one of a series of phone calls with me wherein his illness trajectory routinely (though not exclusively) became an explicit topic for discussion. Following his summary of what doctors had told him about ongoing test results, attention was given to the inherent (and often frustrating) uncertainties of medical knowledge, including doctors being unwilling and apparently unable to lay out, in specific terms, just what his prognosis for overcoming cancer's debilitating effects might be. In the face of more basic yet unanswered questions - How long do I have to live? What probability for healing exists? What impacts will further treatments have? - our talking about cancer diagnoses and impacts routinely shifted to being optimistic, reassuring, at times even upbeat about the ambiguities such bad news entails. And it was in response to our being hopeful together that Robert stated something like "Managing optimism. That's what I'm calling what we're doing, as a practical achievement." 2 Family members include the Son, Father, Mother, Daughter, Aunt, and Grandmother. The corpus also includes an assortment of other conversations between the Son and his ex-wife, the ex-wife's brother, representatives from various airlines (when seeking flight information and reservations), an academic counseling office receptionist, a receptionist at an animal boarding kennel (when making 175
176
CHAPTER 10
calls #1 (involving Dad and Son) and #2 (Dad, Son, and Mom) of the corpus are examined, interactions drawn from a collection of more than 100 instances where speakers engage in optimistic collaborations. Unique opportunities are provided when health-related family conversations are closely inspected over an extended period of time.3 As Kubler-Ross (1969) observed years ago in reference to "different stages that people go through when they are faced with tragic news—defense mechanisms in psychiatric terms, coping mechanisms to deal with extremely difficult situations . . . The one thing that usually persists through all these stages is hope" (p. 138). In the data that follows, preliminary insights into such phenomena such as "defense/coping mechanisms" and "stages" can be tied to specific social actions. More recently, in his ethnographic study focusing on the "social meanings of death" in three hospital wards dealing with seriously ill patients, Perakyla (1991) referred to "hope work" as a predominant set of practices whereby patients are "getting and feeling better" (curative and palliative care) or "past recovery" (where hope per se is dismantled). In contrast, focus here rests not with medical staff working with their patients in institutional settings, nor attempts to legitimate medicine by professionals, but with laypersons speaking together on the telephone within their home environments (though, as in call #2, Mom is in the hospital when Son phones from his home). As with Perakyla's (1991) findings, it is not necessary for "hope" to be explicitly named. At times "hope" is invoked in situated and thus revealing ways in the data examined herein. And though not a single instance of the word optimism has yet been identified, speakers' actions are shown to display a sense of expectancy, even assurance, about a hopeful future. As a preview of more complete data to follow, consider the following seven excerpts: 1.
SDCL: MALIGNANCY # 1 : 6 - 7 Dad: So .hhh n : o : : I would hope by Monday or Tu:esday
and canceling reservations for his dog during his travel), a woman the Son had begun dating, an old friend from St. Louis, a graduate student who covered the Son's classes during travel, and a variety of other calls involving routine daily occurrences (e.g., the payment of bills, leaving messages on phone answering machines). 3 Only alluded to in this chapter, research focusing on longstanding concerns with social aspects of death and dying (e.g., see Sudnow, 1967; Kubler-Ross, 1969, 1974; Perakyla, 1991, 1993, 1995; Holt, 1993), troubles-telling sequences (e.g., see Jefferson, 1980, 1984a,b, 1988, and chapter 13 in this volume; see also Sacks, 1992), and interrelationships between the delivery and receipt of good and bad news (e.g., see Maynard, 1996, 1997, in press) are more fully addressed in related and ongoing papers (e.g., see Beach, in press b; Beach, 2000 a,b).
MANAGING OPTIMISM
177
2
SDCL: MALIGNANCY #1:7 Dad: .hhh But ( 0 . 2 ) she did have two nice things ha:ppen today.
3
SDCL: MALIGNANCY # 2 : 2 - 3 Mom: No there's nothin to say. >You just-< .hh I ' l l - I'll wait to talk to Dr. Leedon today.= He's the cancer man, and =
4.
SDCL: MALIGNANCY # 2 : 2 - 3 Mom: My only hope- I mean- (.) my only choice-.
5.
SDCL: MALIGNANCY # 2 : 5 Son: Well where's our magic wand Mom.
6.
SDCL: MALIGNANCY # 2 : 5 Mom: .hh Is find a reason to keep fighting and (.) to keep being hopeful.
7.
SDCL: MALIGNANCY # 2 : 1 2 - 1 3 Son: See, [there] there's a small battle= Mom.[( )] Son: =That we've won.=
Only Excerpts 1, 4, and 6 reveal "hope/hopeful" as being invoked, and then in similar yet contrasting ways: in Dad's reference to medical procedures (1), a personal reflection on Mom's ill-fated circumstance (4), and her display of perseverance and tenacity (6). Yet the other instances are also somehow related to hopeful and optimistic orientations: As Dad lightens prior and serious discussion (2), Mom waits and relies on news from the cancer doctor (3), Son invokes and Mom responds seriously to "magic," and Son's later attempts to edify and simply cheer Mom up (7) in response to a story she initiates. As a whole these moments reveal "managing optimism" to be a practical matter for family members, talk that is shown to be designed in alternative (at times even humorous) ways while working through troubling illness circumstances. Analysis proceeds by giving attention to the interactionally achieved and contingent features of each successive moment, in its natural and emergent order, to discover what might be learned about how speakers' manage various optimistic concerns.4 4 This analytic exercise is part of a more encompassing project, designed to capture not just patterns of interactional conduct co-enacted by family members facing cancer but also three interrelated sets of activities: a time-line sense of chronology for family members undergoing cancer's development; a grounded understanding of how conversations get progressively constructed from prior interactions, as resources forming the basis for organizing here-and-now problems and their solutions (see Beach, in press b); and (as noted) an extension and elaboration of the observed
178
CHAPTER 10
INTERACTIONAL FEATURES OF "MANAGING OPTIMISM" Hope and Uncertainty Regarding Medical Diagnosis and Procedures We begin with the initial instance, where "hope" is explicitly mentioned in the midst of talking through a family member's cancer. In Excerpt 8 as follows, Dad continues by reporting to Son a doctor's description of procedures for treating Mom's cancer. In Line 3, these procedures include contacting a cancer specialist and conducting "this bo:ne scan thing tomorrow.": 8) SDCL: MALIGNANCY # 1 : 6 - 7 1 Dad: .hhh He said he would have somebody else look in on 2 her: . = He also co:ntacted this cancer specialist so 3 he will be in Monday. (.) .hhh And they will do this 4 -> bo:ne scan thing tomorrow. So .hhh n:o:: I would hope 5 -» by Monday or Tu:esday ( 0 . 7 ) pt they have ( 0 . 7 ) the particulars of what they're a f t e r . 7 -> >Now they may not have< the course of action all 8 .figured out, but [ .hhhh ] 9 Son: [°Umhm° ] = 10 Dad: = They'll at least kno:w. (.) .hh And maybe this 11 -> is just simplistically in my mind >but they'll 12 -> know< .hhh what ki:nd? they're dealing with. 13 That way they should know .hhh how quickly does 14 —» it spread (.) what is- ( 0 . 7 ) what can be done to: 15 to stop it >you know< .hh radiation [or chemotherapy or
Following "I would hope" in Line 4, Dad makes reference to two basic features of cancer treatment: when something might be known and "what they' re after." Immediately next, however, he disclaims by stating ">Now they may not have< the course of action all figured out," which is quietly and briefly acknowledged by Son. Dad then proceeds by elaborating his lay understandings of what he was hopeful about, namely, bottom-line concerns with identifying the cancer and attempting "to stop it" with radiation or chemotherapy. Several features of Excerpt 8 are interesting but not unusual throughout the "Malignancy" phone calls. First, this excerpt represents the initial display of hopeful conduct-in-interaction. These actions follow Dad's initial and extended delivery, and Son's receipt and assimilation, of bad news regarding Mom's cancer (see Beach, in press; 2000c; Maynard, 1996; 1997; in press). tendency for "good" topics to arise out of otherwise "bad" and troubling matters (see, e.g., Jefferson, 1984a, Perakyla, 1991, Sacks, 1992, Maynard, 1997).
MANAGING OPTIMISM
179
Second, a delicate and countervailing balance exists between "hope" and "uncertainty." Notice again that Dad's expression of hope (Line 4) is mitigated with a next-positioned caveat: a "course of action" (Line 7) replete with incomplete knowledge. Third, Dad must inevitably rely on, and report about, what doctors have told him about their specialized knowledge. It is clear that Dad's source of hope is anchored in the involvement of assumedly competent medical providers, professionals who are expected to do everything possible while devising a plan for halting the insidious progress of Mom's cancer. However, his attempts to describe doctors' suggested treatment options to Son (e.g., "this bo:ne scan thing" in Line 4, and later to "simplistically in my mind" in Line 11), reveal Dad's lay attempts to understand complex medical procedures and the technical expertise comprising bone scan procedures. Qualified and simplified moments such as these, involving lay constructions of medical knowledge and procedures, are given considerable attention by family members throughout the course of Mom's cancer. Inevitably, each identified moment reveals some problems in offering medical descriptions, but also optimism about ongoing treatment and diagnosis.
Shifting from Bad to Good News For approximately 1 minute following Excerpt 8, Dad continues by describing to Son how Mom's original neck problem, some 35 years ago at 25 years of age, was a slow growing lymphatic cancer. He then raises the possibility that Mom's current cancer may also be slow growing, which bone scan results will aid in determining. In Excerpt 9 which follows, Dad summarizes what is essentially a bad news description of how Mom was doing. His portrayal escalates in its telling, from Mom's "co:nfirmation and resignation" -> "I just hurt too b:ad to be anything else" —> "something drastic.": 9) SDCL: MALIGNANCY #1:7 1 Dad: A: : yeah .hhh (.) But she seemed to be doing (.) >as I 2 said< pt .hh at this point it was mostly ( 0 . 5 ) 3 co:nfirmation and resignation. 4 Son: [ Mmhmm:. ] 5 Dad: [Cause she] said, .hhh I just hurt too b:ad to be 6 anything else (0.2) >ya know.< It ha: :d to be 7 som- (0.7) something drastic. 8 Son: Mmhm. 9 Dad: And she was really having some problems with pa:in 10 today. She had .hh one and a half (0.2) >percodans< 11 in her and it wasn't hardly slowin' it down. 12 Son:->°Mmm wow.° 13 Dad:—>.hhh But (0.2) she did have two nice things ha:ppen 14 today. She was on her way do:wn and .hhh and was
180 15 16 17
CHAPTER 10 tkinda, depressed or concer:ned I guess with having >to go down< for these needle biopsies and Will? showed up.
In Line 12, following Dad's progressively distressing update, Son's "°Mmm wow. °" displays a shift from acknowledging Dad's description-in-progress (i.e., with "Mmhmmm: " and "Mmhm" ) to quietly assessing it as troubling news. This response is treated by Dad as Son's unwillingness to comment further, and not inviting Dad's further elucidation of Mom's painful condition. Immediately following Son's "°Mmm wow. °," Dad initiates transition to a new but related topic with his pre-announcement "But ( 0 . 2 ) she did have two nice things ha: ppen today." As an upshot of Son's "closure implicative" action, this "conversation restart" (see Jefferson, 1984b, p. 193; see also Jefferson, 1996; Sacks, 1992) reveals how Dad's insertion of "good news" is on-topic, yet designed by him to ease the burden of previously articulated grievous circumstances about which enough had been said (at least for now). Notice also that Dad's "|kinda, depressed or concer:ned" (Line 15) was inserted following his pre-announcement, yet before announcing the good news that "Will? showed up." Here, as with how Dad and Son collaborate on reporting bad news as a prelude to announcing good news, the close proximity of Mom's reported mood, immediately prior to an old friend showing up for a visit, reveal how everyday life is comprised of tightly interwoven relationships among bad and good circumstances. It also illustrates how the valence of social occasions are subject to change and alteration, literally on the cusp of interactional time (see Maynard, 1997; in press). The shift from bad to good news evident in Excerpt 9 is also similar to Holt's (1993) findings involving death announcements by tellers, particularly to recipients not especially close to the deceased. In each of the 10 instances she examined, the tendency to treat the death of an intimate or acquaintance as bad news nevertheless eventuated in movement to a "bright side sequence" revealing some positive stance toward the news (e.g., deceased persons: worked until the time of death, died peacefully and in so doing solved problems associated with prolonged illnesses and caregiving tasks, or had the opportunity to say goodbye to people providing for a funeral that is less dismal). Holt observed that "there seems to be a strong link between bright side sequences and topic termination" (p. 208), not uncommonly termination of a phone call. In Excerpt 9, two exceptions can be noted. First, Dad transitions not just to a closely related topic, but to a decidedly positive orientation to updating news. His actions reveal how the shift from bad to good news is as an apparent resource for facilitating closure to a discussion that Son initially, and next Dad, treated as a delicate matter. Second, in Excerpt 9 not only is good news about friends' unexpected visits elaborated, but the phone call continues for more than 15 minutes. This is not
MANAGING OPTIMISM
181
surprising, however, because this is the first phone call between Dad and Son regarding Mom's malignant diagnosis. Perhaps even more important, however, is that a loved one's cancer is consequential for family members. Recipients not close to the deceased needn't be directly concerned about primary family troubles (Beach, in press). Family members routinely (often closely) monitor the course and progression of a loved one's illness, experience anxiety regarding the future, and grieve together for the possible or probable loss of a family member with whom extensive history is shared.
DELICATE BALANCE BETWEEN HOPE AND CHOICE In two contrasting yet related interactional environments, Dad and Son have been shown to collaborate in "managing optimism" regarding Mom's cancer: In Excerpt 8, "hope" was explicitly named and commented on by Dad; in Excerpt 9, talk about good news emerged out of prior bad news descriptions. In both instances, Dad was reporting on prior incidents involving medical staff and procedures, the latter focusing on how Mom was doing including problems with pain medication. These two instances were drawn from the first phone call. A more extended instance appears in the following Excerpt, but in this case during the second phone call, the very next day, between Son and Mom. A revealing glimpse of Mom's construction of her own cancer dilemma is evident in three ways: as she relies on medical procedures and providers as sources of information and thus attributed (but not named) hope, as "hope" gets mentioned but quickly corrected by her in favor of "choice" regarding radiation and chemotherapy, and as "keep fighting" gives rise to "being hopeful": 10) SDCL: MALIGNANCY #2:2-3 ((Mom has just informed Son that her cancer has been diagnosed as a very fast growing "adenoma type"-an update from call #1, where Dad was not aware of the general cancer classification, nor whether Mom's cancer was slow or fast growing. Mom has just reported that since very few people respond well to treatment, and those who do live five years or less, "It's real bad".)) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Mom:-> And uh: >I don't know what else to |tell you.< (1.0) Mom: ((coughs)) Son:-* .hh hhh Yeah. (0.2) urn- ((coughs)). Yeah, I don't know what to say either. Mom.--> No there's nothin to say. >You just-< .hh I'llI'll wait to talk to Dr. Leedon today.= He's the cancer man, and = Son.- = Um hmm.
182 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
CHAPTER 10 Mom:->
Son: Mom: Son: Mom: Son:-> Mom:—> Son: Mom: Mom:-> Son: Mom:-» Mom:—> Son: Mom:->
See what he has to say, and (0.4) just keep goin' forward. I mean I might be real lucky in five years. It might just be six months. (0.4) Yeah. °Who knows.o Phew::. Yeah. .hh hhh (0.4) Whadda you do: with this kind of thing. I mean- (.) >Radiation chemotherapy.< (1.2) Oh bo:y. Yeah. (0.5) My only hope- I mean- (.) my only choice. Yeah. It's either that or just lay here and it'll kill me. (1.0) And that's not the human condition. No. (1.0) I guess [not.] [No.] (.) So that's all I can tell you.
It appears, at least initially, that Mom and Son collaborate in exiting from the topic of cancer. Both speakers utter "I don' t know" (see Beach & Metzger, 1997), first in Line 1 as Mom claims she has nothing further to tell, and next in Lines 4 and 5 as Son affirms that, as recipient, he does not know what to say. In this sense there is indeed "nowhere else to go" (Jefferson, 1984b, p. 191), and Lines 1-5 bring closure to further talk about the seriousness of Mom's prognosis. Yet Lines 1-5 also demonstrate a transition to talking with her cancer doctor, which Mom initiates in Line 6. As the conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that the insufficient knowledge they claim, and display an inability and/or unwillingness to talk further about, is tied only to Mom's prior diagnosis (most notably the anguish Mom's immediately prior news makes available) and not her ongoing treatment. Three features of particular relevance to "managing optimism" emerge in Lines 6—32. First, Mom's "No there's nothin to say." is one form of an extreme case formulation (see Pomerantz, 1986), employed here to emphasize her position and to terminate her diagnostic update for Son's hearing. Next, notice that Mom's "I' 11- I ' l l wait to talk to Dr. Leedon today. = He ' s the cancer man," (Lines 7-8) implicates her having "cancer" without explicitly stating it. This is but one instance representing a larger collection where the word cancer is noticeably absent and, at times, apparently and
MANAGING OPTIMISM
183
actively avoided. In this moment, where Mom clearly has been diagnosed with cancer but fails to directly state it, she is nevertheless left with the task of formulating herself as a sick person. One practice for doing so, which Mom employs here, is to make reference to a provider-patient relationship in which she is involved. Thus, the professional expertise of "cancer man," provides one solution to directly stating "I have cancer." And by stating "See what he has to say," (Line 10), Mom situates herself as recipient for obtaining any new information the doctor might impart. Only the doctor has the expertise to announce any new, potentially good, and more or less definitive news regarding her acute medical condition. A central feature of "just keep goin' forward." (Lines 10-11), therefore, involves waiting for the doctor and whatever news he might disclose. As updates about Mom's terminal illness evolve, this is but one instance of how "faith" in your doctor is grounded in moments where "waiting" is explicitly stated, whereas the possibility of hopeful news is only implied. Of course, there is no guarantee that any update of her condition will amount to whatever "good news" might imply. This is revealed straightforwardly through Mom's self-repaired "I mean I might be real lucky in five years. It might just be six months." (Lines 9— 10). When 5 years is considered fortuitous, just what might constitute good news is an altogether relative notion here. (As noted previously, Mom's death occurred 13 months following diagnosis.) Clearly, in Lines 14-17, uncertainties surrounding such an illness trajectory make it problematic for Son and Mom to do more than "assimilate" the quandary they are caught up within.5 Second, in response to Son's query in Lines 18-19, "Whadda you do: with this kind of thing. I mean-," Mom immediately and quickly replies ">Radiation chemotherapy. <." By forwarding medical procedures as forms of treatment regimen, Mom also avoids addressing what Son may very well have been pursuing: more personal issues involving her coping (e.g., fears, anxieties, anger) with what appears to be a terminal diagnosis. Whether Son was in fact soliciting and thus inviting Mom to talk further about her feelings remains unclear. What is apparent is that by responding in this manner, Mom is "managing optimism" through steadfast reliance on medical protocol that, for now, is put forth as critical to "just keep goin' forward." (Lines 10-11). Third, it is her resoluteness that Son's delayed and assimilating "Oh bo.-y. " response seems to address (Lines 21 & 22), which Mom next affirms en 5 Work in progress (Beach 2000) is focusing on a collection of similar moments where "few words are enough" in the course of assimilating bad news (e.g., Jesus, Oh boy, Oh wow, Phew, Yuck).
184
CHAPTER 10
route to an explicit yet fleeing reference to "hope": "My only hope-l mean(.) my only choice." This is a curious self-repair, where "hope" and "choice" are at once treated by Mom as interwoven yet distinct, an explanation for which might be gleaned from prior discussion: In light of her 5-year prognosis as a best case scenario for life expectancy, any hope emerging from radiation and chemotherapy is restrictive; such treatment options offer little certitude nor assurance of healing her cancer. Thus, in this utterance, "hope" and the optimism it may engender appears to give way to "my only choice.," which is itself clearly restrictive and further legitimizes her decision making (see Pomerantz, 1986). It is not really a preference but an ill-fated necessity that Mom is orienting to. Addressed in no uncertain terms in Lines 25 and 27, Mom displays an essential unwillingness to be passive while allowing the cancer to "kill me.," which Son aligns with here (Line 26) and following Mom's elaborated "And that's not the human condition." (Lines 29 & 30). Further, it is by reference to basic human instincts for survival that Mom expresses her willingness to be treated through radiation and chemotherapy. In the final utterance of Excerpt 10, Mom's "So t h a t ' s all I can tell you." (Lines 31-32) repeats "tell you" from Line 1, where Mom stated ">I don't know what else to | tell you . < . " By so doing she exhibits her departure from this portion of an extended storytelling, which her cancer experiences entitle her to reveal (see Sacks 1984, 1992).6 One consequence is that, through word repeat, her story ending is punctuated in a manner not providing further access to Son who, as story recipient, does not further pursue what his "Whadda you do: with this kind of thing. I mean-," (Lines 18-19) may have been designed to address (e.g., Mom's personal feelings). Nor can he address the scenic particulars constructed in Excerpt 10 by himself, as it is clearly Mom's story to tell.
Invoking and Responding to "Magic" What Son does do, however, is proceed with his own story, informing Mom that he is aware of how the medication she is on can make her depressed. Mom then informs him that her diagnosis is "very serious" because the cancer has metastasized. (These data are not included here; 31 Lines were deleted between Excerpts 10 and 11, which follows). Next, Son takes the initiative to shift orientation to cancer problems by invoking "magic":
6 Schegloff s (1999) analysis of "word repeats at turn endings" reveal a similar resource: Tellers display their entitlement to initiate closure to stories only they are capable of narrating.
MANAGING OPTIMISM
185
11) SDCL: MALIGNANCY # 2 : 2 - 3 1 Son:—> Well where's our magic wand mom. 2 Mom:->- $It- he$ (.) o Beats the hell out of me. o
3
(1.2)
4 Mom:—» I guess the o:nly thing: (.) I: can do: is (.) 5 after I'm done ree:ling from this. 6 Son: Mmhm. 7 Mom:—» .hh Is find a reason to keep fighting and (.) to keep being 8 hopeful. ( 0 . 5 ) You know that- t h a t ' s about all you 9 can do. >That's all a person can do.< 10 Son: How can you do: that. ( 0 . 2 ) That's [gotta ]= 11 Mom: [We.- :11] 12 Son: =be tough. >I mean-< I don't mean to sa:y that 13 sounding like a14 Mom: Here comes your Papa: : . 15 Son: A:hhh.
In Line 1 Son achieves two key actions. First, through "our" he assumes ownership of Mom's illness predicament by making them out to be problems that can be faced together (see Beach, 1996). This is but one relational and commiserative display of being "with" (see Beach, in press-b; Goffman, 1963, 1971; Mandelbaum, 1987) that was obvious yet implicit in prior discussion. Next, "magic wand" offers more than wishful thinking. It also injects a sense of humor and brightness into a serious health scenario, one that is literally no laughing matter, and (based on prior actions) apparently a set of dire circumstances preventing Mom from being capable of uplifting herself. In responding with "$It- he$ (.) °Beats the hell out of me. °" (Line 2), Mom in turn accomplishes two key actions. First, her initial attempt at laughter ($), though quickly aborted, nevertheless treats Son as having made an effort to invite such laughter through his magical reframing of such critical topics. Curiously and next, however, Mom acts as recipient of her own telling situation by producing a despairing and "recognizably serious response" (Jefferson, 1984a, p. 346). By so doing Mom again appears unable and/or unwilling to take the trouble lightly and thus act in a troubles-resistant fashion (Jefferson, 1984b, 1988). Rather, and understandably so, she is totally engrossed in (and ensnared by) her diagnostic dilemma. But there is more here, a poetic and delicate preoccupation evident in her unwitting and quietly tailored "°Beats the hell out of me.°" (see Beach, 1993, 1996; Hopper, 1992; Jefferson, 1996; Sacks, 1992; see also chap. 13, this volume).7 Beginning with how the word "°Beats" adds valence and 7
The phrase "°Beats the hell out of me.o" may be added to the collection of "idiomatic expressions" as Drew & Holt (1988, 1998) have analyzed them (e.g., "it's gone tuh pot", "down the tubes"), in that it is an utterance occurring in a sequential environment clearly involving "complainable matters" (i.e., a serious cancer diagnosis). However, this interactional moment is unique in this
186
CHAPTER 10
thus pragmatic force to Mom's description, it stands in marked contrast to how magic wands are typically employed (i.e., through a simple "waving," which is sufficient to achieve magical consequences). And in unison with "°Beats" as a lexical choice reflecting the kind of force required to drive cancer out of her body, so does her extended utterance precisely characterize an unintentional sensitivity to the very troubles at hand: If a "magic wand" could heal an illness approaching hopelessness, it would literally exorcise a dark and foreboding force from "hell" that stifles rather than improves living. Following his humorous attempt to uplift Mom's condition, Son next withholds further commentary to her tepid response (Line 3). But the despair evident in her reply is only momentary (see also discussion of Excerpt 12 in the next section). As revealed in Mom's next "I guess the o:nly thing: (.) I: can do: is" (Line 4), she continues by specifying that there are uncertain and limited options for coping with cancer. This utterance is consequential in three key ways. First, it prefaces her insertion "after I'm done ree: ling from this.," a bewildering formulation referencing her here-and-now reaction to a malignant diagnosis (what Dad had earlier and apparently portrayed as "co:nfirmation and resignation." in Excerpt, Line 3). Second, it also sets up Mom's ".hh Is find a reason to keep fighting and (.) to keep being hopeful." (Lines 7-8). Framed as an ongoing and practical matter, Mom sketches out a procedure for living with and through her cancer that exemplifies basic survival instincts underlying the "human condition" (see Excerpt 10, Line 29, earlier). As she constructs it, remaining hopeful requires motivated fighting, two interwoven yet distinct actions that facilitate the search for reasons to live. Third, it is interesting that a key portion of Mom's "I guess the o: nly thing: (.) I: can do: is" (Line 4) is repeated two more times in Lines 8-9: "You know that- t h a t ' s about all you can do. >That' s all a person can do.<." Notice that whereas "can do" gets repeated, Mom's attempt to inform her Son evidences a movement from "I —> you —> person." In unison with her use of "me...I...I'm" in Lines 2-5, Mom's description becomes progressively less my-world centered as she endeavors to manage optimism in the face of bad diagnostic news. This step wise shift, beginning with a revelation of her experiences yet ending with a generic "person," accomplishes three critical and interrelated actions:
sense: While Drew & Holt (1988) have shown that such complainable matters are routinely directed to others' treatments of them, here Mom's utterance is not treating her Son as the source of the trouble but the illness she is enduring and its varied consequences.
MANAGING OPTIMISM
187
1. While falling short of magic, Mom reveals herself as doing "all" she can within her unique circumstances. She first discloses then normalizes her lived reality as an ordinary feature of illness management, an orientation common for others dealing with cancer predicaments (with whom she is now indirectly yet directly associated) as well. 2. By invoking third-person characterizations, Mom distances herself by utilizing "you" and "person" as devices for coping with the apparent inevitability of death. Through third-person references, her illness problems become less intimate and thus more easily managed at a time when, clearly, coming to grips with dying is inherently problematic. 3. Mom is also designing her talk in consideration of Son's hearing, and even protection, from having to directly confront a hopeless terminal illness. She is not disattending his prior and attempted uplifting of the dire situation, but (as best as possible) being responsive to it. Though her current disposition can be explained as "reeling", it is only temporary: Her confusion will give way to a more determined and "hopeful" condition, a "fighting" perseverance that Son can himself be hopeful about. Excerpt 11 draws to a close as Son continues by further pursuing just how Mom can remain hopeful (Lines 10 & 12), a solicitation that is preempted with Mom's announcement that "Papa" has just entered the room.
A Story and its Consequences: Fighting the Battle Together As Mom exits from talking (not shown in Excerpt 11), Papa and Son continue talking for nearly 5 minutes about fixing cars together8 and an upcoming chili dinner Son has prepared for when Mom returns home from the hospital. Son then requests to speak with Mom once again and announces his dinner plans to her. It is at this juncture that Mom initiates the following story about a "sign" the Son had placed in her hospital room: 12) 1 M: 2 S: 3 M:
8
SDCL: MALIGNANCY #2:12-13 >By the way< your sign 'Do not take me' really worked. $Did it?$ Totally confu:sed one girl. She looked, and she looked,
While it may appear that "fixing cars together" is of little relevance to understanding the interactional management of cancer predicaments, quite the contrary is the case. It is revealing to examine just what everyday topics find their way into the midst of "cancer topics", how and when they appear and are terminated, that are seemingly not about cancer per se. For example, in this instance of "fixing cars together", is it coincidental that Dad and Son move together to talk about 1) something they are both knowledgeable about, that 2) they can thus (with some confidence) diagnose together - in stark contrast to technical matters of cancer diagnosis and treatment? Analysis of a larger collection of of topic organization suggests otherwise.
188
CHAPTER 10
4
and she looked. Now this is a little oriental gal. =
5 6
S:
= Mm hm. (0.4)
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2021 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
M: S:
(1.0)
[she went out] [Do not ] ah (.) take oh (.) me
(.) [ ha ] [ She] went out and she brought in >ya know< those things have liners? S: Mmm hm. M: She brought a li:ner of like a- of clear water in to set it there. S: Mm hm mm hm [°hm° ] M: [ She ] didn't- she couldn't quite figure that who:le thing out. >But she wasn't gonna touch it.< S: Mmm. (.) Good. M:-» °So that was kinda funny.o S:-» See, [there] there's a small battle= M: [( )] S : -> =That we've won. = M:-> $Right, [ right,] right$ S:-» [$hhh.$] -» An(d) that's all ya can do is jus- just -> [ rack up the] sma:11 battles. M: -> [Ri : ght ri : ght uh mm] °Well° .hhh Well okay. I'm gonna let you go:. S: O[kay.] ((Mom & Son move to phone closing.))
M:
That Mom even initiated such a humorous story displays her attempt to lighten what had become, prior to Son and Dad's conversation, a very serious discussion of both her diagnostic condition and orientation to coping. Further, she also acknowledges Son's thoughtful effort to meet her needs, by his placement of a "'Do not take me'" sign, which stands in contrast to her prior tepid and momentarily despairing response to his "Well where' s our magic wand mom." (Excerpt 11, Lines 1-2). Taken together, the actions built into this shift in topic mark a contrast in Mom's demeanor: They are remedial in just the ways Mom's initiation of this particular story appears designed to invigorate her earlier and displayed unwillingness and/or inability to take her troubles lightly, and to display appreciation for Son's ongoing concerns with her illness predicament. This marked shift in Mom's disposition does not go unnoticed by Son. In response to her reference to "little oriental gal." (Line 4), Son collaborates by personifying the girl's scenic reaction with a stereotypic " [ Do not ] ah (.) take oh (.) me (.) [ ha ] ", a voiced switch in identity (see Beach, 2000a) he treats as humorous with his final " [ ha ]." Next, it is of particular interest that when Mom brings the story to a close (Line 19), Son
MANAGING OPTIMISM
189
relies on Mom's initiated story to revisit yet extend their earlier discussion (Excerpt 11): He retopicalizes and reframes Mom's immediately delivered story (i.e., fighting -> battle, our magic wand —» we've won). In these ways, Son shows sensitivity to Mom's "keep fighting and (.) to keep being hopeful.," while simultaneously treating this as a moment for reemphasizing that they are indeed facing the problems together. Following Mom's aligned recognition and their shared laughter (Lines 23-24), Son's "An (d) t h a t ' s all ya can do is jus- just [rack up the] sma-. 11 battles." (Lines 25-26) offers a prototypical summary that reinvokes "all ya can do." Apparently, this utterance overextends an otherwise well-taken point, however, as Mom interjectively moves to close down Son's contribution (Line 27) and end the phone conversation together (Lines 28-29).
CONCLUSION Faced with a serious and uncertain cancer diagnosis, and thus in the very midst of emergent troubles and possible despair, family members rely on hope and optimism as resources for dealing with and attempting to ease burdens arising from the often harsh and restrictive impositions of such illness circumstances. Just as it has been observed that "research on the connections between hope and social psychological functioning" is minimal in cancer research, and that "maintain[ing] a sense of control" is an essential determinant of how cancer patients cope with their illness hopefully (Bunston, Mings, Mackie, & Jones, 1995, p. 79), so can it be noted that perhaps even less is known about what comprises "hope" and "control" as interactionally organized moments of practical action. Although only calls #1 and #2 of the larger corpus were examined, "managing optimism" was nevertheless evident across an assortment of social actions: • Acknowledging the importance of medical personnel by steadfastly relying on medical protocol and treatment procedures. • Lightening the discussion by shifting from bad to good topics. • Revealing how personal coping with cancer involves an inseparable relationship between hope and restricted choices. • Offering collaboration in facing Mom's illness together. • Humorously going even beyond hope by invoking "magic" when Mom understandably displays an inability and deep preoccupation with not taking her troubles lightly. • Proposing "fighting" and "being hopeful" as basic survival instincts even when resistance to troubles is diminishing.
190
•
CHAPTER 10
Doing "all you can do" to remain capable of hoping that healing might occur.
Clearly, then, such delicate instances are comprised of fine-grained subtleties through which the process of "managing optimism" is being achieved. Ongoing analysis of the larger collection of such moments (calls #3-#54) will provide a useful and longitudinal perspective for framing how the interactional activities examined herein are themselves tied to, in fact constitutive of, key moments as Mom's cancer progressed and was treated until her death. Though yet further and critical implications require discussion, only four can be briefly articulated here. First, working to be hopeful together can also produce its own interactional dilemmas in the midst of talking about other "dreaded issues" (Perakyla, 1995). Further investigation is needed into how the management of family relationships is itself an ongoing and often problematic achievement, particularly when: a) doing the work of moving out of troubling topics (e.g.; Dad's shift to good from bad news precipitated by Son's display that enough had been said); b) moving talk forward even though family members express that they do not know what to say (e.g., Mom and Son rely on few words when assimilating the news together); c) initiating, pursuing, and responding to intimate and personal topics (e.g., Son twice querying Mom about how she copes with her condition); d) uplifting and compensating for responses to such edification efforts (e.g., Son's invoking "magic" and Mom's delayed telling of a funny story to counter her prior tepid response to his displayed concerns); and e) in responding to Mom's story Son further attempts to make the point that small battles can be won together, which Mom interjectively initiates closure on by moving to end the call. Second, even a cursory inspection of these materials reveals that the query "What makes a family, a family?" (e.g., see Gubrium & Holstein, 1990) is deserving of substantive, interactionally grounded answers. Such matters as how supporting and commiserating get interactionally managed, for example, are available to the extent they are anchored in family members' practices for working as a team: when taking turns at being hopeful, injecting humorous concerns into troubling circumstances, and working to protect one another from fears and anxieties so often associated with death and dying. In these ways, useful contrasts might also be made with interactions among acquaintances. This chapter has shown that "bright side sequences" are only one type of response available for family members dealing with cancer (see Holt, 1993), that the proximity and interwoven nature of good and bad news is omnipresent, and that family members may display "doing being" a family by making another's
MANAGING OPTIMISM
191
problems their own in and through the ways they assimilate the news and grieve together (see Beach, 1996, in press). Third, regarding talk about troubles (see Jefferson 1980, 1984a, 1984b, 1988; see chap. 13, this volume), these family members appear remarkably sensitive to limitations on serious topics, yet at times proceed to enact topic shifts without necessarily terminating talking about cancer per se. How this ongoing work gets done also merits ongoing examination. Similarly, environments need to be more fully inspected when, following moments where Mom's ability to resist troubles essentially fails, she nevertheless "rebounds," that is, attempts to muster the energy required to rally her appreciation for Son's concerns and to remain hopeful and optimistic. Further, if and when such issues as "coping or defense mechanisms" are to be understood as interactionally generated and managed, as well as "stages" of grieving (i.e., denial, anger, depression, bargaining, acceptance; Kubler-Ross, 1969, 1974), they must be shown to be more than psychological states wherein individuals' experiences are ultimately the units of analysis. By inspecting how family members mutually coordinate their orientations to illness predicaments and various health concerns over time, it may become possible to describe and substantiate temporal shifts interactionally, that is, by elucidating the social actions comprising developmental aspects of coming to grips not just with "death and dying" but, even more broadly, all aspects of illness progression. A key feature of these discoveries will likely involve understanding how prior discussions, such as what "the doctors told them," are employed to constantly shape and update understandings about Mom's condition (see Beach, 2001, in press). Little has been said in this chapter about such "carry over" recurrences, even though the data make available such possibilities for analysis, albeit in limited fashion (e.g., as with Dad and Mom's references to "medical staff). Finally, as described earlier (see Footnote 1), I did not invent "managing optimism" as a technical term for labeling social actions of the kind examined here. But it seems an apt description. Having been diagnosed with cancer, and just beginning to realize social aspects of talking with others about his diagnosis and treatment, it was Robert Hopper who observed the tendency to remain hopeful as uncertain and even bad news emerged. Given marked contrasts between self-reporting about versus enacting social actions collaboratively in real time, it is interesting (yet perhaps not surprising) to note that the kinds of interactional contingencies examined in this chapter extend considerably beyond those he identified in more general terms. Similarly, the experiences and interactional involvements of a cancer patient (with medical staff, family members, friends, and colleagues alike) are much broader than what any single phone corpus might capture. And so it should also not be unexpected that Robert cited other kinds of encounters central to "managing
192
CHAPTER 10
optimism," only three of which I mention here, activities involving both those undergoing cancer and others talking with them about "it": a) acting "as though" everything is all right when it obviously is not, b) literally calibrating and coordinating just what and how something might be said, if anything, yet without appearing morbid about the illness, and c) when talk about the "same cancer" arises, but within different relationships comprised of varying degrees of background and intimacy, what problems (if any) emerge as attempts to discuss and describe the illness and its prognosis are modified (e.g., when disclosure is solicited and/or voluntary, withheld and/or pursued)? Living with and through cancer, and an array of other chronic and lifethreatening illness (e.g., see Packo, 1991), occasions diverse circumstances where "managing optimism" is interactionally achieved. Only selected and comparably few instances have been introduced in this chapter. It is obvious and compelling, however, that the full social milieu of cancer quandaries, involving "what communicators do, not what scholars have validated" (Hopper 1981, p. 209), remain largely unearthed and thus taken-for-granted.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was made possible through funding provided by the American Cancer Society (Grant #ROG-98-172-01).
REFERENCES Beach, W. A. (1993). The delicacy of preoccupation. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 299-312. Beach, W. A. (1996). Conversations about illness: Family preoccupations with bulimia. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Asociates. Beach, W.A. (2000a). Inviting collaborations in stories about a woman. Language in Society, 29, 379-407. Beach, W. A. (2000c). When few words are enough: Assimilating bad news about cancer. Unpublished manuscript. Beach, W. A. (2001). Stability and ambiguity: Managing uncertain moments when updating news about mom's cancer. Text, 21, 221-250. Beach, W. A. (in press). Between dad and son: Initiating, delivering, and assimilating bad cancer news. Health Communication. Beach, W. A. & Metzger, T. R. (1997). Claiming insufficient knowledge. Human Communication Research, 23, 562-588.
MANAGING OPTIMISM
193
Bunston, T., Mings, D., Mackie, A., & Jones, D. (1995). Facilitating hopefulness: The determinants of hope. Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, 13, 79-104. Drew, P. & Holt, E. (1988). Complainable matters: The use of idiomatic expressions in making complaints. Social Problems, 35, 398-417. Drew, P., Holt, E. (1998). Figures of speech: Figurative expressions and the management of topic transition in conversation. Language in Society, 27, 495-522. Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places. New York: The Free Press. Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public. New York: Basic Books. Gubrium, J. F. & Holstein, J. A. (1990). What is family? Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Holt, E. (1993). The structure of death announcements: Looking on the bright side of death. Text, 13, 189-212. Hopper, R. (1981). The taken-for-granted. Human Communication Research 7, 195-211. Hopper, R. (1992). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation. Text and Performance Quarterly, 12, 113-124. Jefferson, G. (1980). End of grant report on conversations in which "troubles" or "anxieties" are expressed (HR 4805/2) [Mimeo]. London: Social Science Research Council. Jefferson, G. (1984a). On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp.346-369). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, G. (1984b). On stepwise transition from talk about a trouble to inappropriately next-positioned matters. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 191-222). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, G. (1988). On the sequential organization of troubles talk in ordinaryconversation. Social Problems, 35, 418-441. Jefferson, G. (1996). On the poetics of ordinary talk. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16, 1-61. Kubler-Ross, E. (1969). On death and dying. New York: Macmillan. Kubler-Ross, E. (1974). Questions and answers on death and dying. New York: Macmillan. Mandelbaum, J. (1987). Couples sharing stories. Communication Quarterly, 35, 144-170.
194
CHAPTER 10
Maynard, D. W. (1996). On "realization" in everyday life: The forecasting of bad news as a social relation. American Sociological Review, 61, 109— 131. Maynard, D. W. (1997). The news delivery sequence: Bad news and good news in conversational interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 30, 93-130. Maynard, D. W. (in press). Bad news, good news: A benign order in conversations, clinics, and everyday life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Packo, J. E. (1991). Coping with cancer and other chronic life-threatening diseases. Camp Hill, Pennsylvania: Christian Publications. Perakyla, A. (1991). Hope work in the care of seriously ill patients. Qualitative Health Research, 1, 407-433. Perakyla, A. (1993). Invoking a hostile world: Discussing the patient's future in AIDS counseling. Text, 13, 302-338. Perakyla, A. (1995). AIDS counselling: Institutional interaction and clinical practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Pomerantz, A. (1986). Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims. Human Studies, 9, 219-229. Sacks, H. (1984). On doing "being ordinary". In J.M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.) Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp.413-429). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation (Vols. 1-2). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Sudnow, D. (1967). Passing on: The social organization of dying. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
11 Rejecting Illegitimate Understandings Samuel G. Lawrence University of Central Florida Conversation analytic studies have demonstrated decisively that an "architecture of intersubjectivity" (Heritage, 1984) provides for the recurrence and stability of understandings in talk-in-interaction. These studies describe interactants' methods for accomplishing the routine and tacit tasks of displaying, ratifying, and updating intersubjective understandings (Heritage, 1984; Sacks, 1992a, 1992b; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). This architecture of intersubjectivity is a systematic by-product of turn organization: [I]t obliges its participants to display to each other, in a turn's talk, their understanding of other turn's talk. More generally, a turn's talk will be heard as directed to a prior turn's talk, unless special techniques are used to locate some other talk to which it is directed. (Sacks et al., 1974, p. 728)
The outcomes of interpretive operations, performed upon the prior turn in the first position, are publicly displayed in the next turn position. The selection of some next action (e.g., an answer), for example, exhibits its speaker's understanding that the prior turn was a corresponding first action (e.g., question). The prior speaker, in turn, inspects the adequacy of those displayed understandings and exhibits their (in)adequacy in the third turn position. The products of these inspections may contribute to or briefly impede the continued sequential development and directionality of the talk. According to Heritage (1984), the third position slot may be used for implementing actions that tacitly "ratify" understanding displays in next turn position. Alternatively, the speaker of the talk in the first position, upon finding 195
196
CHAPTER 11
evidence of misunderstanding in the next turn position, may initiate thirdposition repair (Schegloff, 1987b, 1991, 1992). For example, D understands M's deployment of "Jeff as referring to her husband who is also named Jeff. The displayed product of this understanding is the collective pro-term "we." This pro-term refers to the speaker and her husband. (1) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
UTCL: Mother-Daughter.2.192-202 M: =How are things goin' with her- uh her and Jeff? D: Fine (0.4) D: Just fine, we haven't seen much of h fe r we I M: Li do n't] mean your Jeff, I mean Jeff Over fman D: Loh not very good ( ( c o n t i n u e s ) )
M re-performs the operations that D had performed on M's turn in Line 1 and displays their products, "your Jeff," in the rejection component of the thirdposition repair (Lines 5-6). M's actions of re-performing these operations and displaying their products treat D's misunderstanding as the product of a methodical and legitimately alternative, though incorrect, analysis of "Jeff' (Line 1). In this regard, Schegloff (1992) observed: It is striking that misunderstandings are both orderly and accessible to the speaker of what has been misunderstood, who might well be thought to be so committed to the design and so-called intent of the earlier turn as to be disabled from appreciating that (or how) it could be otherwise understood, (p. 1307)
The orderliness and accessibility of misunderstandings to speakers of talk in the first position, however, are not givens because they may misunderstand the understanding display in the next turn position (Schegloff, 1992). Additionally, speakers may reject an understanding display as an unwarranted or illegitimate analysis of the talk in the first position. In these cases, the understanding display may be treated as intelligible on its own; however, the speaker of the first-positioned talk may deny the reproducibility of that understanding as the product of some methodical analysis of the prior turn. Such understandings are rejected not as misunderstanding but as misconstruing the prior turn. The present essay is a single case analysis (Schegloff, 1987a) of an understanding display that is rejected as misconstruing the prior turn. Analytical resources from turn, sequence, and topical organization are utilized to explicate: (a) how the talk in first position is occasioned, (b) how the next speaker analyzes
ILLEGITIMATE UNDERSTANDINGS
197
the prior turn, (c) how the speaker of the first-positioned talk rejects the reproducibility of that analysis, and (d) how the speaker of the understanding display counters the rejection and provides for the methodicity of that display. The data are taken from a telephone conversation between two college students. Dee Ann had called to check whether Skeet was willing to lend his ticket to her. After indicating that he needed the ticket and producing a topicbounding turn, Dee Ann used a topic initial elicitor (Button & Casey, 1984) in Line 1 to create a slot in which Skeet may formulate newly topicalizable materials, based on his current activity. After the repair sequence in Lines 2-3, he reports his current activity as, "Goin' ta bed." (2): UTCL: ROM8a.1.1 What Doin'=h 1 Dee Ann: Wha' I'm doin'? 2 Skeet: Uh huh 3 Dee Ann: Goin' ta bed 4 Skeet: (0.2) 5 Are you really? 6 Dee Ann: Yep |~h 7 Skeet: [why? r ' y a sick? 8 Dee Ann: (0.2) 9 No I'm jus tired.= 10 Skeet: 11 Dee Ann: =Tired °Yeah.° 12 Skeet: (0.4) 13 Went to bed too late las' night.= 14 Skeet: = ( ° Y e p ° ) I donno why_: 15 Dee Ann: 16 (.) 17 huh huh [.h N o t ] my fault. ((spoken in an exaggerated L( No idea.)J 18 Skeet: 19 Dee Ann: regional d i a l e c t ) ) (0.3) 20 I- (.) didn't say that 21 Skeet: Okay 22 Dee Ann: eKh [h! ((laughs/coughs)) 23 Skeet: 24 Dee Ann: [hu=hu You th(h)ought it awful l(h)oud(h) thou(h)gh huh [huh . h huh ] huh . h= 25 [n n h! ] 26 Skeet: =No. 27 Dee Ann: (0.3) 28 Jis okay wull- (0.2) anyway (.) thought I'd 29 Dee Ann: check 30
Because Skeet's activity report had been solicited rather than volunteered, it exhibits downgraded newsworthiness (Button & Casey, 1984). Dee Ann's topicalizing response "Are you really?" upgrades the newsworthiness of that report and makes Skeet's current activity available for further topical talk. This topicalizer selects Skeet as the next speaker, but does not specifically request an
198
CHAPTER 11
elaboration of his report although an occasion for elaboration is provided; thus, Skeet is positioned to volunteer an elaboration. His minimal affirmation in Line 7, however, momentarily curtails topic development, but Dee Ann pursues elaboration in Line 8 through an itemized news inquiry ("Why? r'ya sick?"). This inquiry utilizes a correction invitation format (Sacks, 1992a) that selects a candidate account from a class of accounts (glossed as "debilitating personal states") and invites confirmation or a correction that selects an alternative account from the same class. Skeet in Line 10 opts for the latter by rejecting Dee Ann's candidate account and attributing his early preparation for sleep to fatigue. Skeet uses the minimizer "jus" to formulate his fatigue as having minimal seriousness. After the hearing check and its confirmation (Lines 11-12), Dee Ann had an opportunity to self-select and pursue further topical development (Line 13); however, she did not. Instead Skeet elected to continue speaking and volunteered an unsolicited account for his fatigue: "Went to bed too late las' night" (Line 14). He attributes his fatigue to his own prior failure to get to bed on time. Important to note, the topical focus of Skeet's current "unhappy" state is linked up with incipient topical possibilities, namely actions and events, within the temporal frame of "las' night," that preceded and possibly contributed to his failure. Dee Ann's understandings of Skeet's account are progressively displayed in two successive turn units. The initial turn unit "(°Yep°) I donno why:" (Line 15) may be viewed as a teasing action. Evidence for this analysis may be found in its composition and sequential placement. First, Dee Ann professes ignorance of the reasons for Skeet's tardiness in getting to bed. Since Dee Ann and Skeet may share access to actions and events that preceded and possibly contributed to his lateness in getting to bed, disavowing that shared knowledge is "in direct contrast to something they both know" (Drew, 1987, p. 232). This contrast, coupled with the stress on and the stretching of "why:," contribute to the recognizability of the unit's ironic import. Second, Drew (1987) reports that teases occur in the next turn position and treat prior turns as "overdone" in some fashion. In view of their possibly shared knowledge, Dee Ann's irony may treat Skeet's account in Line 14 as "stating the obvious" rather than as "news." Third, teases attribute deviant actions and/or categories based on some minimally required identity (Drew, 1987). That is, Dee Ann's use of "why:" exploits Skeet's failure to get to bed (minimally required identity) by alluding to (deviant) actions that suggest a lack of personal discipline. In contrast, professing ignorance of these actions may be a way for Dee Ann to take up a playful stance of "innocence." Following a beat of silence in Line 16, Dee Ann produced two bursts of laughter. In the environment of Dee Ann's ironic laugh source, the subsequent
ILLEGITIMATE UNDERSTANDINGS
199
laughter proffers a laugh invitation (Jefferson, 1979). Skeet has an opportunity to exhibit appreciation of Dee Ann's tease and playful stance of innocence by laughing together with her, thus co-implicating himself with that stance (Jefferson, Sacks, & Schegloff, 1987). Skeet does not take up the invitation to laugh. Instead, he displays recognition of the tease (without ratifying its humor) through his own faint and world-weary profession of ignorance in Line 18. In Line 17, Dee Ann does not pursue laughter. Instead, following her terminal inbreath, Dee Ann explicitly denies culpability in regard to Skeet's lateness in getting to bed. In contrast to her prior teasing action, this denial proposes a serious version of "las' night's" events. Her denial is done in a kind of exaggerated "countrified," regional dialect (possibly central Texas) that is compatible with her posture of innocence. Combined with her pre-speech laughter, Dee Ann uses this speech register to distance herself form the delicate action of treating Skeet's account in Line 14 as shifting blame to her. How does Dee Ann come to deny responsibility for Skeet's failure to get to bed on time? First, she does not solicit the account in Line 14. Instead, Skeet volunteers it. Button and Casey (1985) observed how tellers refrain from volunteering delicate tellings and wait for recipients to solicit them. Because Skeet had volunteered the account, Dee Ann may have understood him as making a special point of reminding her of an incident with now "unhappy" consequences for him (Pomerantz, 1978). Second, Dee Ann may have understood Skeet's account as part of an unfinished telling, with more details to come. The unsolicited production of this account (Line 14), coupled with its scanty details, may have contributed to that understanding. If Dee Ann had participated in activities with Skeet that preceded his failure to get to bed on time, then her disavowal of blame in Line 17 may have anticipated and preempted forthcoming reminders of her participation that shift at least some of the responsibility for his failure to her. Dee Ann may have anticipated descriptions from Skeet that would have turned his failure into a consequence of her antecedent actions (Pomerantz, 1978).1 In the third turn position (Line 21), Skeet deploys "I- (.) didn't say that" to reject Dee Ann's denial of culpability. The delayed onset of this rejection, coupled with the glottal cut-off of "I-" and the beat of silence prior to "didn't," display what, for Skeet, is the strongly unexpected character of Dee Ann's denial.2 Features of Skeet's rejection exhibit its placement in the third sequential 1 This line of analysis depends on the assumption that Dee Ann had been a party to the previous night's events. Though no independent evidence is available, it is difficult to surmise otherwise how she could have come to see herself as a candidate for blame allocation, without imputing some type of "exotic" motivation to her denial of culpability. 2 Notice that Skeet's rejection is done in reference to his talk in Line 14; the rejection does not propose a version of the previous night's events that would treat Dee Ann as an outsider to those
200
CHAPTER 11
position in relation to his account ("Went to bed too late las' night") in the first position and Dee Ann's analysis of it ("Not my fault") in the next turn position. The pro-terms "I-" and "say" topicalize his authorship of the account, and "that" ties back to, without formulating, Dee Ann's denial and its concomitant attribution of blame shifting. Like third-position repairs, this rejection treats the relationship between the contributions in the first and next turn positions as problematic. However, the negation of "say" denies that Dee Ann's finding of blame shifting could have been produced from any legitimate analysis of "Went to bed too late las' night." Skeet rejects her analysis, not as misunderstanding the account, but as misconstruing it. This method of rejecting understanding displays in the next turn position differs from comparable practices of third-position repair. The latter treat misunderstanding displays as viable, albeit incorrect, alternative understandings of talk in the first position. In this instance, "I- (.) didn't say that" rejects Dee Ann's denial of culpability as the product of an illegitimate analysis of the account in Line 14. Additionally, third-position repairs provide speakers of understanding displays with the resources to redo their understanding of the first-positioned talk.3 Rather than providing these resources for Dee Ann, Skeet stands by the import of his account as an innocuous and self-evident description of his agency in failing to get to bed on time. Skeet's rejection accomplishes this action by reporting a negative event; that is, he denies having authored talk that could be construed as shifting responsibility to Dee Ann. This negative formulation makes an implicit contrast with what he did say. Skeet imputes a benign and self-evident intelligibility to that talk; furthermore, the account is treated as a completed telling, as opposed to an unfinished one. Skeet invokes an entitlement to having the account treated as having the plainfully intelligible character that he attributes to it (Garfinkel, 1967), and thus Dee Ann's misconstrual of that talk is treated as something of a breach of that entitlement. In line 22, Dee Ann acknowledges Skeet's authorial authority over his talk. This asymmetry does not mean, however, that she is without resources to counter his rejection (cf. Drew, 1991). 21 22
Skeet: Dee Ann:
I- (.) didn't say that Okay
events. That is, if Dee Ann could not be viewed as a party to those events, Skeet would be expected to deliver a very different sort of rejection (e.g., "Huh? You weren't even there"). ' Referring back to example 1, after M had specified how "Jeff" in Line 1 was properly understood (Line 6), D used her revised understanding of M's question to redo her answer (Lines 7-8) in a direction quite different from Lines 2 and 4.
ILLEGITIMATE UNDERSTANDINGS 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
Skeet: Dee Ann: Skeet: Dee Ann: Dee Ann:
201
eKh
fh! ((laughs/coughs)) |_hu=hu You th(h)ought it awful l(h)oud(h) thou(h)gh huh [huh .h huh 1 huh .h= Ln n h! ] =No. (0.3) Jis okay wull- (0.2) anyway (.) thought I'd check
In Line 23, Skeet produces a burst of laughter (also bearable as a cough upon its occurrence) that Dee Ann joins with a pair of laughs. Out of this environment, she retrieves the laugh source (Line 21) from which the counter "You th(h)ought it awful l(h)oud(h) thou(h)gh" is produced. The pro-term "it" preserves the referent of "that" (Line 21), and the counter half jokingly concedes that Skeet's account could not have been understood as saying she was to blame; this concession is delivered in a qualified fashion (note the use of "though" in the tag position). Nonetheless Dee Ann's counter preserves her finding of blame shifting by imputing it as a "thought" to Skeet. The action of attributing "thoughts" to an interlocutor speaks to Sacks' (1992a) remarks concerning the observability of thoughts: And this phenomenon of seeing other people's thoughts is really an important thing. Exactly how it's properly posed is quite tricky. First of all, it's of course nonsense to say that thoughts are things that can't be seen, unless you want to take some notion of "thoughts" that Members do not employ, since they certainly do take it that one can see what anybody is thinking. Not in every case, certainly, but you can see what people are thinking, and there are ways of doing it. And you must learn to do it. (p. 364)
In this particular case, Skeet has rejected Dee Ann's denial of culpability and its analysis of the account in Line 14; he denies the very possibility of construing his talk as shifting blame to her. Dee Ann faces the problem of providing for the methodicity of her denial and its display of understanding in Line 17. Having just conceded to Skeet's authorial authority, she is effectively prevented from using the composition of Skeet's description of his own agency as a resource in solving this problem. Furthermore, certain methodical features of her understanding, the unsolicited production of Skeet's telling and its possibly unfinished character, may be potentially troublesome to formulate explicitly. Dee Ann provides for the methodicity of her rejected understanding by glossing Skeet's observable activity as a "thought" and formulating that activity gloss as the source of her action/understanding display. Such a practice does not involve "mind reading" in the sense of claiming access to the "private" recesses of another's mind. The
202
CHAPTER 11
description "awful l(h)oud(h)" characterizes that "thought" as having a publicly conspicuous character. The delicate nature of Dee Ann's counter lies not so much in the attribution of "thoughts" to Skeet but in the reattribution of the action of blaming to him. Skeet's rejection is treated as a laugh source that Dee Ann retrieves to produce a continuation of joking activity as she distances herself from the accusatory import of her counter (Line 24). This laughter was initiated in Line 23 by Skeet, but was sustained primarily by Dee Ann during its course with minimal participation from Skeet (Line 26). The laughter combined with the joke-to-serious "No" (Schegloff, 1996) in Line 27 to frame the interaction that ensued from Skeet's rejection in Line 21 as "half kidding/serious." Dee Ann exits from this topical sequence (Line 29) by returning to the previous topic and official reason for the call. To summarize: This essay reports on a practice of rejecting illegitimate understanding displays. Utterances such as "I didn't say that" refer to those displays (through the pro-term "that") but reject the reproducibility of such displays from a methodical analysis of the talk in the first position. This practice may be regarded as a cousin of third-position repair. Though both action types treat the relationship between the talk in the first position and its display of understanding in the next turn position as problematic, the former does not formulate a repair or solution to the problem of understanding. In the present data, the speaker of "I didn't say that" reports a negative event that contrasts implicitly with what had been said in the first position. This speaker stands by the first-positioned talk as exhibiting a self-subsistent intelligibility. Consequently the recipient of "I didn't say that" faced the problem of providing for the methodicity of her action/display of understanding in the next turn position. The observed solution in these data involved the speaker of the understanding display acknowledging her interlocutor's authorial authority then imputing her understanding to a "thought" of the interlocutor. This formulation served to gloss the publicly noticeable activity of the interlocutor as the source of her understanding. These data serve to suggest some possible limits to speakers' tolerance for alternative understandings of their talk. As Schegloff (1992) pointed out, speakers readily recognize that and how their talk may be understood in ways divergent from its designed import. However, when their talk is treated as portending some interpersonally problematic action (such as blaming), subsequent understanding displays may be rejected as exceeding that tolerance. One way to reject the legitimacy of an understanding display is to deny the usability of the talk in the first position as the source of an analysis that would produce that understanding. This finding provides a naturally occurring complement to one of Garfinkel's (1967) breaching demonstrations. Next speakers were instructed to withhold displays of understanding of the prior speakers' commonplace remarks (e.g., "I had a flat
ILLEGITIMATE UNDERSTANDINGS
203
tire") and to raise problems of understanding by initiating repair (e.g., "What do you mean, 'you had a flat tire'"?) in the absence of recognizable understanding problems. The prior speakers' subsequent outrage was clearly more moral than technical. He concluded that speakers do not merely expect to be understood but insist on an entitlement to the manifestly intelligible character of their talk. In the present data, a next speaker commits to a display of understanding, but the prior speaker uses the third sequential position to reject the prior action/understanding display as transgressing the self-evident intelligibility of the talk in the first position. Unlike the explosive outrage of Garfinkel's "victims," the parties to the present data drew upon the organization of laughter and used special speech registers as ways of framing delicate actions as "half joking/serious." Overall, these findings contribute to our understanding of connections between the interactional architecture of intersubjectivity and the moral order. Rejecting the methodicity and legitimacy of an understanding display poses certain interactional "aftershocks" in which the parties orient to a possible impropriety embodied in imputing the action of blaming to a prior speaker whose talk is excluded as a possible source of such an understanding. So how does the speaker of the rejected understanding display manage to re-legitimate that display? One way is to formulate conduct, other than the talk in the first position, that would serve as an alternative source of the speaker's methodically produced understanding. Here that speaker preserves her understanding as the product of a gloss of her interlocutor's publicly conspicuous activity: "You th(h)ought it awful l(h)oud(h) thou(h)gh." The interactional uses of these glossing practices provide both a parallel and challenge to communication models that impute messages to the private encoding of speakers' "thoughts" and "meanings." Whereas these models treat "thoughts" as residing in the private, unobservable mental storehouse of speakers, such notions of radical subjectivity are not in use among the parties to this interaction. These observations add credence to Sacks' (1992a) remarks concerning the public observability of thoughts and underscore the dangers of premature theorizing that glosses rather than explicates the details of interactional practices.4
4
Rejecting theoretical notions of radical subjectivity does not deny that people, at times, do act as "practical Solipsists." The key is finding data in which the parties to an interaction orient to such practices instead of insisting upon their omnirelevance as many communication models do.
204
CHAPTER 11
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Robert Hopper was my dissertation adviser at the University of Texas in the late 1980s. I and many others, in large measure, trace the beginnings of our intellectual commitment to the close examination of talk to his graduate seminars in conversation analysis. Over the years, he has continued to embody what it means to be a colleague by appreciating our strengths and challenging us to improve our craft. He has unselfishly given of himself during the best and worst of times. It is a distinct honor to contribute to this esteemed collection.
REFERENCES Button, G., & Casey, N. (1984). Generating topic: The use of topic initial elicitors. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 167-190). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Button, G., & Casey, N. (1985). Topic nomination and topic pursuit. Human Studies, 8, 3-55. Drew, P. (1991). Asymmetries of knowledge in conversational interactions. In I. Markova & K. Foppa (Eds.), Asymmetries in dialogue (pp. 21-48). Hertfordshire, England: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Jefferson, G. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance declination. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (79-96). New York: Irvington. Jefferson, G., Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Notes on laughter in the pursuit of intimacy. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 152-205). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Pomerantz, A. (1978). Attributions of responsibility: Blamings. Sociology, 12, 115-121. Sacks, H. (1992a). Lectures on conversation (Vol. 1, G. Jefferson, Ed.). Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell. Sacks, H. (1992b). Lectures on conversation (Vol. 2, G. Jefferson, Ed). Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
ILLEGITIMATE UNDERSTANDINGS
205
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language, 50, 696735. Schegloff, E. A. (1987a). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: An exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50, 101-114. Schegloff, E. A. (1987b). Some sources of misunderstanding in talk-ininteraction. Linguistics, 25, 201-218. Schegloff, E. A. (1991). Conversation analysis and socially shared cognition. In L. Resnick, J. Levine, & S. Behrend (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 150-171). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Schegloff, E. A. (1992). Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology, 97, 1295-1345. Schegloff, E. A. (1996, November). Joke-serious "no. " Paper presented at the Speech Communication Association Convention in San Diego.
This page intentionally left blank
12 Interactive Methods for Constructing Relationships Jenny Mandelbaum Rutgers University Increasingly in the communication field, scholars are coming to recognize that the character of a relationship is built moment by moment, by interactants, in and through interaction (Goldsmith & Baxter, 1996). Though compelling, this claim has proven difficult to document. Just how is the relationship between interlocutors constructed, and thus available, from the particular ways in which talk is produced? In this chapter I describe two methods whereby the interactional construction of relationships can be documented. First, in a kind of conversational "tit-for-tat," one interlocutor produces a turn that could be heard to have "problematic," or "disconnecting" implications for the relationship. In the next turn, the other produces a similar turn that has the result of shifting the "disconnecting" implications to "connecting" ones. In the second method, conversational repair targets a turn that has possible problematic implications for the relationship. The speaker of the repairable's method for repairing the problem does not take up the relationship implications, though. These two methods for taking up turns with possible problematic implications for the relationship display the interactive process of relationship construction.
APPROACHES TO RELATIONSHIPS In the vernacular, and often in scholarly work also, we take relationships to be things that we "have." That is, in the way that we talk about them, relationships are often reified, static entities. Relationship states are often treated as
207
208
CHAPTER 12
"independent variables, with discursive consequences" (Hopper & Chen, 1996, p. 310). This approach to relationships treats them as social structural entities that "exist" outside of discourse, taking "spouse" or "supervisor," for instance, to be social categories, from which ways of talking follow. From this perspective, which dominates much research in communication, ways of talking could provide an index for intimacy, and ways of talking that are characteristic of "marriage," for instance, could be discerned. In practice, an approach that sees relationships as existing external to discourse presents problems, because even within relationships that have "objective," social categorical definitions, relational states shift. Even those who might describe themselves, and be described by others, as "happily married" have arguments or difficult interactions and problematic moments. In contrast to this view, social constructionists and others make a strong case for seeing relationships as constructed in and through interaction. Goldsmith and Baxter (1996) emphasized the importance of this constitutive view of communication in relationships. They drew on subjects' diaries and recollections to identify a set of 29 speech events, which they then divided into six groups that constitute everyday relationships. They pointed out that "it might prove difficult to observe all the joint enactments of talk through which an individual's relationships are constructed" (p. 90). Therefore, they used diary studies so that individuals could "report on the events in which they engage in various relationships" (p. 90.). Conversation analysts have shown that detailed analysis of tape-recorded naturally occurring conversations provides a method for describing particular ways interacts may "do" relationships (e.g., Goodwin, 1990; Heritage & Sefi, 1992; Mandelbaum, 1987, 1989; Pomerantz & Fehr, 1997). Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson (1967) proposed that all "messages" have both "content" and "relationship" levels. All talk then may be taken to contain proposals regarding the relationship between interactants. For the most part, though, these relational proposals do not become the main business of talk, and may not be taken up at all in any discernible or overt way. Their study often is speculative, because claims about the relational activities that interactants may be undertaking can be hard to demonstrate. Goffman (1971) suggested that interaction contains numerous "signs" whereby interactants make available to one another the "current character of the relationship" (p. 184). He called these "tie-signs" "evidence about relationships, that is, about ties between persons, whether involving objects, acts, expressions, and only excluding the literal aspects of explicit documentary statements" (p. 184.). Tie-signs may include holding hands, locking arms, using the same bottle of suntan lotion when coming to the side of the pool, and so on. For the most
INTERACTIVE METHODS
209
part, the production and noticing of these tie-signs are not focused involvements (Goffman, 1963) for interactants. That is, they are generally incidental to other ongoing activities. Goffman wrote of them as a sort of social obligation, a performance that we owe others who are in the co-presence of a "related" couple (a pair in a relationship). Through the performance of tie-signs, both relational partners and others are provided with evidence of the character of a relationship being enacted. Pomerantz and Fehr (1997) recommended as a final step in analysis that the researcher examine the identity and relational implications of the way a particular action is packaged. For conversation analysts, it is critical that "relationship" be "procedurally relevant" to participants (Schegloff, 1987). Like identity, although theorized to be omnirelevant, it can be hard to document the relevance of relationship to the way talk is done. For this reason, conversation analysts often have been reluctant to address issues of relationship, using instead such terms as alignment, and affiliation. Despite this constraint, conversation analytic findings reveal important features of how talk may propose and/or construct relationships. For instance, Heritage and Sefi (1992) showed how health visitors' methods for questioning new mothers can propose particular alignments between participants. Goodwin (1990) showed how the way that a directive is offered proposes a version of the relationship between the interactants. That is, when you ask someone to do something, it formulates who they are with respect to you—someone over whom you can assume unquestionable control, for instance. When I say to someone "Come here right now," I propose a relationship between us in which I have some legitimate jurisdiction over that person's actions. Some actions, then, lend themselves to fairly easy interpretation with respect to the relationship they propose between interlocutors. The "firmness" of this phenomenon is perhaps indicated by the fact that using a polite format to ask someone with whom we have a "close" relationship to do something for us may be a way of a proposing (current) "distance" between us. Some ways of talking to or acting with regard to others, then, have somewhat stable relational interpretations. With respect to how we ask someone else to do something, the extent to which we provide them with choice, or "self determination" over their own actions, is a fairly tangible index of how we see ourselves relative to them. It may indicate the kind of interpersonal "power" we take ourselves to be able to enact with respect to them. Some conversation analytic work has looked at inexplicit relational proposals that can sometimes be disentangled in such features of conversation. For instance, the use of reporting to do such actions as blaming (Pomerantz, 1978), and inviting (Drew, 1984); the placement and nature of recipient turns in
210
CHAPTER 12
storytellings (Mandelbaum, 1989), and complaints (Mandelbaum, 1991/1992) may enable participants to blame, invite, or complain in a collaborative rather than a unilateral fashion. However, conversation analytic work for the most part has not turned its attention to how relationships are constructed, specifically because this is frequently difficult to identify as the work interactants are actively undertaking. Two exceptions are the work of Jefferson, Sacks, and Schegloff (1987), and Morrison (1997). Jefferson et al. (1987) showed that the use and uptake of obscenity may provide a way for interactants to collaborate on constructing intimacy, and in this way make sub rosa proposals of intimacy. Morrison (1997) demonstrated how interlocutors may use "tracking questions" and answers to these questions to enact involvement. She showed how by asking a question that in effect seeks an "update," relationship members talk in such a way as to display their involvement in the life of the other. Studying relationships involves numerous complexities for the researcher. Among them are issues of unpredictability, privacy, and access. Scholars interested in how relationships develop note that transitions in the character of a relationship may occur at critical moments (e.g., Baxter & Bullis, 1986). It is hard to know when critical moments of relationships will take place, and harder to have a tape recorder or video recorder present at those critical moments in ways that will not change the character of the occurrence. Yet if we look at interaction closely, we see that, in line with the proposals of social constructionists, relationships are constructed and "negotiated" moment by moment in a delicate to and fro, some of which can be documented through close attention to the details of talk. Both Goffman's tie-signs and Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson's "relationship" level of conversation may be present throughout conversation, but may not constitute a focused activity for interactants. In this chapter, I examine places where the often overlooked relational implications of talk are taken up in some way. I discuss two methods for doing this, "tit-for-tat" and repair, and contrast the apparent relational consequences of each. In both cases, I show how both "ends" of the relationship (Goffman, 1971, p. 188) work together to position themselves vis a vis one another.
TIT-FOR-TAT During the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981, while she was uttering her vows, Princess Diana produced Prince Charles' name (Charles Philip
INTERACTIVE METHODS
211
Arthur George) incorrectly, confusing the order of the names.1 The significance of this repairable could be interpreted in many different ways. As a unilateral, presumably unintentional action, it has many possible (possibly negative) implications, both regarding Princess Diana's identity (the kind of person that she is), and regarding their relationship. It could be taken to have implications regarding her competence or her state of mind, for instance. Psychologists might take it to have symbolic significance regarding her feelings for Prince Charles, or about the wedding. In his vows, though, Prince Charles produced Diana's name in a similarly incorrect way. Until Princess Diana's death it was said that this was the last nice thing he did for her. His "tit-for-tat" here made available the implication, "getting names wrong during a wedding is something anyone could do." A reciprocal action of the same kind appears to be one way to take up a problematic activity. By doing the same thing (mixing up names, in this case), it targets the activity to which it is reciprocal. It may show that the initial action was noticeable. Interestingly, though, by doing the same action, a possibly problematic or "disjoining" action on its own is rendered benign or "conjoining," because the implications that "anyone could do it" or "it can happen to me" become available. It becomes a common occurrence, instead of a gaping breach of etiquette, for instance. In the following segment, a telephone conversation is begun with an apparently playful exchange of name-calling. This tit-for-tat seems to work in a similar way to the previous instance. Though it is clearly not its "official" business, the first name-calling could be heard to set the couple apart. That is, although in the context the hearing is unlikely, it could be heard in this way. In response, the reciprocal name-calling proposes a kind of relatedness between the callers, undoing the possible disjunctive. Kip and Cara have been put on the phone by their roommates, who were talking together until Cara's roommate reported to Kip's that Cara wanted to talk to Kip. On the tape, we hear Cara waiting for Kip. His "^ee^YEE::^ES?hh huh hih heh" starts their conversation. (1)
Romance 8
1
Kip:
2
( ):
3 4 5-> 6 7 8->
1
Cara: Kip: Cara: Kip: Kip:
^ee^Y
[EE::^E]S?hh huh hih heh= [(
)]
=Ki^:p? 'ehh. h e e Y e ( h ) e ( h ) e s ? "hh Yih que:er w ( h ) a t [ ' r e ya doin.] ['ehhhhhhhhhh]hh. (0.6) uh ^I dunno what're you doin you queer bait.
l am grateful to Paul Drew for bringing this example to my attention.
212 9 10 11 12
CHAPTER 12 Cara: Kip: Cara:
eh h[eh heh heh [Nothing?h eh hh[h "eh [('s) go'n on.
After initial apparent difficulty recognizing one another (perhaps due to Kip's overdone "Yes" in Line 1), in Line 5 Cara calls Kip a name, "Yih queier," which could be heard as a teasing response to his redoing, in Line 4, of his overexaggerated "Yes" at the beginning of their interaction. Though in its vernacular sense of "homosexual" queer has no apparent fit with Kip's behavior, it could be heard as a playful version of "silly" or "odd"—an original meaning of the term queer. This is immediately followed by an inquiry regarding what he is doing, presumably currently or immediately before he took the phone call. This can be heard as a conventional beginning to their conversation. His response is postponed by a post laugh inbreath. In Line 8, he gives a minimal answer to the question regarding what he is doing, "I dunno." He then asks the reciprocal question, "what're you doin," and produces a reciprocal name-calling, "you queer bait." This name-calling is reciprocal in a special way. She has called him a "queer" that, if it were to be taken seriously or literally in the current vernacular, would make her not of interest to him. "Queer bait" in response to "queer" could be heard to be formulating her as "bait" for the "queer"—that is, bait for Kip. It thus proposes a possible relationship between them in which she is specifically attractive to him. Thus a formulation of him ("you queer") that taken literally (in the sense in which it is presumably not intended) makes her of no interest to him, is recast in retrospect as making her specifically of interest to him. This is done playfully, but nonetheless might raise a glimmer of the possibility that there could be a relationship between them that involves a connection constituted by appropriate fit and special interest. In its aftermath, nothing is overtly made of the reciprocal name-calling and the possible connectedness it implies. As Kip laughs, Cara answers the inquiry that preceded the name-calling. As Kip's laughter continues, Cara makes a reciprocal busyness inquiry: "('s) go'n on." and talk proceeds. In this instance, through a kind of conversational "tit-for-tat" interactants make available a connection between them. Immediately after talk that could be heard to indicate a reciprocated disjuncture between them (the difficulty recognizing one another), an action by one partner that could be heard to have possible implications for their relationship, but could equally, and more plausibly, be heard to be directly related to prior talk (Kip's playfully overdone greeting) is responded to in such a way as to constitute a reciprocation by the other. The reciprocation takes up possible relationship implications in the first
INTERACTIVE METHODS
213
speaker's turn and provides for a proposal of connectedness between them where her turn could have been heard to position them as disconnected. Talk simply moves on, and nothing is made of it overtly. Like Princess Diana's flub, Cara's name-calling makes available certain implications regarding participants' relative positioning although these relative implications are clearly not "official business" at all. In both cases, their relational partner's next turn has a similar format, yet counteracts those implications in an "off-the-record" fashion that nonetheless makes the relational implications of the first turn apparent. Here then we see a sort of advance on the tie-sign. An action that could be heard as a tie-sign with possible disaligning relational implications, but that could also simply be ignored, is targeted, made visible, and redressed simultaneously by a response-in-kind. Nonetheless, like Goffrnan's tie-signs, this remains an embedded action.
REPAIR In the following fragment, the embedded relational implications of a turn are taken up in a more overt way, using repair. Nonetheless, the first speaker's response to repair initiation downplays the relational implications. This demonstrates interactants' alertness to problematic relational implications, and indicates the collaborative character of positioning activities in conversation. Two couples, Vicki and Shawn, and Nina and Matthew, are eating dinner together. This segment occurs after about 14 minutes of recorded conversation. Vicki reports an activity she plans to undertake (Lines 24, 26, and 28). Shawn initiates repair in a somewhat overdone, teasing way (Lines 33, 35, and 37). Vicki completes the repair in an "underdone" way (Lines 39-40). The "underdone" character of Vicki's repair is noticeable in contrast to the overblown character of Shawn's repair initiation. (2) 1
CDII:39-40 Shawn:
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
people'v
Vicki: Shawn: Vicki:
11 12
Shawn: Vicki:
Nina: Shawn:
[Cars ih stra:nded 'bout thirdy sump'n die:d, (0.7) Wo: w. (0.4) °Becuz a 'that,o (0.3) Ye:ah.= =C'ss the weather, Wir gunnuh call [up
]
[ ' T ' s in]sa[: n e .] [Wir g'n]nuh
214 12a 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24-> 25 26 27-> 28 29 30 31 32-> 33 34 35-> 36 37-> 38 39 40-> 41 42-> 43 44 45 46 46a 47 48 49 50 51
CHAPTER 12 Shawn: Shawn: Vicki: Shawn: Vicki: Nina: Shawn: Vicki: Shawn: Vicki: Matthew: Vickie: Matthew: Vicki: Nina: Vicki: Nina: Shawn: Vicki: Nina: Shawn: Vicki: Shawn: Shawn: Matthew: Vicki: Shawn: Shawn: Nina: Vicki: Shawn: Matthew:
52
53
[call up sm friends]= [ ( s p t h A : : d' ).] =hih'hh[Wz eigh]d[y degrees here the oth]uh] = [ en say] [eighty d e g r e e s ]ihh] =[day. ih hih] [he =[hnhh heh-hu]h-h[uh Oh they hate tih hear that. I kno:w. En [then hang up] °eh heh u° [Well this gu]y =^Who[was \tha[t ( ) [who- [ [mn nan ah[hah [One guy thet I [wannacaw:11= [( ) =he usually comes ^ou:t. yihknow[so you js= [Mmhm, =tell'm it's eighdy degree:s hi'11 get onna $pla:n[e [nhh[Yheh]= [Woah]= =[n a h-ha-ha] [heh heh heh] =[w a i' hey]woah w[oah [in hih heh he[h [Wu wai'a wai'a wu. (0.4) One: gu::y you usually ca(h)a(h)ll? W'd['z's [mm-hm m-h [m [No we [ ^ c a \ : 1 1.] [ W ' d is this ] :: . (0.5) Oh: .Okay it wz : friend a' mi.: net [oo. Awright. [Oh: S h a m e ' s friend, [yeah. [Nyejah) [Oh t h a t ' s good ( t h e t ) . That's m y [ f r i e n d . [The guy ( ' o o ) comes o u t ' n treats yuh? (0.2)
Shawn:
Ye:h.
In Line 24, Vicki begins a report about an unnamed "guy" that she wants to call. In using a nonrecognitional reference (one that indicates she does not expect that her recipients could recognize the person to whom she is referring [Sacks & Schegloff, 1979] the implication is available that she does not expect any of those present to be able to recognize to whom it is that she is referring. In Line 27, she tells what the guy referred to in Line 24 "usually" does. She then reports what "you" need to say to produce the result of this guy coming out—tell him about the warm weather. From this recipients can draw the implication that if
INTERACTIVE METHODS
215
she does what at the beginning she states she wants to do (call him), the result will be that the unnamed (and unknown-to-others-present) guy will come out. In previous turns, in Lines 10-16 Shawn and Vicki together enact what they are going to do ("We're gonna call up some friends")—calling people to tell them that it is 80°. They synchronously report an action that they both claim and show themselves to be going to undertake together. In formulating the person who wants to call as "I," and in contrast with their joint enactment of calling someone to tell them that it is 80°, her report of something she wants to do ("one guy that I wanna cawrll," Lines 24-25), and her reference to "you j's tell 'm . . ." (Line 27 and 29) could be heard to project an action she will do by herself. Given the way in which she refers to the person she will call, and her formulation of herself as the sole caller, it is potentially hearable that she wants to call someone unknown to members of the present gathering. Immediately upon the completion of Yield's report of her future plan, Shawn "stops" conversation in a very elaborate and overdone way. His "wai" hey woah woah Wu wai'a wai'a" could be heard to indicate some kind of trouble, but it is not available from this turn what the trouble could be. He then produces a turn as though it were a repeat of Vicki's turn: "One: gu::y you usually ca(h)a(h)ll?" (Line 40). He combines elements from the beginning of her rum in Lines 24-25 ("one guy that I wanna caw:ll") and the second part of it in Line 27 ("he usually comes ^ou:t") to produce a most "incriminating" version of what she said: "One guy you usually ca(h)a(h)ll?" He slightly misrepeats her talk in such a way as to make available as an understanding the strongest indication that there is a "guy" in her life about whom he does not know, whom she calls habitually. His "W'd'z's" ("What is this?") corroborates the impression that he is calling into question what is going on. All of this is produced in a somewhat overdone, overblown fashion, which Drew (1987) suggested may be characteristic of teases. It is possible to hear this turn as taking Vicki to task in a teasing way for having produced the appearance that she is inviting out to see her "some guy" that he does not know. In Goffman's terms, he displays himself to be hearing her turn as offering a particular kind of tie-sign. Like the first turns in the tit-for-tat segments examined earlier, although it is clearly not its principal enterprise, Vicki's turn could be heard to be proposing that she has some involvement that suggests disassociation with Shawn because of association with a guy that Shawn does not know. In Line 42, Vicki offers a disagreement token, "No," and then offers another version of part of what he, through his reenactment, has claimed her to have said, "we ca:ll" can be heard as a candidate replacement for "you usually call." The repair operation involves dropping the "usually" and replacing "you" with "we." In this way, the problematic character of the activity—habitually
216
CHAPTER 12
calling an unknown guy without him knowing—is removed, because the calling is an activity that they do together. What is anomalous about this repair is that she does not stress the repaired item. Normally in response to other-intiated repair, the item that performs the repair operation is stressed, so as to be hearable as the repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks, 1977). She stresses "call," which does not appear to have been targeted as the repairable. At the same time, it is clearly the word "we" that has replaced the "I" from her rum and the "you" (meaning Vicki) from his turn. In stressing "call," a word that has not been repaired, it is as though she were indicating that the activity of calling were the repairable. In this way, she literally de-emphasizes the word that caused the trouble—the one that pointed to who was doing the calling. It was her use of "I" that made available the appearance or possible hearing that she might want to, or was engaging in, some activity independent of Shawn. Stressing the nonrepaired part could be hearable as "backgrounding" or playing down the relational implications of the repair. In this way, Vicki avoids "overtly" taking up the relational proposal his repair tries to make. Shawn's repair appears to be done as a teasing display of concern, yet Vicki gives a po-faced response to the tease. She treats it as though it were serious (Drew, 1987). After what appears to be a postoverlap resolution hitch, in Line 45 Shawn's change of state token, "Oh" (Heritage, 1984), shows that he now has a new understanding of what Vicki meant. His "okay" shows that this shift makes what she had been proposing acceptable. He then reports a characteristic of the call-recipient that he now understands: "it wz: friend a'mine too." In explicitly stating that this is what makes it okay, Shawn makes available that it was indeed the problem posed for their relationship that constituted the problem his repair initiation addresses. In calling the group's attention to it by doing a very public repair, Shawn calls this implication into question in an overdone, teasing fashion. In so doing, he shows that the appearance that Vicki's talk could be heard to present regarding their positioning relative to one another—that there is a guy whom she will call, and who will then "come out" (presumably to California)—is what was problematic for him. Because it is a friend of his also, he can now rehear this as unproblematic, and make that rehearing public. In this way, Shawn makes a public display of having the right to call into question with whom Vicki associates without his knowledge. In her producing her repair with the stress that she does, Vicki emphasizes the activity of calling, and not the "we" on which the relational implications center. In this way, she seems to focus on issues of understanding, rather than relational concerns. There is no playing along with the tease, display of shame or
INTERACTIVE METHODS
217
embarrassment, of having been "caught red-handed," and so on. Rather, the way in which she offers the repair has more the air of annoyance. Drew (1987) suggested that teases are often used to produce mild social sanctions, and that po-faced responses provide a way for the teased party to "set the record straight." Here Shawn's repair initiation seems to target the problematic tie-sign, the appearance of illicit activity that Vicki's turn makes. Though Vicki could play along with the tease, she sets the record straight in a way that seems to dismiss the tease. In playing down the relational implications, Vicki avoids "officially" entering into the positioning activity that Shawn's turn takes up. Rather, her talk does relationship work by not officially taking up the implications Shawn's repair indicates. For in treating it as a matter of course that it is his friend, and showing mild annoyance at Shawn's action, she displays that the concern his repair indicates is not an issue. Here then we see an instance where the possible relational implications of a turn are taken up and made available by one participant, whereas the other participant downplays the relational implications. Though Shawn's turn makes possible overt uptake of relational matters, Vicki's shows that they are not relevant here.
CONCLUSIONS These episodes demonstrate that relational implications may be taken up when they contain problematic proposals regarding the relative positioning of interactants. The management of these proposals is a collaborative process. In both conversational tit-for-tats, and in the repair episode, a second turn targets possible problematic relational implications in a prior turn. Thus we see interactants' on-sight alertness to the "relationship" level of a conversation, and to the tie-signs that talk may contain. However, talk in third position indicates that even where relationship implications have been targeted by one speaker in the talk of the other, the speaker whose talk contained those implications need not take them up further. This account suggests the subtle yet collaborative manner in which relationships are enacted in interaction. It seems that moments where there are mild problems for relationships (or the appearance of a relationship) can prove to be fruitful sites for documenting the interactive work of relationship construction. In this way, we can begin to see relationships as collections of communication practices, or things that we do through communication, in contrast to thinking of them as social structural things that we have.
218
CHAPTER 12
REFERENCES Baxter, L., & Bullis, C. (1986). Turning points in developing romantic relationships. Human Communication Research 12, 469—493. Drew, P. (1984). Speakers' reportings in invitation sequences. In J. M. Atkinson & J. C. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 129-151). Cambridge England: Cambridge University Press. Drew, P. (1987). Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics, 25, 219-253. Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places. New York: The Free Press. Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public. New York: Harper & Row. Goldsmith, D., & Baxter, L. (1996). Constituting relationships in talk: A taxonomy of speech events in social and personal relationships. Human Communication Research, 23, 87-115. Goodwin, M. (1990). He-said-she-said: Talk as social organization among Black children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heritage, J. (1984). A change of state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J. M. Atkinson & J. C. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 299-345). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J., & Sefi, S. (1992). Dilemmas of advice: Aspects of the delivery and reception of advice in interactions between health visitors and first-time mothers. In P. Drew, & J. Heritage, (Eds.) Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings (pp. 359-417). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hopper, R., & Chen, C. H. (1996). Languages, cultures, relationships: Telephone openings in Taiwan. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29, 291-313. Jefferson, G., Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Notes on laughter in pursuit of intimacy. In G. Button & J. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organization, (pp. 152-205). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Mandelbaum, J. (1987). Couples sharing stories. Communication Quarterly, 35, 144-171. Mandelbaum, J. (1989). Interpersonal activities in interactional storytelling. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 114-126. Mandelbaum, J. (1991/1992). Conversational non-cooperation: An exploration of disattended complaints. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 25, 97-138.
INTERACTIVE METHODS
219
Morrison, J. (1997). Enacting involvement: Some conversational practices for being in a relationship. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Temple University, Philadelphia. Pomerantz, A. (1978). Attributions of responsibility: Blamings. Sociology, 12, 115-121. Pomerantz, A., & Fehr, B. J. (1997). Conversation analysis: An approach to the study of social action as sense making practices. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction: Discourse studies 2—A multidisciplinary introduction (pp. 64-91). London: Sage. Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday langauge: Studies in ethnomethdology (pp. 15-21). New York: Erlbaum. Schegloff, E. A. (1987). From micro to macro: Contexts and other connections. In J. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, N. Smelser (Eds.) The macromicro link (pp.207-234). Berkeley: University of California Press. Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for selfcorrection in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 53, 361-382. Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J., & Jackson, D. (1967). Pragmatics of human communication. New York: Norton.
This page intentionally left blank
13 A Note on Resolving Ambiguity Gail Jefferson Rinsumageest Just about twenty years ago, working on materials in which people talk about their troubles, I came across a possible phenomenon: Someone inadvertently produces an ambiguous utterance, then attempts to disambiguate it without speaking explicitly. Although it was clear to me that something like that was going on, I found that I had no analytic resources to develop a case for it. I gave a talk to some colleagues at the University of Manchester, presenting the phenomenon as something intriguing but that my conversation analytic resources gave me no handle on, and was told in no certain terms that my muchvaunted conversation analytic methods had utterly failed to handle it. They're a lively bunch! Even agreement turns into open warfare. At some point, someone suggested that we just go have a drink. So ended my presentation. Since that time I've every now and then come across another candidate case (and although the original instances occurred in the materials I happened to be investigating at that time, the phenomenon is not exclusive to troubles-talk). Recently I took another shot at it—not that I can handle the thing any better now than I could twenty years ago—but just trying to suggest that such a phenomenon might exist, and that this or that fragment of data might comprise an instance of it. Perhaps Robert Hopper's phrase "roughing up the ground" best describes what I'm up to. I'll start out with a few fragments in which it seems to me that one participant has produced a characterizably problematic utterance, then resolves the problem, whereupon a recipient produces an appropriate next utterance.
221
222
CHAPTER 13
(1)
[Goodwin:60:C:l2 ]
( (Two women at a block party, chatting days and characters they have known.)) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
about college
Lauren:
We had this one girl she w'z from Flo:rida. Un I swear t'Go::d, she wannid t'be on the bes' dress' list. (0.4) Lauren: En'er parents apparently weren'even that wealthy. En she wen'out'n she bought tons of clothes so she c'd be on th'bes'dres-She even -> came t'college inna pegnoi:r se:t. (0.2) Lauren: -> Y'know. u-mean who goes tih college inna with a= Tanzi: —> = [Who even o:wns]] one. right? — L Lauren: [ pegnoir set.]
Problematic here is that Lauren seems to be describing a young woman's arrival on a college campus wearing a negligee ("in a pegnoir set", Lines 7-8). There may be good grounds for Tanzi to figure that Lauren means to be saying something less drastic, that is, that the young woman brought with her, among her "tons of clothes," a pegnoir set. She didn't arrive "in" one, but "with" one. The story structure itself may be angled toward the less drastic alternative; a story about someone showing up on campus wearing a negligee would probably look different from the start. On the other hand, funny things do happen at college. So, Tanzi may be holding off taking a position. We may be seeing Lauren discovering her error as she recycles the punchline with its problematic "in a" and immediately thereafter produces the problem-resolving "with a" ("I mean who goes to college in a with a", Line 10). Whereupon Tanzi produces a next utterance appropriate to the "with a" alternative, addressing herself to the ostentation of having such a thing rather than, say, the brazenness of wearing it. And this is 'whereupon' in a strong sense. Not just somewhere afterwards, but immediately upon the occurrence of the clarifying phrase. Lauren: Tanzi:
who goes tih college inna witha D who even o:wns one.
While the problem in the preceding fragment does have to do with alternatives, it doesn't involve the sort of ambiguity I'll be focusing on, where a single item could mean one thing or another.
223
RESOLVING AMBIGUITY
The following two fragments do involve that sort of ambiguity. As in the preceding fragment, immediately upon the occurrence of disambiguation, we get an appropriate next utterance.l The first of the two fragments comes out of a telephone conversation between two men on duty at different locations during the 1964 Anchorage, Alaska, earthquake. They refer to each other by their locations: "City" is the Anchorage fire department and "Elmondorf' is an outlying army base. They've been connected by a short circuit in the telephone system, and have taken the opportunity for a chat. In this course of that chat, the following occurs: (2)
[FD:Finger:2-3]
1 2 3
E'dorf: City:
4
Squawk:
5
City:
D'you know w't-w't kinda news'ere broadcastin' down'n th'States et (.) pres'nt? I: heard d'fir:st [ xxxxxxx] rxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxrxxxxx)
[
(2.0)
[The
6 7
firs'one thet dey uh, (0.7) broadcas' w'z sixty tuh thr-
8 E'dorf: 9 10 E'dorf: 11 City:
[Yer loud'n clear Muldoon Tower, (2.0) Pard'n? I heard d' firs'broadcas'Stateside,
12 Squawk:
[(xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]x xxxxx)
13 E'dorf: 14 (1.4) 15 E'dorf:-> Go'head. 16 (1.9) 17 E'dorf:-> Go'head. 18 (0.2) 19 E'dorf :-> Ci ty, 20 City: 21 22
[Justa minnit.
[Ye-u- ah heard d'firs'broadcas'state det deh w'z bout sixty t'three hunner'dea:d 'n (0.4) city of Anch'rage is on dih grou:n'
Just as City starts to answer Elmondorf's question, a squawk box on the Elmondorf side starts up with a report from Muldoon air field (Lines 1-4). And we can watch City's work by reference to the squawk box. He initially drops out (lines 3-4) and then, perhaps because he gets no indication from his coparticipant that he should maintain his silence, he may take it that someone else on duty is handling it, and he starts up again (Lines 3-6). But it turns out that his coparticipant is handling the squawk box, and interrupts him to respond These two fragments and my discussions of them are taken from Jefferson (1986).
224
CHAPTER 13
to it (Lines 5-8). And City drops out, remaining silent until he's invited back by Elmondorf's "Pardon?", to which he responds immediately (Lines 8-11). That City hears Elmondorf's "Pardon?" as directed to him and not to Muldoon Tower may be, at least in part, because "Pardon?" is a 'conversational' object, in strong contrast to the instrumental "You're loud and clear" with which Elmondorf responded to the squawk box. But again, just as City gets going the squawk box starts up, and Elmondorf, again with a conversational object, "Just a minute," indicates that City should drop out and give the squawk box priority (Lines 10-14). Now comes what I'm proposing to be the ambiguity. In his next utterance, Elmondorf uses "Go ahead," which is both conversational and instrumental. This may generate a problem for City: which of them is being told to "Go ahead," he or Muldoon tower? And it appears that Elmondorf comes to see that there is a problem and what the problem is. After two such invitations go unanswered, he shifts to a non ambiguous item, naming his selected coparticipant: "City". Whereupon City responds—and 'whereupon' in a very strong sense, that is, after the first syllable of the identificatory word:2 1 E'dorf :
Go' head.
2 3 4
E'dorf :
Go' head,
5 6
E'dorf: City:
CiD DYe-u-
(1.9) (0.2) ah heard. . .
In the following fragment, the "whereupon" feature may be really exquisite. And for this fragment I'm preserving the initial consonant and vowel of the actual names of two of the participants, Jesse and Joan, in order to show just how delicate this business may be. The fragment is taken from a group therapy session for teenagers. This particular session is being observed from a room behind a one-way mirror. (3)
[GTS:I:2:19:R:5]
( (Jesse is reporting a success with his parents; they have stopped interrogating him about his comings and goings.)) 1 2 3 2
Jesse:
Nob' ddy sez _inning yih jis hh °yihknow °
keep °whha:lkin' . °
(0.2)
Jefferson, (1986), the whole point of the exercise was that one cannot be certain that City starts to talk by reference to "Ci" and not by reference to the prior "Go ahead," his response merely incidentally occurring at a "recognition point" for the identificatory word. The same reservation, on an even finer scale, holds for Fragment 3.
RESOLVING AMBIGUITY 4
Jesse:
5
Joan:
it's
0
225
T^bghuggin° ^mhhe (h) now
hm hm [^Don'ta ] lk tih
them
6 3
talk t ' u : : S : : . (1.3)
8 Jesse: 9 10 11 David :-> 12
No. (.) th- (0.4) drapes er closed now I c'n see through that liddle crack et th'window over there (2.0) Yer very ^°conscious'v° th'm being in the : re . Je sse.
13 Joan: 14 Jesse:
->
[He keeps::
^talk [°ih°
in' ^there. [ It doesn'
]
rilly
bother me,
This may be a very touchy moment. Joan having raised the issue of observers in the first place, (Lines 5-6), it is possible that David's remark (Line 11) is addressed to her. Indeed, the appending of Jesse's name by David may be directed to clearing such a possible ambiguity, similarly to Elmondorf's work in Fragment 2 with his shift from "Go ahead," and Lauren's work in Fragment 1 with her shift from "in a" to "with a." (But whereas Lauren's shift, involving as it does a mid utterance substitution, is clearly a self-repair, Elmondorf's is less obviously a matter of repair, in that after a bit of silence he produces a legitimate next component for a single utterance, that is, "Go ahead (0.2) City." And David's shift is even less obviously a matter of repair, coming off as a through produced sentenceutterance with the disambiguating name in tag position: "You're very conscious of them being in there Jesse." We're left with some intonational details, the standard ending intonation of "in the:re.," which might lead us to wonder if the disambiguating "Jesse" was not appended to a completed sentence-utterance specifically in order to resolve a just discovered ambiguity.) And, similarly to City in Fragment 2, Joan could be monitoring for which of the two candidate addressees (in this case, which of the two who have shown themselves to be "conscious of them being in there") is being addressed. But the recognition work in this case would have to be a bit finer than that proposed for City in Fragment 2, because in this case the name of the other candidate addressee starts with the same consonant as does Joan's. Involved in this case, then, would be response upon occurrence of the crucial differentiating vowel, at which point, and no sooner, selection is achieved. And it is at just that point that Joan launches a next utterance appropriate to Jesse's being the one addressed by David: David: Joan:
Yer very °^conscious'v° th'm being in the : re . JeD DHe...
226
CHAPTER 13
And that is 'whereupon' in a very fine sense. In the following four fragments, the circumstances become murkier. In each of them it seems to me that someone, having produced an ambiguous utterance, then tries to achieve disambiguation without the sort of explicitness found in the prior materials. That failing, in three of the four we do get— perhaps specifically as a last resort—a disambiguating utterance. In the first of the four—a leisurely conversation between two neighbors, Reva and Jane, in the laundry room of their apartment building—the talk has turned to an allergy that Jane's husband is suffering from. At some point thereafter, the following occurs: (4) [Gold:MS:16-17] 1 Reva: En it's annoying. 'cause you-jih-you-you figure 2 you nevuh had it befaw 'n all'v a sahd'n yih 3 getting all dih symptom s, [
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Jane:
[
[ ° Mmj:, ° [
nYah I know. (1.0) Jane: I think it has a lo:t t'do wih t h a : t . (1.2) Jane: En the fa:ct thet (.) they don't know what eez allergic to yet.= Reva: =Ih makes (a ) , (0.4) Jane: °( )° (0.6) Reva: -> En my sistuh call'me today she siz to me how is —> ev'rything out the: re how is it is ev'ry thing unduh control? (0.4) Reva: -> Ah sid I guess it is the planes ah le(h)nding I say I don'knoh:, Jane: uh-huh eh-heh eh-heh.
Reva presents her sister's question as a multi component utterance, "How is everything out there, how is it, is everything under control?" (Lines 14-16). This may be a faithful rendering of her sister's words. It may also comprise serial attempts by Reva to disambiguate what she has come to see as a possible reference to some sort of illness-related problem topically coherent with the prior talk, when what she intends to be referring to is a dramatic but short-lived strike by the city's air traffic control personnel. (In the first place, "out there" may be fitted to a trouble of the area in general, in contrast to, e.g., "with you." And perhaps at the subsurface, poetics level, "is everything under control" came to be produced via its resonance with air traffic control.)
RESOLVING AMBIGUITY
227
In this case, activities that may be attendant to a problem and its solution are embedded in bland colloquy; Reva quoting an exchange between her and her sister consisting of a multicomponent question and a similarly constructed answer (Lines 14-19), in which one component of the answer, "the planes are la(h)anding," happens to be an explicit reference to the topic; Jane responding, not thereupon, but after a next component, "I say I don't kno:w" (which, contributing nothing substantive may work as a recompleter), with a mild laugh (Line 20) that, although it occurs at a distance from the disambiguating component may yet be fitted to it, given the laugh particle in "la(h)anding." So although matters in Fragment 4 are worked out in a more dilatory fashion than in the prior three fragments, there is still some evidence of a problem and its solution—for both speaker and recipient. In contrast to the foregoing where, in the first three fragments we have the recipients' 'whereupon' responses and in the fourth, a response that, although not immediately 'thereupon,' may yet show its relationship to the solution-bearing component, in the remaining three fragments we lose the recipient as a resource. As far as I can tell, their responses are completely opaque for the problem-solution issue. The following fragment and its consideration is taken from the work I did on troubles-talk and is one of the cases in which I first noticed the possible phenomenon (Jefferson & Lee, 1980). The situation is this: The adolescent son of divorced parents has driven down from Palo Alto where he lives with his father, to visit his mother in Los Angeles. At some point in the visit, his car is vandalized. He's left the car with his mother and is flying home unbeknown to his father who is expecting his arrival by car and has phoned the mother to find out his son's estimated time of arrival, only to be given the news. (5) [MDE:MTRAC:60-l:2:R:l-2] 1 Sheila: Hello:? 2 Monty: Hi: Sheila? 3 Sheila: ^YA:H< 4 Monty: How are you. 5 Sheila: ^FI:NE. 6 (.) 7 Sheila: Did JOEY GET HOME YET? 8 Monty: I w'z wondering wen'e left. 9 (0.3) 10 Sheila: ° ' t' hh° Uh(d) did ^OH: .h Yer nod in 11 on wut ha:penhhnt. 12 Monty: No(h)o (wut he-) 13 Sheila: 14
[He's flying. (0.2)
228 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
CHAPTER 13 Sheila:
Monty: Sheila: Monty: Sheila:
Sheila:
Sheila: Monty:
En Nadine [Joe's girlfriend] is going to meet im:.=Becuz the ^TOP w'z ripped o:ff'v iz car which is tih say someb'ddy helped th'mselfs. Stolen. (0.5) Stolen.=Right out'n front'v my house. °Oh fer c:rying out loud0 En eez not g'nna- eez not g'nna bring it bat^:ck? 'h No so it's parked in: thih gihrage c'z it w'z so damn ^co:ld.
41 Sheila: 42 Sheila:
[En I left him there et abayou:t noo:n. (0.5) Uh ha:h. (0.5) Ayund uh,h ~ (0.4) Wut's 'e gun'do go dow:n pick it up later? er someth'n like ey-B't that's ^AW ^f'l [ [ ] ['hh[ His friend] Yeh his °friend S t e e-°
43 Monty: -> 44 45 Sheila:
[ (Boy) that really makes] me m a : d , (0.4) 'hhh Oh it's dis^gusti ng iz a mattera'f a : c t .
46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62
[ P o o r Joey.] I- I:, I ^told my ^ki:ds- who do this: . down et the Drug Coalition ah want th'TO:p ^ba: ckhh. (1-1) ^SEND OUT THE WO:rd. hh°hkhuhh° (0.3) Yeah. (0.3) Bu:t (.) hhghuh: his frien'Ste:ve en Brian er driving up. (.) right after::< (0.3) school is out. En then hill drive dow:n here with the:m. Oh I see So: in the long run 'hhh it (.) probly's g'nna Save a liddle td.me 'n: energy. Okay
33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Sheila: Monty: Sheila: Monty: ->
Monty: -> Sheila:
Sheila: Monty: Sheila:
Sheila: Monty: Sheila: Monty:
[
~
]
RESOLVING AMBIGUITY
229
As Sheila described what happened, Monty exhibits what seems to be more concern for the car then concern for his son; for example, his response to Sheila's initial announcement, "He's not going to bring it back?" (Lines 21-22), his non response to her report of icy cold weather in which Joe would have to be driving in a car without its convertible top (Lines 24-26), and his non and minimal responses to her report of Joe's troubles at the airport (Lines 27-32). Which is to say, Monty's treatment of Sheila's report raises as a possible issue that the boy has been irresponsible, simply abandoning a problem as adolescents are wont do do . Focusing on the arrowed series of assessments, the initial one, "But that's awful." (Line 40), may be an attempt to repair what might look like a display of more interest in the car's return than in the boy's circumstances. It occurs immediately after a statement of concern for the car's return, prior to completion of the utterance in which that statement is packaged: "What's he going to do, go down and pick it up later? Or something like ey- But that's awful." (Lines 39—40). In that rapid juxtaposition is an echo of Fragment 1 with Lauren's shift from "in a" to "with a." And as Lauren may there be discovering her error, Monty, hearing himself expressing concern for the car (for the second time, cf. "And he's not going to bring it back?", Lines 21-22), may be discovering the infelicitous direction of his concern, attempting to repair that with a self-interruptive display of concern for the boy. However, the assessment he uses is non selective; it could apply to either concern. And following on the heels of an expression of concern for the car as it does, it might conceivably be heard as assessing his son's abandonment of the vandalized car. As it happens, Monty's assessment occurs in overlap with something Sheila has started to say (Lines 41-42). She, having cut off her overlapped utterance, minimally acknowledges Monty's talk with "Yeh" and starts again, now overlapped by his next assessment, which starts up immediately after her "Yeh" (Lines 42-43). The "Yeh" is at best no help to Monty in deciding if his initial assessment has been heard by reference to the vandalism or to his son's irresponsibility. At worst, it may be weighted toward the latter, bearable as Sheila, in the interests of keeping the peace, accepting—if most minimally—his assessment of the boy's (and her own) handling of the situation. And conceivably it is in response to the non- or wrongly commital "Yeh" that Monty makes a next attempt at disambiguation. But, as in Fragments 2 and 4, rather than producing something more selective of one or the other relevant alternatives than was his "But that's awful," he offers another item of the same sort,"(Boy) that really makes me mad" (Line 43) cf. Elmondorf's repeated "Go ahead" and Reva's added " . . . how is it, is everything under control?" And it may be that the offering of a same or similar item can alert a
230
CHAPTER 13
recipient to a problem in their response to the initial item while preserving non explicit reference. But in this case, whereas, for example, an expression of anger on his son's behalf such as "Boy I bet he's mad" might not only have done such reoffering work but could have fostered selection of the vandalism alternative, Monty's expressing his own anger allows for (and perhaps even promotes) selection of the irresponsible-kid alternative. And given the persistent bivalence of the talk so far, Sheila's concurring "Oh it's disgusting" (Line 45), which does not select for one or the other alternative but refers to whatever "it" is that Monty is referring to, could at least possibly be concurring with his prior utterance as an assessment of the boy's abandonment of the car and not the vandalism. For Monty's assessments and Sheila's concurrence to be unequivocally understood as addressing the vandalism and not the boy's behavior, we need to refer to and rely upon our shared knowledge of the conventional proprieties— for example, that a father cares more about the welfare of his son then about a chunk of Detroit metal—and assume that the speaker and his recipient share those proper concerns. It appears that in this case the father does not feel able to depend upon those conventional proprieties for deciding how is ex wife is hearing what he's saying, or for him to decide what she is saying. And what occurs next is an utterly explicit utterance that resolves any possible ambiguity, "Poor Joey." (Line 46). This utterance is positioned in just the way Pomerantz described for second assessments, that is, with "minimization of gap between its initiation and prior turn's completion"; in this case, as in several of those she showed, occurring in slight overlap (Pomerantz, 1984): Sheila: Monty:
Oh it's dis^gusti ng [ Poor Joey.
That is to say, as a sequential object "Poor Joey" comes off as an understanding/agreeing response to Sheila's utterance, and not at all as some sort of repair. Nevertheless I would argue that "Poor Joey" is indeed some sort of repair; this expression of pity, so unlike the sort of talk that Monty has been producing throughout the interaction, being enlisted specifically to resolve the as-yet-unresolved ambiguity. In armchair-psychological terms, "Poor Joey" may have been generated out of the fact that Monty does blame his son and is in fact angered by the boy's just walking away from the vandalized car, and thus can hear his own words and those of his recipient as at best not clearly enough not blaming the boy. It may
231
RESOLVING AMBIGUITY
be that he has found himself forced to produce something so drastically over solicitous to make himself heard through the crescendo of blame that has only intensified with each next utterance. The following fragment also involves the relational-pair categories parent-child, with the attendant conventional proprieties. Again the disambiguation does not come off as a 'solution' or 'repair', and again the recipient's responses are inscrutable. Here's the situation. Christmas is approaching. Two young mothers, Ann and Linda, are chatting on the telephone and talk has turned to presents for the kids. Ann has.already bought some for her own kids, and also some for Linda's kids. At one point she's remarked that "what I've got for them there's no way you're going to be able ... to get it in your car", which sounds pretty impressive. As the fragment begins, Linda is asking what Steven, one of Ann's children, wants for Christmas. To Ann's "I don't know" she responds "I don't know either" (Lines 1-5); that is, she speaks of herself as a candidate gift giver in search of the right gift (and perhaps something pretty special) for her friend's little boy. (6) [TCI(b) : 1 6 : 2 5 - 2 6 ] 1 Linda: So:: ^What'd Stev'n ^ w a : : n t . 2
(0.2)
3
Ann:
4 5
Linda:
6 7 8 9
Ann:
Linda:
Linda:
15 Ann: 16 17 18 19 -> 20 21 Ann: -> 22
['tch I don't know eether.
10 Ann: 11 12 13 14
' hhhhhh Oh: : : (m) ' tch I_: don't kno w,
Linda:
I
[(B't) he keeps tellin' yihknow before he mentioned thet he said he wannid uh ( .) ' tch a tra: :ctor. Mmhm, [ ' hhhh En, I don'know'f they have those liddle To:nka things? b't he's go-ot two a'these (.) grader uh not graders b't tra:ctor things out here. [ Y e a
: h? l~ [ 'hhhh An'that's a'only thing yihknow he kept telling s- u- Donna one day she went with me tih the store en she stayed in th- car with th'kids en then I 'hh-'hh did the sa:me fer he:r, 'hhhh a:n' uh:m sh- 't she said thet s- Steven said he wannid the tra:ctor.= _ hhhh(h)y(h)ihkno(h)w [ Mm
:
:
:
: .]
232
CHAPTER 13
23
Ann: ->
='hh Oh that's ni:ce hhuh _ _ heh heh _ heh _ h ^uh- u j
24 25
Linda: Ann: ->
=He ain't gett'n one, heh heh 'hhhh hh=
26 27 28 29
Linda: Ann:
30
Linda:
[heh he] h= [Ye: ah .] =Bu:t. i: don't know I rilly(d) (0.2) ' p' hhh He's so ha:rd. tuh figure out (.) what tih git im this year [
eYea:h.]
((ca 8 lines omitted, in the same vein)) 38 39
Ann:
I got im a lotta things tih jis:siddo:wn en[ =
40 41 42
Linda: Ann:
[Ye:a:h.= = 'pk en do things. I do: n't I don'know I really don't wannim tuh hhave a lotta stuff . . . . So::(m) 'tlk ' hhh I don't know just (0.2) ga::me yihknow books'n:: stu ff he c'n do stuff 'hh ~ L J ~ L [Mm::.] [ Yeah.
43 44
45
Linda:
Linda as candidate gift giver in search of a gift for Steven may be what sets up the ambiguity problem here. When Ann does mention something Steven really wants, a toy tractor (Lines 16-20), one question might be whether Linda is listening to the anecdote that that information is embedded in as a story recipient or as an information seeker. And what may be happening in Ann's series of utterances following "Steven said he wanted the tractor" is an attempt to convey to Linda that she's neither to run out and buy the kid a tractor nor to feel accountable for not doing so, without saying so in so many words. (While Ann might have avoided the whole problem by simply not mentioning the story of Steven's telling their friend Donna that he wanted a tractor, she might forsee Donna's mentioning it to Linda and be trying to head off whatever problems that might entail.) Ann's initial attempt to defuse "Steven said he wanted the tractor," a don't take this seriously marker, the laughing recompleter "(h)y(h)ou kno(h)w" is overlapped by Linda's simultaneous appreciative "Mm:::." To the mention of the tractor (Lines 21-22). (That the next place Linda produces that sort of utterance is at the fragment's end, when Ann summarizes the foregoing talk by mentioning some things that she'd like Steven to have, "So, I don't know, just game you know, books and stuff (Lines 43-45) suggests that its initial occurrence might also be produced as a "response to a gift suggestion" made to her by Ann.)
RESOLVING AMBIGUITY
233
Ann's next attempt, her ironic self-quoted response to the storied announcement that Steven wants a tractor, "Oh that's nice huh heh heh heh" is received by Linda with a little laugh (Lines 23-24). That is, Linda's responses give no indication that she sees herself off the hook when it comes to the toy tractor. Ann's problem here may be the reverse of Monty's in Fragment 5. That is, whereas Monty may be not at all sure that the conventional proprieties are working for him so that he'll be understood to be more concerned for the boy than for the car, Ann may be discovering that the conventional proprieties are working too well, that she's not being heard as not wanting her child to have the toy he so much wants for Christmas. And it is, perhaps, therefore that we get the disambiguating "He ain't getting one, heh heh" (Line 25). I have a feeling that this utterance is as uncharacteristically callous as Monty's "Poor Joey" in fragment 5 is uncharacteristically solicitous. But in this case the callousness may specifically be produced to be taken lightly, not only with the appended laughter, but with the "ain't." She's to be heard as doing 'talking tough to get a point across.' And a bit further on, the possible callousness of "He ain't getting one" is shown to have been a matter of motherly concern; that instead of toys, she'd prefer him to have game books; things that promote activity (see Lines 41-44). A quick note about "ain't." I've transcribed two phone calls between these two women; this very long one (ca 45 minutes) and another, shorter one. This is the only occurrence of "ain't." All other utterances that could be done with "ain't" are done with standard syntax.3 Not long after I'd put together an earlier draft of this exercise, I began watching coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial. Several times I heard "ain't" used in the way Ann uses it. And in some instances, the "ain't" was embedded in language a cut above the ordinary. For example: ( 6 . a . ) [TV news, caught in passing] ((Cindy Adams, New York Post columnist)) Adams :-> If there's a better system anywhere I ain't found it yet. But there's something inherently wrong with what's happening in this case.
( 6 . b . ) [CNBC Special Report, 4 - 2 4 - 9 5 ] ((Manny Medrano, commentator, asked about the 3
For example (and these are all by Ann):[TCI(b):16] p. 1. "I'm not g'nna have it done.", p. 15, I'm not worryin' about it.," p.57, "It's not rilly like a cowboy thing", p. 60, "that's not yours," p. 79, "he's not doing that." [TCI(c):12] p. 5, "We're not answering.," p. 13, "yer not talking tuh someb'ddy:. . . ."
234
CHAPTER 13
feasibility of using professional j u r o r s . ) ) Medrano:-> That also (.) ain't gonna happen f' the feeruh-rf' The reason thet it rilly flies in the face of Constitutional protections,
And just recently, looking through some medical data collected in 1992, I came across a physician making similar use of "ain't." (6.C. ) [HospSite:PIS:8-27-92:21-22] ((Senior attending physician Slater is commenting on intern Fitch's suggestion that a patient be scheduled for a "psych consult")) Slater:
It ^might be worth it 'cause ... it might be Y'know kind of an unstable mo ment where
Fitch: Slater:
[°Mm° [ Mhm 'hhh just getting on a waiting list'n having an: (0.7) 'hhh (.) something happen in a couple months just (.) ain't gonna do the jo: b.
-> Fitch: Slater:
Fitch: Slater: Fitch:
->
[ Yeah. 'hhh It's not that she's got a cri.sis it's just this is the m- the right ti:me 7.) M hm [period in which something ought to happe n. [ Mhm.
(Especially nice here is that having used "ain't gonna do the job" to make his point, Dr. Slater returns to the standard syntax of "It's not that she's got a crisis . . .") These sorts of materials can lead us to see Ann's "He ain't getting one," not as an expression of callousness, but as an idiomatic resource she's put to work to make herself utterly clear in an environment of persistent ambiguity. And in that regard, then, it may well be that Monty's strikingly solicitous "Poor Joey" is a similar sort of resource being put to similar work in a similar environment. The final case and its consideration, like Fragment 5, comes out of the early work on troubles-talk (see Jefferson & Lee, 1980). As in the preceding three fragments, we get a series of ambiguous utterances. Unlike the preceding three, this one has no explicit, last-resort component. Things—if they are adrift—remain adrift. In this section of the troubles-talk report, the point being made is that although troubles-talk seems to have the potential for progressing as an orderly
RESOLVING AMBIGUITY
235
sequence, it appears to be enormously susceptible to contamination by other types of activities. One such contaminant is the negotiating of a plan, in which one participant's trouble is the other's obstacle. In the following fragment, someone has phoned with a project in mind (leaving her little boy to be looked after for a while so that she can go shopping) and discovers that the intended coparticipant in the project (the babysitter) has a trouble that may be consequential for that project (she's got the flu). And once again, the issue of proper parental concern for a child seems to be involved. (7)
[TCI(b):7:l-2]
( (Call opening unrecorded; Lily is the caller and is now identifying herself to Cora.)) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Lily: Cora: Lily: Cora: Lily: Cora: Lily:
10 Cora: 11 12 Cora:
Jo:dy's mothe:r? (0.6) Oh ye h ((very hoarse, here and throughout call)) ~ I [ Jo:dy Lih- tempi, Oh: yeh, (0.2) Are you si::ck, 'ten u-Yeh ah got the flu. aOh::::.uh hnh hnh ha ha-ha-ha [h- [ hhhhh]
hh-hh-hk
(.)
' hh
13 Lily: 14 15 16 Cora:->
[Wul that ni:ps it'nna bu:d, ' hh ah w'z gonna ask yuh if yih c'd keep Jo:dy fer a c(h)ouple hours but yih can't if yih got the flu::' tch Ah wouldn'wan'im aroun'me ho:n, 't=
17
_ nNo::::,
Lily:
18 Cora:-> 19 Lily: 20 Lily:
['hhhhhhhjhh 'Cause uh: ah'v really ghhot it. (.) yo u sure-
21 Cora: 22 23 Cora:-> 24 Lily:
[Ah- ] (.) But ah'd be glad=do it if I wasn't sihhck. e-You sure sound aw:ful. (hoarse.)
25 Cora: 26 27 28 Lily: 29 30 Cora:
[ 't Oh:: ] my God ah been 'hhh running th'highes'tempihtures you ever sa:w. Omy go:sh well let me hang up'n letchu git back tun be:yudh= =eh huh uh uhh h h u=
31 Lily: 32 Cora: 33 Lily:
[So:rry]I disturbed you. ] =Ha'yih doin' hhon= =Oh jes fi:ne.
236
CHAPTER 13
Across the fragment, the trouble is talked about by reference to its consequences for Lily's project; that is, will the fact that Cora has "the flu" stand in the way of her minding Lily's little boy. The presence of a symptom (hoarseness) and the announcement of 'the flu' does not in itself terminate the possibility that the project can be carried out. This is perhaps because a feature of the term 'the flu' is that it gets applied to almost anything and may here be naming something quite mild, and a feature of hoarseness is that it can be residual and not at all debilitating. So the sheer assertion "I've got the flu" (Line 8) and the presence of hoarseness are in a range of ways unreliable indices. And it appears that although Lily announces absolute withdrawal of the project, "Well that nips it in the bud" (Line 13), she is allowing for and perhaps specifically pursuing its being carried out. For one, several alternative courses are available to her. She might at this point introduce the "Sorry I disturbed you," which eventually closes off discussion of Cora's flu (Line 31). Less drastically, she might now initiate the diagnostic inquiry that occurs midway into the discussion, "You sure sound awful" (Line 24). Instead, having announced abandonment of the project, she goes on to describe it: "I was going to ask you if you could keep Jody for a couple of hours" and her grounds for abandoning it: "but you can't if you've got the flu" (Lines 13-15). And in the description of the project is at least one detail that might tend to urge for its being taken on by Cora; that is, there is mention of the briefness of the intended period of babysitting ("a couple of hours"), where, that something will take but a little while is a routine component of such negotiations. Then there is the proposed reason for abandoning the project, "but you can't if you've got the flu." This utterance strikes me as a proposal offered for confirmation or disconfirmation, perhaps because stating it makes it sequentially relevant; a response to it is due. Also, the proposed grounds for abandonment of the project are specifically disattentive to what ought to be a crucial concern if 'the flu' is being taken seriously; that is, it ought not to be that this sick woman "can't" take on the job, but that if she is sick the child ought not to be exposed to her. So, in this utterance that announces itself as abandoning the project, there is a minimizing not only of the task (just a couple of hours) but of the obstacle (no concern about contagion), and the babysitter has been put into a position of confirming or disconfirming that she "can't" take on the job. Now we come to the target series. In the utterance that confirms that the project ought to be abandoned, it appears that Cora is addressing the seriousness of 'the flu' by reference to possible contagion with "I wouldn't want him around me, hon" (Line 16). She is in effect hanging up a quarantine sign.
RESOLVING AMBIGUITY
237
But the utterance is ambiguous. It is at least conceivable that what is being referred to is the child as a nuisance to a sick person rather than (or as well as) the sick person as a source of contagion for the child. This is a very real issue, and it does show up in conversation—but interestingly, at least in the cases I've noticed, not as a person-to-person assertion, but as a third-party report. So, for example, in the following fragment a woman is talking about her daughter Janet's very ill father-in-law. (7.a) Emma:
[NB:IV:13:R:5-6] Janet s'd he ^looked (.) awf'lly ba:d though b'course Fre:d ditn say 'e ^ looked so ba:d but uh: (0.4) what kinyih do:, he's ho:me en yee ah mean they can't have -> the kids aroun' distur:b yihknow. . .
And in the following fragment a woman is talking about her daughter-in-law's "mum," who has yet to see her newborn granddaughter. (7.b) Mattie:
[Holt:88U:2:4:3] And uh (0.2) her mum rang me this morning 'n (0.3) they could get from Salsb'ry just uh within a day but sh' sez I can't go 'n see 'er I've got bronchi:ti s [ Leslie: [ Oh dear what a sha^:me. Mattie: -> Sh's'z I ca:n't go anywhe(h)re nea(h)r them an' -> she do(h)n't feel like it anyway you know, ~L Leslie: [nNo::.h
Fragment 7.b is especially instructive. We get both aspects specifically referred to, that is, sick person as a source of contagion (again with the self-quarantining, stay away formulation: here, "I can't go anywhere near them," in Fragment 7 "I wouldn't want him around me"), and sick person as in any event unwilling. Further, the covert character of the latter is interestingly invoked; that is, while Mattie quotes her fellow new grandmother as saying "I can't go and see her, I've got bronchitis," she does something else with the unwillingness aspect, not quoting but asserting "and she don't feel like it anyway." How ever she may have come to that conclusion (whether the other woman actually said it, or some sort of common knowledge is being invoked; i.e., no ill person would "feel like it"), Mattie is not ascribing those very words to her, but providing a sort of buffer by forming it up as a statement about her and not by her. So, returning to Fragment 7, it appears that the understanding of Cora's "I wouldn't want him around me, hon" as an assertion of self-quarantine in the interests of protecting Lily's little boy from contagion is based on a conventional
238
CHAPTER 13
public propriety. But there turns out to be that covert aspect, that is, that behind the 'quarantine' sign is one that reads 'do not disturb.' Compounding that, is the local context, specifically, that Lily herself is exhibiting no concern about 'quarantine.' Given these factors, Cora, having said "I wouldn't want him around me, hon" and receiving a drawn-out, sympathetic "nNo::::," (Line 17), may have good grounds to suspect that she is being heard to be invoking the 'do not disturb' alternative. A quick note about "nNo::::,." Comparing British and American uses of "No" as a response token (not an answer to a question), I found that whereas British speakers use "No" for negatively framed priors, for example: (7.c) Kath:
[Wheatley(l):16] So ah don't kno::w, (.) yahknow when she's com ing
Polly:
[No::,
Americans deploy "Uh huh," "Yeah," and so on, not only for positive but for negative priors, for example: (7.d) Jean: Clara:
[SBL:2:2:R:1] Allen doesn'know anything new out there eether. Uh huh,
(7.e) R.J. Dick:
[TCI ( b ) : 8 : 2 - 3 ] ( ( r e : allergy medication) ) : En I don'know where she keeps that sorta s t u : f f , Y:ah
reserving "No" for affiliation; for showing sympathy, solidarity, and so on, often where values and morals are concerned, for example: (7.f) Maggie: Dawn: (7.g) Nancy: Emma:
[ J G : I I ( a ) : 3 : 2 ] ((Maggie blacked o u t a t p a r t y ) ) she asked me if it w'z becuz I'd had too much t' dri:nk en I sid no becuz et the t i : m e . . . [N O : : : :
:.]
[NB:II:2:R:19]((Nancy knows that Andre lied.)) becuz Andre never stayed home all day tih call ^anybuddy y_, h ' hhh hh [n: :No:, ]
In any event, the "nNo::::," with which Lily receives Cora's "I wouldn't want him around me, hon" is not unequivocally selective of either alternative
RESOLVING AMBIGUITY
239
('quarantine' or 'do not disturb' and, as in similar circumstances in Fragments 4, 5, and 6, another non disambiguating item is offered, "Because I've really got it" (Line 18), Cora perhaps attempting to alert her recipient to the existence of a problem while remaining non explicit. But, in contrast to the prior fragments with their disambiguating third items, Cora produces yet another non explicit utterance, "But I'd be glad to do it if I wasn't sick" (Line 23), and the ambiguity is left unresolved: Is she expressing concern for the child or for herself? It is certainly possible that she is using ambiguous talk to pursue attention to her troubles while not explicitly saying poor-me-and-the-devil-takeyour-kid. On the other hand, the ambiguity may be a by-product of an attempt to avoid being seen as trying to instruct a mother on the proper grounds for abandoning the project; that is, that it's not that Cora "can't" baby-sit, but that the child should not be exposed to her—and that that ought to have been the mother's first concern. In which case, across a series of attempts, this speaker might be characterized as invoking, while specifically declining to explicate, the proprieties in hopes that the recipient will come to see that her prior talk exhibited a misalignment to those proprieties and now produce talk that will exhibit correct alignment. And whereas in each of the preceding fragments the problem can be ascribed to the one who is producing the ambiguous talk, in Fragment 7 it may be that the trouble lies with the recipient. In which case, whereas in each of the preceding fragments the one who produces the ambiguous talk solves the problem with a disambiguating utterance, in Fragment 7, as the recipient appears to remain dense to the problem, the speaker may be deciding that tactful ambiguity is preferable to possibly confrontational disambiguation. A closing note. One thing we can notice is that whereas in Fragment 7 disambiguation (possibly for good reason) did not occur, in the preceding materials we did see an eventual move to explicitness. One question that raises is, why do we not see an immediate move to something explicit? Why, for example, in Fragment 2, do we get "Go ahead" again! Why, in Fragment 5, do we get another indexicalized complaint ("That's awful" followed by "That really makes me mad")? This may have to do with a general feature of interaction, something that might be called 'understanding assumed,' which involves that the way in which we're talking to each other is in principle adequate for understanding. Where, then, on any given occasion, resolving some particular problem by explicating, explaining, and so on, could constitute a rupture of that in-principle condition of understanding each other.
240
CHAPTER 13
In one of his lectures, Sacks talks of how "monumental in its import" it is that in their interaction "people suppose that what we've been talking about all along, you know in the way I told it to you, and I suppose that in producing any next thing I say." He goes on to offer a rhapsodic description of a possible consequence of that assumption; that "without thinking about it, the work I do is to find for any item you say—no matter how grossly it misunderstands what I say, how well it understands what I say" (Sacks, 1992, p. 184). The materials I've been exploring here may involve a rather more prosaic working out of 'understanding assumed' on particular occasions when that assumption falters. Specifically, when an initial non explicit reference seems to be getting into difficulty, its speaker may attempt to alert its recipient to the problem while preserving the utterance's original, non explicit character, and thereby preserving the assumption of understanding—it being only when that attempt fails that the assumption is breached and explication is brought to bear.
REFERENCES Jefferson, G. (1986). Notes on "latency" in overlap onset. Human Studies, 9, 153-183. Jefferson, G. & Lee, J. R. E. (1980). On the sequential organization of troublestalk in ordinary conversation. (SSRC end-of-grant report). Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. C. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 59-64). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1992). [Lecture 2]. In G. Jefferson. (Ed), Lectures on conversation (Vol. 2, p. 184). Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
14 The Surfacing of the Suppressed Emanuel A. Schegloff UCLA I was first alerted to the phenomenon I sketch here by an incident in which I was a participant. The episode was not taped; I noticed the key occurrence when it happened in the course of the interaction, a meeting ("job interview" would probably be the more accurate term) with the Vice Chancellor of a small New England university in the early 1970s. After the end of the interview, I wrote a note about what I had noticed on—you won't believe this—the back of an envelope.1 Here's the note: Talking to Vice Chancellor; he tells about an administration report that slams some departments and the trouble to be expected when the report becomes public. It is set up for "the shit will hit the fan," but he censors it. Still, it's "in his brain," as witnessed by: a few moments later, replying to a suggestion that it not be made public, he says "it's already in the fan."
So there in a nutshell is a raw description of the phenomenon. If we ask what happens to the talk that gets suppressed when an utterance gets aborted before being brought to completion, then we sometimes see the suppressed item pop up in the talk later. As I say, that's a "raw description." How can we refine it? And why, or how, is it of interest? As an initial take, we might say it is of interest, first, because it is a recurrent occurrence in conversation (if it turns out to be) and it is our job to describe such things. And, second, because we may well find ourselves called upon to explore and register what has been suppressed when talk is selfI am, it should go without saying, not recommending this way of working, especially for getting started on a project, but one should not discard candidate phenomena only because they have come to attention in this way. 241
242
CHAPTER 14
interrupted, and what prompts the suppression. If we have grounds for looking to a particular place and knowing how to recognize what is to be found in it, we may find evidence there to support a claim about what was suppressed. And often enough what was suppressed is the best lead as to how come it was suppressed. How can we refine the rough initial account? At the very least it would be nice to put some constraints on the claim that something said later is "the suppressed item," and some constraints on "later;" surely it cannot be indefinitely later. And surely we want to press such refinements not on anecdotes written on the backs of envelopes, but on recorded data that can be inspected over and over again to give us the best possible chance of detecting this phenomenon. And it needs detecting. As we see herein, what happens to suppressed material often appears designed to escape notice—for obvious reasons; if it was wanted to be kept out of the talk once, there may well be grounds for keeping it from figuring in the talk subsequently as well. In fact, I found my most recent instance while preoccupied with some other topic, in data that I have been working on for about 30 years, data that were in fact collected several years before my episode with the Vice Chancellor. That's a long time to escape detection! Here, I can examine only a few exemplars, but I think we can at least sketch some of the key features of this phenomenon, which I am calling "the surfacing of the suppressed."2
A FIRST TAKE: INITIAL OBSERVATIONS AND RESOURCES Let me begin with an exchange that presents (at Line 29) a very simple and accessible version of some of the central features of these occurrences. (The reader is urged to examine the transcripts with some care and not "read around" 2
In Gail Jefferson's article "On the Poetics of Ordinary Talk" (1996), she employed the term "suppression-release" (at pp. 8, 18, 20 and 24) for a somewhat different, but not unrelated, phenomenon. By that term she meant "You're being very careful not to say something, and you succeed in not saying it, and it sneaks out in the next utterance" (p. 8). However, in none of the instances that she examined in this regard is there an overtly displayed suppression of the talk (e.g., by cutting off the talk that would articulate the suppressed material), talk that subsequently is "released." In three of the four instances, Jefferson developed a cogent account of an ongoing suppression of some word or theme that subsequently comes out in the talk, but that was not done as a suppression—was not done as a displayed suppression; in the first of the instances for which she introduced the term, there is a displayed suppression, but it is applied prematurely, and the item hypothetically being avoided ("Blacks") is not the one subject to displayed suppression and does not in fact come out subsequently. So although Jefferson's account of what she referred to by suppression-release is tracking something that is thematically closely related to what I am examining here, the details of the occurrences and their analysis are different.
243
SURFACING
them; notational conventions are explained in Appendix A. Readers are invited to access the audio of this and virtually all the data extracts in this article, in a format suitable for most platforms, on my home page, which can be addressed at , with a link to the present paper. Should this web page cease to be available, readers should contact me directly or search the California Digital Library at . The extract is from a telephone call in the late 1960s between two young women who grew up in the same neighborhood and attended the same college until Bee transferred to another school; here Bee is asking about the school that she has left and that Ava still attends.) (1) 34 35 36 37 38 01 02 03 04 05 06 07
TG, 4:34-5:31 (simplified) Bee Ava Bee Ava Bee Ava
(0.4) Eh-yih have anybuddy: thet uh:? (1.2) I would -!Snow from the_English depar'mint there? Mm-mh. Teh! I don't think so. °Oh,=
08 09 10
Bee: Ava:
Uh-ho that's [a- that's a s[wee:t co:mplimint] [Kuhleznik.= [I said gee:, tha:n]ks a lo:[t honeh,
11 12 13
Bee: Ava: Bee:
[hhhhhhuh huh= ='hh [ Said ] yih all gonna gitch' mouth shuddup= ['hhhh!]
14 15 16 17
Ava: Bee: Bee: Ava:
=fih you yih don't sto: p i [ t . ] [°M]mmyeh, I think evrybuddy's had her hm[hhh! [Ohh,
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
[she's the biggest] pain in the a:ss. [ -fih something, ] (0.3) Bee: °Yeh, Ava: .T She's teaching uh English Lit too, no more composition, Bee: Ohj^: : , She's moved up in the wor[ld ] Ava: [She] must know somebuddy because all those other teachers they got rid of.hhhh (0.3) Bee:-> Yeh I bet they got rid of all the one::Well one ]E had, t! 'hhhh in the f_irs' term there, fer the f_irs' term of English, she die::d hhuh-uhh ['hhh Ava: [Oh:. Bee:
244 33 34
CHAPTER 14 Bee: Ava:
She died in the middle of the tejjrm?mhhh! = =Oh that's too ba:d hha ha!=
Note then that this extract begins with a topic-proffering sequence initiated by Bee to Ava, a sequence whose second try (at Line 38) asks whether "they" (i.e., the authorities at the college) got "ridda Kuleznick yet," a teacher who is held in low regard by both Ava and Bee. They "work up" the Kuhleznick case for a bit, and it turns out that she has not only not been sacked, but is doing very well— "teaching English Lit too, no more composition," the import of which is registered by Bee (Line 24) as having "moved up in the world," and explained by Ava (Lines 25-27) by reference to her knowing somebody "because all those other teachers they got rid of." Such a reuse of a word from a question (Line 38's "Did they get ridda Kuhleznick yet") deep into an extended answer sequence is a practice for marking or claiming the end of the answering (Schegloff, 1998). And here (at Line 29) it appears that Bee is aligning with this move to close the sequence by agreeing with the claim with which Ava has proposed to end it with respect to the fate of the faculty they knew in common, "Yeh I bet they got rid of all the one::." Although this is epistemically qualified to a supposition by the "I bet," the turn-so-far still appears on the way to alignment, projecting a continuation as ". . . got rid of all the one[s I had]."3 But it is aborted before getting there. The turn is arrested in a relatively unusual way—not with a cut-off but with a sound stretch (marked by the colons near the end of Line 29). It seems to convey, "waitamminnit, I'm just thinking of something that makes what I was about to have said not quite right." It exemplifies a suggestion made some years ago (Schegloff, 1979) that, whereas cut-offs commonly initiate repair on the talkalready-produced, sound stretches ordinarily initiate repair on talk as yet unsaid. And so Bee aborts the "about-to-have-said-ness" of it, and tells what problematizes it: One of her former teachers could not have been gotten rid of by the secular higher-ups (so to speak), because she died. And thereby what was on the way to being an agreement with what Ava had said, and an alignment of their views and the closing of the sequence, is derailed. It is turned into an exception to what Ava had said, and thereby at best a nonalignment, perhaps even a disagreement and challenge (a characterization resonant with the "well" that initiates the new departure, "well" being often deployed as an opposition- or disagreement-marking token). As it happens, this outcome characterizes virtually every sequence and topic in this conversation. At one point, having secured from Ava an agreement that she is home (she must be, because that is where Bee called her and she answered, and this is before "call-forwarding" technology), Bee remarks in 3
The brackets enclose a plausibly projectable continuation of the talk that was not in fact articulated.
SURFACING
245
frustrated vindication (or vindicated frustration), "See? hl-I'm doin1 somethin right t'day finally, I finally said something right. (0.2) You are home." Still, Ava finds a way to distance herself even from this inescapable truth: "Yeh-1 believe so. Physically anyway." Bee's backing away from the alignment we are examining, concerning getting rid of teachers, is just one appearance of something deeper and more pervasive going on in this interaction and in the relationship of which it is the most recent (and possibly the last) episode. But note how Bee starts this "exception": "Well one I had t! .hhhh in the firs' term there," and so forth. Note two things. First, what follows the suppression of the ending of the turn unit that was aborted includes in its very beginning just the words that appear to have been suppressed—"I had." Indeed, we almost reflexively use those words to either reconstruct, or ground the reconstruction of, what that aborted ending was going to be.4 Second, note the break between "one I had" and its descriptor "in the first term there." This ends up being a single phrasal person reference—"one I had in the first term there," but it is "fractured" in the middle, both with the tongue click and with a substantial inbreath, an inbreath that displays the at least transient "unit-in-itsown-right" status of this chunk, and the persistence of the boundary that was projected to occur after "had."5 4
As we do with error correction; cf. Jefferson, 1974. Here is another, quite similar, instance (at Lines 38 and 41). Mark has been visiting and "schmoozing" with Sherrie, Karen, and Ruthie in their dormitory room in the mid-1970s, talk mostly dominated by Mark's recounting of his recent social life. Then: 5
(A) 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
SN-4, 12:15-40. Mark: Yih know my stpmach after every meal now feels r:ea:lly weird 'n it's been giving 'hh Mi:les got Digel tablets? 'n stuff like tha^t? (0.4) (??) .[°henh Mark: [A:nd uh: like-(-) 't's r:ea:lly weird, ( too). 'hh- I find one thing.don't eat their pineapples. They make yer stomach imme:diately after dinner really feel lousy.<'t least mi:ne.= Sher: =Their pineapple's ca:nned.
25
26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
(1.5)
Mark: Sher: Mark: (??) Mark: Kar: Mark:
(°I ' o n ' t care,) it's still terrible. mmhhhhh HUH-HUH "hhhh hh they really- just turn my stomach. Sump'm after dinner [(in) (-)('s)] °turning in yer stomach .hh : [ hhhh 'hh ] (0.5) But u:m: (1.2) C'est la vie, c'est la vie,= °=eyeh°
246
CHAPTER 14
So the candidate finding I want to take away from this instance is that something that has been suppressed in the course of producing talk in a turn may pop up in the same words in the very next spate of talk. We add to and shape this observation as we examine additional candidate exemplars, but, for now, we have this: what was suppressed—that is, the word or words that were suppressed (if they appear to have been projected), may surface in the immediately following talk. That gives us something to look for and a place to look for it, and those two things—position and composition—are major parts of all sorts of practices and phenomena in talk-in-interaction.
EXCURSUS: SUPPRESSION AND INSERTION There are occurrences that look very much like suppressions, ones in which the "suppressed" item pops up in immediately following talk, which however are a quite different phenomenon. They are instances of same-turn repairs accomplishing the operation of "insertion." Thus for example: (2) 01 02 03 04 05
Joyce and Stan, 4:07-11 Stan: --> Joyce:
And fer the ha:t, I'm lookin fer somethi:ng uh a little different. Na- uh:f: not f:: exactly franky but not (.) a r-regular type'a 'hhh >well yihknow I I< have that other hat I wear, yihknow? Yeah,
In this telephone conversation recorded in the mid-1970s, Stan is soliciting advice from his sister Joyce about where to purchase a hat and a pair of sandals. At Line 02 he appears to suppress something—which begins with an "f' — when he says about the hat that he is looking to buy, "not f::." And when a moment 37 38 39 40 41 42
(1.2) Mark:--> That's about it hell I haven't been doing anything but- (•) s- (Well,) (0.2) going out [actu]ally. ?Kar: [mmh ] (0.7) M a r k : - - > I 'aftuh start studying no:w
Mark is apparently starting to complain that he has done nothing but sftudy], which is (by the testimony of his own prior talk) the opposite of the case. When he comes to the "payoff' component of this turn-constructional unit (at the start of line 39), he suppresses it, and confesses that he has done nothing but good times. The "correction" from what he was about to say to "the truth" is even underscored by the "actually" which serves here (as it often does; Clift, 1999, 2001) as a correctionmarker. And then the suppressed "studying"' surfaces in the turn to repentance which follows (at line 42); one might almost hazard the conjecture that this further extension of his talk at this juncture is designed to accommodate the surfacing of the suppressed element of the prior talk.
SURFACING
247
later the word "funky" comes out, it may look like the "surfacing of the suppressed." But Stan has in effect put the utterance-so-far on hold in order to insert something—here, the word "exactly"—before the word he was in the process of saying, after which he returns to the saying of it; thus "not f:: exactly fiinky." "Funky" has not been "suppressed, only to surface anyway"; it has been held in momentary abeyance to insert something before it. To be sure, this practice is as deserving of careful analysis as suppression is (because it is as much an issue for recipient as suppression is): How shall we understand a speaker's disruption of the production of the talk to insert some element—this element in particular—at this juncture? What does its insertion do to the upshot of the turn? To what possible understandings of the talk by recipient does a speaker show orientation by inserting this element when it was not included in the previously articulated composition of the turn? Etc. But these questions are different than the ones mobilized by suppression. Or consider the following extract from earlier in the same conversation. Stan has asked his sister the outcome of a traffic ticket incident in which she was involved and she has reported deciding to pay the ticket rather than contesting it. Then: (3) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
Joyce and Stan, 01:20-30 Stan: Joyce:--> Stan: Joyce:--> Stan: Joyce: Stan-. Joyce: Stan:
[I guess it would ye you figured out finally found out it'd be too much ha:ssle ta take care of it. ' hh I figu:red (0.4) in order: I would just half tig- make two trips down there:, Yeah, ~ Yihknow I'd hafta go down there ta pay it, Right, Then make an appoi:ntment (.) ta come back there again, Yea[h, [An1 they wouldn't give me a date, fer a month an a half, Yeah,
Stan is offering a guess about why his sister Joyce has chosen to pay a parking/traffic ticket rather than contesting it. Joyce appears to be suppressing something when she says (at Lines 04-05, in regularized orthography), "I would just have to g-," with that something surfacing at Line 07, "I'd hafta go down there ta pay it." But it is clear that here again an insertion is being done. Joyce has temporarily put this utterance on hold while inserting "make two trips down there" before the "go:"—inserting, that is, the larger point of which the selfinterrupted utterance is a first part. Although this is not the place for a substantial comparative treatment of "suppression" and "insertion," at least this much can be said here. A speaker can show that "insertion" is being done by having the previously abandoned and now
248
CHAPTER 14
repeated or returning element be implicated in the same trajectory of utterance as was initially in progress, and this is ordinarily implemented by employing the same grammatical form and lexicon—by "doing resuming" as part of the practice of "doing inserting." In suppression, as we see later, the "suppressed" element—when surfaced—is often virtually unrecognizably different from what was in progress or "due next" grammatically and semantically rather than resumptive of it, and is implicated in a different trajectory of utterance. One upshot of registering the practice of same turn insertion repair, and differentiating suppression from it, is this. It may be necessary to track the subsequent development of the talk in order to determine exactly what practice the earlier "abandonment" of a TCU-in-progress (TCU stands for turnconstructional unit) was the product of—necessary both for the co-participant and for the professional analyst. And, for the coparticipant, once engaged with that subsequent talk, and with its potential sequential implicativeness for what should be said next in response, the possibility of returning to the point of abandonment—the point of "suppression"—and lingering on its import is attenuated.
SECOND TAKE: PAYOFFS: EMPLOYING THE OBSERVATIONS AND RESOURCES Returning now to suppression itself, let us see what the resources developed on the first exemplar (before the excursus), and the search that they permit, yield on another "specimen." In this telephone call between two college women in the mid-1970s, Hyla has called her good friend Nancy ostensibly to talk about the arrangements for going to the theater that evening, but a good deal of talk about other matters gets done as well. Quite early on in the conversation there are opportunities for each to tell anything major that happened during the day, and it is in such a telling by Nancy that the utterance we examine occurs (at Line 24). (4) HG, 2:1-25 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Hyla: Nancy: Hyla: Hyla: Nancy: Hyla: Nancy: Nancy:
[Bu:t] [My f]:^ace hurts,= =°W't-° (•) Oh what'd'e do tih you. (•) GOD'e dis (•) prac'ly killed my dumb fa:ce,= =Why: Ho[-ow. ] [(With,)] (•) With this thing I don'ee 1^ wzn'even Rooking I don't kno: : w," (•)
SURFACING 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
Nancy. Nancy: Nancy: Hyla: Nancy: Hyla: Nancy:
249 B't 'e jis like o:pened up, (0.6) a lo*:t* y ' k n o w ( ' v ) (0.4) the 2imPles * ha:ve
Looking at Nancy's turn at Lines 23-27, we can note that here too an utterance is aborted, its ending suppressed. Nancy has reported her exchange with the doctor after crying in reaction to the pain: He apologizes (Lines 23-4), she reports herself to reject the apology (Lines 24-5). Then (in standard orthography), "He was just (0.4) so, e-he didn't mean to be but he was really hurting me." "He was just so" what? In the aftermath of pain infliction and an apology that is treated as rejectable? He was just so ... what? I take it that this can be not only a question for us external analysts; it can be an issue for the parties as well, the recipients of the talk. Recall that recipients parse a speaker's talk in real time, turn-so-far by turn-so-far, projecting where it is going, what it is coming to, what it will take for it to be possibly complete. They are projecting all the time, and using each next bit of the speaker's actual talk to confirm or modify their projection of where the talk is going—to re-project. So Hyla is not listening in a docile manner for each next bit of Nancy's turn to fall into her lap, so to speak. She is listening proactively, in the fashion that (as we have seen from such work as that of Sacks [1992] and Lerner [1991, 1996] on collaboratives or anticipatory completions) can often allow such a recipient in effect to say the projected next part of the utterance for or with the current speaker. Indeed, in just such a place as we have arrived at, one often enough finds the recipient chiming in at the point of the hesitation and supplying the missing item (Lerner, 1991, 1996). There are grounds then for taking the recipient to be oriented to the possible turn completion that is being suppressed and not delivered (just as recipients can be demonstrably oriented to it when suppression is not an issue). "He was so . . . " There is a virtual tension built up by the recurrent cycle of projection (by the recipient) and delivery by the speaker of a next bit of the turn-so-far, a tension deprived of resolution by the suppression. We return to this theme later.6 6
One sort of evidence for this line is suggested by the suppressed elements reappearing in the immediately following talk not of the suppressing speaker but of the recipient, whose close attention
250
CHAPTER 14
How about "mean"? "He was just so mean?" Look then at the immediately following talk after the suppression, and notice: "He didn't mean to be b u t . . . " Now this is clearly a different "mean." What is suppressed in Nancy's turn, if it was "mean," was a descriptor (an "adjective") —was the "mean" of "nasty," "cruel," and the like. The "mean" of "He didn't mean to be b u t . . . " is a verb—the "mean" of "intend." Still, it is a way in which the word or words that have been suppressed find a way out, so to speak. Sometimes they are the same lexical items used in the same "sense"—as in "one I had"; sometimes they are the same lexical items used in an entirely different sense, as with "mean." And when they come out in such a radically different usage, they are very hard to detect. In effect, they are a form of camouflage, allowing the suppressed talk to come out, perhaps even at some level to ground the energy or tension set up by the "unfulfilled" projection of the turn completion, without actually saying the suppressed thing. It (so to speak) grounds the "energy" left unspent by the nonsaying of the projected, although still not "saying" the suppressed, although using its word(s).7 But what is so important about "not saying the suppressed"? In many such instances, what is suppressed is suppressed because in some fashion it is problematic or delicate. Such problematicalness or delicateness also commonly figures in a speaker's providing an opportunity for anticipatory or collaborative completion by the recipient (as in the work of Sacks and Lerner cited earlier). Getting the recipient to say the delicate item allows them to have said it together, collaboratively; it shows the recipient to also be capable of "thinking that thought" and saying it. So what is so delicate or problematic in the episode in Extract 4? Here is another piece of the puzzle, another ingredient of the phenomenon being described here. We want to show not only the suppression reappearing, and to the turn-so-far, and orientation to its projected completion, are displayed by production of the candidate suppressed element. For discussion of several exemplars of this, see Appendix B. 7 Consider the blizzard of tokens of the suppressed item in the following episode of mutual accommodation in arranging to take a meal together. (B)
MTRAC, 90-2, side 1 Marcia: Bu wai- d'ya wanna have lunch? 'r dinner. Witha Big Mac. Fiona: Which d'ya think is best fer YOU(1.0) Marcia:--> Well I don'tuh::: (1.5) I- I'm- I'm adjustable. I think if I know now, y'know I c'n:uh:: (1.0) adjust my time accordingly,
I take Marcia to be saying "Well I don'tuh:::[know]" with the "know" suppressed. But then note the flurry starting with ". . . if I know now y'know," none of which is the "know" that she suppressed (which was the knowing of "what... is best fer you").
SURFACING
251
reappearing in the next spate of talk (composition and position); we would like to motivate or ground the suppression interactionally, and where it is so grounded, come to terms with the camouflaged appearance that it sometimes takes. The phenomenon can still be there without "heavy" interactional motivation; but then, perhaps, it is most centrally an artifact of the speech production machinery under interactional control and shaping.8 8 There is a closely related phenomenon and practice that deserves brief mention and exemplification here, without full treatment. This involves a display of orientation to public "cultural norms" in the very course of transgressing them; that is, even when they do not command full assent or conformity from the speaker her or himself. This can take the form of full or partial suppression. In the former, the speaker omits articulation of the transgressing elements. Thus, in a storytelling episode discussed in various papers (Goodwin, 1986, 1987; Schegloff, 1987, 1988, 1992), Mike is telling about a fight at the race track the night before. Although he later shows himself willing to articulate far more offensive language, he begins the storytelling itself this way:
(C) Auto Discussion, 6:23-4 23 Mike:--> Evidently Keegan musta bumped im in thee, 24
(0.6)
And the silence at Line 24 is broken by the intervention of another party to the conversation. What is "missing" here is quite clearly the word "ass," which figures in similar contexts later in the story and is articulated there. But here there is a sort of obeisance paid to the cultural impropriety of the usage, and it is fully suppressed. In partial suppression, the improper talk is produced in lowered voice, sotto voce, as what I am inclined to call "quiet improprieties." For example, in the following phone call recorded in the mid-1960s, a woman "of some years" is telling her friend about a holiday trip to Lake Tahoe in California, and the comparative virtues and drawbacks of the venue. This includes what could be reckoned to be prejudiced comments about various so called "minority groups." Although she has little reason to believe she can be overheard, she nonetheless lowers her voice to register an awareness of, and orientation to, the impropriety of what she is doing. (D) SBL, T2:C4, 3:1-30 (simplified) 01 Bev: So you go outta California into Nevahda. All of the 02 motels are in California, all the ga(h)mbling 03 places, and the big hotels, are in Nevada.
04 05
Ann: Bev:
0 6 Ann: 07 Bev: 08 09 Ann: 10 Bev:--> 11 12
Mm hm, And os it's- it is. -hh Yeah, iinfinitely different. And 1^ don1 know, Ann, but !_ think -- they're stealing a lotta Los Vegas. I wouldn't be surprized. The other thing that we noticed, ((very quiet)) You know, we didn't see any Jews, you know in Las Vegas, you [know how you see those greasy old women an'=
13
Ann:
14
Bev:
=[men, but at-
=[Uh huh,
[Uh huh
15
Ann:
16 17
Bev:--> And very few Negroes, ((voice moves to low-normal)) But we saw lots of Orientals.
18
Ann
[Mm hm,
252
CHAPTER 14
So what is the problem or delicate matter here? I offer this proposed analysis, or conjecture. Nancy is a young woman, in her late teens, in the transition between adolescence and adulthood. Under the stress of the pain and the telling about it, it appears that she is "regressing" a bit, reverting to a child's grasp of pain—it is inflicted by those who administer it because they are "mean." There is evidence of such a stance elsewhere in this very conversation. Hyla, for example, a little later on, reacts to a mention of the "Dear Abby" advice column by launching into a story: "Oh:, she said something mea::n yesterday I didn' like her," and as soon as Nancy asks her to go on, she retracts the "mean" as a descriptor, "Well ih wasn't mea:n b't it wz really stupid." "Mean" here is a kind of generic negative. But here is another instance of the usage of the term, this time from an adolescent boy, a "hotrodder" in 1960s Los
18a 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
Bev [You see, I think they come in from San Francisco. Ann: Mm hm, Bev:--> ((voice returns to normal)) And the Orientals, you know, are always very well dressed, Ann: Mm hm, Bev: And they're tremendous gamblers. Ann: Mm hm, Ann: I think that's ( ) Bev: So uhm uh:: they have a grand time at the crap
27 28 29
Ann: Bev:
30 3-1
Bev:
games. Mm [hm, [TheyThey really at uh- it's a something to see, and I'm glad I saw it, 'n I had a wonderful time doin' it.
Formal notice is thus taken of the cultural norms applicable here, in the very course of showing a lack of commitment to abide by them. Finally, there are gradations between full suppression and "reduced offensiveness," in which, for example, a speaker mouths the words or parts of them without actually voicing them, or begins that way and then gradually allows some voicing to set in, as in the following characterization (by the same "Mike" cited earlier in this note) of the villain in the story. (E) Auto Discussion, 9:23-27
23 24 25 26 27
M i k e : - - > D[ewa:ld is a [big burly ( ( s i l e n t ) ) b a ( ( v l ) ) s t e r d = Curt: [Jeezuz. [ Phyllis: [ . h h h h hhehhhhhhehheh, Mike: = [jihknow, Curt: = [Mmhm,
Here, the first syllable of "bastard" is mouthed silently and its remainder is voiced very quietly ('VI" is an abbreviation for "Very low"). What we have in the various gradations of this practice, then, appears to involve more than simple word production apparatus per se, and yet not some thisinteraction-specific matter of delicateness, but one way in which "culture" in the anthropological sense, and an orientation to cultural prescriptions as privileged points of reference, appear in talk-ininteraction.
SURFACING
253
Angeles talking about the relationship between teenagers and the police, which embodies just the usage I have suggested for Nancy. (5) GTS 1 Roger: 2 3 --> 4 5 Al:
When a cop sees a hopped up car, he doesn't care if you're goin forty five you must be doin somethin wrong, and if he wants to be mean, he can bust you on a thousand things. He doesn't have to have a reason...
Here again the adult who does something painful to the kid does so because he is, or wants to be, "mean." So here is Nancy poised on the very verge of a relapse into this "childish" way of seeing the world: She does not treat the doctor as hurting her incidentally, as part of doing something for her, and when he apologizes she rejects the apology as ineffective, and characterizes him as ... just as she is about to say "mean," she backs away. And note, what she backs into is precisely the adult counterpart to the childish view—it's not that he means to be hurting her, but it hurts just the same. And in the very course of articulating this newer adult part of her, she leaks out—in camouflaged form—the bit of childishness she has almost let escape.9 A rather more public problematicity and delicateness informs the next instance, taken from an interview on National Public Radio's news program "Morning Edition." President Clinton had nominated obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Henry Foster to be Surgeon General of the United States, and the nomination had run into trouble in its pursuit of confirmation when Dr. Foster was reported to have performed a number of abortions—these being treated as "immoral" by one segment of the press, the Congress, and the public, and as a "medical decision" by another segment. Journalist Joanne Silberner developed a story on the attitude of obstetrician/gynecologists toward doing abortions, and one part of the story reported on Dr. Elizabeth Garrow (Lines 1-4), and included her recorded response to an inquiry during an interview (Lines 5-13). (6) 1 2 3 4 5 6
NPR, Morning Edition, 2/23/95 JS:
EG:
...Elizabeth Garrow does one or two abortions a week as part of her practice in suburban Virginia. She says it's one of many services she offers her patients. Just as if a woman comes in an' says, ".hh I'm pregnant=I want ta have a baby, en I- try to give
9 Compare the relationship of this surfacing of a suppressed item with the earlier-discussed reappearance of an item held in abeyance to allow an insertion before it, as in Extracts (2) and (3) and the discussion of them.
254
CHAPTER 14
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
her good prenatal ca:re, .hhh or .h I don't want to be pregnant en I g:et her on the pi:11, 'f=sh=s's I am pregnant en I don't want ta be:, .hh that's- (.) -helping her take care of that is just another aspect. (0.8) of- of my jo:b. I don't see it as any: (0.2) more a less important. It's j's- it's a part of it.
At Lines 11-12, it seems apparent that Dr. Garrow is on the way toward summing up how abortion presents itself to her in her practice—as "just another aspect of my job" (Lines 10-11)—by saying "I don't see it as any [moral issue]." In the context of the public controversy that prompted the story and interview in the first place, this would, of course, have been fuel on the fire. As she approaches the problematic element of her TCU, she slows and pauses, and suppresses "moral." But note how it creeps out nonetheless. In a striking restructuring of her TCU, the "any" is converted into the start of the idiom "any more or less [important]." But her articulation of this phrase, by reducing the "or" to "a", incorporates the suppressed "moral" like this: "any: (0.2) [more+a+l]+ess . . . " In the very swerving to avoid the publicly problematic "moral," it occupies the turn in camouflaged form and in the very next bit of talk. Let me end with the instance that had escaped me all these years, and that I finally saw while examining something quite different. This comes from the conversation drawn on for the first extract that we examined—a telephone call between two young women in late 1960's New York. Ava is telling Bee about how she came to be "so tired." (7) 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
TG, 02:10-38 Ava: I'm so:: ti:yid.I j's played ba:ske'ball t'day since the firs' time since I wz a freshm'n in hi:ghsch[ool.] Bee: [Ba::]sk(h)et= b(h)a(h)ll? (h)[(°Whe(h)re.) Ava: [Yeah fuh like an hour enna ha:[lf.] Bee: [ . h h ] Where didju play ba:sk [etbaw. ] Ava: [(The) g y ] : m . Bee: In the gy:m? [ (hh) Ava: [Yea:h. Like grou(h)p therapy. (.)
21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
Ava: Bee: Ava: Bee: Bee: Ava: Ava:
Bee:
Yuh know [half the grou]p thet we had la:s'= [ O h : : : . ] . hh =term wz there- <'n we [jus' playing arou:nd. [ . hh Uh-fo[oling around. [.hhh Eh-yeah so, some a' the guys who were bedder y'know wen off by themselves so it wz two girls against this one guy en he's ta:11.Y'know? [ . hh [ Mm hm?
SURFACING 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
Ava:-->
Bee: Ava: Bee:--> Ava: ->
255 En, I had- I wz- I couldn't stop laughin it wz the funniest thing b't y'know you get all sweaty up'r en evrything we didn' thing we were gonna pla:y, .hh en oh I'm knocked out. Nhhkhhhh! .hhhh Ripped about four nai:ls, 'n okhh! Fantastic.= =B't it wz fun-You sound very far away
Here, it appears that the "I had-" at Line 33 suppresses "I had [fun.]" Note first that the "fun" surfaces a bit later in "the funniest thing" (Line 34), where, however, the sense of "fun" (as "having a good time") is masked by the sense of "funniest" (as "laughter prompting") given by its following "couldn't stop laughing." Then note that, just before a final quick exit line from this topic at Line 40, Ava says, "But it was fun"; this is the same "fun" that was suppressed earlier (as compared to the "funniest" as the superlative of "funny" that is not, quite), but she still manages to deflect it from herself to the situation as a whole: "It was fun," rather than "I had fun." Note as well that the first thing to follow the initial suppression at "I had-" (Line 33) was "I wz-" (itself cut-off in turn), and that "wz" returns in the exiting line "it w'z fun" (Line 40). Several ties connect this exit line with the earlier site of the suppression, then. (Note by the way that Bee's otherwise odd "fantastic" (Line 39)—odd as a response to "knocked out" and "ripped about four nails"—may invite understanding for its resonance of "fantastic" with "fun.") So the features that have recurred in other instances of suppression that we have examined appear to be present here as well. But what is going on? I would like to end with an(other) illustration of an unexpected way in which having a sense of such a phenomenon as "suppression resurfacing" as a real thing can figure in our understanding of entirely different aspects of what is going on in some episode of interaction. The suppression and its reappearance (or the capacity of the reappearance to warrant that there was a suppression and what it was) throws new light on something odd in the opening of this conversation. In the opening, Bee says a curious thing after detecting in the sound of Ava's voice and in her apparent "kidding around" a note that properly warrants notice by a recipient in an opening; she says, "Why whatsa matter with y- y'sound happy." Now "sounding happy" would not ordinarily be characterized or made accountable as "something the matter with you." The allusion here, I had always taken it, was to Ava being a "sad sack" type, always complaining, never being content, so that the later "y'sound sorta cheeerful" that follows Ava's denial of being "happy" would, even as a reduced descriptor, be a noticeable. But this had been mere supposition; interpretation with little in the data to support a stronger claim of analysis.
256
CHAPTER 14
And here—in the suppression we have been examining—we see what may be such evidence: Ava cannot bring herself to say she had fun—"I had fun"—even though everything about the telling about playing basketball conveys that. This is not quite something that motivates the suppression, but it grounds the claim of suppression in a larger canvass of the speaker's conduct, and grounds Bee's treatment of Ava's sounding happy as "something the matter with her" in an actual display of "happiness avoidance." This is a long way from where we started (though subsequent developments can be brought to bear on the episode with the Vice Chancellor, even if only conjecturally for lack of a recording of the exchange). The moral of my story is this. Taking seriously, and pursuing, an observable for the purely technical object it can be, can make available a resource whose bearing on the warrantable analysis of what is going on in interaction is by no means "purely technical" in the pejorative sense ordinarily attached to that phrase. Perhaps the larger moral is to remove the pejorative sense attached to terms such as "technical," "merely technical," "purely technical, " and the like altogether. If something is correct as an account of a possible event or practice or phenomenon in talk-in-interaction, then pursuing it in its own terms promises to deliver an analytic resource whose scope of relevance cannot be properly imagined in advance.
POSTSCRIPT It will not be lost on readers that my title alludes to a phrase generally associated with psychoanalytic theorizing, and with Freud in particular, the "return of the repressed." Why, then, have I danced around this memorable phrase, and settled for something that retains both its semantic sense and its poetic alliteration, but not its literal identity? "Suppression" and "repression" have, to my mind, slightly different connotations. "Repression" is deeper, "suppression" shallower; "repression" long-lasting; "suppression," at least potentially, shorter term and transient (a government may "suppress" an uprising, but we do not speak of it as "suppressive"; if this is a long-term, character-revealing tendency of a regime, we speak of it as "repressive"); "repression" fundamental, "suppression," at least potentially, relatively superficial. Still, in both of them, grounds are found by actors for affirmatively avoiding the externalization of something assertedly (by the analyst thereof) present in the scene and informing the conduct of participants in the scene—whether these be thought of as regimes and bodies politic, individuals and their psyches, or participants in episodes of interaction. Here I have been dealing with "suppression"; to what degree the discussion turns out to be relevant to "repression".(whatever that term may be understood to
SURFACING
257
denote, given the methodological obstacles to rigorous and clear thinking in this domain) remains to be determined. Dealing with "suppression" (and "repression" as well, of course) involves us in nontrivial issues of interpretation and evidence, and this in two respects. First, it involves showing what was not said—and this implicates a host of issues bound up with making negative observations. Second, it can involve (and does in the present case) arguing that something that was said not only was said, but is what was specifically not said earlier, and has thus in effect "escaped." With respect to the first of these sets of issues, it may be worth reviewing in as compact a form as possible the problem of negative observations. Strictly speaking, an indefinitely extendable set of things was not said at any specified point in a conversation, yet only a very limited part of that set can relevantly be noted to have been "not said"—by parties to the conversation in the conversation or by external analysts about it. As noted early on in the conversation analytic literature, one consequence of the sequencebuilding resource dubbed the "adjacency pair" (two-turn sequences such as greeting-greeting, question-answer, request-grant/reject, etc.) is that when there is no response to the first part of such a pair, one can not only generally say who was silent, even though no one has talked; one can say what was not said/done. After a question, then, the silence is understood as a failure to answer or a withholding of answering. Here, formulating what was not said takes the form of a characterization of the activity or action that was not implemented, and that line of analysis can be grounded in the relevance rules by which a first pair part constrains, shapes, and casts an interpretive key over the moments directly following it. The negative observation implicated in a claim of "suppression," however, can be more detailed and specific than this. In the episodes examined in this chapter, what is claimed is that some word(s) or phrase(s) or topically specific fragment of talk—some sayable in particular—has been specifically withheld from articulation, has been "suppressed." The relevance rules that underlie such a claim therefore have to be more fine-grained than those underlying characterizations of missing responses to first-pair parts. With respect to the second set of issues, one feature of the type of understanding of interaction (and social life more generally) sought by conversation analysis and kindred pursuits in the social and human sciences is that analytic characterizations of actors' conduct be grounded in, and warranted by, the participants' own demonstrable orientations to the setting, context, and import of what is going on. In this enterprise, one eschews analytical claims warranted only by the theory one brings to the data, whatever the force of the statistical or experimental or interpretive data marshaled on their behalf.
258
CHAPTER 14
Whatever categories of action the analyst's theory has generated, if we cannot show the participants to be oriented to the conduct in its course by reference to such "categories," to such an understanding of the import of their actions, then that line of analysis is not tenable. But are we then to argue about talk that has "slipped out"—as is implied by "the surfacing of the suppressed"—that this captures the orientation of the parties? The import of the conduct for them? That is what is involved in arguing that something that was said not only was said, but is what was specifically not said earlier, and has thus in effect "escaped." These are some of the more general issues mobilized by the empirical occurrences with which this chapter engages. It would, of course, be presumptuous to claim that they have been "solved." But I hope to have indicated one way in which we can approach taking them seriously and beginning to deal with them. Their relevance may extend past conversation analytic work itself.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, prepared for, and presented at, the annual meetings of the National Communication Association, Chicago, November 1997. Robert Hopper called to my attention possible convergences with discussions in Jefferson 1996, a matter taken up in Footnote 2. The present version of the chapter was prepared while I was the grateful beneficiary of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and a fellowship in Residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, under support provided to the Center by The National Science Foundation through Grant SBR-9022192. This article is co-published in German in Volume 1, No. 4 of the new journal Psychotherapie und Sozialwissenschaft. Readers coming to the article from a background in psychiatry or psychoanalytically oriented psychology will find in the Postscript some reflections on the relationship between the sort of conversation-analytic work presented here and those traditions of inquiry—as reflected in the title, and may wish to consult it first, or in due course.
SURFACING
259
Appendix A Suppressed Elements Surface in Recipient's Utterance This appendix presents brief accounts of two episodes in which suppressed elements reappear in the immediately following talk not of the suppressing speaker but of the recipient, whose close attention to the turn-so-far, and orientation to its projected completion, are displayed by production of the candidate suppressed element. Consider first the following opening of a telephone conversation. (8) D&B, 1:1-17 01 Dina: Hello? 02 Bernie: H'llo, Dina? 03 Dina: hhhHI! 04 Bernie: Hi, how're you. 05 Dina: I CAlledju las' night. 06 Bernie: You di:d, 07 Dina: yea:h. 08 Bernie: Wha' ti:me. 09 Dina: Uh::: about seven uh'clock, or was it e- tch! Oh 10 I- I don't remember b- but I calledju. 11 Bernie: Yeah. 12 Dina: N- nobuddy was home. 13 Bernie: hhhh[hhhh 14 Dina: --> [Gee I was just th- n- that's very funny. 15 How are you. 16 Bernie: Okay. 17 Dina: That's good. 18 Bernie:--> Tch! hhhh I think I was home last night.
Almost certainly Dina was saying at Line 14, "Gee I was just th[inking about you]," something that is often accompanied by "that's [very] funny" (at the beginning of an unanticipated phone call). Here it is suppressed (perhaps because it is a further display on her part of interest in him which may not be reciprocated or appropriate). Note then that it pops up three turns later, in the recipient's mouth ("I think I was home last night."). Two observations may be made about this. First, regarding the "non-immediacy" of the position: This is the first turn of Bernie's following the suppression, which is not sequentially constrained by Dina's prior turn. Second, hurdles are overcome for this utterance to be produced here. A reciprocal "howareyou" question is in order, as Bernie's first "howaryou" at Line 4 was by-passed by reporting the effort to call him, and Dina's "howaryou" was marked by its stress on the second syllable as a "first" inquiry of a reciprocal pair (Schegloff, 1986). Where the reciprocal inquiry was due, Bernie does not do it. In its place he replies to the "Nobody was home" of
260
CHAPTER 14
Line 12 with what is in effect a disagreement or rejection or correction, its contrariness marked by the epistemic downgrade of the "I think," which was the suppressed element of Dina's earlier turn. The second exemplar occurs early in the conversation between Joyce and Stan examined earlier in the discussion of "insertion" (Extract 3), and indeed is the larger sequence in which that insertion occurred. (9)
Joyce and Stan, 01:09-02:12
. 01 Stan: hh First of all how'd that thing turn out with 02 --> the ticket. Dju:anything happen? 03 (0.4) 04 Joyce:--> Oh, I just decided ta pay it. 05 Stan: --> Decide(d) ta pay how much was iti. 06 Joyce: Fifteen fifty. 07 Stan: Fifteen fifty? 08 Joyce: Mm hm, 09 (0.2) 10 Stan: Bitch. Bitch. 11 Joyce: I(h) kn(h)owh[h 12 Stan: [I guess it would ye you figured out 13 finally found out it'd be too much ha:ssle ta 14 take care of it. . 15 Joyce: hh I figu:red (0.4) in order: I would just haf 16 tig- make two trips down there: , 17 Stan: Yeah, 18 Joyce: Yihknow I'd hafta go down there ta pay it, 19 Stan: Right, 20 Joyce: Then make an appoi:ntment (.) ta come back there 21 again, 22 Stan: Yea[h, 23 Joyce: [An' they wouldn't give me a date, fer a month 24 an a half, 25 Stan: Yeah, 26 Joyce: An' I figu:red (0.9) the case [just wu27 Stan: [ (Plus) ya gotta 28 yih gotta put down the money.ahead a'time. 29 Joyce: Yea:h, 30 Stan: Yeah, 31 Joyce: Yeah t[hey give it back to you. l:ater.= 32 Stan: [(Yeah the ) 33 Joyce: =[(see an') 34 Stan: =[The way I beat mine it was a pa:rking ticket. 35 yihknow, so I was able ta go to ta night court. 36 (wu) then beat the ten dollar ticket. 37 Joyce: Oh:, 38 Stan: 'hh Yihknow just the principle'a thing that 39 bugged me. 40 Joyce: Yea:h,= 41 Stan:--> =U::m (1.4) tch! (.) So wudja do pay it through 42 the auto clubd 43 Joyce: Yea:h,
44
(0.5)
SURFACING
261
On the theme that the suppressed item may show up in the immediately following talk of recipient, note that Stan surely appears to suppress something at Line 02: "Dju:anything happen?" He is starting to ask an agentive question: "Did you: [pay it]" The sound stretch on the "you" shows him thinking the better of it, and he shifts to a non-agentive form of the inquiry, one that does not introduce the relevance of any particular action on Joyce's part (which she might have to report having failed to do, e.g.). Then note that the suppressed item shows up in the next turn by the recipient, "Oh, I just decided ta pay it." and is then repeated by Stan (Line 05) as a form of registering the response (Schegloff, 1997). Once out in the open, Stan uses it again (at Line 41), as he brings the the topic/sequence to a close. (For further discussion related to this general topic, see also Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 1979)
REFERENCES Clift, R. (1999). Grammar in interaction: The case of 'actually'. Essex Research Reports in Linguistics 26, University of Essex. Clift, R. (2001). Meaning in interaction: The case of 'actually'." Language 77, 245-91. Goodwin, C. (1986). Audience diversity, participation and interpretation. Text, 6, 283-316. Goodwin, C. (1987). Unilateral departure. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 206-216). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Jefferson, G. (1974). Error correction as an interactional resource. Language in Society, 2, 181-199. Jefferson, G. (1996). On the poetics of ordinary talk. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16, 1-61. Lerner, G. H. (1991). On the syntax of sentences-in-progress. Language in Society, 20, 441-458. Lerner, G. H. (1996). On the "semi-permeable" character of grammatical units in conversation: Conditional entry into the turn space of another speaker. In E. Ochs, E. A. Schegloff, & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Interaction and Grammar (pp. 238-276). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, E., Schegloff, E.A., & Thompson, S. (1996). Interaction and Grammar. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. (2 vols.). G. Jefferson, Ed., (with introductions by E. A. Schegloff). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
262
CHAPTER 14
Schegloff, E. A. (1979). The relevance of repair for syntax-for-conversation. In T. Givon (Ed.), Syntax and semantics 12: Discourse and syntax (pp. 261-288). New York: Academic Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1986). The routine as achievement. Human Studies, 9, 111151. Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: An exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly, 50, 101-114. Schegloff, E. A. (1988). Description in the social sciences I: Talk-in-interaction. IPRA Papers in Pragmatics, 2, 1-24. Schegloff, E. A. (1992). In another context. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon (pp. 193227). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1997). Practices and actions: Boundary cases of other-initiated repair. Discourse Processes, 23, 499-545. Schegloff, E.A. (1998). Word repeat as a practice for ending. Paper presented at the 84th Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, New York, NY, November, 1998.
15 Sex, Laughter, and Audiotape: On Invoking Features of Context to Explain Laughter in Interaction Phillip J. Glenn Emerson College Laypersons and analysts sometimes invoke gender as an explanatory variable that, it is presumed, shapes or even determines some feature of interaction. In its simplest formulation, this variable shows up in studies devoted to identifying differences in how women and men talk, move, listen, and so on. Underlying such studies is an assumption that particular features of speech or interaction reflect and constitute gender differences. For example, there are claims that women use more tag questions, disclaimers, and hedges; and that men interrupt women more than women do men. Tannen (1990) claimed that women give more audible and visible feedback when listening than men do. Wood (1996) summarized research findings indicating a tendency for women to do more "conversational maintenance" work, including behaviors to signal interest and involvement (p. 157). The differences then are found in particular features but also in clusters of these features adding up to activities, such as maintenance, affiliation, or support. Researchers offer various conceptual explanations for such differences. Some argue that these may not reflect behavioral differences as much perceptual differences: that people perceive women and men as speaking differently. Initially researchers were willing to explain such differences in terms of lesser confidence or competence on the part of women. Recent studies tend to treat such claims as problematic (see West, 1995), and suggest that differences may in fact show women as being highly competent, perhaps more so than men. Another explanation lies in asserted power differences: that speech features reflect varying degrees of relative power, and that differences between men and women reflect more fundamentally different power currencies. Others account 263
264
CHAPTER 15
for variations as reflecting different primary styles of communication. Pushed to an extreme, style difference arguments pose women and men as coming from different cultures or even different planets (e.g., Gray, 1992; Tannen, 1990). Laughter may be one feature of discourse that reflects and constitutes gender differences. There are shared cultural assumptions (perhaps based in stereotypes) that men produce more laughable, humorous behavior, and that women do more laughing in response to men, than the converse. Laughter can do such conversational work as displaying involvement or interest and achieving "maintenance"; to the extent that such work is more common for women, this may suggest women do more laughing in the presence of, and responsive to, men. In an observational study Robert Provine found that most instances of conversational laughter between two persons occurred when men were talking and women were listening, and the least took place when women were talking and men were listening (reported in Kluger, 1994). Two recent studies make use of naturalistic data to investigate gender differences in conversational laughter. Jefferson (1994) explored the possibility that "in male-female interaction, if the male laughed, the female would join in laughing; if the female laughed, the male would not join in laughing" (p. 1). From analysis of a collection of instances of laughter in interactions of women with men, she found tentative support for some gender difference trends. However, her claim is not a straightforward one that women laugh more than do men. Rather, it is that laughing (or not laughing) may, depending on sequential environment, display "receptiveness" or "resistance" to what the other speaker is doing. Her gender difference argument is that men more often display resistance and women tend more to display receptiveness. Whether laughing or withholding laughter in any particular instance displays resistance or receptiveness is shaped in part by the immediate sequential environment. Thus the organization of laughter seems subsumed under the organization of a more fundamental set of activities, displaying receptiveness or resistance. However, Jefferson cautioned against making too much of these tentative claims; emphasizing the cartoonish nature of the crude female-male binary split, she referred to participants in her data as "Tarzans" and "Janes." Glenn, Hoffman, and Hopper (1996) set out to test Jefferson's preliminary claims in a larger corpus of laugh instances. In general, their counts did not match the trends Jefferson identified. When they separated data into two kinds of interactions, "courtship-relevant" and "noncourtship," some numerical gender difference trends emerged. However, the increasing number of cells made for such small sample size that results remain inconclusive. Outside of courtship situations, men more often showed appreciation for women's laughables-with-laugh-invitations by laughing along than women did for men. This contradicts Jefferson's receptiveness-resistance theory. Within courtship, however, instances of laughter produced responsive to another's laugh more
LAUGHTER IN INTERACTION
265
closely supported patterns described by Jefferson. When one speaker offered a positive laughable without laughing and the other showed appreciation for it by laughing, a female speaker of the laughable would provide second laugh, but a male speaker usually would not. In courtship-relevant interactions, women were much more likely than men to produce negative laughables at their own expense and offer first laugh. This suggests another way in which laughter may mark gender differences: that women may be more likely than men to laugh as an accompaniment to self-deprecation. Research questions driving such studies begin with the presumption that communicative differences do exist, or at least may exist, and that the binary, biologically based categorization scheme of "women" and "men" is an appropriate way to conceptualize this variable. Claims of gender difference notice trends across numbers of cases. Empirical findings reflect this in proquantifier terms like "more often" or "less likely." However, we do not live our communicative lives in the aggregate. We live them one moment at a time, or, in researcher's terms, one instance at a time. If people communicate differently from each other, and if they do so systematically in some way linked to biological sex or gender role, then our task as analysts is to examine the means by which people accomplish such differences in single instances. Increasingly, scholars are calling for more context-sensitive treatments of gender as socially constituted (see Wodak, 1997). Garfinkel (1967) noted the "omnirelevance" (p. 118) of sexual status in everyday life in that humans continually display features readable as gendered. However, this does not mean that people orient to gender equally at all times. Many individual attributes or features of context are potentially available as participant resources in the ongoing tasks of organizing and making sense of conduct. For analysts too, gender is but one of many features available to draw on for explanations of communicative phenomena. How can we develop and support a claim for gendered communication being part of a particular communicative moment? This may be understood as a question of context (see Tracy, 1998). Making a distinction between text and context helps us examine words, actions, utterances, sequences, and so on, somewhat apart from features of the individuals, setting, surrounding talk, relationship, culture, and so forth, that shape and help explain features of the text. In the present study, I treat context as emergent, fluid, and locally occasioned by participants in interaction. Consistent with this perspective (one advocated by Schegloff, 1987, among others), we may make the strongest empirical claims about the relevance of some feature of context (such as gender) in explaining communicative phenomena when evidence exists in the data that participants themselves orient to that feature as relevant. This "intrinsic-to-messages" approach (Hopper, 1992) helps avoid the danger of the researcher imposing a priori theories that may unduly limit or mislead analysis.
266
CHAPTER 15
The sense of contextual features being located in the moment is different in an intrinsic-to-messages approach. If a man interrupts a woman, or a woman uses a tag question and a man does not, there is not an a priori assumption that such differences arise because the actor is a woman or a man. Rather, the initial interest is less in individual behavior than in joint construction of actions, and less in imposing external explanatory variables than in trying to characterize the procedures by which people do whatever it is that they do. Thus, the moment can be investigated, not as a site for the inevitable realization of gender or some other feature(s) of context, but as a site for creativity, change, and constitution. The analytic focus, then, is on details of talk and action as patterned ways of accomplishing activities in interaction. There is a suspension of theoretical explanations in order to retain as long as possible analytic focus on what is being done and how it is being done. The following analysis is aimed at investigating the possibility that people orient to gender in the organization of conversational laughter. For this purpose I selected an instance of talk in which gender (and sex) clearly become relevant for participants, in close proximity to laughter. In other words, I begin with a hunch that something gendered is happening with laughter here. I argue, with evidence from this instance, that acoustic and sequential features of laughter can display participant orientation to gender. Thus, this analysis stands as an example of how to demonstrate empirically the relevance of gender as a feature of context.
EXAMPLE: "EVEN WILDER" The following instance comes from the radio program "Car Talk," broadcast live on National Public Radio affiliate stations. In the show, brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi, who run an automobile repair shop in the Boston area, dispense advice to people calling in with car-related problems. In addition to giving advice, the brothers joke and play, often punctuating the talk with laughter. The show combines face-to-face interaction between Tom and Ray, telephone interaction with the caller, and broadcasting to an overhearing radio audience. The interactions with callers typically reflect a structure common to other advice-based talk shows: opening, problem formulating, advising, and closing (Crow, 1986). The fragment under consideration is shown in its entirety as follows. It comes from the beginning of a phone call, the second one broadcast on this particular day: Car Talk, National Public Radio, 30 March 1997 Tom and Ray Magliozzi and Caller 1
Ray:
One eight hundred (.) three three two (.)
LAUGHTER IN INTERACTION 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
Chand: Ray: Tom: Chand: Ray: Chand: Tom: Chand: Ray: Chand: Ray: Chand: Chand: Tom: Chand: Tom: Ray: Chand: Tom: Tom: Chand: Ray: Ray: Chand: Tom: Chand:
Tom: Ray: Chand:
267
nine two eight seven=Hello you're on Car Talk. tHi this is Chandler? I'm calling from Denver? tchandler= =tsh::andler [ Yes From tDenver= =Yes Tsh:andler Yes [ •That's an unusual (.) first name? Well (.) I know I'm not supposed to tell you[ forfor a woman my last name my last name's even wilder. (0.9) Anyway [ tEven wilder Yes= =Ooh! Chandler's even wilder than the last girl [I went out with [ Hu hu hu ha ha rha ha ha ha [ Hhhh huh huh huh huh [hhh HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH]= HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH (.) .hh huh huh [ [ = huh huh .u h h h h We:ll. [ There's athere's a hyphen in there? ehNo No it's just a sentence It's just a sentence? That's right [ Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha .hh °Well?° Anyway, TI: have (.) I have this problem. I have a Ford Escort (.) wagon (.)
Of particular interest for this article are Lines 21-27. In Lines 21—22, Tom playfully assesses the caller as "even wilder" in contrast to "the last girl" he went out with. As is shown later, in this utterance he treats the caller as female, as someone he might go out with, and as "wild" with possibly sexual implications. All three participants laugh, although her laughter displays a different, less affiliative stance toward the laughable than those of the brothers. This appears to be a moment of highly gendered, laughable, and laugh-inducing talk. Are the laughs themselves contributing to gender marking? Do they display orientation to gender? Before addressing this question, let's back up and trace how the participants get to this moment.
268
CHAPTER 15
The caller identifies herself as "Chandler from Denver." This use of first-name-only plus location for self-identification is standard practice on the show. 4 5
Chand:
tHi this is Chandler? I'm calling from Denver?
The name gets immediate and marked attention. Ray repeats it with increased melody and emphasis; Tom does the same, shifting the pronunciation of the initial affricate ch to sh and stretching it. 4 5 6 7 8
Chand: Ray: Tom: Chand:
THi, this is Chandler?, I'm calling from Denver? Tchandler= =tsh::andler [ Yes
Repeats can function as next-turn repair initiators (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). At the least, they retrieve some prior item and make it available for further talk or action (they also divert, at least momentarily, from moving toward the purpose of the call; in "Car Talk" such playful diversions are common). Consistent with the structure of repair sequences, the repeat returns the floor to other to confirm or amend the repeated item. In overlap with Tom's second repeat, Chandler confirms that this is her name. Ray now repeats the second half of Chandler's self-identification, "from Denver." This repeat has a marked melody paralleling that which he used in repeating her name a moment earlier. It is a poetic moment: the melody echo emphasizes the rhyming of "Chandler" and "Denver." This too fitting the structure of a next-turn repair initiator, it returns the floor to her, and she confirms "Denver" as correct. 7 8 9 10
Tom: Chand: Ray: Chand:
=tsh::andler [ Yes From toenver= =Yes
Tom repeats the name again (line 11), once more with marked, melodic intonation. She again confirms it. 11 12
Tom: Chand:
tsh:andler Yes
That it's been repeated multiple times and already confirmed provides evidence that this is not a problem of hearing or understanding on their part. Rather, the
LAUGHTER IN INTERACTION
269
repetitions open up possibilities for topicalizing her name as something to talk about, and/or for keying a playful treatment of it (on repetition's role in keying play, see Hopper & Glenn, 1994). Ray assesses the name as "unusual" (Line 13). This assessment, with questioning intonation, would make relevant further talk about her first name, perhaps including an account for it. Chandler begins to speak. In overlap, Ray (Line 15) produces a delayed completion (Lerner, 1989) of his prior turn: 13 14 15 16
Ray: Chand: Ray: Chand:
[
That's an unusual (.) first name? Well (.) I know I'm not supposed to tell you[ for- for a woman my last name my last name's even wilder.
This added prepositional phrase modifies his assessment such that the name "Chandler" is unusual, not for all people, but "for a woman." By this he introduces gender explicitly into the talk, for the first time in this call. Her unfolding turn does not attend explicitly to the delayed completion. Instead, Chandler shifts to discussing her last name. She does not actually produce it, but states the program's rule prohibiting use of last names. She assesses this name comparatively as "even wilder" than her first. Through this turn she continues the pattern of playful assessments of her name yet shifts attention from her first name to her last. After she says her last name is "even wilder," there is a pause. Several possibilities are relevant here. They could talk more about her first name, although she now has shifted focus to her last name. They could talk about her wild but unstated last name, although such talk might be limited because Tom and Ray do not have the name itself as a present resource. They could go on with the business of the call. Two of these three possibilities get pursued almost simultaneously. Chandler speaks, and her "Anyway" displays willingness to close this section of talk and move on. In overlap, Tom repeats her preceding phrase "even wilder." 16 17 18 19 20
Chand: Chand: Tom: Chand:
my last name my last name's even wilder. (0.9) Anyway [ TEven wilder Yes=
Tom's repeat/repair initiator picks up on and furthers the topical shift she had made from her first name to her surname. In contrast to her "Anyway," his repeat displays willingness to delay proceeding to the business of the call. She confirms his repeat. Now comes Tom's joke. It's prefaced by an exclamation of delight or excitement.
270 21 22
CHAPTER 15 Tom:
=Ooh! Chandler's even wilder than the last girl I went out with
He repeats the assessment "even wilder" but applies it to her, not to her last name as she had done. To retain the contrastive form of the adverb-adjective assessing pair, Tom must provide something or someone against which to compare Chandler. He does so by inventing "the last girl" he went out with. The jibe is clever: he uses her words to assess her playfully by invoking a nonexistent dating/romantic relationship between them and implying that within it she is wild. In this utterance, it is not just gender that creeps into talk (Hopper & LeBaron, 1998); it is also sex—the act, not the biological category. Tom's use of "girl" in the jest about her being "even wilder" suggests a younger orientation and perhaps playfulness on his part (contrast to Ray's prior use of the term "woman"). It seems fitted as category to the activity "go out with" (see Sacks, 1992, Vol. 1, pp. 515-516, 594-597, on category-bound activities). More specific than simply the broad categories "female" and "male," the talk now invokes, albeit jokingly, participant identities as heterosexual woman and man who represent, for each other, potentially dateable partners. For such persons, the assessments "wild" or "even wilder" may carry sexual meanings. Now comes the laughter. Ray begins to laugh immediately after the words "last girl," displaying recognition of the joke in progress. He produces a lengthy and mirthful stream of laughter. 21 22 23
Tom: Ray:
=Ooh! Chandler's even wilder than the last girl I went out with [ Hu hu hu ha ha ha ha ha ha
Chandler starts laughing at completion of Tom's utterance and following several syllables of Ray's laugh. She produces two initial closed-mouth syllables then six open-mouth syllables: 21 22 23 24 27
Tom: Ray: Chand: Chand:
=Oooh! Chandler's even wilder than the last girl I went out with [ Hu hu hu ha ha ha ha ha ha [ Hhhh hhh huh huh huh huh huh huh •uhhhh
Tom's is the biggest laugh of all, loud and hearty (Lines 25-26). 21 22 23 24
Tom: Ray: Chand:
=Ooh! Chandler's even wilder than the last girl I went out with [ Hu hu hu ha ha ha ha ha ha [ Hhhh hhh huh huh huh huh
LAUGHTER IN INTERACTION 25 26
Tom: Tom:
27
Chand:
271
[ HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH] = HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH (.) .hh huh huh
= [huh huh .u h h h h
[
We:ll.
Ray's laughter ceases. Chandler produces an audible inbreath (Line 27), and Tom pauses briefly, produces an inbreath, then laughs a bit more (Line 26). More laugh particles following inbreath may show willingness to keep laughing and constitute an invitation to renew and extend shared laughter. At that moment, however, Chandler resumes nonlaughing talk, and Tom ceases laughing (ends of lines 26-27). 26 27
Tom: Chand:
[
huh huh We:ll.
The word "well" is spoken with a tone of mock indignation. Placed here, following Tom's jest about her "wildness" plus shared laughter, it shows some degree of resistance (albeit playful) to what has just gone on. Perhaps sensitive to this, the brothers abandon the laughable plus shared laughter to resume speaking. Ray suggests an implicit pun, for his reference to "hyphen" invites a hearing that "Even-Wilder" literally is her last name. 26 27 28 29
Tom: Chand: Ray:
huh huh =[We:ll. [ There's athere's a hyphen in there?
Ray's grammatical jest provides a way for them to continue playing with her name without continuing the explicitly gendered, sexual talk (although gender still may be remotely relevant, in that hyphenating surnames is a practice more often characteristic of women than of men, and may invoke marital status). Tom laughs, but neither of the other participants does. Chandler then moves on to the business of the call: 28-29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
Ray: Chand: Tom: Chand: Tom: Ray: Chand:
There's a- there's a hyphen in there? ehNo No it's just a sentence It's just a sentence? That's right [ Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha .hh °Well?° Anyway, TI_: have (.) I have this problem. I have a Ford Escort (.) wagon (.)
In this passage, the caller's name serves as a resource for play. Tom uses Chandler's name and her own words to construct a sexual jest about her. The brothers' laughs align with each other and appreciate the jest, which is done
272
CHAPTER 15
(however innocuously) at her expense. By laughing at the sexual jest, Chandler displays some willingness to play along (cf. Drew, 1987, concerning the range of responses to teases). By laughing less enthusiastically and responding with "Well," she displays some resistance to the jest. By resuming talk, she helps move them away from the sexual reference. At the first sign of lack of enthusiasm from Chandler, Tom and Ray immediately move away from sexual innuendo. Talk continues on topics for which gender/sex seem not to be foregrounded: a hyphen in the sentence, a Ford Escort wagon, and more. Participants mark the relevance of sex categories and sexuality as features of context. They do so in the service of word play and shared laughter. The laughs themselves reflect and constitute different orientations to this invoking of context. Laughs orient to context through their acoustic features, length, and sequential placement, all of which contribute to marking laughter's footing in relation to the laughable, the participants, and the situation. The instance here turns out to be consistent with Jefferson's (1994) preliminary claim that, in laughing along, "Janes interacting with Tarzans exhibit receptiveness" (p. 17). That is, Chandler's laughing shows her to be receptive to what the brothers are about. This "Jane" may not be thrilled about what happens, but she is willing to laugh along while at the same time—through features of her laughterdistancing herself somewhat from the stance of the two Tarzans. . Participants sometimes foreground gender issues explicitly as topic of talk. Perhaps more subtly, they sometimes orient to gender through features of the sequential organization of interactions. The choice to laugh or not to laugh provides partial clues for hearers and analysts concerning the "work" that laughter may be doing. Placement and production features of laughs help show laughter to be affiliating, disaffiliating, or partially affiliating with some evident resistance. To the extent that these displays are about gendered issues, they allow participants to orient to gender and thereby, allow analysts access to the social constitution of gender in discourse. This analysis, then, offers a method for demonstrating empirically the relevance of gender to interaction. It is intended as an alternative to beginning with a priori assumptions that gender is always equally relevant for participants. It is also intended as an alternative to assuming that the study of gender equates to the study of difference. The laughing that women and men do may not always differ from each other, but laughter stands as one of a host of phenomena through which people engender sexual identities. Finally, all pragmatics researchers must deal with how and under what circumstances to invoke features of context to explain discourse. This argument shows one way to locate context in talk. Providing evidence in details of interaction that participants are orienting to some feature of context (such as gender) provides an empirical warrant for invoking that feature in an explanatory fashion.
LAUGHTER IN INTERACTION
273
REFERENCES Crow, B. K. (1986). Conversational pragmatics in television talk: The discourse of Good Sex. Media, Culture, and Society, 8, 457-484. Drew, P. (1987). Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics, 25, 219-253. Garfinkel, H (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Glenn, P. J., Hoffman, E., & Hopper, R. (1996, March). Woman, laughter, man: Gender and the sequential organization of laughter. Paper presented at the American Association of Applied Linguistics Convention, Chicago. Gray, J. (1992). Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: A practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in relationships. New York: Harper Collins. Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hopper, R., & Glenn, P. (1994). Repetition and play in conversation. In B. Johnstone (Ed.), Repetition in discourse: Interdisciplinary perspectives (Vol. II,) (pp. 29-40). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Hopper, R., & LeBaron , C. (1998). How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 59-74. Jefferson, G. (1994). A note on laughter in "Male-Female" interaction. Unpublished manuscript. Kluger, J. (1994, January). Survival of the funniest. Discover, pp. 16-20. Lerner, G. (1989). Notes on overlap management in conversation: The case of delayed completion. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 167-177. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation (Vol. 1) (G. Jefferson, Ed.). Cambridge: Blackwell. Schegloff, E., Jefferson, G., Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-repair in the organization of repair in conversation. Language, 53, 361-382. Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Between macro and micro: Contexts and other connections. In J. C. Alexander, B. Gieson, R. Munch, & N. J. Smelser (Eds.), The macro-micro link. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Tannen, D. (1990). You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: William Morrow. Tracy, K. (1998). Analyzing context: Framing the discussion. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 1-28. West, C. (1995). Women's competence in conversation. Discourse & Society, 6, 107-131.
274
CHAPTER 15
Wodak, R. (1997). Introduction: Some important issues in the research of gender and discourse. In R. Wodak (Ed.), Gender and discourse (pp 1-20). London: Sage. Wood, J. T. (1996). She says/he says: Communication, caring, and conflict in heterosexual relationships. In J. T. Wood (Ed.), Gendered relationships (pp. 149-162). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
16 Gender Differences in Telephone Conversations Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra Utrecht Institute of Linguistics When we read Harvey Sacks' very first Lecture Notes of 1964, we see that conversation analysis (CA) has developed from Sacks' observation of how North Americans open their telephone conversations. Phone openings have been studied ever since, especially by Emanuel Schegloff and Robert Hopper. Schegloff (1979) studied North American telephone openings and found a pattern of four canonical sequences: (a) summons/answer sequence, (b) identification/recognition sequence, (c) greeting sequence, (d) "how are you" sequence. For example: (1) Hopper et al. 1990/91:370 a. b. c. d.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
R. C. R. C. R. C. R. C. R. C.
((RING)) Hello Hello Ida? Yeah Hi.=This is Carla Hi Carla. How are you. Okay:. Good.= =How about you. Fine. Don wants to know . . .
Schegloff showed how the conversationalists establish the participants' identification. When somebody hears the ringing of the telephone, he or she will answer this summons by providing a voice sample ("hi" or "hello") to be recognized by the caller. If the caller recognized the answerer from the voice sample in the answering turn, then the caller should show (or claim) such 275
276
CHAPTER 16
recognition in the next turn, the second in the call. Subsequent to the caller's recognition of the answerer, the answerer displays recognition of the caller. For in example, in Fragment 2: (2)
Schegloff 1986:127
turn 1 turn 2 turn 3
summons: answer: recognition: recognition:
A. C. A.
((ringing)) (Hell)o, Hello Missiz Feldman, Hi Bonnie.
This is different from how people in the Netherlands deal with the tasks of identification and recognition. Rather than doing other-recognition, Dutch telephone conversationalists self-identify. First the answerer mentions his or her name, and then the caller does. This is shown in Fragments 3 and 4: (3) Houtkoop-Steenstra 1991 Self-ident.: Self-ident.:
A. A. C. C.
((ringing)) Met Mies Habots= With Mies Habots= =Da:g, met Anneke de Groot. = H i : , with Anneke de Groot.
(4) Houtkoop-Steenstra 1998 Self-ident.: Self-ident.:
A. A. C. C.
((ringing)) Goedenvond. Met Francien de Veer. Good Evening. With Francien de Veer. Goeienayond. U spreekt met Annette Bos van Marktonderzoeksbureau ( ( N A A M ) ) uit Amsterdam Good evening. You're speaking with Annette Bos from Market Research ( ( N A M E ) ) in Amsterdam.
Before Dutch answerers mention their names, they may provide a greeting token, usually "Good Morning/Evening" as in Fragment 4. This greeting token then tends to be returned by the caller in his or her next turn. A more common way of answering the telephone is to say "(Hello), with So-and -So," as happens in Fragment 3. Note that the "with" is the remains of "you're speaking with...." In 1991 I reported a study of 87 Dutch phone openings (HoutkoopSteenstra, 1991) that were recorded in the later 1980s by Paul ten Have and myself. In 78 cases the answerers provided a self-identification, and in 5 cases they provided a voice sample. The rest of the 4 cases were referred to as "variant cases," for example, answerer picking up the phone by saying "just a second please." In Table 16.1,1 refer to this set of data as "late 1980s data."
GENDER DIFFERENCES
277
TABLE 16.1: Late 1980s Data
Answerer provides self-identification Answerer provides voice sample Variant cases, e.g., switch calls
N 78 5 4 87
% 89.6 5.7 4.5 100%
It was on the basis of these data that I came to the conclusion that in the Netherlands we find a strong preference for answerers' explicit selfidentification, whereas in the United States, we typically find other-recognition.1 Such a difference then suggests that there are differences between speech communities with respect to how people answer the phone. Robert Hopper and his students, as well as various other authors, have shown differences with respect to how members of different speech communities routinely answer the telephone in domestic contexts. In the literature we find three variations: providing a voice sample, explicit self-identification, and mentioning the household's telephone number. Answering the phone by using some form of voice sample was found in Taiwan (Hopper & Chen, 1996), in Lebanon2 and England (Hopper & Doany, 1989), in Northern Mexico, Spain, and Paraguay (Hopper, Doany, & Drummond, 1990/1991), and in Greece (Sifianou, 1989). English answerers say either "Hello" or give their telephone number (Sifianou 1989). Based on her own intuitions as a member of French society, Godard (1977) claimed the French use voice sample too. However, Hopper & Doany (1989) did not find evidence for this in a follow-up study. 1 The example that follows shows how two speakers from different cultures, here North America and The Netherlands, may stick to their own opening procedure. The opening has been transcribed from memory immediately after the call took place. ((ring)) A. Met THanneke ^Houtkoop B. HtannekTe. ((with an American accent)) A. Yes? B. It's ^Doug. A. toh. Hi: Doug. 2 In fact, Hopper and Doany (1989) spoke of "Arabic" openings. This suggests that their findings also apply to other Arabic-speaking countries, such as Morocco, Egypt, and the like. Hopper et al. (1990/1991) mentioned the possible effect of language on opening sequences. It seems plausible to expect possible differences to occur in speech communities rather than in languages. It is possible that the ways in which members of speech communities answer the phone may have been influenced by a country's colonial history. As Hopper and Doany pointed out for the former French colony Lebanon: "the use of 'allo' as a response type in Arabic calls in Lebanon is the result of linguistic borrowing of the term" (pp. 165-166).
278
CHAPTER 16
Lindstrom (1994) showed that, in Sweden, explicit self-identification is the most common answer to a summons, followed by the phone number. Although "Hello" is used in Lindstrom's data, it is as infrequent and marked as in the Dutch data.3 Adler (1993) reported a similar procedure for Germany.4 There is an ongoing debate in CA on the question as to whether or not these differences in how members of certain speech communities routinely answer the phone reflect a cultural difference. More generally, how universal is Schegloffs description of the four canonical sequences? Hopper et al. (1990/1991) seemed to suggest that the difference between answerers providing a voice sample versus explicitly self-identifying falls within the scope of withincultural variance in the details of telephone openings as Schegloff (1979, 1986) and Hopper (1989) found in North America. They considered the systematic practice of answerers and callers self-identifying as fitting within Schegloffs model: "In fact, Schegloffs (1979) discussion of identification and recognition includes virtually every format that have been argued as being unique to Greece, France or Holland—and all from North American data!" (p. 378). If we read Schegloffs work closely, especially his unpublished dissertation (Schegloff 1967), it is clear that he saw the voice sample "Hello" as the typical answer to the summons. He wrote: "'Hello' is the unmarked form of answer to the telephone; whereas 'yeah' or "Hi" may type a prospective conversation as 'expected,' and a self-identification form of answer, such as 'Police Desk' may type it as 'business'" (p. 43). For the Dutch situation, we may state that selfidentification is the typical, unmarked form, and all other forms of answering the phone (e.g., "yes," "hello," and "hello?") are marked forms.
3
"Hello" was found in 5 of the 100 transcribed openings. One of these appeared in a call that seemed to involve some technical problem. Three of the four remaining instances were produced by the same person. 4 As telephone technology is changing, it should be stressed that all studies mentioned apply to calls to "pre-modern" telephone sets, that is, no cell phones and no telephone sets that have the provision of displaying the caller's telephone number. Especially in countries in which answerers' selfidentification is the norm, it is possible that such technical devices may change the way in which people answer the phone. Cell phones provide for the possibility to be used in public spaces such as streets, shops, and public transportation, where strangers can listen in to the conversation. This may have an effect on the way people answer these calls. A second feature of cell phones is that they usually are not shared with other members of the household, and callers know this. Answering the call by mentioning one's name is thus a redundant action, because a voice sample suffices as a selfidentification (cf. Sanders, 1998). In the situation in which answerers can read the incoming telephone number, they may know who is calling before the telephone has been picked up. Theoretically speaking, this provides for the possibility to answer the call by saying, for example, "Hi Mom." (Compare Hopper et al. 1990/1991 on the possible effects of technology on how people answer the phone.)
GENDER DIFFERENCES
279
Schegloff (1967) furthermore stated that it is up to the caller rather than to the answerer to start the identification work. In discussing self-identifications by North American answerers (e.g. "Police Desk"), Schegloff wrote: The work of identification [is] the initiator's work, in the case of telephone conversation the caller's work, for it is his entitlement to [start] the conversation that may be at issue. . . . Answering the telephone with a self-identification is pre-emptive because it does the work of identification before the turn-taking organization has provided caller his first opportunity for doing so. (pp. 44-45)
This is fundamentally different from the Dutch situation, in which the answerer begins the work of identification. So, there are two clear differences between the North American and the Dutch situation, (a) "Hello" versus self-identification being the typical answer to the summons, and (b) the caller versus the answer beginning the work of identification. Whether or not these are "cultural" differences depends on how we define the concept of culture. I see them as cultural differences, because I see culture as a set of typical behaviors, norms and values that are largely shared and oriented to by the members of a (speech) community. Apart from the issue of whether or not these are cultural differences, it seems safe to say that the Dutch practice does not quite fit Schegloffs description of the first two sequences, the summons/answer sequence and the identification/recognition sequenc: especially not because the party who starts the identification sequence in the United States is the caller (in Turn 1), whereas in the Netherlands it is the answerer (in Turn 2). Schematically, it breaks down as in Table 16.2. TABLE 16.2
Turn 1 Turn 2
USA Summons A. Voice sample C. Other-identification
The Netherlands Summons A. Self-identification C. Self-identification
HISTORIC DEVELOPMENTS IN ANSWERING THE PHONE My Dutch colleague Leo Lentz (Lentz, 1997) introduced me to the thought that conversational practices (like answering the phone) may change over time within a culture. Lentz asked himself: Did the Dutch always self-identify, or
280
CHAPTER 16
may they have started out in a different way? The problem with studying the history of telephone conversation is that we do not have recordings of calls that were done before the last few decades. However, there is an indirect way to approach the issue. Lentz analyzed theater plays and novels written between 1920 and 1940 with respect to the use of the telephone. He also studied early telephone directories that not only provided telephone numbers but also instructed the Dutch people how to use the phone. What Lentz found is the following. The very first "Official Guide of the Dutch Bell Telephone Company, No. 1" of 1881 instructs telephone conversationalists as follows: "If the member is called by the telephone bell, one takes the telephone off the hook, pushes it against the ear, makes clear he is present, and listens." The "Namelist for the Interlocal Telephone Service" of 1925 says: "In case of a call, one says his name and does not shout 'Hallo.' The call should be answered immediately." Ten years later it was said: "One does not answer the telephone with 'Hallo,' but mentions name or telephone number." This time the directory also gave accounts for the advice: "this in order to prevent loss of time, and in case of a wrongly dialled number, to give the caller the opportunity to put back the receiver and disconnect." Not only directories, but also books on etiquette would instruct the Dutch how to behave in case of a call. In 1945 it was written that "The etiquette requires that the one who is being called self-identifies immediately." A book from 1960 not only explained how to do it: "In case you are being called, mention your name," but also how not to do it: "Do not say just "Hallo" because "this does not inform the caller." A few years later, in 1964, another etiquette book is even more precise: "We do not begin our conversation with the silly 'Hallo, who's there?' but mention shortly and consisely one's name or give one's telephone number." As we see later on, providing one's telephone number never made it as a practice in the Netherlands. Lentz came to the conclusion that in the early days of telephone communication, the Dutch must have started out their answering practice by saying "hello." Only after World War II and after the Dutch phone company had kept telling their costumers to mention their names, rather than saying "Hello," the Dutch gradually developed from providing a voice sample into selfidentifying. An interesting point in Lentz's work is the idea that some new piece of technology requires a conversational practice that does not yet have a precedent that can simply be followed by newcomers in the conversational arena. A second point of interest is that people can gradually change a conversational practice for whatever reasons. As a member of Dutch society, I had the impression that the Dutch way of answering the phone was slightly changing over the last several years. This impression was based on two
GENDER DIFFERENCES
281
mundane observations. First, Dutch people, especialy women, sometimes state that they say "Hello" when picking up the phone, because, as they say: "You don't know who's calling, after all, right?" They seem to see this as a safe practice that protects their privacy. This may well be in line with the fact that more and more Dutch people have unlisted phone numbers nowadays. The second mundane observation derives from my research on interaction in telephone survey interviews, that I have done since 1991. I collected hundreds of recorded survey interviews that are carried out from Dutch survey research centers. These interviewers randomly phone to Dutch citizens' homes. Listening to these recordings I got the impression that, compared to the late1980s data, more people who answered the phone would say only "Hello" or "Yes," either with a rising or a falling intonation contour. Moreover, it seemed as if these were the people who angrily inquired how the interviewer got hold of their phone number, as it was an unlisted number. So, I wondered if the Dutch might be moving up a little toward the American system. When one day, my student Titia Houwing asked me for an idea what to study for her thesis, I proposed she might look at my interview data and compare the openings with the late 1980s data that were reported in HoutkoopSteenstra (1991). Titia transcribed the first 142 opening sequences of these interview tapes, leaving out the cases that would fall into my 1991 category of Variant cases.' Table 16.3 shows what she found. Note that the four variant cases of the late eighties data reported in Houtkoop-Steenstra (1991) are left out here. TABLE 16.3 LATE 1980s DATA
self-identification non-self-identification
N 78 5 — 83
% 94 6
SURVEY INTERVIEWS 1995 % N 91 129 9 13
— 100%
— 142
— 100%
2
X =0.70,DF=1,P=0.40 Let me first make clear why I use the term non-self-identification rather than voice sample in this table. Anita Pomerantz pointed out (personal communication) that if my Dutch informants claim they say 'hello' in order not to be recognized by creepy callers, they can not be seen as providing a voice
282
CHAPTER 16
sample. Remember that a voice sample is meant to be recognized by caller (Schegloff 1972, p. 353; 1986, p. 123).5 Table 16.3 shows that there is no significant increase in the percentage of answerers who withhold self-identification. Maybe the people who claim they answer the phone by saying 'hello' nowadays, do not actually do say 'hello' once they are being called. Perhaps it is less easy to say goodbye to a conversational routine than one might wish.
GENDER DIFFERENCES IN 1995 The next step in this study was to look for possible gender differences in the way Dutch people answered the phone in 1995. Could it be that the 9% of the answerers who withheld self-identification were mainly women?6 As was said earlier, it were especially women who claimed they answered the phone by saying "Hello" in order not to be identified. After going through the transcripts again in order to find out whether the answerer was male or female, we did not find significant gender differences, as Table 16.4 shows. TABLE 16.4
self-identification non-self-identification
% of Men 1995 54 93 4 7
% of Women 1995 75 89 11 9
58%
84%
100%
100%
X2 = 0.60, DF = 1, P = 0.439 As we reanalyzed the transcribed openings, we came to realize that "selfidentification" is a broad category that comprises different ways of selfidentification. When answerers perform the activity of self-identification, they 5
Pomerantz1 remark is a challenging one, which, however, can only be confirmed if we would know what action the Dutch answerers intend to perform when saying "Hallo." And it may well be that some mean to withhold self-identification and/or to invite the caller to self-identify, whereas others mean to indeed provide a voice sample to be recognized by the caller. As we have no clear means to decide on participants' intentions, we need a less interpretive term than voice sample for the Dutch situation. Therefore I use the more descriptive term non-self-identification. 6 Conversation analysts are very reluctant to engage in quantitative and distributional studies of conversation for reasons that were laid out by Schegloff (1993); see also Hopper (n.d.) and Schegloff (1987). I wish to point out that the problems that Schegloff discussed appear not to apply to the study at hand, that is, the study of the response to yet unknown caller's summons.
GENDER DIFFERENCES
283
also choose a certain formulation with which they self-identify. There were four ways in which the Dutch self-identified in these 1995 data: (a) mention first name: "(With) Hanneke"; (b) mention both names: "(With) Hanneke Houtkoop"; (c) mention last name: "(With) Houtkoop"; (d) Title + last name: "(With) Misses Houtkoop." Theoretically speaking, one could also provide one's telephone number, but nobody did so. After we did a statistical analysis of our data, we found some striking gender differences in ways of self-identifying (see Table 16.5). TABLE 16.5 Self-Identification First Name First + Last Name Last Name Title + Last Name
TV 8 18 28 0 — 54
Male % 15 33 52 0
— 100%
N 19 24 16 16 — 75
Female % 25.0 32.0 21.5 21.5
— 100%
X2=21.77,DF=3,P=0.000 The most striking finding is that whereas 21.5% of the women in this sample say "Mrs. Last Name," not one man says "Mr. Last Name." The background of this difference is unclear. Another result is that only when it comes to the percentage of persons using First + Last Name men and women act the same. The genders score very different on the other two ways of self-identifying. The women provide First Name almost twice as often as the men do (25% vs. 15%), whereas the men provide Last Name more than twice as often as the women do (52% vs. 21%). What do answerers do when they identify themselves as First Name or as Last Name? Providing a self-identification as such may well be a cultural specific routine, but making the choice for one form of self-identification over another, is a different issue. Do people present a certain aspect of themselves, when choosing for one or the other form? Do people project informality when they present themselves by First Name, and do they project formality when they present themselves by Last Name? There is a yet unmentioned aspect of these calls to domestic homes that may be relevant here. In two thirds of the cases, the phone was answered by women.7 If we leave out all women and men who live on their own, and 7
Ton Boves (personal communication), a Dutch survey researcher confirmed that in The Netherlands calls from survey research centers are answered far more by women than by' men.
284
CHAPTER 16
concentrate on households, this may mean that answering the phone is primarily the business of the woman in the house. So for women, the telephone may be part of the domestic and private world of relatives, friends and aquaintances. And in answering the phone by providing first name only they recipient design their answer and are "doing being intimate" (cf. Lindstrom 1994). Dutch men, on the other hand, may consider the telephone as belonging, in the first place, to the public domain, where more formal ways of speaking are being used. So, one might suggest that the different ways in which a large proportion of Dutch men and women answer the phone, reflect their different orientations to the category of people whom they expect to call.8 One could object to this line of reasoning by saying that Dutch women, just like Dutch men, are being called by potential strangers in their workplaces. However, if we look at the statistics of the Dutch labor market (NRC Handelsblad 1998), it turns out that in 1969, only 30 years ago, no more than 30% of the Dutch women had a paid job. For the men, this was 98% (See Table 16.6). TABLE 16.6 Dutch Labour participation (20-64 years old) Men 98% 1969 80% 1998
Women 30% 58%
If we also consider the fact that a large percentage of these women's jobs were, and still are, part-time jobs, it seems reasonable to say that for Dutch women the telephone used to be primarily part of their domestic lives. And for Dutch men, the phone used to belong to their public lives. These then are the different settings in which the genders may have come to develop their gender-related ways of answering the phone. For the time being I think that the gender-specific way of self-identifying is, in the first place, a reflection of the traditionally and still existing very unequal labor division in the Netherlands. If this suggestion holds true indeed, and considering the growing number of working women in the Netherlands, we may expect the gender-related differences in answering the phone to gradually decrease in the future. From a conversation analytical point of view, one might say that in the way the Dutch men and women in our data answered the phone they displayed an orientation to a different class of potential callers, and that they recipient designed their answering utterances. Although this may well have been the case in specific cases, I strongly believe that the way in which individuals answer the 8
I owe this perspective to Gitte Rasmussen, with whom I discussed these gender-related differences in self-identifying.
GENDER DIFFERENCES
285
phone is a case of socialization and routine in the first place. Dutch children are explicitly taught to answer the phone by mentioning their names. There is no research on how Dutch children develop their phone answering practices, but one may expect the following: They start out answering the phone by saying "Hello?" as my collection of telephone openings suggests. Soon their parents instruct them to mention their name when answering the phone, which they take as mentioning their first name only. And in hearing how adults answer the phone, they will gradually come to see that adult women provide First Name or First + Last Name, whereas the adult men provide First + Last Name or Last Name only. At some point in their lives a large proportion of the Dutch children will adopt this gender-specific way of answering the phone. Had these children been raised in the United States, they would have learned to answer the domestic phone by saying "hello." As Hopper (1992) says about this American routine, it was established in the early years of telephone use and has remained somewhat stable. The way in which people answer the phone is not only a matter of socialization, but also of routine behavior.9 Each Dutch person has his or her own idiosyncratic routine; they not only differ in the form of self-identification they use but also in whether or not they begin their self-identification with "Hello" and/or "with," and in the intonation contour of the answering utterance and their speech rate.
CONCLUSION When discussing how telephone conversationalists proceed in establishing the parties' identities, it was already suggested that cultural differences exist with regard to how to carry out the interactional task of mutual identification. In some cultures, answerers typically provide vocal recognition cues; in other cultures, they typically self-identify. This study shows that there may also be genderrelated differences within one and the same culture when it comes to how to answer the phone. These differences may be seen as stylistic differences (cf. Hopper et al. 1990/1991). In Dutch society, the genders do not differ in whether or not they self-identify, but in how they self-identify.
9 It is striking that in Lindstrom's Swedish data it was one individual who was responsible for 3 of the 5 "Hello"-answers.
286
CHAPTER 16
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Huub van den Bergh, Paul Drew, Paul ten Have, Henk Lammers, Leo Lentz, Joost Schilperoord and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
REFERENCES Adler, J. (1993). Telephoning in Germany. Telecommunications Policy, 281296. Godard, D. (1977). Same setting, different norms: Phone call beginnings in France and the United States. Language in Society, 6, 209-219. Hopper, R. (n.d.). Quantity envy. Unpublished manuscript, University of Texas at Austin. Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Bloomington, Indiana University Press. Hopper, R., Doany N., Johnson, M., & Drummond, K. (1990/1991). Universals and particulars in telephone openings. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 24, 369-387. Hopper, R., & Doany, N. (1989). Telephone openings and conversational universals: A study in three languages. In S. Ting-Toomey & F. Korzenny (Eds.), Language, communication and culture (pp. 157-179). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Hopper, R., & Chen, C. H. (1996). Languages, cultures, relationships: Telephone openings in Taiwan. Research on Language and Social Interaction 29, 291-313. Houtkoop-Steenstra, H. (1991). Opening sequences in Dutch telephone conversations. In D. Boden & D. H. Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and social structure (pp. 231-252). Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Lentz, L. (1997). The history of opening sequences in Dutch telephone conversations. In L. Lentz & H. Pander Maat (Eds.), Discourse analysis and evaluation: Functional approaches (pp. 87-111). Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi. NRC-Handelsblad. Vrouwendeelname groeit. [Women's participation grows], (1998, July 2). p. 4. Lindstrom, A. (1994). Identification and recognition in Swedish telephone conversation openings. Language in Society, 23, 321-352. Placencia, M. E. (1998, July 19). Telephone conversation openings in Ecuadorian Spanish and British English. Paper presented at the 6th IPrA conference, Reims, France.
GENDER DIFFERENCES
287
Sanders, E. (1998, October 7). Ik zeg: Hallo. [I say: Hello.]. NRC Handelsblad. Schegloff, E. A. (1967). The first five seconds. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of California at Berkeley. Schegloff, E. A. (1972). Sequencing in conversational openings. In J. J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in sociolinguistics (pp. 346380). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Identification and recognition in telephone conversation openings. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 23-78). New York: Irvington. Schegloff, E. A. (1986). The routine as achievement. Human Studies, 9, 111151 Schegloff, E. A. (1993). Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 99128. Sifianou, M. (1989). On the telephone again! Differences in telephone behaviour. England versus Greece. Language in Society, 18, 527-544.
This page intentionally left blank
III Talk in Institutional Settings The importance of social institutions is indicated by the extensive attention devoted to them in scholarly work (e.g., Drew & Heritage, 1992; Labov & Fanshel, 1977; Morris & Chenail, 1995). Drew and Heritage pointed out that an occasion's institutionality is not derived simply from its setting. Rather, "interaction is institutional insofar as participants' institutional or professional identities are somehow made relevant to the work activities in which they are engaged" (p. 4). Thus interaction is central to the constitution of institutional settings. As Heritage (1984, p. 242) pointed out, interaction is both context shaped and context renewing. Work in language and social interaction (LSI) has examined institutional settings from a number of different perspectives. In this section authors focus on a range of institutions from several different perspectives, showing both how institutions impinge on interaction, and how interaction is constitutive of institutions. A formal distinction between casual and institutional talk (see Heritage & Drew, 1992; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974) assumes that casual conversation occupies one end of a continuum of speech-exchange systems, the other end of which is marked by increasing restriction on turn taking. Other than distinguishing various institutional events by their turn-taking features (such as meetings, interviews, and debates), little work has attempted systematically to explore variations in talk in different types of institutions. In chapter 17, Paul Drew explores the possibility that formulations, which are utterances providing a summary or gist of preceding talk, might vary across four different institutional contexts. Drew addresses this question while reflexively considering analytic issues raised in the process. Robert Sanders (chap. 18) explores how methods and findings designed for studying face-to-face and telephone talk might apply to interactions taking place over Marine VHP radio between people on different boats. This medium carries particular constraints on interaction due to the limitations of being unable to use the same channel for both listening and speaking. Sanders shows how participants manage coherent interactions despite these limitations. In particular, he demonstrates how laughter gets accomplished between speakers who cannot hear each other laugh in overlap. 289
290
PART III
Next, the article by Jennifer Molloy and Howard Giles (chap. 19) exemplifies work on intergroup communication, taking up the important but understudied area of communication between civilians and law enforcement officers. This chapter shows how sociolinguistic research can have real-life applications that offer hope for improving communication between groups. It pays tribute to an interest area of Robert Hopper, who coauthored with his former student Dennis Gunderson a textbook for law enforcement officers on communication (Gundersen & Hopper, 1984). The next three chapters examine interaction in a therapeutic setting. This has been a popular site for research on LSI. Harvey Sacks, a founder of conversation analysis, made some of its earliest applications in the study of a therapy group for troubled teenagers (e.g., 1992, pp. 281-299). Since the publication of Labov and Fanshel's (1977) classic, Therapeutic Discourse, analysis of clinical discourse has flourished. Through close observation and analysis of therapy recordings (e.g., Morris & Chenail, 1995), researchers have shown how therapeutic discourse may be structured in ways that "ordinary" talk is not, which has practical import for the discourses of healing that clinicians and clients interactively bring about. First, G. H. Bud Morris (chap. 20) examines preventatives, that is, utterances that orient to and forestall the possibility of interactional trouble. In this study he builds on previous research on disclaimers and accounts, grounded in the study of alignment as a fundamental interpersonal activity. He briefly introduces seven types of preventatives and offers an instance of each type, arguing for both an ordering of them in terms of seriousness and a time sequencing of them, such that speakers may start with the mildest and build toward the strongest. He suggests that preventatives serve an important role in minimizing interactional problems that could deepen; he also argues that a rule of "the earlier, the better" guides the doing of preventatives, as people seek ways to keep interactions going smoothly. Next, Duff Wrobbel (chap. 21) examines a recording of a family therapy session, focusing on several minutes of interaction leading up to an "aha" moment in which the wife experiences (or at least displays) a sudden flash of insight or self-revelation. The author identifies various "external antecedents" associated with the wife's "internal experience," including subtle communicative moves on the part of her therapist. Taking seriously the social constructionist view that individual "selves" and psychological "states" are largely products of social interaction, Kurt Bruder (chap. 22) promotes a discourse analytic approach to therapeutic intervention. The author argues that therapists can (perhaps should) analyze (in real time) the moment-by-moment and turn-by-turn unfolding of therapy sessions, noticing and calling clients' attention to the "inevitable display and enactment of identityconstituting talk." Not only would the therapist gain insight into a client's
PART III
291
discursively generated psychosocial experiences, the argument goes, a therapist could share these insights with the client, who might thereby be acculturated into processes of self-healing. The last three chapters in this section examine interaction in the medical setting. Anita Pomerantz's article (chap. 23) on modeling as a teaching strategy is part of an ongoing research project concerning medical precepting, the process through which supervising physicians train and oversee medical students working with patients in clinical settings. She argues that modeling provides a solution to the complexities of needing to ensure proper patient care, instruct interns, and yet avoid compromising the interns' professional role in front of patients. The chapter examines not only interactional phenomena, but also participants' perceptions of the effectiveness of a particular pedagogical strategy, as determined through surveys and interviews, which are standard ethnographic methods. Douglas Maynard and Richard Frankel (chap. 24) examine a sequence of conversations between a doctor and a female patient whose mammogram results were mixed, warranting additional tests (e.g., ultrasound) that also turned out to be indeterminate. The authors focus on diagnostic news as an interactive and emergent accomplishment: The patient in this case happens to also be a registered nurse, able to interpret test results and ready to resist the doctor's conclusion that the results constitute good news. By attending to the details of this particular case, the authors show how diagnostic negotiations are delicately woven into conversations between health care professionals, who sometimes joke (in a self-conscious or self-reflexive way) about the medical practice in which they simultaneously participate. In the final chapter of this section, Daniel Modaff (chap. 25) investigates coordination of talk and subtle body movements during doctorpatient interviews. Specifically, he examines transitional moments interactively brought about: Doctors sometimes turn away from their patient and toward some object in the room (e.g., a stool), indicating a shift in the immediate focus of attention, giving the patient an opportunity to align with the transition possibly being cued. Through such small and subtle forms of interaction, large social institutions (such as a medical community) are sustained day by day, mostly taken for granted.
REFERENCES Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (1992). University Press.
Talk at work.
Cambridge: Cambridge
292
PART III
Gunderson, D. & Hopper, R. (1984). Communication and law enforcement. New York: Harper & Row. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977). Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic Press. Morris, G., & Chenail, R. (Eds.). (1995). The talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of medical and therapeutic discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sacks, H. (1992). An Introduction Sequence. In Lectures on Conversation (2 vols.) (G. Jefferson, Ed.) (pp. 281-299). Oxford: Blackwell. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language, 50, 696735.
17 Comparative Analysis of Talk-inInteraction in Different Institutional Settings: A Sketch1 Paul Drew University of York INTRODUCTION There has in recent years been some discussion and debate (e.g. Hak, 1995; Hopper, 1995; and Schegloff, 1992) concerning the study of talk that takes place in 'institutional settings'. Much of this debate is about how (and whether) 'institutional' interactions are to be distinguished from those that are not institutional: for instance, if the family is an institution, why then are telephone calls between members of a family not 'institutional'? But the question about what is special or different about 'institutional' interactions shades into others, including whether, since the practices and organizations of talk are generic to talk-in-interaction, and are not specific to talk in any given setting, it is appropriate to separate the study of talk in one setting (for instance in medical consultations, courts, or in news interviews) from others? There is a tendency, it is argued, to treat the conduct of talk and interaction in a particular institutional setting as unique to that setting. Because researchers generally focus on one specific institutional setting, they commonly assume that any patterns or practices that are observed in that setting can be attributed to the particular organizational features and exigencies associated with that setting. 1 This paper is based on a talk which I first gave at a meeting of Nordic sociolinguistics projects, held at the Swedish School of Social Sciences, Helsinki University, in May 1992. A previous version was published in H.Lehti-Eklund ed., 1998. In revising this for publication in this volume, I have benefited from the particularly thoughtful comments of two anonymous reviewers: although I have not accepted all their suggestions, I have borrowed from these at certain points without further acknowledgement. 293
294
CHAPTER 17
The analytic connections between the very identification and delimitation of 'institutional' interactions, and the readiness to attribute to features of talk in a given setting a certain kind of uniqueness, is summarized succinctly by Hopper in a trenchant commentary about whether the study of 'institutional settings' might, as he puts it, "blunt the cutting edge of conversation analysis?": "A problem with analyses of institutional talk is embedded in describing it as "institutional talk." This terminology carries the traditional setting divisions of communication study. Given a characterization of a strip of talk as "the opening of a medical interview," or given a title of an essay as "Host Talk on X TV Show" it becomes difficult to resist offering an institutional setting explanation as the explanation for whatever we find in these materials." (Hopper, 1995, p. 374)
Hopper develops these arguments in a number of directions, some of which have also been articulated by other voices in this debate. I would like to take up just one of these directions here—one which is more or less implicit in his commentary, but which is quite explicit at some points in his own research (Hopper and Drummond, 1992; Hopper and Chen, 1996). That is, that comparative analysis may be required in order to assess how far a certain pattern, device or practice is generic to talk-in-interaction, and therefore not restricted to any one type or setting; or whether, perhaps, there are systematic variations in the occurrence, scope, properties and form of certain practices— variations associated with the specific settings in which they occur and the activities in which participants are engaged in those settings.2 Although work on institutional interactions often implies or explicitly claims a comparative justification for attributing a pattern or device (or the salience and import of that pattern or device) to a given setting, nevertheless it is true that those claims are generally not supported by comparative research. Hopper is correct when he points out that "Most essays about talk within institutions have treated just one setting, which foregrounds setting-based explanations for things happening as they do" (Hopper, 1995, p. 373). Typically, researchers (and I include myself here) investigate interaction in the particular setting they are studying, perhaps with only an indistinct comparative perspective in mind—a general awareness that what they are finding in their data/setting is unlike patterns or features which (probably) obtain in other 2 This is a slight re-statement and amplification of the proposal which Heritage and I made, that "The basic forms of mundane talk constitute a kind of benchmark against which other more formal or 'institutional' types of interaction are recognized and experienced...'institutional' forms of interaction will show systematic variations and restrictions on activities in their design relative to ordinary conversation" (Drew and Heritage, 1992, p. 19).
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
295
settings, but without exploring that suspected comparative difference at all systematically. And there is something further which is worth highlighting in a remark which Hopper makes about such comparisons, "Analyses of talk in institutional settings frequently proceed by posing comparisons between practices used in that settings and those in mundane conversation - practices that seem relatively context-free" (Hopper, 1995, p. 372). I take this to mean, in part at least, that we can claim about a practice that it has some relatively specialized use or consequences in a given setting—even though the practice itself is not restricted to that setting (just as oh is not restricted to mundane conversation) and is therefore "relatively context-free," and despite our not having investigated its various uses or properties in other settings (hence the tendency to attribute to that practice in that setting some unique properties, or to explain its occurrence in terms of the special properties of that setting). As a way to begin to address some of these issues of comparative analysis, to sketch what such an analysis might involve and what kinds of properties of a practice we might investigate, it occurred to me to bring together some findings about a particular 'conversational' practice, that of formulating what another speaker is saying or has said. Plainly the practice is in some respect 'context free'; it is not restricted to any particular context, whether mundane or institutional. However, I wondered whether the practice may exhibit some systematic variations associated with the settings in which it is used. What follows, then, is a sketch, the objective of which is to enquire whether, if a practice appears to be context free, we should let it rest there, assigning this to one of those generic practices of talk-in-interaction—or rather, whether the practice is molded into distinctive shapes by participants when they engage in the specific interactional work associated with certain institutional settings.
FORMULATIONS The sense or meaning of a conversation, part of a conversation, or a rum in a conversation, is not unambiguous. The meaning of what someone said or what we have been talking about can be described—or formulated—in different ways. Of course most of the time, participants in a conversation take it that they have understood the other's meaning sufficiently to be able to produce a relevant response, without first having to check their interpretation of what the other meant. But from time-to-time, participants "May treat some part of the conversation as an occasion to describe that conversation, to explain it, or characterize it, or explicate, or translate, or summarize, or furnish the gist of it, or take note of its accordance with rules, or remark on its departure from rules. That is to say, a member may use some part of the conversation as an occasion
296
CHAPTER 17
to formulate the conversation . . ." (Garfinkel and Sacks 1970, p. 350). Thus formulations are a means through which participants may make explicit their sense of "what we are talking about," or "what has just said": they are a means for constructing an explicit sense of the gist of the talk thus far. In their seminal paper on formulations, Heritage and Watson (1979) (following Garfinkel and Sacks) identify and describe a range of types of formulations. I shall focus here on those in which a speaker offers his or her interpretation of what the other meant—an activity which generally takes the form (So) what you mean/are saying is . . ., or something resembling that. These are familiar to linguists as metacommunicative acts, expressions through which participants comment on the nature of the discourse in which they are engaged, or are about to be engaged. One reservation I have with the term wetacommunication is the implication that such expressions stand above or outside the talk. Heritage and Watson (1979) argue cogently that formulations are themselves events or moves within the talk, and as such may be geared primarily to participants' ongoing, specific practical interactional tasks. In this respect, they are as much part of the talk as any other kind of turn or discourse practice. Indeed we can see that formulations are produced in very specific interactional environments or circumstances in various kinds of institutional discourse, and that they serve to perform specific interactional tasks which vary according to the setting. But more of that in a moment: for the present, I want to make an initial observation about the claim I made earlier that they are contextfree.
FORMULATIONS IN ORDINARY CONVERSATION In their title "Formulations as conversational objects," Heritage and Watson can be taken to imply that formulations are the realizations of a generic practice in talk-in-interaction (mundane conversation as well as other forms of talk). Just parenthetically, I take it that formulating is the practice, and that a formulation is the object or device through which the practice is mobilized by participants in a given interaction. At any rate, I supposed from the title that Heritage and Watson were describing a practice/device that had its home base in conversation.3 I was wrong. Re-reading the article, I discovered that none of the 3 I think that the use by Heritage and Watson of conversational in their title was owed in part to how enquiries in conversation analysis were cast, at the time they wrote (1979). They were describing the properties of what they took to be a general (if not quite generic) practice: they did not then have the more accurate nomenclature talk-in-interaction (which as far as I know was introduced by Schegloff in the early 1990s) with which to refer to its scope. What they might have meant by conversational was general: however that misled me, at least, into assuming that it was primarily in ordinary conversation in which participants employed this practice.
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
297
instances they show (at least, none resembling the form I outlined above) was taken from 'ordinary' conversation: instead, they were from a variety of institutional contexts, mostly news interviews. This led me to make a search of the recordings of mundane (mostly telephone) conversations we have (much of this data obtained in the years since Heritage and Watson wrote their article) in order to check whether their data were skewed by their happening to have been working at that time on news interviews. I was surprised to find almost no instances of formulations which in any way resembled (So) what you 're saying is . . . . This is one of the only two clear cases I found during a not-quite-exhaustive search. (1) [HGII:4-5] (Talking about Nancy's skin problems, and the medication she has been given) 1 2 3
Nan: Hyl:
So 'e gay me these pills tih ta:ke= =What.Tetracykuhleen? (.)
4 5 6 7
Nan:
. PT NO: cuz I usetuh take that an' it didn' he:Ip so 'e gay me something e:lse.= =Hm: . (0.2)
8 9
Nan:
Hyl:
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26-> 27 28 29 30 31 32
Hyl: Nan:
33 34 35
Nan: Hyl:
Nan:
Hyl: Nan: Nan: Hyl: Nan:
Hyl:
Nan:
He sai:d- yihknow, ( 0 . 2 ) sometimes Tetracyklene jus doesn' h e : l p . (0.4) Also he sid that (0.3) .t what you ea:t, (0.2) end how you wash yer face has nothing tih do with it, (0.8) Yer kiddin[g. [nNo:, (0.4) He says 't's all inside you it's 'n emotional thing'n, .hhh e[:n, [Yeah buh whatchu ea:t if you eat greasy foo:d= =We:h he said it's no:t the fact thet you've eaten the greasy food it's a' fact thet you worry about it. En that makes you [break ou[:t. [.Teh.k.h[hhhhhh Y'mean I c'd sit here en eat french fries 'n ez long'z I'm not worrying about it I [won't break ou]hhhthh [I g z a : :]:ctly, (.) .hh[hh]_ ' t' sa [buncha [h: : : : : :: [horse: ]: [ I] belie[ve 'im [too h e ' s [ rilly-] ( .) [e.-he's rilly a [smart, ] [(isk-skih-) f: [feather]s, .huhh [.hn
298
CHAPTER 17
Here, in Lines 26-28 Hyla seems to offer an interpretation of what the other has said (note that in #1 Nancy reports in Lines 8, 11, 18 and 22 what the doctor said to her, as he said such-and-such: these are instances of indirect reported speech, and not therefore the practice on which I am focusing here). However, without being very technical about this, it is reasonably clear that Hyla is being tendentious in her 'interpretation' (remembering that Nancy is reporting what the doctor said to her; but she is doing so in a fashion which makes it evident that she is aligning with or accepting what he said). Moreover in producing this version of what Nancy means, Hyla is making a move that is a preliminary to expressing her scepticism with the doctor's advice (Lines 30 and 31, it's a bunch of horse feathers). So this practice of offering an interpretation of what the other meant is employed in mundane conversation—but apparently only very infrequently. This is in contrast to various institutional settings in which, as I knew from some previous research,4 such formulations are very frequent indeed. This then is a practice/device that might be generic, though not much found in conversation. However, to regard this as a generic practice, we need to explore whether it has properties which are 'context-free' in so far as they are exhibited in, and underpin, its use in talk in any setting in which it occurs (this to paraphrase Hopper, 1995, p. 372). This led me to considering how this practice was employed in other settings, and whether its properties, its form or linguistic features, were identical; or whether instead the design features associated with formulating in various settings differed systematically according to the kind of interactional work which formulating is done to manage in particular settings (a kind of correspondence between 'form' and 'function')—in which case, whilst the practice of formulating may be context-free, we cannot discern a generic device through which the practice is implemented. In order to pursue this question, I will briefly describe instances of formulations in psychotherapeutic consultations, call-in radio programmes, news interviews and industrial negotiations. Space allows me to show only a single example in each setting: but this will perhaps be sufficient to sketch a comparison—one which will suggest that the precise linguistic forms that such formulations take may differ, and do so in ways which seems to relate to the interactional task (function) which the formulation serves in each setting.
4
I am drawing here particularly on work of two of my previous graduate students, Ian Hutchby and Esther Walker. Their research into, respectively, radio call-in programmes and negotiations between management and unions in an industrial setting is cited in the bibliography. I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to their work, from which many of the data extracts are taken.
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
299
FORMULATIONS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY An instance of a formulation in psychotherapeutic sessions, which illustrates what appear to be some of the characteristic features of such expressions in this setting, is the following: (2)
[Therapy: P B : 5 - 3 1 - 7 2 : 7 ]
1 Brenda: 2 3 4 5 6 7 Laurel: 8 9 10-> Brenda: 11 12 Laurel: 13 14 Brenda: 15 16 17
Well hhm I've been ah:m,hh .k better: wi.th her. (.) u-lately, then I had been (.) in a long ti.-ime. (0.2) .p.hh (0.9) e-Oh: Go:d but that couldn't I mean if that ever created a problem like I'm having no:w. (lT7) May not create a problem: it might make it possible for a problem to come ou:t (12.1) You mean she could've always felt like this. (0.4) Mmhm (26.4) .pl.hhhhh (0.6) mYou know Sam's been very upset about this. 'N he: (0.4) s-aid that I shouldn't have sent her to school when I did. (1.5) And that's probably what caused it.
The patient (Brenda) has been telling about some aspect of a problem she is having with her very young daughter: in her first turn in this fragment she appears to notice a paradox between an improvement in her conduct (I've been better with her lately) and the worsening of her child's problems (a problem like I'm having now). The therapist responds (Lines 7-8) by commenting on, or making an observation about, the patient's account, and seems to offer an alternative association between Brenda's improvement and her daughter's apparently increasing problem (in other instances, such 'commenting' may be done in an interrogative form, as in "Think she might be trying to tell you something about you?"). The patient's formulation (Line 10) is an expression through which she offers her interpretation of the characteristically implicit, allusive or indirect 'message' which she discerns in Laural's remark. The patient is constructing a sense of what the therapist might be alluding to in her comment/observation, putting that implicit message into 'so many words', for the therapist to confirm. The sense of the therapist's intending to be allusive, to hint at but not make explicit some point to be found in the patient's telling, is perhaps to be found also in Laurel's minimal and unelaborated confirmation of Brenda's formulation/understanding check (see Line 12). Moreover, in this kind of therapy at least, there is evidently an orientation to a strategy whereby the therapist guides the patient towards finding for herself what might be the true
300
CHAPTER 17
nature of her problem. But at any rate, it is evident that the patient treats the therapist's comment or observation in Lines 7-8 as implying or alluding to something about the problem, which goes beyond what she (the therapist) has said explicitly. Brenda's formulation is an attempt to put into words that implied 'message,' and thereby constitutes an action that is part of her finding, and showing that she is finding, the direction in which the therapist is pointing her.5 In this way, her formulation embodies an orientation to the reciprocal role of therapist and patient, and the behaviors expected of each (on formulations in psychotherapeutic settings, see also Davis, 1986).
FORMULATIONS IN RADIO CALL-IN PROGRAMMES In his study of radio call-in programmes (specifically, a program broadcast by a London radio station, in which listeners called in to air and discuss with the program host their views about any matters of current interest, or which concerned them), Hutchby (1996) focused on the ways in which the host 'constructed' controversy. Whatever topic a caller had called in about, and whatever position he or she held, the host invariably managed to challenge their point of view and contested their argument—so that often the most unexceptional views were turned into the subject of a controversy between host and caller. Among the moves which the host made in seeking to defeat the caller's view was to formulate the caller's argument, to summarize the gist of what he or she was saying. (3) [BH:2/2/89:12:l-2] (from Hutchby 1996, pp. 7071) (The caller has phoned in to recommend a product which will prevent dogs fouling the footpath outside one's home) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 5
Caller:
U:sually when a dog fouls:, .hh e::r it, it lea:ves-=the scent that is left behind even if you:, clean up with boiling wa:ter an' disinfectant, .hhh is a mar:ker. .h An' when 'e comes on 'is e::r, (w'-) wa:lk the next da:y, when 'e gets tuh that ma:rk, he does the same thing again.
A simple way to put this is that Brenda is checking her understanding of what Laurel has said. However, she may be doing so in the service of another activity, namely showing that she is seriously considering the implications of the alternative association which is implied in Laural's remark (that the daughter's problem hasn't been caused by Brenda's recent conduct, but is the result of pre-existing circumstances or events which have only now come to the surface). So that checking her understanding can be a way to show that she is considering this possibility.
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
301
9 10-> Host: 11 12 13 Caller: 14 Host: 15 Caller: 16 Host: 17
Er you s-seem tuh be suggesting that they go t'the same place ev'ry ti:me. Becuz they've been there buhfore, Ooh yes,=quite often ye : s . = =Yeah but er(h)n(h) then:, .h e:r,= =An [d other [dogs will: also. [This[This mea:ns that they never go in a diff'rent pla:ce,=doesn't it.
In Lines 10-12 the host formulates the caller's account (opening turn) as amounting to an argument that when dogs poop on the pavement they "go t'the same place ev'ry ti:me. Becuz they've been there buhfore,". It is readily apparent from this extract that that formulation is the first part in an argument sequence: after the caller confirms this formulation, the host subsequently constructs an upshot of the caller's position, an upshot which reveals the absurdity of that position (here, the absurdity of holding that a dog always poops in the same place). Three features of this formulation are worth drawing attention to at this stage. First, it is tendentious; it is constructed to serve the host's purpose to challenge and undermine the caller's position (there are several features which are associated with that tendentiousness, including 'extreme case' constructions such as 'same place every time'). Second, the caller's attempt to qualify his confirmation of that formulation, in 'quite often' (Line 13), is possibly evidence that he has recognized the host's strategy and is trying to head off an anticipated line of argument. So the host's formulation is likely to have been analyzed by the caller as a move which has the aim of 'setting him up'. And third, the formulation is the initial move in a sequence designed to challenge and defeat the caller's position, the third turn in that sequence being the host's rebuttal in Lines 16-17 (an attempt having been made in Line 14 to go straight to that third turn rebuttal - an attempt which collides with the caller continuing to support or defend his position, perhaps as further evidence that he understands the host's strategy, and is trying to deflect it).
FORMULATIONS IN NEWS INTERVIEWS Heritage reports that in news interviews, interviewers do not respond with news marks (particularly, oh) to answers which interviewees give to their questions (Heritage, 1985). In order to avoid being seen to align with the IE, or in other ways to treat his or herself as the primary recipient of the talk, IRs regularly use formulations of the gist of the IE's prior answer—formulations which do not exhibit any empathy or alignment with the IE's position, but which topicalize or highlight an implication of what the IE has said in answer to a prior question
302
CHAPTER 17
(Heritage, 1985). All that such formulations do, officially, is to make explicit something in the prior answer, for the IE to confirm or disconfirm. But by highlighting some particular aspect of what the IE has just said, the IR manages to give the IE the opportunity to comment further, or elaborate, or defend, his or her position. (4) [News interview: TVN:Tea] 1985, pp. 108-109) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
IE:
11
12-> IR: 13 14 IE: 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
(from Heritage,
What in fact happened was that in the course of last year, .hh the price went up really very sharply, .hhh and-uh the blenders did take advantage of this:-uh to obviously to raise their prices to retailers. (0.7) .hhh They haven't been so quick in reducing prices when the world market prices come down. (0.3) .hh And so this means that price in the sh- the prices in the shops have stayed up .hh really rather higher than we'd like to see them. (0.7)
So you-you're really accusing them of profiteering. .hhh No they're in business to make money that's perfectly sensible.=We're also saying that-uh: it's not a trade which is competitive as we would like it.=Th're four (0.2) blenders which have together eighty-five percent of the market .hhh and-uh we're not saying they (.) move in concert or anything like that but we'd like the trade to be a bit more competitive.
The IR's formulation in #4 is an instance of the kind of formulation that Heritage describes as an 'inferentially elaborative probe' (1985, pp. 108-112): it invites the IE to assent to a rather strong or dramatic version of what he has said in his previous answer. The IR characterizes the IE's stance as being particular critical of the tea blenders: this is perhaps "designed to commit the interviewee to a stronger (and more newsworthy) version of his position (in relation to the blenders) than he was initially prepared to adopt"—the point being to test how far the IE is prepared to go in criticizing the blenders (Heritage, 1985, p. 110). In formulating the IE's position in such dramatic, controversial or conflictual terms, the IR might, of course, expect the IE to deny such a strong version of his position. The IR may do so in the interests of making the item more newsworthy or controversial (if only by getting the IE to go 'on record' as denying something).
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
303
FORMULATIONS IN INDUSTRIAL NEGOTIATIONS The final setting that I want to consider as part of this comparative exercise is that of industrial negotiations. In her study of negotiations in the workplace between management and trades union representatives, Walker (1994) reports that formulations are used at particularly critical junctures in negotiations. Following periods of extensive discussion on a matter under dispute, one or other side (i.e., either management or union) may formulate the position each is taking, summarizing where they now stand, in an effort to explore whether they can reach an agreed settlement—a compromise, in which we 'II agree to x if you agree to y. The following is a particularly transparent instance. (5) [PORT:WGE:2:A:314] (From a wage negotiation between management, here Andy, and the work staff's union, represented here by Pete. Management are offering a flat rate pay award, with no additional deals/inducements. The union is seeking a package, to include discussions about a shorter working week) (from Walker, 1994) 1 Andy: Er:m (1.4) er so (1.0) you' re (.) com- on the 2 basis of feedback you're getting from (.) from 3 people (.) you (.) started off giving me the 4 impression that we were (.) still hundreds of 5 miles apart (.) we now seem to have come down 6-> to a position where (.) in essence what you're 7 asking us to consider is the six percent on 8 basic which we've already offered you (.) but 9 you would like in addition to that for us to 10 consider the possibility (.) of: an increase 11 (.) on the (.) bonus rate (.) and to include in 12 any agreement we reach (.) a paragraph 13 indicating the willingness to (.) have dialogue 14 on the subject of a thirty seven hour week 15 (1.2) during the period of this agreement. 16 (3.4) 17 Pete: N:o (.) that's not wha'I said. 18 (1.0) 19 Pete: I says in six months time to have a look at it 20 (.) again 21 Andy: You want to be specific an' say six months do 22 you 23 (1.3) 24 Pete: I think you have to ( ) bu' I mean if you: 25 (.) talked about it for six months as well...
Andy's extended formulation, which begins with "in essence what you're asking us to consider is..." (Lines 6-15), is an attempt to summarize where they have
304
CHAPTER 17
got to in their discussion, and to construct a package in which the union will recommend a pay rise of 6% (they had been asking for more), in return for management agreeing to enter into talks, during the next twelve months (i.e., "during the period of this agreement."), about reducing the working week. It may be noted that although the union representative (Pete, in Line 17) objects to this formulation of what his (union) team has been demanding, his objection is only to one aspect of it. In effect he is correcting only that part of Andy's formulation of his (Pete's) position which concerns the period in which the union are seeking to have discussions begin on the issue of a shorter working week (Lines 19, 20). Andy's enquiry (Line 21)—to which Pete responds with an interpretation of the "six months" stipulation which would make it more acceptable to Andy (ie. starting in six months, and talking for six months, would bring it into line with the management's preferred timetable)—is a 'preagreement' move towards his accepting the compromise settlement adumbrated in his formulation of what the union is now asking for. So his formulation of the other side's position played a key role in achieving an agreement on the matter of the wage rise. Through that formulation he was proposing a compromise that struck a balance between the interests of the two sides, in a (successful) attempt to reach agreement. In summary, then, formulations in these negotiations occur after there has been discussion about some issue of contention; and they are constructed to articulate what each side may be willing to offer by way of a compromise package. That is, although ostensibly formulating only what the other side is saying, these formulations are constructed in a turn package which conveys what the proposer (i.e., the one doing the formulation) is willing to agree to. Hence formulations are the objects through which a settlement is proposed. Because of their strategic character—one side may be trying to 'slip in' to the wording of the formulation something in line with their preferred outcome, and something which the other side may wish not to accept—the other side may be cautious in confirming such formulations: for instance in #5 the formulation was rejected, and an alternative one proposed (Lines 21-25), whilst elsewhere the other side may avoid explicitly accepting or rejecting the formulation but instead give a very qualified version of what they are saying (a version which avoids commitment to the principle which the other side's formulation attempted to build into the settlement).
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
305
DISCUSSION: COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE INTERACTIONAL FUNCTION AND LINGUISTIC FORM OF FORMULATIONS IN DIFFERENT SETTINGS The single instances I have shown of formulations in each of the four settings are taken from collections of such objects in these settings. Although these are likely to be representative of such collections, one cannot yet draw firm conclusions on the basis of this preliminary review. So in comparing formulating in the different settings considered above, I am not claiming that these are anything like definitive findings. Recalling that this is a sketch or an exercise, all I mean to indicate is that these are the kinds of comparisons that can be made, and the kinds of conclusions that emerge, at least on the basis of these limited data. So the following points sketch the dimensions or properties in terms of which formulating in different settings can be compared, if we are to consider whether formulations are a generic device of talk-in-interaction—and I think it would follow from these comparisons (if the observations on which they are based hold for large-scale data sets) that whilst formulating is a generic practice in talk-in-interaction, the forms through which it is realized are not. These forms (objects or devices) are not unique to particular settings, so they are not setting-specific; rather there are clusters of similarities which relate to the kinds of activities which are managed through formulating. It appears that formulations have different interactional functions in the different settings reviewed—where by 'interactional function' I mean that participants manage different activities through formulating, which is therefore associated with different kinds of activity sequences. In psychotherapeutic sessions, the patient formulated a version of the therapist's prior comment, by way of checking her understanding of the therapist's implicit meaning (this being associated with the therapist's strategy of making a comment, or asking a question, which leaves it to the patient to find for herself what the problem is, what should be done etc.). In the radio call-in programmes, the host formulated a (tendentious) version of the caller's argument, as an initial move in an argument sequence (confirmation by the caller of the formulation, leading to a reductio ad absurdum by the host). It is worth noticing the similarity between this and the formulation shown from ordinary conversation, in extract #1—in which Hyla constructed a tendentious version of what Nancy was 'saying,' before expressing scepticism with the latter's argument (or rather, with the doctor's argument, with which she was aligning). News interviewers offered formulations of interviewees' prior answers, as a means to invite or encourage them to elaborate on some particular aspect of that answer (often as a means of dramatizing the issue, and making it more conflictual and newsworthy). And finally, in industrial negotiations one side offers a formulation of what the other
306
CHAPTER 17
is saying/proposing, in an effort to construct a compromise which will settle the matter under negotiation—the formulation being designed strategically to hold on to one side's preferred conditions, whilst characterizing this in a package designed to be acceptable to the other side. Each of these activities is central to the tasks in which participants are engaged in these settings. They are not peripheral, epiphenomenal activities. Constructing controversy and undermining the other's argument, getting the interviewee to elaborate, figuring out the implicit meaning in a therapist's comment, and trying to arrive at a compromise settlement with which both sides in a negotiation can agree, are each core activities in these settings. So that formulations are associated with activity sequences which are especially characteristic of certain forms of talk-in-interaction (psychotherapeutic discourse, negotiating, etc.). We begin to see, now, why formulations of this kind might be so rarely employed in mundane conversation: formulations are the means of conducting these activities—and though these activities are not unique to these settings, they are relatively restricted, in so far as we do not, generally speaking, need to arrive at compromises after long negotiations in mundane conversation, nor do we need to be allusive, set someone up in order to challenge their argument, or present what they've said in a more dramatic or newsworthy way. We may engage in these activities in conversation from time to time,6 but they are not the kinds of routine, organizationally salient activities that they are for the settings discussed here. Moreover, it appears that small but significant differences in the linguistic realization of formulations in these settings may be associated with their different activity environments. In psychotherapy (at least, of the kind represented here), formulations are done in interrogatives, in the form of You mean . . . . In the call-in program in which the host challenges callers' arguments, he used formulations such as What you 're saying is and You seem to be suggesting. News interviewers formulate the upshot of what an interviewee has just answered, in So . .; and uses a wider range of verb forms, including for instance accusing, as well as suggesting, in constructions like So you 're really accusing them . . . . And in industrial negotiations, formulations seem restricted to forms such as (What) you 're saying is . . ., and You 're asking us . . . . The principal difference between these is the lexicalisation of the verb describing the kind of 'saying' attributed to the other. Mean occurs in psychotherapy, but not in the other settings; saying is used in each of the others but 'stronger' forms, such as accusing, predominate in news interviews and are not used in the others; and suggesting is used in news interviews and in the radio call-in program, but not in negotiations. But there are differences also in other features of the turn design package, So you 're . . . being used in news interviews, but not in the others; and On being allusive in conversation, see Schegloff, 1996.
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
307
you seem to be . . . occurs in the radio call-in program, but apparently not in the others. I think also that there may be prosodic differences between otherwise identical lexical verb forms, so that saying in radio call-in programmes has different prosodic features from saying in negotiations (on prosodic aspects of the realization of the 'same' lexical token, see Couper-Kuhlen and Selting, 1996). These varying patterns of lexicalising the verb with which a formulation is proposed (i.e., the verb of saying) are associated with the different activities in each of these settings in the following way. In psychotherapy, the patient is involved in a search for the meaning to be found in the therapist's allusive remarks or questions: the patient is endeavoring to interpret and show that she understands what the therapist is meaning to say— hence the lexical selection you mean with which the patient formulates a sense of the therapist's prior remark. In the other settings, most notably in industrial negotiations, there might be good reason to avoid any suggestion that one is having to interpret what the other is saying. A speaker's purpose in formulating what the other said is to claim a certain transparency to what they said, whereas interpretation is associated with speech that is opaque in its meaning. So in an industrial negotiation, a speaker is aiming to be able to pin on the other side this transparent sense of what they are saying (rather than having to resort to an interpretation). The more dramatic verbs to be found in news interviews, such as accusing, are associated with attempts by interviewers to inject something controversial or newsworthy into the interview: of course such a verb would be alien to psychotherapy and to industrial negotiations—in the latter case, were one side to claim that the other is accusing, this might lead not to resolution and compromise, but rather to outright breakdown. So in a very exploratory fashion, I have tried to show that we can track a particular linguistic phenomenon through its use in a range of different (institutional) settings,—here the phenomenon of formulating what the other is saying—and find that the same object is associated with different core activities in each setting. Hence the object or phenomenon is employed in different activity sequences. Furthermore, associated with the different contexts in which it occurs—and by context now, I mean the different activity sequences in which it is to be found—are patterns of different linguistic realizations of the object: for instance, the lexicalisation of the verb with which what the other is saying is formulating is different in the different settings/activity contexts. Hence if formulating is a generic practice, the devices or objects through which it is realized are shaped by the activities, and thus the settings, in which they are employed.
308
CHAPTER 17
REFERENCES Couper-Kuhlen, E. and Selting, M. (1996). Prosody in conversation: Interactional studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, K. (1986). The process of problem (re)formulation in psychotherapy. Sociology of Health and Illness, 8, 44-74. Drew, P. (1998). Comparative analysis of institutional discourse: The case of 'formulations.' in H. Lehti-Eklund (Ed.), Samtalsstudier: A Festschrift for Anne-Marie Londen (pp. 29-42). Helsinki: Forffatama. Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (1992). (Eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garfinkel, H. and Sacks, H. (1970). On the formal structures of practical actions. In J. D. McKinney and E. A. Tiryakan (Eds.), Theoretical sociology (pp. 337-366). New York: Appleton-Century Crofts. Hak, T. (1995). Ethnomethodology and the institutional order. Human Studies, 18, 109-137. Heritage, J. (1985). Analyzing news interviews: Aspects of the production of talk for an overhearing audience. In T. Van Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis (Vol. 3) (pp. 95-117). London: Academic Press. Heritage, J. and Watson, R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 123-162). New York: Irvington. Hopper, R. (1995). Studying conversational interaction in institutions, Communication Yearbook, 18, 371-380. Hutchby, I. (1996). Confrontation talk: Arguments, asymmetries and power on talk radio. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Schegloff, E. A. (1997). Confirming allusions: Toward an empirical account of action. American Journal of Sociology, 102, 161-216. Walker, E. (1994). Negotiating work. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York.
18 Conversational Socializing on Marine VHF Radio: Adapting Laughter and Other Practices to the Technology in Use1 Robert E. Sanders University at Albany, SUNY Marine VHF radios are the primary medium for communication between vessels in coastal waters and between vessels and shore facilities. 2 They are standard equipment on commercial vessels, and widely but not universally installed on recreational vessels. Unlike CB radio, marine VHF radio is not intended as a folk medium. It is used for official communications by law enforcement (the Coast Guard, marine police and harbormasters), in search and safety operations, by towing/salvage services, and commercial operations in coastal waters (drawbridge operators, port operations and traffic control). There are prescribed protocols and language—drawn from long-standing procedures for signaling at sea—for hailing other stations, repeating information, 1
I can't think of a more fitting place for this study than in a volume in honor of Robert Hopper. It's not so much because it resonates with his interest in telephone conversation, but more his broader interest in the adaptation of conversational particulars to the technological environment. I have in mind at least one project of his I know of, some relatively early work on the way persons playing pinball adjusted their turn constructional practices to accommodate the interruptions to be expected from the noises and activity of playing the game. 2 A growing number of boaters are also using cell phones for communication in coastal waters, and some recreational boaters use a cell phone exclusively. However, marine VHF radios are not becoming obsolete. The broadcast capabilities of radio make it essential for vessels in distress to call for help from anyone in the vicinity, for coordinating search and rescue operations, for making known the location of obstructions, or movements of vessels, in channels and harbors, and so on. 309
310
CHAPTER 18
acknowledging transmissions and ending them, requesting priority on a channel, prefacing messages to index their urgency, pronouncing some words and numbers ("see-lonce" for silence and "niner" for nine) and pronouncing letters when spelling ("Alpha," "Bravo" . . . "Yankee" "Zulu"), and so on. 3 And the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has designated for whom, or for what purpose, each of a marine VHF radio's approximately 55 talk-receive channels is reserved (including two channels for hailing, one for search and safety, one channel for digitized emergency broadcasts, six channels for the Coast Guard, eleven channels for port operations and traffic control, ten channels for commercial users, six channels for marinas and recreational boaters, and nine channels for connecting to a landside telephone line). However, in practice marine radios are not consistently used as the FCC intends, that is, for carrying out the business of safely operating vessels at sea and providing marine services. They are also commonly used for matters of logistics and convenience, especially by recreational boaters (contacting marinas to arrange for overnight dockage; calling water taxis for transportation ashore when moored; contacting fellow boaters about mooring together at day's end; contacting others who are fishing to exchange information about where the fish are; and so on). And sometimes, furthest from FCC intent, these radios are not used in service of marine operations at all, but as a folk medium for conversational socializing when there is no particular business at hand.
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING Because the phenomena of interest here come mainly from this genre I call "conversational socializing," and because the genre itself is of interest, it needs a brief exposition. When persons engage in conversational socializing, they talk about matters that are entertaining, or present each other with news items, commentary, and gossip about subjects or persons of mutual interest. It is definitive of such talk that it not be material to transacting "business" on any practical matter, nor for bringing about any particular result — except to have spent time together entertainingly. Use of marine VHF radios for conversational socializing is most widespread among recreational boaters, but occasionally
3
Perhaps in conjunction with the FCC having stopped requiring recreational users to have radio station licenses, a number of recreational boaters do not observe these restrictions and protocols of use (at least in the waters of Long Island Sound, and probably around the United States generally). Many have imported CB-radio jargon and protocols, and, as on CB radio, use any clear channel for transmission rather than just the ones reserved for them.
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING
311
tugboat captains engage in it while in transit between harbors or while docked waiting for a barge to be loaded or unloaded. It is while auditing conversational socializing on marine VHF radio that I observed the two practices of interest here, involving gaps and conversational discontinuities, and laughter and other affiliative responses. Although the practices I observed in that regard might occur in other media, other genres of conversation, other cultures, what is of interest here is how those phenomena reflect and have been adapted to the operational contingencies of the medium of two-way radio.
THE TECHNOLOGY There are two prominent technological differences between the telephone and two-way radios in general that seem responsible for the phenomena I examine below. First, the radio technology makes it physically impossible for more than one person at a time to occupy the floor. Anyone transmitting cannot hear (i.e., receive) others who are transmitting at the same time. Further, if two persons in a conversation speak (transmit) at the same time, they cannot tell they are doing so as long as they continue speaking. And if a person in a conversation and a third party outside that conversation transmit at the same time, only the one with the strongest or closest signal can be heard by the other(s) in the conversation. Hence, third persons outside a conversation can inadvertently "step on" (block) the transmission of someone with whom one is speaking, with neither of the speaking persons aware of it and the person(s) listening unable to intervene. Second, unlike other aural media, to make oneself heard one has to do more than just vocalize. One has to take the prior, physical steps of bringing the microphone up near one's mouth, and pressing and holding down the microphone's transmit key. This alone delays response and reduces its spontaneity. The spontaneity of responses is further reduced by being unable to make oneself heard until the other person stops transmitting. And there is a potential for further delay in responding if something occurs just then that is material to operating one's vessel, or to fishing, so that one may temporarily not have a free hand to operate the microphone even if one could otherwise have continued talking while taking action at the same time.
312
CHAPTER 18
THE DATA Because conversational socializing comprises a minority of the transmissions being made at any time on marine radio, and they can occur on any of about 40 talk-receive channels on which boaters contact each other,4 locating and recording such conversations is somewhat happenstance (barring the use of 40 receivers each on a separate channel and 40 recorders). I relied on a scanning radio: My radio completes a scan of all talk-receive channels roughly once every 3 seconds unless it comes to a channel on which someone is transmitting. When transmission on a channel is detected, scanning is suspended for 4 seconds so that the transmission can be listened to, and then scanning resumes unless it is manually stopped. Conversations thus got "found" in that way and recorded, usually after they had already begun. Further, in recording a conversation, other conversations that may have been taking place at the same time on other channels necessarily went undetected. Sometimes when I resumed scanning after a conversation had been recorded, I came upon a final fragment of another conversation that exhibited a practice in which I had become interested, too late to record it. I took notes on some of these. Hence, the methods I employed do not make it possible to estimate the relative frequency of the practices of interest here, but they occur more often than I was able to record. I should note (given Hopper's interest in gender and communication) that the great majority of speakers on marine VHF radio are men. This is probably an artifact of the extent to which men dominate boating (though women have the option: Two boats of approximately 46 on my dock are owned and operated by women). On those relatively few occasions when women use the radio, it is often as a stand-in while "the captain" is engaged in operation of their vessel. Hence, with the exception of one example in my notes, the conversations in which the phenomena of interest were exhibited were all between men. It remains to be seen whether this is incidental to the corpus or reflects a gender bias in the medium itself, and whether women would adopt different conversational practices. The transcripts of these social conversations use notation conventions developed by Jefferson (e.g., in Atkinson and Heritage, 1984), but with two slight modifications. First, gaps of less than 0.5 seconds are not hearable as 4
Although there are a total of 55 talk-receive channels on marine VHF radios, some channels are not potential sources of conversation between boaters. A few of these are now in use by civil authorities ashore and are avoided by boaters. On the nine channels dedicated to connecting with the land-based telephone system, only the land-based side of the conversation is hearable; the marine telephone company that provides this service sends out a masking signal that prevents the boater's transmission from being heard on other VHF radios.
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING
313
delays in response in this medium and were not noted: It takes at least that long for the next speaker to register that the prior transmission has ended, and to then press his or her transmit key and begin speaking. Second, the symbol "#" denotes the electronic "click" sound made at the end of transmissions when the current speaker's transmit key is released: Notating this serves as a reminder that the ends of transmissions are audible, and allows notating any occurrences of "dead air" between the speaker's last utterance and release of the transmit key. Finally, laughter was transcribed with symbols intended to more closely reflect its actual phonetic qualities, and it appears in boldface to set it apart visually from the surrounding talk, not to indicate any relatively greater loudness.
GAPS AND DISCONTINUATIONS It is not uncommon in the conversations I recorded for there to be gaps between conversational turns of 5-6 seconds and longer. Based on my own experience in the region and subcultures of the Northeastern United States, these gaps are much longer than what these same speakers would generally find tolerable in face-to-face or telephone conversations ashore. Yet on marine radio, these prolonged gaps are almost always tolerated and not oriented to as breaches, something I attribute to the operating requirements of this medium, as explained below. Persons waiting for a response often do not prompt the other at all, and if they do, it is not as quickly or directly as they might in a different medium. Moreover, the party waiting for a response is careful generally to avoid making the other person accountable for the gap. At the furthest extreme, these gaps are sometimes "terminal": The conversation just ends for lack of anyone taking a next turn, without any closing. In the following examples, gaps of 9 seconds and longer went unremarked, and ended when the next speaker finally did respond: (1) M1:
Hey: , the guys on the boat here, they invited us to go out to Hooters tonight they're so happy. # M2 : That right? They're gonna go hoot 'n holler. # M1: Yeah: , they want Ja:ck " n Cary myself, they all (want) us to go up to Hooters. # -> (9.5) M2 : Read today's Newsday? #
314
CHAPTER 18
(2) M3 :
Okay, then you must be in sight o:f me. # -> (9.7) M4 : I got a visual on Penfield reef now:.#
(3)
MS:
Can't Ginny talk ' im into: (.) goin' out to eat? # M6: Ah, I wish she would, it'd be so much nicer. # M5: We'll take 'im. (.) We'll pay for 'im, we'll do anything. # (5.2) M6 That's right, let's- let's take up a collection,= we'll seh-h-nd 'im to Alaska h- # M5 heh-heh-heh-heh # -> (19.2) M6 : How'd doctor Mike do today? #
The likely reason for the occurrence of such notable gaps and the evident respect they are given is that, as noted, the technology requires the speaker to have one free hand to hold the microphone and operate the transmit key. Having a hand free is not something one can count on from anyone currently operating a vessel or fishing. This is evident even in the one instance in my corpus when the prior speaker did directly prompt the next speaker after a gap of 6.2 seconds (Example 4 below: "Di'you copy that", i.e., did you receive my transmission). The next speaker replied by citing his current attention to fishing as a reason not only for the gap but for thereupon ending the conversation. This was accepted without protest and the conversation ended exactly then: (4)
M7:
I'll tell ya, you gotta use these circle hooks. (0.5) They're great. (0.5) You stick the rod in the rod holder, ya put the brake on: (0.5) .hh uh: ya hook (.) ninety nine percent of all y'r fish in the (lip). (0.7) Ah:: they're a son of a gun t' get ou:t, (0.5) but- ya don't gut hook many fish at all, ya get a really ( ) fish. (0.5) Works pretty nice. (0.2) °over.° (.) over. # -> (6.2) M7: -> Di'you copy that, (Dan)? (0.5) # M8: Ah:, I gotta leave now, like we gotta fish on. (0.7) Talk t'ya later. (0.2) over. #
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING M7:
315
Awright. ( 0 . 2 ) Goin' back to nine (("nine" is the standby/hailing channel; this declaration is equivalent to hanging up a telephone)). #
Long gaps were not always ended by the next speaker eventually taking a turn, as in Examples 1-3. Although it is atypical as in Example 4 to directly prompt the next speaker, same speaker sometimes resumed after a gap to prompt the other indirectly for a response. The person seeking a response after a gap begins hailing the silent vessel, as one would do in making initial contact. This implicates that it is not a matter of a response delayed too long, but of having lost contact, an accidental happenstance that warrants an effort to reestablish contact: (5) M3: M4 : M4:
->
M4:
->
M3:
Okay, then you must be in sight o:f me. # (9.7) I got a visual on Penfield reef now:. # (8.2) Alone Again, Alone Again, Happy Days. # ((a hail to the vessel "Alone Again" to answer the vessel "Happy Days")) (7.2) Alone Again, Alone Again, ya got Happy Day# (7.0) How far're you from Penfield? #
(6) M9: M9: M10: M10: (
)
M10: M10:
Nine miles 'n hour. # (4.1) (What're) you doin'? # (5.5) ( it) like Jo:hn. # (9.1) (uh) I got eight point o:ne. # ((possibly his speed)) (0.5) : (Any ideas?) # ((possibly a transmission from a third party in another conversation)) (6.7) 'Bout fifteen hunderd. # ((possible reference to RPM)) (32.2) -> (Glitterbox), whe:re are ya?
316
CHAPTER 18
Finally, as was noted, gaps sometimes were not closed at all; the conversation just stopped continuing. There are several examples of this in my corpus. A case from my notes in which the conversation does continue after a gap reveals an orientation by both parties to the potential for discontinuation after such a gap. In arranging for their boats to tie up together at anchor that night, M11 expresses the joking concern to Fl that Fl 's husband might snore too loudly: (7)
M11: M11:
-> ->
Yeah, but I dunno. Do you think we'll get any sleep? You know, Frank's snoring and all. ((7-10 second gap)) Switching back to nine. (("nine" is the standby/hai1ing
F1:
channel))
No, sorry Tom, we were just working on a comeback.
M11's announcement after the gap that he was switching to the standby/hailing channel is the equivalent of simultaneously saying goodbye and physically hanging up the telephone—it is not the same as opening up a closing where one then waits for the other to respond. That M11 did this after a notable gap displays an orientation to gaps as possibly terminal. However, F1 responded anyway (probably aware that while persons often do switch channels right when they make such announcements, they are sometimes slow to do so and may still be listening). What is important about F1's response is that she apologizes— presumably for producing a gap that it would be warranted for Ml 1 to infer was terminal. She continues by giving an account for the gap as interactionally produced, thus canceling the implicature of termination. There is thus a relatively greater tolerance for gaps during conversations on marine VHF radio, and the potential for discontinuations, than one is likely to find in conversations ashore among these same speakers. However, note that similar tolerances and potentials have been observed among Native Americans, and attributed to the communal value they give to privacy and autonomy (Basso, 1979; Scollon and Scollon, 1981). With two different accounts of the same practice— attributed to the practicalities of boating on one hand, and to Native American communal values on the other—it would be parsimonious to find a common denominator. As it happens, there is one. It seems that in both cases, if talk occurs at the same time speakers are engaged in an activity that the community of speakers gives precedence, the talk will be suspended whenever it interferes with that activity, and the resulting gaps and discontinuities tolerated. For boaters, there are certain practicalities that are given precedence over talk. Perhaps what has been observed among Native Americans arises from their
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING
317
giving most or perhaps all other concurrent activities priority over conversation, whether these are practical/material activities, or spiritual or cognitive ones. The cultural aspect of the tolerance for gaps and discontinuities, then, is not about values placed on privacy or autonomy, for example, or marine exigencies. Rather, it is about the priority that the community gives to conversation relative to specific other activities that persons can be engaged in concurrently.
LAUGHTER AND OTHER AFFILIATIVE RESPONSES In conversation generally, whether on a two-way radio or not, the presumption is that one's substantive reply to, or follow-up on, what the current speaker is saying in the moment will be withheld until it is one's turn to speak (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson, 1974). A notable exception is affiliative responses— for example, acknowledgment tokens, newsmarks, laughter—"spontaneous" responses to what is just then being said that are ordinarily produced by the listener while the current speaker still has the floor. However, in conversation on two-way radios, not only substantive but affiliative responses have to be "saved up" until one has clear air in which to transmit. The opportunity for and the spontaneity of affiliative responses is thus greatly reduced during conversational socializing on marine VHF radio. This has the apparent effect of pruning out some, and simplifying other, affiliative responses in radio conversations. In my corpus, there are few or no newsmarks, acknowledgment tokens, supportive assessments, and so on. Speakers did sometimes produce linguistically elaborated acknowledgments at the next opportunity (in this corpus primarily, I gotcha, I hear ya, I copy that and Yeah::), but they lack a functional complexity on two-way radio that they can acquire in conversation ordinarily. In other media of aural conversation, such elaborated acknowledgment tokens not only have an affiliative function but a turn coordination function. If a person produces simpler back channel acknowledgment tokens during the current speaker's turn, and then produces an elaborated form, it often implicates the speaker's readiness to take the floor just then and produce a full turn at speaking (Drummond and Hopper, 1993; Jefferson, 1993). But on two-way radio it is impossible to hearably make simpler back channel responses while the other's turn is in progress, so that producing an elaborated acknowledgment token cannot display a change of state. Besides that, if one has clear air to transmit the elaborated token and does so, one already has the floor and the issue of speakership is moot anyway. Accordingly, such acknowledgment tokens can only serve an affiliative function on two-way radio.
318
CHAPTER 18
The one affiliative response that is not pruned out or functionally simplified on marine VHF radio is laughter. At times, persons who are conversationally socializing via marine radio press down the transmit key, they transmit laughter, then end that transmission. In that case, they took the special steps needed to transmit just to make laughter heard. This in itself is evidence that speakers are capable of being "knowing" and deliberate, even calculating, about the social functionality of laughter, more so than previous analysis has revealed. Further evidence of this is presented below. Ordinarily the functionality of laughter as an affiliative response depends on its being, or being made to seem, an immediate and spontaneous response to what occasions it (Glenn, 1989, 1991/1992; Jefferson, 1979, 1984). But this is impossible to display on a two-way radio. One has to wait for clear air, then transmit, so at minimum there is an unavoidable micro-delay before laughter is heard, and a marked deliberateness about making it hearable. Ordinarily this would make laughter seem artificial.5 But laughter is produced on two-way radio anyway, moreover with the apparent presumption that it is genuine unless there is reason to think otherwise. The evidence for this is that persons laughing on marine radio sometimes take special measures to register their laughter as artificial, and conversely, sometimes take special measures to establish it as genuine when there is a circumstantial reason to doubt it. It is these phenomena that are of particular interest here. Let us posit that a laugh response on a two-way radio is presumed genuine the extent to which it has the requisite vocal qualities of genuine laughter, and is transmitted "immediately" (though not spontaneously)—that is, at the first opportunity—after it is occasioned. It is not any more difficult to produce laughter with the requisite vocal qualities on two-way radio than any other medium, especially if it actually is genuine. The relative immediacy of a laugh response will be enhanced the extent to which the current speaker ends his transmission just when laughter is occasioned, and this is common. In example 8 (from the same excerpt as example 3), there is actually a gap of a few l0ths of a second between M6's occasioning remark and laugh particles, and M5's laugh response, but my own experience is that such gaps do not register as a delay in response when one is accustomed to the mechanics of two-way radio:
5
The one exception would be if laughter were delayed because the person did not immediately "get it." But when this happens, there is usually a marked display of "getting it" when the delayed laughter begins, even verbalizations such as "Oh:: I:::: get it", that function to cancel any implicature that the delayed laughter is artificial. Although there is no obvious reason why delays for that reason would not occur (or be feigned) over marine radio as in other aural media, and be marked in that way, this did not occur in my corpus.
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING
319
(8) M5: M6: M5: M6: M5:
Can't Ginny talk ' im into: (.) goin' out to eat? # Ah, I wish she would, it'd be so much nicer. # We'll take 'im. (.) We'll pay for 'im, we'll do anything. # (5.2) That's right, let's- let's take up a collection,= we'll seh-h-nd ' im to Alaska h- # heh-heh-heh-heh #
However, it was not unusual that when the current speaker ended transmission as soon as he or she occasioned laughter, there was a marked delay before the laugh response was transmitted, sometimes several seconds in duration. In itself, in any other medium, this would mark the laughter as artificial. Although extra effort could be made to establish laughter as being genuine anyway, as we see in examples 12 and 13 below, no such effort was made in the following examples, 9 and 10, despite a notable gap between the occasioning utterance and the laughter in response. Of course it is possible that in these instances the persons responding did not care whether their laughter seemed genuine or not. But then why take the trouble to transmit it? The alternative is to suppose that delays in transmission on marine radio are accepted as potentially unavoidable, canceling the implicature that delayed laughter is artificial. (9) M12 M12 M13 M12 M12 M13
(in) Anthony. # (1.5) Come in Anthony.# (1.5) Chuck- pa:1, how are ya? # (1.5) That voice. # (1.5) I missed that voice. # (1.2) hah-hah-hah-hah #
(10) M14:
M15:
It doesn't work that way. (0.2) Set the anchor, (.) two guys on top, (.) pull against the anchor, it works.# (5.2) heh-heh-heh #
In contrast, there were instances when active steps were taken to mark transmitted laughter as artificial. In general, laughter can be made to seem
320
CHAPTER 18
artificial (not genuine, insincere) by positioning it so that it is hearably delayed or withheld, and/or by giving it vocal qualities that are not "natural." Of course, delaying or withholding laughter is not distinguishable on two-way radio from being unable to immediately transmit it, and so persons have to rely on vocal quality alone to register laughter as artificial. In example 8, M17 produced laughter that was too loud and intense a response to what occasioned it, his final laugh particle was artificially elongated, and he gave the laughter a guttural quality reminiscent of the villain's laugh in an old movie: (11) M16: M17: Ml6:
M17: ->
Hey (Al), whaddya suppose he's doin' over there? (0.5) # (2.1) Probably (checkin' on our) maneuvers. # (1.5) Yeah::. That's okay:, we know how t' take care o' that, right pal? # (3.5) *YEAH: : : : . HEH-HEH-HEH; ;;;;;;;;:;;:*#
Conversely, one does occasionally find that speakers take steps to establish their laughter as genuine. In general, the laugher was marked as genuine by means of transmitting it twice, separated by an interval. In the instances when this happened, there was reason to doubt that the laughing person would have been genuinely amused by what occasioned the laughter. In example 12 M18's laughter could potentially be regarded as insincere because it came in the context of a mild disagreement, where it expressed M18's affiliation with Ml9 on something that Ml8 had been disputing. In their conversation, Ml8 and Ml9, apparently commercial fishermen or lobstermen, disagreed whether a supplier of theirs treated customers badly because of the business pressures involved (as Ml8 contended) or because he was a hateful person in his own right (as M19 contended). After M19 finds a pithy way to make his point that it was this person's intrinsic qualities that made him hateful, not the business context, Ml8 responds with laughter even though he presumably disagrees. Note that he transmits laughter twice in two contiguous transmissions separated by a gap of 4.2 seconds, even though nothing new (interactively) occurred in that interval to occasion the second transmission. (12) M18:
Well, don't forget, too, I mean, uh:::, ya know .hhh 'n always sitting there trying to collect money from thirty different guys, 'n uh::: you take any thirty guys ' s gonna be: : .hh a certain
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING
321
amount of 'em that'a al:ways pay their bill on time='n there's gonna be a certain amoun:t (v 'em y'always gonna have t' chase down:: 'n look for. .hhh Ya know, 'n I think that's ((mic noise)) where we had problems. # (2.2) Ml 9: Was always the same Tguys. # (0.5) M18: W ha-ha yeah:: h-h- ya know, I:: -hhh I:: I'm not- pickin' out any names or anything like that, but I mean that's just the rule of thumb, ya know: .hhh ya know ya' (never) gonna have thirty people all make their payments on the exact same time or be prompt.= There's always ((noise)) fusing, ya know, .hhh 'n I think that's where a lot of problems used to stem from, .hhh 'N I'm sure Pete had to do that with some of us too, but- ya know, (.) now he doesn't have to worry about as many. # (2.5) M19: ( ), when he- (was/noise) at Bayshore we hated him. (0.2) I mean(.) we haven't changed. We still hate him at (Jethrey's). # (0.7) M18:-> hu-hu-hu yeah-h-h- gotchah-h- # (4.2) M18:-> eh: heh-heh- #
By transmitting his laughter twice, Ml8 gives the appearance of finding M19's quip so funny that he actually sustained laughter during the interval between his two transmissions (or at least the appearance that on reflection he had found M19's quip funny again and resumed laughing). He thereby marks his first laugh response as genuine by transmitting the second one. In the instance that follows, M20 and M21 are tugboat captains who evidently have known each other for a time, but have been out of touch for several years. In the course of catching up on personal news, M21 reports that he has a young daughter now. He then complains that continuing to have children would leave him without a seat at the dinner table, and M20 comments that he should therefore not have more children. At that juncture, a potentially delicate matter is introduced. I take M21's response as an indirect disclosure that he had a vasectomy ("(I) better not [have more children]. (0.2) I'll be after that doctor with a baseball ba:t."). M20 responds with laughter and then moves to closing. A second laugh particle is transmitted after they have closed, though I could not identify who produced it.
322
CHAPTER 18
(13) M20: M21:
M20: M21: M20: M21:
M20:
M21:
M20: ( )
Ho::ly smoke, I haven't seen you in awhile. # Yeah, I got two and a half, (almost) three year old daughter,=she'11 be three in uh: : (0.5) (just) before Christmas. (0.5) (little Emma). (#) ((1.5/garbled utterance, either a continued transmission by M21 or a transmission from some third party, ending with rising inflection)). Su:re! # (0.5/open mic) ( ), just screw yourself right out of a seat at the table ya keep goin'. # (Then) don't have no mo:re. # (I) better not. (0.2) I'll be after that doctor with a baseball ba:t. # (0.5) WA- ha-ha- -hhh I:: gotcha. (Alright there, Rod), (.) .hh you have a good trip back in there. # Yah, okay Steve, we'll be talkin' to ya. = C (smiley voice)) Take Tca::re, (keep your sanity with the cattle). ((Tugboat captains sometimes refer to pleasure boats or boaters as cattle, perhaps because they dot the landscape and are slow to move out of the way)) (0.5) We'll talk to ya. # Aw:right.# (2.2) :-> heh-heh (0.2) #
Of interest here is the second laughter token in the transcript's last line, transmitted after they closed. No matter which of them transmitted it, that token has a similar functionality. The only evident laughable is M21's allusion to his vasectomy, where M20 did laugh. Hence, given that that second laugh particle was transmitted long after it was occasioned, it displays sustained amusement, as in the prior example. If it was M20 who produced the laughter, then like Ml 8 in example 12, he affirmed the genuineness of his laughter about a matter he might have not found amusing. However, if it was M21 who transmitted that laughter, it could not mark previous laughter as genuine because he had not previously laughed (aside from a smiley voice in closing). But it would affirm that he had alluded to his vasectomy as a joking and not a delicate matter, and underscore his own residual amusement and good feeling about the conversation. The
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING
323
production of that laughter might also have dispelled any doubts on M20's part about the appropriateness of his laughter or whether he had given offense.
CONCLUSION The operational differences between the telephone and two-way radio foster the distinctive effect examined here that the radio technology has on conversational practices. But marine VHF radio is also distinct from the telephone functionally, and is a source of data of a kind not readily available otherwise. The difference between them makes conversational socializing on marine radio different in important ways from conversational socializing on the telephone. Of course, I am basing this comparison on personal experience coupled with much of the published data on telephone calls, and the distinctions I am making involve general tendencies, not absolutes. First, when there is a business reason for telephoning someone, talk on other matters besides the reason for call may also take place, including conversational socializing. On marine VHF radio, however, the two functions are strictly segregated. When there is a business reason for making contact, the calling party, and often all parties, are engaged just then in the operation of a vessel or a marine service. There is no room for conversational socializing. When there is conversational socializing, conversely, it is when there is no practical business for either party to address. In my corpus, there is only one clear exception. A conversation between a tugboat captain at the dock and the company dispatcher late at night started with the business of checking the schedule, and then they engaged in conversational socializing. Besides that, infrequently, boaters may conclude talk on non-essential business—such as checking time of arrival with another boater—with a quip and then a closing, and to that small degree conversational socializing may also take place. We see this in example 7, where, after arranging to tie their boats up together at anchor, Ml 1 makes a joke about F1's husband's snoring. But note how relatively quick M11 was to infer that in not getting an immediate response to his quip, the conversation was over. Perhaps this reflects a standing presumption that business-related radio traffic will end when business is concluded, and excludes conversational socializing. Second, when telephone calls are made, it is to a particular person who is being sought out, whom the dial-up system allows one to seek out specifically. Hence, even when a telephone call is made solely for the purpose of conversational socializing, it is for the purpose of socializing with that particular person, and to that extent the socializing may have a functional aspect (e.g., it
324
CHAPTER 18
discharges an obligation to stay in contact, or strengthens or affirms the relational tie, or indirectly checks on the well-being of the other person or the relationship). In contrast, when persons make contact on marine VHF radio and engage in conversational socializing, it is usually serendipitous—between persons who know each other who happen to be on their boats at the same time. Occasionally they "bump into" each other when one hears the other transmitting to some third party and makes contact. More often, boaters do actively seek contact with particular others, but not necessarily because it is that person in particular with whom they want to do conversational socializing. Persons may seek to contact some specific person just because they know that that person is boating just then and available, and they want to engage in conversational socializing with someone. One sometimes hears a boater hail first one boat, then another, until someone he knows answers. This can also happen on the telephone, of course, but unlike telephone callers, recreational boaters can count on the persons who answer their call to be at leisure (at least, if the other person is at the dock, or in open water in good weather), whereas persons making phone calls have no basis for anticipating the other's availability for conversational socializing. Conversational socializing that takes place in serendipitous encounters is likely to exhibit aspects of conversation we would not otherwise see, not even in conversational socializing with others who are specifically sought out for the purpose. This is because persons engaged in serendipitous conversational socializing potentially face two problems unique to that genre of social interaction. First, in business-related or socially functional conversation, the topics that are available or obligatory to talk about are known in advance. But in serendipitous conversational socializing, topics are not given in advance. Topics have to be found in the moment that both persons would find interesting, that they would be able or willing to talk about, and that would be safe, i.e., not usher in anything serious or business-related. Even when there are matters to talk about from a prior encounter, there is no assurance that they would be of interest or would be safe in the present encounter. Hence, there is likely to be a process of proffering, assessing, and pursuing or discarding topics in serendipitous conversational socializing one will not find in other genres. Second, in business-related or socially functional conversation, the stance that each speaker will take regarding the topic(s) at hand can be anticipated (serious or amused, pro or con, engaged or detached) — if not on the basis of personal knowledge of the other, then on the basis of role-stereotypes. But in serendipitous conversational socializing, the stance that each speaker has toward the topic at hand is contingent and emergent, not given in advance. Even the person speaking cannot fully anticipate his or her stance towards the topic at
CONVERSATIONAL SOCIALIZING
325
hand, because the matters that topic will range over for the other(s) involved are not fixed. Hence, more has to be done—in phrasing, vocal qualities, affiliative responses, and so on—to display (or conceal) one's stance during serendipitous conversational socializing than in other genres of social interaction. It is arguably something that should concern us that the stuff of conversation analysis is mainly agenda-driven conversations, especially phone conversations when there is a reason-for-call and business-related conversations in institutional settings, as opposed to serendipitous conversational socializing. This is understandable. It is a genre to which it is hard to reliably gain access, let alone record. Yet such conversations, with their structural fluidity, their shifts from the serious to the playful and back, their potential for crab-like progress or no progress at all, potentially have much to reveal about how conversation works—its coherence and coordination—and language and social interaction more broadly. I do not claim that serendipitous conversational socializing only takes place on marine radio. It also happens when acquaintances or friends run into each other on a bus, at the market, and so on; or when persons go to a restaurant or tavern where they expect to find acquaintances, any acquaintance, with whom they can socialize. But as a site of conversational socializing, it is more accessible on marine radio. Hence, marine radio is a medium that should be of interest for more than the effect of its operational peculiarities on conversational practices.
REFERENCES Atkinson, J. M., & Heritage, J. (Eds.) (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Basso, K. (1979). Portraits of "the Whiteman": Linguistic play and cultural symbols among the Western Apache. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drummond, K. & Hopper, R. (1993). Back channels revisited: Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 157-177. Glenn, P. J. (1989). Initiating shared laughter in multi-party conversations. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 127-149. Glenn, P. J. (1991/92). Current speaker initiation of two-party shared laughter. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 25, 139-162. Jefferson, G. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance/declination. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 79-96). New York: Irvington.
326
CHAPTER 18
Jefferson, G. (1984). On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 346-369). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, G. (1993). Caveat speaker: Preliminary notes on recipient topic-shift implicature. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 1-30. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696-735. Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. B. K. (1981). Narrative, literacy, and face in interethnic communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
19 Law Enforcement and Community Policing: An Intergroup Communication Approach Jennifer L. Molloy University of California, Santa Barbara Howard Giles University of California, Santa Barbara On August 14, 1998, ABC news reported the story of a Los Angeles police officer, shot through the head as he sat in his patrol car. Wearing a uniform showing his identity as a police officer was his only crime and, in certain circles, killing a cop earns one much envied status. But to kill a police officer, one must also kill the other social identities attached to the human being wearing the uniform (e.g., son, husband, father, basketball fan, etc). Social identity theory (see Tajfel & Turner, 1986) suggests that people relate primarily to one another in terms of their memberships in different social groups rather than as unique individuals. This example is but one of many involving charged police/citizen interactions that are principally "intergroup" and communicative in nature. However, our discipline has not been involved much in police/citizen relations, police training (see, however, Giles, in press; Gundersen & Hopper, 1984; Perlmurter, 2000), or law enforcement/community policies. In tandem, research and thinking in police science has rarely drawn on communication theory and research to assist its insights and approaches. Intergroup theories of communication offer a unique and useful perspective to aid in our understanding of the complex psychological and communicative dynamics of police/citizen relations that can lead to strained relations between these groups that can end in violence and even death. Efforts to improve police/citizen relations can already be seen in community-oriented 327
328
CHAPTER 19
policing (COP) programs such as foot patrols, public relations campaigns, ministations, and door-to-door visits by the police. Unfortunately, although some efforts have been made to utilize theory to better understand COP and its implementation (see Greene & Taylor, 1988; Guarino-Ghezzi, 1994), most empirical investigations are hindered by a lack of relevant theory (see Yates & Pillai, 1996). In this brief chapter, we address police/citizen relations and COP in light of the insights that intergroup theories of communication can provide. Toward this end, we first address the importance of communication in police/citizen encounters and explore the somewhat conflicting social roles inherent in being a police officer, and how this can contribute to citizens' images of the police (both positive and negative). Then, we examine some of the intergroup dynamics currently challenging effective COP development and implementation. Finally, intergroup theories of communication, combined with a discussion of the stigma associated with policing, are utilized in order to better understand police/citizen relations and the effectiveness of COP programs.
COMMUNICATION AND POLICE ROLES When reference to theory is made in COP research, attention to the significance of communication issues in COP is all but ignored. This oversight is ironic given that Womack and Finley (1986) viewed communication as "the central, most important commodity that the officer has at his [or her] disposal" (p. 14). Patrol officers serve as mediators and diffusers of potentially volatile interactions between citizens in our community. In their research, Sykes and Brent (1983) found that conflicts between citizens tended toward confrontation or reassertion (of a position) rather than cooperation. They noted that, because "these civilians are unable to limit their conflict and come to some resolution, [police] intervention seems necessary" (p. 188). In effect, we often call on the police when efforts at communicating, with neighbors and spouses, for example, have failed or when we have not even bothered to communicate in the first place. The safety concerns inherent in officer/citizen interactions are further complicated, according to Thompson (1983), by the fact that officers, on a daily basis, deal with "numerous people whose backgrounds, needs, points of view, and prejudices vary dramatically, moment to moment . . ." (p. 9). The very different personalities that officers encounter necessitate that they adapt their style of communication to those of citizens, all while striving to address each situation. In actuality, effective communication, rather than brute force, is the best weapon officers have to ensure the safety of civilians, as well as their own. In fact, one of the implicit criteria for hiring officers today is the latters' codeswitching skills in being able to shift, sensitively and strategically, back and forth
LAW ENFORCEMENT
329
through their accommodative-nonaccornmodative gears (see Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991). The neglect of communication theory and research in the study of COP holds potentially serious implications for officer training in COP and the implementation of COP in various communities worldwide (see Kidd & Braziel, 1999). The potential consequences could not only include perpetuating people's negative attitudes toward the police, but also potentially place strain on officer/departmental relations, officer/citizen relations, and police/community relations, thereby putting officers and civilians in psychological or physical harm's way. Further complicating the picture are the seemingly conflicting roles police play in society. The advent of COP revealed a new era in attempting to redefine (the nondefined) and improve the police role and image. COP revealed a public belief that crime prevention was at the heart of the police role. That said, Bayley (1994) attributed this myth: That the police are not able to prevent crime should not come as a big surprise to thoughtful people. It is generally understood that social conditions outside the control of the police, as well as outside the control of the criminal justice system as a whole, determine crime levels in communities. In a phrase police often use, they see themselves as a "band-aid on cancer" (p. 10).
Klockars (1985) suggested that the belief that police should be able to do something (e.g., prevent crime) inaccurately defines them in terms of end results rather than means. He suggested that the ability to use coercive force is the universal and distinguishing means of policing in that: [No] police anywhere has ever existed, nor is it possible to conceive of a genuine police ever existing, that does not claim the right to compel other people forcibly to do something. If it did not claim such a right, it would not be a police (pp. 9-10).
In his final analysis, Klockars defines the police as ". . . institutions or individuals given the general right to use coercive force by the state within the state's domestic territory" (p. 12). This useful definition (which we revisit later) reveals how power in policing makes them both a valued and devalued social group. Reiss (1967) described this as a double-bind situation, stating that citizens are "skeptical, if not distrustful, of police power, yet they see police power as the most obvious solution to their problem" (p. 36). In other words, the power woven into the fabric of police identity is simultaneously desired by, and a source of concern to, citizens. The fact that police have this power opens up the possibility for it to be abused, thus symbolizing the potential for police
330
CHAPTER 19
violence even toward law-abiding citizens (Lawrence, 2000; Ross, 2000). Such fears can foster a reluctance for civilians to partake in seemingly wellintentioned COP programs. Grinc (1994) noted that: . . . community policing projects are usually initiated [in] typically poor, disorganized areas of the city where residents have for generations borne the brunt of police abuses. The apparent unwillingness of residents to involve themselves with the police may thus be less a product of apathy than of fear and suspicion grounded in their largely negative experiences with police in the past (p. 451).
Ironically, given a prior metaphor, COP may seem to citizens like, in rum, an insignificant band-aid covering a deep and infectious wound. Reciprocally, any citizens' resistance to COP can serve to damage police attitudes toward community members. The obstacle of COP overcoming historic wounds within communities fearful of the police illustrates but one intergroup issue hindering the development and implementation of effective COP programs.
INTERGROUP ISSUES CURRENTLY AFFECTING COP We see such precursors to strain in police/community relations in Lurigio and Skogan's (1994) work on staff perceptions of COP, which claims that "to be successful, community policing initiatives must be compatible with the existing culture and organizational climate in a department and with the basic concerns and needs of police personnel" (p. 329). Moreover, COP efforts can sometimes be viewed as the "cart-before-the horse" phenomenon because programs have been implemented "without first creating the organizational environment to sustain them on a large scale" (Rosenbaum, Yeh, & Wilkinson, 1994, p. 332). However, Lurigio and Skogan also noted that officers can and do experience resentment when community members are consulted before they are about COP "which touches a deep and sensitive nerve in the police culture" (p. 316). This is not to say that COP cannot have beneficial effects on officers by means of increased job satisfaction (see Rosenbaum & Lurigio, 1994; Wycoff & Skogan, 1993), and officers felt improved relations with community members (see McElroy, Cosgrove, & Sadd, 1993; Sadd & Grinc, 1993; Wycoff, 1988). However, even police administrators and officers initially excited about COP can meet with unaccommodating citizens out in the field, thus leading them to feel hostile toward community members unwilling to "better their own lives" by partaking in COP activities (Grinc, 1994). Clearly, police and civilians need a better understanding of each other's social identities in the process of COP instigation and development. After all, if officers do not believe in COP, why should civilians? Lurigio and Skogan (1994) also found that "minority officers
LAW ENFORCEMENT
331
(especially African Americans), older officers, and higher-ranking officers expressed more favorable attitudes toward community policing in Chicago" (p. 329). This finding raises some interesting notions about the influence of various social identities within the police force on attitudes toward COP. Just as the implementation of COP may strain intradepartmental relations by disrupting the status quo, so too may it damage relations between groups in the community (who, otherwise, could benefit from its enactment). As Grinc (1994) noted, "that people live in the same ecological space and possess the same racial and class backgrounds is by no means an indication that they define values and problems in the same way" (p. 461). He further suggested that more heterogeneous community populations make the task of assessing community values and the perceptions of problems all the more difficult for police departments shifting to COP programs. Although more contact-based approaches to policing have become popular recently (see Grinc, 1994; Rosenbaum & Lurigio, 1994), current research shows no guarantees that residents will actively involve themselves in the process. However, despite COP's definitional ambiguities, few would argue that community involvement is central to the success of COP. Without clear operational definitions of COP from those developing and implementing the programs, though, many citizens are also unaware of what COP means, and what roles they can play in it. Even citizens highly supportive of the police and their efforts are restricted from active involvement without such clarity. Ironically, such an oversight could serve to strain police/community relations during efforts to strengthen them through COP.
THEORIES OF INTERGROUP CONTACT AND SOCIAL IDENTITY At all levels, then, communication research and theory is virtually invisible in the COP literature. We will now draw on intergroup communication theory with the conviction that it can contribute to a much fuller and pragmatic understanding of COP effectiveness, from the interpersonal to the organizational level. To be truly effective, COP must improve citizens' attitudes not only toward local officers, but law enforcement in general. Interestingly, COP programs typically reveal an unreferenced reliance on encouraging very favorable contact between officers and civilians. This notion plays off traditional intergroup contact theory (see Hewstone & Brown, 1986), which suggests that positive interpersonal contact between members of groups can lead to liking between the individuals involved (e.g., having officers be plain-clothed and talking about their own personal lives as citizens, too). COP implementers assume and trust that
332
CHAPTER 19
citizens' newly acquired positive feelings toward COP officers will carry over to all officers in their department. However, to be truly effective in changing attitudes toward "the police" per se, positive contact must be combined with citizens' beliefs that the target officers are typical representatives of the social category, "police." Otherwise, citizens can either discount such contacts as individual exceptions or confine them to a unique subcategory while leaving their previous attitudes toward officers, in general, intact (see Hewstone, Hopkins, & Routh, 1992). Indeed, the need to build strong personal relations between civilians and officers (so-called "high interindividual contact") while not underplaying or camouflaging the fact that two distinct groups with their own codes and values are actually engaging each other ("high intergroup contact"; see Tajfel & Turner, 1986) is often neglected in the COP literature. Contact (and hence communication) between groups can then bring both our personal and our social identities into play. The essence of Tajfel and Turner's (1986) social identity theory (SIT) suggests that we define ourselves in terms of our membership in various social groups. These groups of ours can range from being a police officer, female, Asian American, gay, and so on. The authors argued that we constantly strive to feel good about our membership in our social groups in order to maintain a positive self-image. In effect, we feel good about ourselves when we have achieved a positive group identity. Knowing whether these social identities are positive or not depends on where our particular social groups stand in comparison to other social groups in society. Negatively stereotyping other groups (i.e., through the use of taunts and slurs) is a not infrequent way in which people can feel good about their own group membership and obtain a feeling of positive distinctiveness. Such differentiation between self and others is readily apparent in an examination of the stigma sometimes associated with policing (see later). An important feature of SIT is the so-called "social creativity strategies" that members adopt in order to assume a more positive identity (e.g., by adopting more positive group labels, developing new, valued art forms including dance and music). A further set of "social competition" strategies are invoked, under certain psychological conditions, when a group vocally, and sometimes with civil actions, questions the status and power of another, more dominant, outgroup. The communicative parameters of the processes involved have been applied to a number of different intergroup settings, such as between: the genders (Boggs & Giles, 1999); ethnic groups (Giles, 1979); persons with and without physical disabilities (Fox & Giles, 1996); and the generations (Harwood, Giles, & Ryan, 1995) as well as in critically examining training and social policies designed to engender healthy intergroup contact (e.g., Cargile & Giles, 1996; Fox & Giles, 1993).
LAW ENFORCEMENT
333
In all of these, moves to nonaccommodate to, or diverge from, the speech and nonverbal styles of outgroup members are fundamental strategies of social differentiation by people in search of a sustained or enhanced positive identity. To date, however, intergroup communication theory has not been utilized with regard to police/citizen relations where the creation of communicative distances from both parties are rationale tactics leading to misattribution, miscommunication, or even worse. With national attention being brought to this issue by former President Clinton and a number of high-profile cases involving the charge of police brutality, a clear need exists for a better theoretical understanding of how to best improve police/citizen relations and communication through COP. Returning to SIT, COP efforts are socially creative because they demonstrate an innovative repackaging of the police image. Examples also come in the form of having law enforcement refer to themselves as "peace" officers and using negative terms to their advantage (as in adopting the negative slur for an officer, "pig," and changing the meaning with the acronym, PrideIntegrity-Guts). Indeed, Weatheritt (1988) noted that the nebulously defined COP was actually used by British police to raise their public image without making substantive behavioral or organizational changes. Although the typical goals of COP appear to be legitimate and admirable, COP is an attempt, in effect, to make policing palatable to the public by challenging negative media images and stereotypes about the police. Indeed, much of citizens' (oftentimes negative) attitudes toward the police (see Ennis, 1967; Reiss, 1967; White & Menke, 1982) are not based on personal experience (e.g., with COP programs, traffic stops) but, instead, may be informed substantially by media influences (Perlmutter, 2000). However, to combat negative media images of the police is not an easy task. According to Van den Bulck (1998), "in almost every movie or television series—be they serious or comic, action oriented or romantic, mainstream or alternative—there is at least one cop" (p. 1). Furthermore, stereotypical images of the police characteristic of the U.S. media are exported throughout the world. In fact, Arcuri (1977) argued that even television shows that help the police image by portraying officers as competent, well trained, dedicated, and professional— qualities that are valued in our culture—"may, ironically, lead the public to expect too much" (p. 237). Combined with the taunts and slurs often lobbied at the police, all of this makes it difficult for officers to be treated fairly in society, a characteristic shared by stigmatized, and stigmatizable, groups.
334
CHAPTER 19
STIGMA AND POLICING As with taunts and slurs, the stigma often associated with policing further reveals the dynamic of differentiation (distinguishing "us" from "them") inherent in SIT. Goffman (1963) used the term stigma to refer to an attribute of an individual that is tarnishing in a highly discrediting way. The possession of such an attribute reduces that individual in the eyes of the nonstigmatized "from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one" (p. 3). A "master status" stigma, then, is all-consuming in the eyes of others and nearly eradicates the possibility that this stigmatized person will be viewed as a unique individual who merely happens to have a devalued attribute. Crocker, Major, and Steele (1998) made the important point that the devaluation of a particular social identity resides not in the actual stigmatized attribute one possesses, but in the possession of that attribute in a particular social setting. This reasoning opens the door for the possibility that anyone may be stigmatized depending on the social context, including those in a position of power. Unlike being a member of a stigmatized group, being a member of an outgroup in and of itself is not sufficient to indicate societal oppression or make clear one's place in the social hierarchy. Although Crocker and Major (1989) did note similarities between ingroup-outgroup and stigmatized-nonstigmatized group interactions, they are quick to mention that "stigmatized groups are devalued not only by specific ingroups, but by the broader society or culture" (p. 609). The advent of COP was based on recognition of a societal negativity felt toward officers and an acceptance that "coercive force" needed to be publicly accountable, and should, wherever possible, be balanced by, or even give way to, creative and joint problem solving with the community it serves and of which it is a part. However, being a member of a profession such as law enforcement challenges the assumption of a societal consensus of devaluation with respect to stigmatized groups in general. As an outgroup, the police can at times be both revered and despised depending on the situation and the social identities of those interacting with these officers. The fact that officers can be hailed as valued heroes or frowned upon as evil-doers reveals a dimension of social status attainment unlike that of typically stigmatized groups. Ironically, having power both separates the police from typically stigmatized groups and helps make them one. Furthermore, the perceived controllability of stigmatizing marks also play a role in classifying the police as stigmatized. According to Jones et al. (1984): [Many scholars] concerned with stigma hold that the afflicted person's role in producing the mark is an important influence in the
LAW ENFORCEMENT
335
stigmatizing process...[and] that a marked individual is treated better when he or she is judged not to be responsible for the condition (pp. 56-57).
The fact that people choose to go into law enforcement—with the ease of putting on or taking off their uniforms reflecting the voluntary nature of this identity— demonstrates the likelihood that citizens who do stigmatize law enforcement may judge them more harshly. This increased degree of felt responsibility for the creation of the mark runs counter to Goffman's (1963) first type of stigma, abominations of the body. Because having a physical deformity usually stems from a genetic anomaly, such people are often treated more sympathetically than those believed to have some control over it. However, because Jones et al. believed that those who can conceal their stigmatizing mark will do so, uniforms—a major form of nonverbal communication (Gundersen & Hopper, 1984)—practically become abominations of the body due to the negative attitudes that can be triggered in citizens simply by seeing an officer on duty. Indeed, the example of the slain officer at the opening of this chapter shows this to be the case. The desire to go into law enforcement may be viewed by many as being most akin to the second of Goffman's (1963) three types of stigma, blemishes of individual character, which includes supposed character flaws such as being weak-willed, domineering, or rigid in one's beliefs. Having any of these traits suggest that one could control them if only one tried. With respect to law enforcement, a commonly held belief is that those with an authoritarian personality are more prone to go into law enforcement. Although this perception could stem from the legal and weaponry powers accorded them, they contribute to construing law enforcement as a stigmatized group when viewed through the lens of Goffman's third type, tribal stigmas. Although Goffman (1963) claimed that tribal stigmas are explicitly related to race, nation, and religion (rather than law enforcement), he did argue that this type of stigma "can be transmitted through lineages and equally contaminate all members of a family" (p. 4). The notion of passing down a tribal stigma makes sense with respect to law enforcement when the history of their power is taken into account. For instance, before the Civil Rights Act (1964), officers enforced seemingly now unethical and immoral laws of racial segregation, thereby helping to create and reinforce negative public attitudes toward the police. All this makes law enforcement similar to, yet different from, an oppressed group. Officers have been thought of as oppressor. One example comes from an NBC television miniseries, The 60s, in which two AfricanAmerican men try to convince a peer to join the Black Panthers in the midst of a street riot. One of them says, "We don't blame you if you're scared. Every time a black man tries to show his pride, The Pig takes him down" (February 8,
336
CHAPTER 19
1999). This vividly illustrates that, at least at this point in time, law enforcement was viewed by some members of stigmatized (and nonstigmatized) groups an instrument of societal oppression. This "shoot the messenger" type tribal stigma is still evident today. George Carlin, in his HBO Comedy Special suggested—to raves of cheers from the audience—that, "They oughta have two new requirements for being on the police [force]: intelligence and decency. You never can tell, it might just work, it certainly hasn't been tried yet" (February 1999). Although just one example, this reflects both current and decades-old notions about law enforcement acting inappropriately, irresponsibly, and brutally. Having been perceived as agents of oppression through both tribal and blemishes of character stigmatization, officers have become, to some degree, boomerang recipients of oppression themselves. COP reflects an attempt by police to retool their public image. Although they have power, this means little without widespread community support. In fact, instances of perceived police brutality have called police power into question, suggesting that social competition, the final stage in SIT, may start to unravel more traditional methods of policing. For example, although four White police officers were cleared of any wrong doing in their shooting of a 20year-old African-American woman (December, 1998), numerous members of the African-American community challenged the court's findings through public outcries and protest marches. Long-standing racial and police/citizen divides are further strained by a lack of public understanding for police action. Indeed, a large-scale police presence and zero tolerance for even seemingly inconsequential misdemeanors (e.g., jaywalking) on festive, family occasions— where gang violence in previous years had been intolerably acute—are not only historically-misunderstood by young people, but any convincing rationale for it has been under-disclosed to the community by the police via the media. And, although the police assisted in desegregating the public school system in the 1960s, public questions concerning racism in policing today seem almost natural given the legal and weaponry power available to the police.
EPILOGUE The complexities of police/citizen relations suggest that COP programs face many challenging obstacles that must be addressed and overcome before such programs can be very effective and truly change negative public attitudes toward the police and police practices. The communication inherent in police/citizen encounters dictates the need for more theory-based research concerning the development, implementation, and evaluation of COP programs. The use of intergroup communication theories in our understanding of COP and officer/citizen relations becomes all the more important given media depictions
LAW ENFORCEMENT
337
of the police, the stigma associated with policing, and the conflicting attitudes toward the police due to their controversial legal power. It is our believe that intergroup theories of communication such as intergroup contact and social identity theory (as well as communication accommodation theory; see Giles et al., 1991) can aid the COP process at all levels by providing predictive and explanatory power. Given spatial constraints here, only a flavor of the implications of the aforementioned theoretical positions, as they apply to COP, can be explicated, and they include: 1) A blend of high intergroup plus high interindividual contact between officers and citizens is most conducive to changing civilians' attitudes toward law enforcement in general. 2) An awareness of each other's social identities can aid departmental and community members alike in understanding and predicting their relationships, within and between their groups, with respect to COP implementation and development. 3) The kinds of accommodative strategies adopted by these groups in their intergroup encounters are critical if COP is to be effective. Clearly, this intergroup arena, in turn, holds many unique possibilities for testing the tenets of a range of intercultural and intergroup models. COP is in many ways a conceptual enigma. However, the definitional flexibility of COP allows us, as communication scholars, to hone in on and study its various dimensions. This knowledge would allow the developers and implementers of COP programs to fully utilize the aspects of COP that work. Negative attitudes toward law enforcement, stereotypes, media images, and perceived power differences between officers and citizens may all serve to undermine COP efforts. Departmental, police/community, and community divisions can erupt from a lack of understanding of just what COP is intended to accomplish and just who is responsible for its success. Taking into account intergroup communication dynamics allows for a fuller understanding of what happens before, during, and after COP implementation. Simply put, however, this chapter is a call to scholarly arms for communication theorists and researchers to contribute their much needed expertise to the timely area of communication and law enforcement (Giles, in press).
REFERENCES Arcun, A. F. (1977). You can't take fingerprints off water: Police officers' views toward "cop" television shows. Human Relations, 30, 237-247.
338
CHAPTER 19
Bayley, D. H. (1994). Police for the future. New York: Oxford University Press. Boggs, C, & Giles, H. (1999). "The canary in the cage": The nonaccommodation cycle in the gendered workplace. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 22, 223-245. Cargile, A., & Giles, H. (1996). Intercultural communication training: A critical review and new theoretical perspective. Communication Yearbook, 19, 385-423. Crocker, J., & Major, B. (1989). Social stigma and self-esteem: The selfprotective properties of stigma. Psychological Review, 96, 608—630. Crocker, J., Major, B.. & Steele, C. (1998). Social stigma. In D. Gilbert, L. Gardner, & S. Fiske (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology 4th Ed. (pp. 504-553). McGraw Hill. Ennis, P. H. (1967). Criminal victimization in the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Fox, S., & Giles, H. (1993). Accommodating intergenerational contact: A critique and theoretical model. Journal of Aging Studies, 7, 423-451. Fox, S., & Giles, H. (1996). Let the wheelchair through! An intergroup approach to interability communication. In W. P. Robinson (Ed.), Social groups and identities: Developing the legacy of Henri Tajfel (pp. 215-248). Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Giles, H. (1979). Ethnicity markers in speech. In K. Scherer & H. Giles (Eds.), Social markers in speech (pp. 251-289). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giles, H. (Ed.), (in press). Law enforcement, communication, and community. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Giles, H., Coupland, N., & Coupland, J. (Eds.) (1991). The contexts of accommodation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Greene, J. R., & Taylor, R. B. (1988). Community-based policing and foot patrol: Issues of theory and evaluation. In J. R. Greene & S. D. Mastrofski (Eds.), Community policing: Rhetoric or reality? (pp. 195223). New York: Praeger. Grinc, R. M. (1994). "Angels in marble": Problems in stimulating community involvement in community policing. Crime & Delinquency, 40, 437468. Guarino-Ghezzi, S. (1994). Reintegrative police surveillance of juvenile offenders: Forging an urban model. Crime & Delinquency, 40, 131153. Gundersen, D. F., & Hopper, R. H. (19S4). Communication and law enforcement. New York: Harper & Row.
LAW ENFORCEMENT
339
Harwood, J., Giles, H., & Ryan, E. B. (1995). Aging, communication, and intergroup theory: Social identity and intergenerational communication. In J. Nussbaum & J. Coupland (Eds.), Handbook of communication and aging research (pp. 133-159). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Hewstone, M., & Brown, R. (1986). Contact is not enough: An intergroup perspective on the "contact hypothesis". In M. Hewstone & R. Brown (Eds.), Contact and conflict in intergroup encounters (pp. 1-44). Oxford: Blackwell. Hewstone, M., Hopkins, N., & Routh, A. (1992). Cognitive models of stereotype change: (1) Generalization and subtyping on young people's views of the police. European Journal of Social Psychology, 22, 219-234. Jones, E. E., Farina, A., Hastorf, A. H., Markus, H., Miller, D. T., & Scott, R. (1984). Social stigma: The psychology of marked relationships. New York: Freeman. Kidd, V., & Braziel, R. (1999). Cop talk: Essential communication skills for community policing. San Francisco: Acada Books. Klockars, C. B. (1985). The idea of police. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Lawrence, R. G. (2000). The politics of force: Media and the construction of police brutality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lurigio, A. J., & Skogan, W. G. (1994). Winning the hearts and minds of police officers: An assessment of staff perceptions of community policing in Chicago. Crime & Delinquency, 40, 315-330. McElroy, J., Cosgrove, C., & Sadd, S. (1993). Community policing: CPOP in New York. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Perlmutter, D. (2000). Policing the media: Street cops and publics perceptions of law enforcement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Reiss, A. J., Jr. (1967). Public perceptions and recollections about crime, law enforcement, and criminal justice. In Studies in crime and law enforcement in major metropolitan areas (Vol. 1, pp. 34—47). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Rosenbaum, D. P., & Lurigio, A. J. (1994). An inside look at community policing reform: Definitions, organizational changes, and evaluation findings. Crime & Delinquency, 40, 299-314. Rosenbaum, D. P., Yeh, S., & Wilkinson, D. L. (1994). Impact of community policing on police personnel: A quasi-experimental test Crime & Delinquency, 40, 331-353. Ross, J. I. (2000). Making news of police violence: A comparative study of Toronto and New York City. New York: Praeger Sadd, S., & Grinc, R. M. (1993). Issues in community policing: An evaluation of eight innovative neighborhood-oriented policing projects (Final Technical Report). New York: Vera Institute.
340
CHAPTER 19
Sykes, R. E., & Brent, E. E. (1983). Policing: A social behaviorist perspective. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social psychology of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7-24). Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Thompson, G. J. (1983). Verbal judo: Words for street survival. Springfield, IL: Thomas. Van den Bulck, J. (1998). "Sideshow Bobby": Images of the police in Flemish film and television. Public Voices, 4, 1-8. Weatheritt, M. (1988). Community policing: Rhetoric or reality. In J. R. Greene & S. D. Mastrofski (Eds.), Community policing: Rhetoric or reality? (pp. 225-238). New York: Praeger. White, M. F., & Menke, B. A. (1982). Assessing the mood of the public toward the police: Some conceptual issues. CriminalJustice, 10, 211-230. Womack, M. M., & Finley, H. H. (1986). Communication: A unique significance for law enforcement. Springfield, IL: Thomas. Wycoff, M. (1988). The benefits of community policing: Evidence and conjecture. In J. R. Greene & S. D. Mastrofski (Eds.), Community policing: Rhetoric or reality? (pp. 103-120). New York: Praeger. Wycoff, M., & Skogan, W. G. (1993). Quality policing in Madison: An evaluation of its implementation and impact (Final Technical Report). Washington, DC: The Police Foundation. Yates, D. L., & Pillai, V. K. (1996). Attitudes toward community policing: A causal analysis. The Social Science Journal, 33, 193-209.
20 Preventatives in Social Interaction G. H. Morris California State University, San Marcos When individuals feel they have been wronged by another party, they face the choice to pass over the present (Hopper, 1981) or to take some form of remedial action (Goffman, 1971). Similarly, when individuals are in the process of doing something they anticipate another person may not approve, they can choose whether to desist, to acknowledge the pending problem, to disclaim, or to account for their actions. In either case, overlooking or avoiding a problem has much to recommend it because it might avoid transforming nonserious troubles into more serious problematic situations: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." On the other hand, taking an early opportunity to remedy a potential or actual problem can restrict or contain the problem and keep it from growing in seriousness. When problems do occur, they can be dealt with before neglect or poorly executed remedial work worsens them: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This dichotomy is of some importance for the study of alignment (Hewitt and Stokes, 1975; Morris, 1991; Morris & Hopper, 1980, 1987; Ragan & Hopper, 1981) because it gets to the heart of how and when people align. Alignment is interactional sensemaking. Its key processes are creating expectations for interactants' conduct, formulating divergences from such expectations, and accounting for divergences. By engaging in alignment, participants forge tighter correspondences between their actions and expectations. But how serious must a divergence be in order to warrant remedial intervention? Can earlier, milder remedial actions make later, more drastic actions unnecessary? Overall, how and when is it prudent to engage in the process of alignment? This essay is a celebration of early, preventive attempts to keep interactional problems from deepening. It argues that when it comes to 341
342
CHAPTER 20
alignment in social interaction, the earlier, the better. Several opportunities, each of which arises before the chance to accuse another person of wrongdoing, are illustrated. These opportunities include: (a) Not creating an expectation that will probably be violated, (b) crystallizing expectations, (c) giving an advisory, (d) notifying someone of a pending divergence from expectations, (e) disclaiming offensive intent, (f) giving a proactive account for an apparent divergence, and (g) formulating a problem with another's conduct without making an accusation. These earlier opportunities to align, collectively referred to here as "preventatives" (McLaughlin, 1984), occur before and may make unnecessary, explicit reproach by another person.
NOT CREATING AN EXPECTATION THAT WILL PROBABLY BE VIOLATED When one person invites another to do something and he or she agrees, an expectation is established that the agreed upon action will occur. Similarly, when a promise is made, the promised party has the right to expect that the promise will be fulfilled. Thus, one can avert being held accountable for actions by declining to promise to do them or otherwise creating an expectation for performance. Examinations of declined invitations show that when invitations are declined an account is generally provided, and this account explains why the invited party cannot do what has been invited (Heritage, 1989; Morris, White, & Iltis, 1994). For instance: UTCL, A21:12-13 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
Pam: Glo:
Pam:
(simplified)
I'd love for you to come if you want to Well I would but I just talked to my sister a few minutes ago...and I promised her that I would...go over there cause I have...to return the car and then she's babysittin so we're ...going to take the little girl to go get her something to eat... ((laughter)) Okay well just thought I'd call.
In this instance, Glo's description of her prior promise suggests that it would not be possible to both do what she has previously obligated herself to do and also go with Pam. She declines the invitation with no equivocation and it appears from Pam's reply that no expectation was created. This would appear to be superior to another choice available to her, which would be to accept the invitation, try to accomplish all four expectations, and possibly fail to conform with one or more of them. Such failures would occasion later remedial attempts
PREVENTATIVES
343
that would be more challenging for the parties to negotiate than if no failure had been allowed to crop up in the first place.
CRYSTALLIZING EXPECTATIONS Morris and Hopper (1980, 1987) considered alignment partly as a matter of achieving greater consensus on rules governing interaction. When people experience problematic situations, one outcome of their remedial/legislative interaction is a crystallization (Cushman & Whiting, 1972) of rules, and this has the potential to avert problematic interaction in the future. Moreover, earlier crystallization of rules might circumvent later troubles. For instance, in the following excerpt from Jones and Beach's (1995) analysis of therapy talk, the therapist's instruction to one party to let another speak may have been unnecessary had ground rules for this already been established and understood: FAM : B2 (simplified) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07
TH: RP: TH: F:
Oh you gotta house er somethin? He's gotta property right around the corner he doesn't havta pay rent deposit he doesn't havta pay [anything (he owns his own) property] [Let me hear it from him cause he's ] gotta deal with the reality I'm probably not going ta stay in the area
It is not known whether earlier opportunities to align were used in the preceding case. But such opportunities do occur typically in early sessions and/or when particular kinds of interventions are being set up. For instance, when initiating talk in first sessions of therapy, it is typical for a marriage and family therapist to call for an explanation of what brings a couple to therapy. Recognizing that members' explanations are likely to differ, the therapist might establish some ground rules to govern what will be talked about, by whom. In the following instance, the therapist queries the couple about this, asking explicitly for each member, in turn, to reply: O'Hanlon Session (Simplified, from Gale, 1991) . 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
TH:
how will you know when actually (.) things are better? and uh or things are where you want them to be in your relationship or whatever you are coming for. So .hh I wanna ask each of you (.) how will you know and then I may ask you some questions so I make sure I understand that in a pretty good way and I wanna know how you'll know ultimately and what will be the first sign you'll see (.)
344
CHAPTER 20
09 10 11 12
things are going in a good direction. So, either of you, whoever wants to start You made the call, you could hhhhh Alright
H: W:
In subsequent talk, the woman's narrative about what brings the couple for therapy unfolded without unsolicited contributions from the husband, and it is plausible that the therapist's clarification of his expectations helped to bring this about.
GIVING AN ADVISORY It sometimes happens that a person can anticipate that another person is likely to commit an error in a particular circumstance. For instance, an error might be probable because that person lacks a critical piece of information. Giving an advisory (Morris, 1988) is a technique for averting the problem by issuing the needed information or reminding the other person of the need to perform some act. For instance: Parking lot (Morris, 1988, simplified). 01 02 03 04
Attendant:
Okay now Doctor Smithers. Now you come back here to pick up your car by seven today. We don't close at midnight on Saturday like usual
The aim of this advisory is to forestall a repetition of a problem that had happened the previous day. Giving this warning at this point was, in fact, successful in preventing a more serious problem of either having to stay open for 5 hours in order to release a car or closing and ruining the goodwill of a regular customer.
NOTIFYING SOMEONE OF A PENDING DIVERGENCE FROM EXPECTATIONS When a social actor first learns that he or she is going to be unable to do something another person expects, the opportunity often exists to alert the expectant party to the pending problem in time for him or her to be less inconvenienced by the failure. For instance, teachers are often notified that students are not going to be in class on the date an assignment is due. Following is a note that illustrates this kind of prior notification:
PREVENTATIVES
345
TS1, 1978: 4 (A student's note sent through an intermediary) I'm sorry but I will not be in class to give my speech today. I woke up yesterday with a fever. I also had some stomach and diarrhea problems. Today the fever is gone but I still have diarrhea with an upset stomach. I know this will put a bind on your speaking schedule and I'm very sorry. Quite truthfully, I'm not quite through with the speech but probably could have managed if I hadn't gotten sick. I hope we can work something out.
This student's account of his illness explains how the troubles he encountered kept him from finishing the assignment on schedule. Recognizing that his failure presents a scheduling problem for the teacher, he also bids to "work something out." A couple of the features of this note may be characteristic of such advance notifications: First, if someone is not going to be performing up to specifications, perhaps he or she can at least get credit for a good attempt to comply, which may lessen the penalties that may be assessed. Second, the note seems to minimize the extent of the failure by characterizing the situation as a "near miss." Because the student's speech is almost ready, it shouldn't be too hard to make new arrangements. Achievements such as these would be more difficult to undertake after a failure has already occurred.
DISCLAIMING OFFENSIVE INTENT By offering disclaimers (Bell, Zahn, & Hopper, 1984; Hewitt & Stokes, 1975), social actors forestall an undesired-but-likely-to-be-ascribed interpretation of their conduct. Disclaimers are given along with or immediately preceding a potentially offensive deed. Hewitt and Stokes wrote that: "Unlike accounts and quasi-theories, which are retrospective in their effect, disclaimers are prospective, defining the future in the present, creating interpretations of potentially problematic events intended to make them unproblematic when they occur" (p. 2). In the following example, a woman is telling a marriage and family therapist why she and her husband sought his help. Because there are many ways to explain such a thing, some of which represent him more negatively than others, and whereas she is shortly going to explain their problems as stemming from his having had an affair, she offers a disclaimer of her intention to hurt him as she discloses his affair to the therapist.
346
CHAPTER 20
"Laying in Limbo" 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14
W:
H: W: H: W:
...and that's what led up to this point Recently .hhh February thirteenth I'll never forget the date .hhh he had bee:n .hhh um coming home late from work (1.6) pt and- I'm not saying this to hurt you= =^I know It's to help us= =I know so::- He'd been >comin home< late from work and he just was- didn't didn't care, he wasn't there I just could see it in his eyes. Well he came home February thirteenth and announced that he was seein somebody...
In terms developed by Hopper, Ward, Thomason, and Sias (1995), the disclaimer in the preceding example is "embedded" in that it occurs close to the possibly offensive action it is designed to cushion. These authors argued that such embedded disclaimers were superior to "early" disclaimers in the medical hotline calls they examined, in each of which some form of medical disclaimer was obligatory. The important distinction here, however, is between an embedded and a late disclaimer, and the superiority of the embedded disclaimer should be evident. It averts surprise and elicits consent.
GIVING AN UNSOLICITED ACCOUNT FOR AN POSSIBLE DIVERGENCE After a possibly inappropriate act has occurred but before being reproached, an actor can account proactively for the situation, and this account may or may not be relieved (Goffman, 1971). In addition to giving explanations and possibly providing relief, however, parties can and do discuss and attempt to manage consequences of the divergence. This may include considering the penalties that may be assessed. A key advantage of providing an unsolicited account is that lesser penalties may result. Providing an unsolicited account of a problem gives the actor the first chance to characterize the situation and provides an opportunity to suggest ways to handle the consequences of the situation. If the consequences of the failure can be handled easily, perhaps the account will appear more acceptable. To illustrate, in the follow-up meeting to the student note case previously examined, after an exchange of greetings, the student first bids to address how to handle the situation:
PREVENTATIVES
347
(3C) TS1, 1978: 1 01 02 03 04 05
S:
06
((greeting exchange)) I'm trying to figure out how I can get my speech in. Uh Uh What I came up with is that I could prepare it so like I could have it ready and then like if somebody's absent and didn't show up to do their speech, I could do mine then. Uh
When the teacher did not reply, the student recycled his earlier apology and account before again bidding to address how to handle the consequences of his failure: 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
T:
I'm really sorry about what happened, it (.) I didn't get better until Thursday (.) I found out I had some sort of flu ((cough)) but uh, I've got everything pretty much finished now and the only thing I have to do is get the outline typed up. Had it, uh written out lengthwise for the speech, uh, Saturday, and I was gettin' ready to do the note cards when (.) I don't don't what it was (.) it was something (.) fever and diarrhea, but uh (.) What do you think about that? About having it ready and like last time at the end there was people who didn't show up to give their speeches or anything, and then if I don't get a chance to do it (.) just turn it in (.) turn in what I've done and everything and get partial credit or something for it. Well, uh. There is another option...
In later action not shown, after the student accepts her counterproposal of Line 22, the teacher measures out the penalty she plans to exact. Only then does she provide relief for his account. The parties agreed to a lesser penalty than would have been assessed had the student not taken the initiative to account for and address the consequences of his failure.
FORMULATING A PROBLEM WITH ANOTHER'S CONDUCT WITHOUT MAKING AN ACCUSATION. When it comes to the point that one person's conduct has diverged from expectations, no previous opportunity was taken by either party to align, and another person opts to initiate a remedial episode rather than passing over the present, there is still a chance to align without engaging in an aggravated reproach (Cody & McLaughlin, 1985). Simply by formulating the problem with another's conduct (Morris, 1988), a person can elicit an account and thereby foreswear blaming (Pomerantz, 1978) and aggravated disparagement (Morris,
348
CHAPTER 20
1998, November). In the following instance, a state tax enforcement officer is calling a delinquent taxpayer: Tax Collector/Merchant 01 TC: Mr. Warrens Good morning. This is Ernest Joseph sir. 02 I'm with the state comptroller's office 03 TP: Yes sir 04 TC: I'm looking at your record in front of me? and we: 05 do not have a return (.) in April May and June. 06 TP: Right 07 TC: Right 08 TP: And (. ) I'm in the process of getting all that 09 together at the present time I- at that time (.7) 10 I:: uh stopped using the accountant that I had 11 been using up to that point. (1.4) a::nd so I got 12 behind but I have (.) everything and I am putting it 13 together::r a:::nd uh I am planning to have it all (1.5) 14 together hopefully this weekend is what I- is what I15 I'm tryin to use as a target time for myself 16 (2.4) 17 Um and I you know to get everything up to date. You- you 18 don't have one for that period or for the next period 19 right 20 TC: No we don't. 21 TP: Not quite. Well, let's see it isn't over- ov- overdue 22 now is it 23 TC: No sir the third quarter will be not is will not be due? 24 until Mundie. Mundie will be your [last 2 T P : 5 [ y e a h 26 TC: day. 27Pea: T Yeah 28HH If TC:il it HHH If you can get that postmarked Mund 29 to me we can honor it without chargin you penalty 30 TP: Yeah. Okay...
As the caller, the tax collector is obliged to make known why he is calling. He does so by announcing that he does not have a tax return for the taxpayer, stating also the evidence he has for this claim. When the taxpayer has acknowledged that this is correct, the tax collector did not use his turn at Line 07 to further expound on the problem or attribute blame for the problem to the taxpayer. Instead, by repeating the taxpayer's certification of what he had reported ("right"), he seems to treat his announcement as now complete. This occasions the taxpayer's report about his attempts to file the returns and the troubles he has had in the process. At Line 16, the tax collector might have offered some sort of response (e.g., an assessment) to this account, but he did not. He focused entirely on the technical problem of acquiring the tax return and never addressed the taxpayer's account. The problem formulation with which he commenced the business of the call was entirely sufficient to dispose of the problem and the need to reproach the taxpayer never arose.
a
PREVENTATIVES
349
DISCUSSION Both parties in problematic situations have several chances to dispose of shallow troubles before they become deep troubles. Through a succession of opportunities prior to, at the point of, and after the commission of inappropriate actions, participants can manage to align their actions without ever resorting to any sort of aggravated reproach (Cody & McLaughlin, 1985). In fact, aggravated reproach would appear to be a measure of last resort, finding a use only when parties failed to grasp or execute earlier opportunities to align their actions and expectations. There may be a general preference for self-repair (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977) in social interaction which would operate to make reproaching another's conduct an accountable act. If so, by the time an actor is reproached, alignment has been made more difficult because there are at least three accountables, not just one. The actor is accountable for an actual failure to comply with expectations and is also culpable for not having used the prior opportunities to avert the problem. The reproacher is accountable for failing to allow the person who committed the offensive deed to initiate his or her own aligning actions with respect to it. Thus, early alignment is in both party's interest. For the perpetrator of actions that others might disapprove, there are very powerful strategic advantages of providing aligning actions without first having been reproached. With such a proactive approach, expectations can be revised, interpretation of the possibly offensive deed can be transformed, and arrangements can be made that lessen the consequences of inappropriate acts. Making use of the earliest chances to align, finally, allows participants to formulate, explain, and correct for an unfortunate situation without prompting cycles of blaming and accounting (Buttny, 1993) that may be repetitive and may compound and intensify the problem (Watzlawick, Weakland & Fisch, 1974).
REFERENCES Bell, R., Zahn, C., & Hopper, R. (1984). Disclaiming. Communication Quarterly, 32, 28-36. Buttny, R. (1993). Social accountability in communication. London, Sage. Cody, M. J., & McLaughlin, M. L. (1985). Models for the sequential construction of accounting episodes: Situational and interactional constraints on messages selection and evaluation. In R. L. Street, Jr., &
350
CHAPTER 20
J. N. Cappella (Eds.), Sequence and pattern in communicative behaviour (pp. 50-69). London: Edward Arnold. Cushman, D., & Whiting, G. C. (1972). An approach to communication theory: Toward consensus on rules. Journal of Communication, 22, 217-238. Gale, J. (1991). Conversation analysis of therapeutic discourse: The pursuit of a therapeutic agenda. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public. New York: Harper & Row. Heritage, J. (1989). Accounts as explanations: A conversation analytic perspective. In C. Antaki (Ed.), Analysing everyday explanation (pp. 127-144). Bevery Hills, CA: Sage. Hewitt, J. P., & Stokes, R. (1975). Disclaimers. American Sociological Review, 40, 1-11. Hopper, R. (1981). The taken-for-granted. Human Communication Research, 7, 195-211. Hopper, R., Ward, J. A., Thomason, W. R., & Sias, P. M. (1995). Two types of institutional disclaimers at the Cancer Information Service. In G. H. Morris & R. J. Chenail (Eds.), The talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of medical and therapeutic discourse (pp. 171-184). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Jones, C. M., & Beach, W. A. (1995). Therapists' techniques for responding to unsolicited contributions by family members. In G. H. Morris & R. J. Chenail (Eds.), The talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of medical and therapeutic discourse (pp. 49-69). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. McLaughlin, M. L. (1984). Conversation: How talk is organized. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Morris, G. H. (1988). Finding fault. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 7, 1-25. Morris, G. H. (1991). Alignment talk and social confrontation. In J. Anderson (Ed.), Communication Yearbook, 14 (pp. 401-411). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Morris, G. H. (1998, November). Alignment and aggravated disparagement: Malignant receipt of a problem formulation in therapy. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, New York. Morris, G. H., & Hopper, R. (1980). Remediation and legislation in everyday talk: How communicators achieve consensus. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 266-274. Morris, G. H., & Hopper, R. (1987). Symbolic action as alignment. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 21, 1-21.
PREVENTATIVES
351
Morris, G. H., White, C. H., & Iltis, R. (1994). "Well, ordinarily I would, but": Reexamining the nature of accounts for problematic events. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 27, 123-144. Pomerantz, A. (1978). Attributions of responsibility: Blamings. Sociology, 12, 266-274. Ragan, S. L., & Hopper, R. (1981). Alignment talk in the job interview. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 9, 85-103. Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G. & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for selfcorrection in the organization of repair for conversation. Language, 53, 361-382. Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J., & Fisch, R. (1974). Change: Principles of problem formation and problem resolution. New York: Norton.
This page intentionally left blank
21 The Interactional Construction of SelfRevelation: Creating an "Aha" Moment E. Duff Wrobbel Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville We generally think of self-revelation—the sudden flash of insight the instant that we understand what something means—as something wholly individual, internal, and psychological. Conversation analysts, on the other hand, build their arguments only from the interactive, communicative behaviors that are available to the participants themselves. Is understanding then beyond the reach of ethnomethodology? Conversation analysts suggest otherwise. Frankel and Beckman (1989), for example, argued that "speakers and hearers continually negotiate meaning in and through conversational exchange and in so doing create social reality" (p. 61). In other words, what someone "understands" in interaction is not so much a psychological question as a social one. Pollner (1979) suggested that understanding is neither an entity nor an object in the mind or psyche of the actor, but rather is "a shorthand way of referring to a behavioral process or transaction in which the actor participated" (p. 247). These authors and others argue that understanding is a social creation, negotiated through interaction. Thus, it follows that understanding can never be a wholly individual phenomenon. It exists, not in one person's mind, but rather in behaviors exchanged by interactants. Any consideration of understanding then should include a close examination of the participants' interactive construction of that understanding. Of particular interest to this study is the as yet unaddressed question of how new and novel understandings first emerge—what occasions a so-called "aha moment"? This brief essay provides data and analysis showing that even this seemingly most internal and psychological of moments in the understanding process may have an interactive component. It also implicates several conversational devices in the construction of an "aha." 353
354
CHAPTER 21
ANALYSIS Let us now visit the data and consider how, during a therapy session, a wife (W) moves from one understanding of a discussion with her husband (H) to another. In a previous meeting, their counselor (C) discussed the need for this troubled couple to do a better job working out the details of their child care. They had been given the task of working through their next child care discussion calmly and effectively as "homework." During this session, already in process, the counselor asks the wife for an account of the results of their discussion, which she provides in the following (see Jefferson, 1984, for transcription conventions): 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425
C: W: C: W: C: W: C: W:
H: W: C:
°Um° Because we're making a a change on Tuesday nights because I'm '11 be helping a friend go to some birthing classes? Um hm? And um (.) I'm her coach uh h? Um And uh we start tonight and so I asked him is: if he would watch em both on Tuesday nights (.) for six weeks °Um hm° And he agreed he's gonna watch em at my hou:se and get em in bed and everything cause then I won't get home 'til like nine fifteen Well not for six weeks but for six (.) Tuesday nights [yeah [six Tuesday nights= =Yeah=
In this sequence, the counselor provides continuers (see Schegloff, 1982) in Lines 408, 412, 414, and 418 that result in a "fleshing out" of the discussion by the wife. Here, we learn that the wife (a) recently accepted an outside obligation as a friend's birthing coach, (b) that her husband agreed to watch the children while she is gone, and (c) that the class will run for 6 weeks. The husband then offers a correction in Lines 422-423 (6 nights rather than 6 weeks), this correction is ratified by both the wife (Line 424) and the counselor (Line 425), and the conversation continues: 426 427 428 429 430 431
W: H: C: W: H: C:
=You can handle
[six weeks ]= L [whew ] ] [Yes ] =Six [ Tuesday nights 1 [(("stage.cough"))] Um hm
AHA MOMENT 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440
W: C:
W: C: W: C:
How 'bout you did you feel like you had been heard?
H: C:
Sure [ I I was okay ]with it yeah (.) yeah [And your concerns]
(0.4)
444
445 446
And uh and right after we (.) decided that we called them in and told them we was gonna do. °Um hm° How was that- how was the negotiation process for the two of you (0.2) did you feel like you had been heard (0.2) like your, (1.0) Yeah So have you been heard? Uh huh (0.8)
441
442 443
355
A brief moment of levity (Lines 426-430) is brought to a close by the counselor in line 431. The counselor then asks both W and H (Lines 434-436) about the relative "success" of their discussion (the first query), and she receives a positive response from W in Line 438. She then "checks in" individually with both the wife (the second query, Line 439) and the husband (the third query, Lines 442443) to see if each agrees that their needs were met in this discussion, and each responds in the affirmative. The wife then continues to offer details (beginning as follows in Line 448) which the counselor encourages with additional continuers (Lines 450 and 454). To this point, then, the counselor has asked three times about various aspects of this couple's discussion, and both husband and wife have provided positive responses each time, thus collaboratively negotiating a positive understanding of this event. All interactants seem to be "on the same page" when the wife resumes the discussion: 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455
C: W: C: W: C: W:
°0kay° He said that he wouldn't be taking one of 'em at night then °Mm hm° Since he'd be bed and everything »hh which is fine and it was fine with them Mm hm? And then [he
At this point, the husband rejoins the conversation and interjects a qualification: 456 457 458 459 460
H:
461
C:
462
H:
[I also said that there's a possibility that something could come up for me:: (0.2)that (0.2) I you know that I may (.) not be able to (.) make one of those nights also »h [but = [Hm
=as much advanced notice I me- I don't kno:w
356 463 464 465 466 467 468
CHAPTER 21
H:
of anything hm And I can't see anything happening but there's a:1ways that possiblity so (0.8) You know
H:
(
C: H:
(1.0)
469
470
Um
life) goes o:n
The husband suggests that he was happy to commit as long as the wife was willing to allow him some flexibility—an aspect of the discussion that the counselor also initially draws out with continuers (Lines 461 and 464). Note, however, the difference in the quality of the counselor's responses as she changes from continuers (Lines 461 and 464) to nonresponsiveness at the TRPs (Lines 467 and 469). This, though allowing the husband to continue, provides less overt encouragement for him to elaborate. The husband orients to the nonencouraging nature of the counselor's first instance of nonresponse by ceasing to provide additional elaboration and instead soliciting further encouragement in Line 468. When none is forthcoming, he offers the "life goes on" cliche, thus seemingly signaling the completion of his qualification. At this point, the counselor then continues: 471 478 479 480 481 482
C: H:
Hm (0.2) so (0.4) [so that ewhw[solilee w Ihilhi was committing to it you know (0.2) to doing that just to know that (1.0) there's always something that could happen (0.3) *although I don't (.) (have a )
When the counselor finally does provide the uptake the husband sought in Line 468, he immediately (in overlap beginning at Line 478) adds to his earlier qualifier. Note, however, that there is no substantively new content added here. The counselor continues: 483 484 485 486 487
C:
H:
So how's that feel to you when there's (0.2) like a window open and [it may not work] L Yeah don't ] don't put it in cement (1.0)
There are three issues of import in this brief exchange. First, it is notable that the counselor has once again asked the wife a question about how she feels about her discussion with her husband—a query very similar to several already asked and answered. Recall that when asked earlier, the wife described her discussion with her husband as successful (Lines 404-407), and then twice again responded to more specific questions (Lines 434-436 and 439) positively (Lines 438 and
AHA MOMENT
357
440). Why might someone ask a question so similar to ones that have only just been answered? One possibility is that this may suggest that a different answer is now preferred. Note that this previously "asked and answered" question is revisited immediately after the husband has finished detailing his qualification— a qualification that the counselor has pointedly not encouraged. Also, when the counselor asks this version of her question, she provides a reformulation (Heritage & Watson, 1979) of the husband's qualifier as an "open window" (one that he readily ratifies in Line 486) and directs her question directly and only to the wife about this particular aspect of the discussion. The combination of these sequential elements serve (a) to refocus the discussion from one about the couple's discussion to one about the couple's discussion in light of the husband's qualification, (b) to suggest that something is amiss with the wife's previous answers to questions of this discussion's success, and (c) to suggest an alternative reading of this qualification. In a very real sense, the counselor has just actively "sown the seeds" of a specific revelation—hardly a professionally neutral role. These seeds immediately begin to sprout, as seen in the following: 488 489 490 491 493 494 495 496
W: C: W:
(0.4)
497
498 499
Well I don't remember him saying that earlier but (1.8) What's that, (0.4) Twell (0.8) I mean I guess I always knew there 'd be a possibility (1.0) I'll just have to get my brother or somebody to watch 'em for me
C: W:
°Hm° If he could (1.4)
500
Throughout this exchange, the wife begins the slow process of reconsidering the discussion in light of the counselor's reformulation. The counselor nurtures the seeds she has sown by allowing the wife to "twist in the wind" a bit through pauses (TRPs at Lines 490, 493, 497, and 500) and the use of only very minimal prompts (Lines 491 and 498). The wife now describes her understanding of the discussion not as a success, but rather as something she has resigned herself to accept. After allowing the wife this period of reconsideration, the counselor then asks her once again to consider her understanding of this event, as follows: 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508
C:
But that's (0.2) then that's alright with you? to be responsible to find someone if he (.) can't? (2.4) W: think about it like that C: [°Okayov [I just 'felt like I probably didn't have a choice but to do that
358
CHAPTER 21
509 510 511 512 513 514 515 516 517 518
C: C: W: W:
C:
Okay (1.0) °Okay° (2.0) Cause I(1.0) I mean I week [you L Mm (1.0)
it's something that I can't mi:ss can't just tell her I can't go one know] hm ] Mm hm
Here again, the recycled question has a consistent alternative reformulation nested within it. In this permutation, the counselor first calls the wife's prior acceptance into question, thus suggesting that her answer is still not the preferred response, and then "summarizes" W's acceptance with another reformulation (we have now moved from her flexibility to his irresponsibility). The very long pause at Line 504 suggests that this time, the question, answered promptly so often before, requires more thought. This reading of the pause is validated in Line 506 when the wife explicitly indicates that her understanding is evolving. The "okays" in Lines 509 and 511 function as continuers and prompt the wife to pursue this reevaluation, which she finally does in Line 513. As the wife begins to display a different (and less favorable toward the husband) understanding of the event, the husband rejoins the conversation and attempts to mitigate his earlier qualification as follows: 519 520 521 522 523 524 525 526 527 528 529 530
H: H: W:
C:
There's probably nothing (0.6) you know that would (0.2) come up but (1.2) °Its uh° (0.4) But if there did and if there was I mean if all else failed I probably- I'd have to take her to the Kid's Playhouse or something an (.) pay for a babysitter (1.0) Hm (2.0)
His mitigation seems to have some effect, as at this point, the wife seems to be vacillating between her (and his) earlier, more positive understanding and the new alternative, less positive understanding. The husband interjects as the wife continues: 531 532 533 534 535 536
W:
H: [Which [Unless my brother could watch 'me or someone H: Which I would also feel responsible for C: So you'd feel like if you couldn't come that would be your responsibility to pay for a sitter
AHA MOMENT 537 538
C:
539
359 (1.2) To take care of them (0.6)
Having raised the question of paying for a baby-sitter after the counselor has recast the husband's qualification as evidence of his irresponsibility rather than of her flexibility, the husband is then prompt to "accept" some responsibility for paying the sitter. The counselor attempts to clarify in his prior turn in Lines 534536, asking the husband if he is saying that he will, in fact, accept this responsibility, but he does not answer (pause at 537), suggesting a possible moment of disagreement (Pomerantz, 1984). She tries this again in Line 538, and is again unsuccessful. She finally receives the husband's qualified response as follows: 540 541 542 543 544 545 546 547 548 549 550 551 552 553 554 556 557
H: C: H: C:
W: W:
C:
We:11 I was thinking of ha:lf of a sitter actually [$but h »h$ [(Half of one?) (0.4) [But uh] L Huh ] talk about that issue cause that (.) sounds like an important (.) thing that may (0.6) That would be fair (.) half (3.0) It wouldn't be that mu:ch anyway it li- it'd be like four dollars an hour (0.2) fer (0.2) two and a half hours (0.4) total (0.4) something like that °Hm° (2.0)
When the husband provides his qualified answer—that he would feel responsible for half—the counselor uses repetition in Line 542 to flag "half of one" as important, though she does not suggest why it is important, and then directs the wife and husband to "talk about it." The wife indicates her understanding of this as reasonable in Line 549, but receives no response whatsoever from the counselor. And, though transcripts do provide an excellent visual representation of spoken interaction, one really must hear this exchange to appreciate the palpable pressure and oppressive weight of this particular pause. The wife finally offers an account for her assessment in Lines 551-554, but again receives minimal uptake from the counselor. Thus, although the counselor continues to create opportunities for the wife to adopt and display the alternative understanding, the wife continues to defend the previous one. Finally, it seems that there is little more to be said, and so the counselor begins a summary sequence (Wrobbel, 1994) to put closure on the whole exchange:
360 558 559 560 561 562 563 564 565 566 567 568 569 570 571 572 573 574 575 576 577 578 579 580 581 582 583 584 585
CHAPTER 21 C:
W: C: W:
«h So it sounds like (2.0) when there are commitments that either of you need to make which doesn't involve just the children but (.) there are times when i- (.) for either parent you need to be away from the children (0.8) that there are times: (0.4) its important for the kids to know that they can count on the other parent to be there to fill that gap but sometimes both parents are c called away »h (0.6) and its important to be able to negotiate (.) what is fair around child car (0.4) and who's going to be taking the responsibilty so that (0.2)[the kids are certain that someone [YEAH I GUess that would be ri:ght cause I didn't [think of that [That someone would be there (0.4) I mean I guess I was just thinking of it as he was doing me a favor? (0.4) and if something happen he couldn't then he just couldn't and it would be my responsibility »h (0.4) but really I mean that's (.) these are like your set nights for visitations (0.4) and if (0.6) if we really had those s:e:t (.) like you know these were your set nights for visitation? (1.0) then if (1.0) if you couldn't be there you would have to get your own babysitter
Between Lines 558 and 570, the counselor pulls together and positively reformulates the details of this couple's discussion as she understands them. This would suggest that she has discontinued her efforts to move the wife to a different understanding of the discussion and is now just "making the best of it." Then in Line 572, at what is for all practical purposes the last possible moment to do so, the seeds the counselor planted earlier burst into full bloom (quite literally, as this utterance emerges loudly and in overlap) as the wife suddenly "gets it." She has a moment that she clearly marks in Line 573 as novel understanding, thus marking this as her "aha," or the precise moment of insight. The counselor immediately breaks off her summary to allow W's insight to emerge. At this point (Lines 576-585), the wife then displays her "new" understanding of her husband's qualification as (voila) his irresponsibility rather than her flexibility. So what does the analysis of this extended segment of dialogue reveal? First, it provides evidence that even the most seemingly "internal" of psychological experiences, such as this moment of self-revelation, may have communicative antecedents. In this segment, much of the substance of the wife's changed understanding was shown to have actually come from her counselor through an extended negotiation. When the wife initially indicated that she understood her child-care discussion with her husband to be successful, the counselor said
AHA MOMENT
361
nothing to directly contradict her. However, the counselor then went on to construct a therapeutic environment that clearly facilitated the wife's "change of mind." This analysis also shows that the method the counselor used to occasion this revelation included two elements: (a) revisiting previously asked questions as a way of displaying a preference for a different response, and (b) reformulations of the subject of those questions as a method of "pointing the way" toward the preferred response. These elements, coupled with the use of various speakerselection devices and continuers to keep the question on the floor, conspire to create an interactive environment conducive to the emergence of self-revelation. Through his participation in this process, the husband displays his clear "vote" for the extant understanding, working hard to keep it alive, whereas the wife first interactively evades the new perspective, and then not only accepts it, but displays it as her own unique insight into this event. All three participants in this interaction played a role in the construction of M's self-revelation.
REFERENCES Frankel, R. M., & Beckman, H. B. (1989). Conversation and compliance with treatment recommendations: An application of micro-interactional analysis in medicine. In B. Dervin, L. Grossberg, B. J. O'Keefe, & E. Wartella (Eds.), Rethinking communication: Vol. 2: Paradigm examplars (pp. 60-74). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Heritage, J., & Watson, D. R. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 123-162). New York: Irvington. Jefferson, G. (1984). Transcript notation. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. ix-xvi). London: Cambridge University Press. Pollner, M. (1979). Explicative transactions: Making and managing meaning in traffic court. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 227-256). New York: Irvington. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 57-101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1987). On the preference for agreement and contiguity in sequencesin conversation. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 5469). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
362
CHAPTER 21
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1978). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction (pp. 7-57). London: Academic Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1982). Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of "uh huh" and other things that come between sentences. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics (pp. 71-93). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Wrobbel, E. D. (1994). Microanalysis in therapeutic interaction. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.
22 A World in a Grain of Sand: Therapeutic Discourse as Making Much of Little Things1 Kurt A. Bruder Emerson College To see a World in a Grain of Sand. And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour. —William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence"
1
This essay, offering a demonstration of the prescriptive use of discourse analytic concepts and practices in a therapeutic setting, is situated against the backdrop of my own history as a student of Robert Hopper, who taught me to pay attention to the minuscule details of everyday social activity as transparent to the infinite web of relations that structure our world. I think that this theme best summarizes Robert's effect on me, both professionally and personally. Perhaps it will resonate with others who have had him for their "hearing aid." I am not suggesting that my work as a therapist is altogether an outgrowth of my training as a student of talk-in-interaction. Nor am I implying that Robert Hopper would endorse the use that I routinely make of discourse analytic tools in therapy. However, Robert always impressed me as someone motivated not merely by an academic wish to know more, but by a profound desire to help others. This is something that I seek to emulate in my analysis—both in session ("on-the-fly") and after the fact (with recordings)—of talk-in-therapy. As I have studied such talk—in terms of its structure, flow, and consequences—my practice as a helping professional has matured. Robert's contribution to me—an improved capacity to notice and make use of little things people do in interaction—has proved beneficial in its therapeutic, no less so than in its scholarly, application. I would not be as helpful to the people I counsel were it not for Robert's guidance and inspiration. 363
364
CHAPTER 22
In the field of discourse analysis, scholars have typically emphasized adequate (if not exhaustive) description and explanation of communicative events in various contexts. Some have employed these tools in order to explore and account for the mechanisms of conversation as such; others have sought to disclose important features of the life world shared by members of diverse speech communities and/or by humanity at large. Among some discourse analysts, however, there has been a growing aspiration to the development of discourse-sensitive means for the deliberate alteration of people's communicative practices in pursuit of improved personal, and even societal, outcomes. We may distinguish this as a kind of prescriptive turn in the discipline. In helping relationships such as those that occur in counseling, the counselor is frequently cast in the role of "detective," distinguishing those features in the client's unfolding story that call for therapeutic interaction and intervention. Such a feature may be a major narrative theme. Often, it will be rather more subtle; a "slip of the tongue," or a pause of greater-than-expected duration. Whatever their qualitative or quantitative character, aspects of the client's participation in the therapeutic encounter—like the broader repertoire of communicative practices that are the client's means of manufacturing and maintaining her or his self-structure—constitute the raw material with which the counselor may work. My effort in counseling (evidenced in the fragment under examination later) is to problematize features of the client's discourse—making things said, things unsaid, and the way they're said into objects of reflective awareness. In this way, clients have an opportunity to organize their subjective responses—acts of self-creation in the present—around this or that bit of their own very recent (though, perhaps, habitual) symbolic behavior. The now-objectified symbolic behavior was itself subjectively organized around the client's past (i.e., reconstructed memory) or future (i.e., plans, hopes, fears). The point is that clients, in this very moment of reflective awareness, encounter the possibility of novelty—of changing who they are—in and through the creative revision of their self-presentation. Such self-presentation is, of course, made to others; but equally, and more significantly, it is made to themselves. In the remainder of this essay I propose, first, to discuss how the close analysis of talk has been used thus far in the "talking cure." Second, I draw a theoretical connection between one's particular communicative practices and one's psychological experience, especially one's subjectivity. This connection is observable in, though by no means limited to, therapeutic interaction. Finally, I attempt to "unpack" a stretch of talk-in-therapy, paying attention to the manner in which each of the interlocutors coordinately, if differentially, make use of the
THERAPEUTIC DISCOURSE
365
little things that are said in the local (re)construction of the client's subjective response.
THE ANALYSIS OF TALK AND COUNSELING With his pioneering commitment to recording and transcribing therapy sessions, Carl Rogers (1942) anticipated the inception of discourse analysis (in its several forms) by decades. Believing with Rogers that through the examination of such recordings, "psychotherapy [may] become a process based on known and tested principles, with tested techniques for implementing these principles" (p. 434), others interested in clinical discourse have turned their attention to the investigation of the therapeutic process that close inspection of talk (typically assisted by electronic recording) allows (Buttny, 1990; Buttny & Lannamann, 1987; Frankel, 1984, Freeman, 1987; Gale, 1991; Morris & Chenail, 1995; Waitzkin & Britt, 1993). Gale (1991) suggested several areas pertinent to counseling that require inquiry, including "the interactive talk of the clients and the therapist," the "nonverbal . . . features of the therapy talk," and "the issue of the observer as helping to shape the research system" (p. 16; emphasis in original). Gale's own study of the recording of a single family therapy session, responsive to these concerns, demonstrates how the close inspection of therapeutic talk may be employed to discover the means by which counselors effect change in the clients' experience. He modeled an approach to counseling research that is alert to the manner in which "participants themselves construct and define the meaning of their actions" (p. 32).
THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF TALK AND SUBJECTIVITY When examining the details of interaction, it is possible to recognize both the life—constructing function of discourse and the identity of social and psychological phenomena. The accumulation of particular actions—or, rather, of moments of interaction between people—form the psychological, relational, and institutional experience of the interlocutors; indeed, discourse is the essence of that experience. Harre (1992) described this identity relationship as follows: Many, perhaps most cognitive, affective, and cognitive states, phenomena, entities, processes, etc. that are naively attributed to individual minds just are properties of conversations, engendered in certain discursive practices. . . . [But] it is a fundamental error to
366
CHAPTER 22 think that psychological processes are internal states that are manifested or displayed in the uses of language and other symbolic systems. The manifestations and displays just are the psychological phenomena. (pp. 515-516; emphasis added)
In other words, the commonsense notion that language is merely a vehicle for the expression of "psychological entities and processes that already exist or that have already occurred," "manifestations of hidden goings on in mind or brain" (Harre, 1992, p. 520), blinds us to the reality that our talk is the very stuff of thought, feeling, and action. Even our sense of self is the outgrowth of social interaction with others. This as yet unconventional perspective on talk affords us the possibility of exploring what has been supposed to be largely, if not altogether, inaccessible: the substance of human consciousness, personality and relationship, as these are formed, modified and displayed in discourse. "Rather than seeing the important business of psychological processing taking place underneath [the] content" of conversation, this perspective "treats this content as literally where the action is" (Potter & Wetherell, 1995, p. 82). Of course, that portion of the "internalized conversation of gestures" (Mead, 1934, p. 156) that we may call a person's "self talk"—that which is not spoken aloud—remains empirically unobservable. However, by examining one's talk-in-interaction, substantial insight into one's discursively generated psycho-social experience may be obtained. Because all of our talk (even that which is not externalized) contributes to our psychological experience (to a greater or lesser degree), one may alter one's life experience in terms of the symbolic operations by which one represents it to oneself and others. We may observe that in counseling interviews, there is the potential to notice—and call clients' attention to—their own inevitable display and enactment of identity-constituting talk. And this noticing allows the client to adopt an external perspective vis a vis her own social activities. When we attempt to examine our own behavior (whether in the moment of its performance or at some temporal remove from it), we become an object to ourselves. To make use of the language of Mead's (1934) model of social selves, the "'I phase' of the self looks at the "me" of a moment before, assesses it, and "owns" it (or otherwise). On the other hand, inspecting one's own talk may also lead to the blurring of conventional distinctions between self and other. Such a recognition may, in turn, permit an understanding of one's interconnection with others, of the interdependency of oneself and other people (and everything else), a grasp of the integrated character of life that may prove to be profoundly therapeutic.
THERAPEUTIC DISCOURSE
367
If, as O'Hanlon (1991) suggested, "what we try to do when we're doing good therapy [is to] get people to see things from new angles" (p. x), the analysis of one's own talk-in-interaction would seem to be an excellent counseling tool, affording both practitioner and client an uncommon depth and clarity of insight. Ironically, this capacity to see within is gained by looking closely at externalized representations of one's own social conduct. The therapeutic benefits of giving attention to the self-as-object in the context of social interaction have been long recognized across cultures, spiritualities, and psychotherapeutic traditions (e.g., Watts, 1961). Corey (1996) said the role of the counselor is "to create a climate in which clients can examine their thoughts, feelings, and actions and eventually arrive at solutions that are best for them" (p. 22). Despite distinctions among sundry therapeutic approaches, all share an orientation to assisting clients in their attempts to examine and improve their lives. They may focus on making the unconscious conscious, developing insight, or cultivating self-acceptance and responsibility, but each is designed and applied with a view to affording clients increased awareness of, and control over, the shape of their lives. In attending to one's own talk-in-interaction, one looks at the interchange between self and other; this process also encourages the client to perceive the self as if it were an other, resulting in a shift the viewpoint of the observer through the doubling of perspectives. One is both subject and object, self and other. Increasing one's sensitivity to what, when2 and how one says things in conversation (even in as contrived an environment as a counseling interview) allows one to recognize one's own communicative practices as the objective, yet identity-generating, artifacts of social activity that they in fact are. What clients themselves have said at a point in time—and to which their conscious attention is currently being drawn in the interview—may be treated with a quality of detachment (as if it were another's behavior) that would be otherwise unavailable. This results in a kind of defamiliarization of the artifact. Such identity-talk is rendered strange by the objective stance facilitated by and in its inspection. Watts (1961) said that "the more unfamiliar, the more other the form in which man learns to recognize himself, the deeper his knowledge of himself becomes" (p. 92; emphasis in original). By enabling clients a defamiliarizing glimpse of the very discursive practices that constitute their psycho-social experience, examining one's own talk-in-interaction becomes a means to insight and personal transformation.
368
CHAPTER 22
ANALYSIS OF THERAPEUTIC TALK In my capacity as counselor, I have actively imported the theoretical understandings just presented into counseling interviews like that discussed herein. As can be seen, my effort was to draw the client's attention to the fact and manner of his interactively constructed self-sense, highlighting the possibility of personal transformation through the positive manipulation of perhaps otherwise unexamined—and unquestioned—habits of selfrepresentation. Two potentially controversial issues should be addressed at the outset. First, one of the participants to the interaction to be examined—myself—also occupies the role of analyst. Certainly, were the goal of this essay to explicate features of so-called "naturally occurring discourse" (i.e., the sorts of conversational activities that might happen in the absence of the student of communication), the fact of my participation would present an insurmountable obstacle to any claim for the generalizability of my findings. Because the objective is, rather, to illuminate a potentially useful intervention in counseling, my dual status as interlocutor/analyst seems less problematic. Second, the idea that one can perform analysis of talk-in-interaction in real time (i.e., as the social exchange is unfolding) may be greeted with some skepticism. Surely, the potential for depth and precision in analysis is, in principle, increased when undertaken after the fact using recordings of the talk in question. But this does not preclude the possibility of insights gained "on the fly" in conversation; the testimony of those who have considerable experience in the close investigation of talk provides (admittedly anecdotal) evidence for increased capacities in distinguishing subtle interactive details—even within communicative events to which the analyst is party. At several points in the following encounter, we may observe the counselor orienting to the fact—and, critically, the relative adequacy—of the client's self-constituting talk. I argue that there is a recurrent metacommunicative pattern of talk in which certain identity-implicative interactive particulars are recognized and depicted (i.e., brought to the attention of the other), and that these social activities are organized with a view to achieving therapeutic results. I transcribed approximately 4 minutes, 30 seconds, of a 1 hour counseling interview with a college student in his mid-20s. "Harlan" (a pseudonym) comes from a deeply religious African-American family. Like his father, Harlan was an ordained Pentecostal minister, but he had begun to question formerly unquestionable facets of his life and world, in part because of his program of study in college. The dissonance between his former and present
THERAPEUTIC DISCOURSE
369
worldviews was part of a radical, painful revision in what he knew, how he acted, and who he was. Harlan felt himself to be divided in terms of his several roles: preacher, father, student, party-goer, etcetera. The multiple, social., and temporal nature of his (and every human being's) self-experience became apparent to him. We pursued this area of concern for several months on a fairly regular basis. The theme of "integrity"—being who one says one is; doing what one says one will do—emerged as a useful construct in our discussions. Harlan had on several occasions expressed his appreciation for and aspiration to integrity, including early in the interview from which the accompanying transcript is excerpted. The following excerpt occurred late in the hour-long interview. "K" is the counselor/author; "H" is Harlan. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
K: K: K: H: K: [ H: K: H: H: H: K:
H: H:
K: H:
. . . Well »I mean« thats a:ll (0.2) the same theme (0.5) Its all about integrity. (2.5) Which is i-why ya know its (I a0 cknowledge that) Its kind of a motif ah (0.3) a recurring theme °ya know [Right In our talks: Right (0.5) I (0.3) I'm just °uh-° (1.7) I'm anxious to:: (1.0) anxious to (0.8) have- have that complete so called integrity I guess (0.2) Hmm (.) Ah::mm and I'm unco:mfortable now being aware «of the::» (1.0) importance of integrity (1.2) Ah::m (0.8) °ah-° (.) become disturbed (1.0) when I find myself not in integrity tit really does bother me. Uhum? (.) Ahm especially after our talk:s: ya know it really does Tbo:ther me (0.7)
In Lines 10-30, Harlan confirms the recurring character of the issue of integrity throughout our talks and displays his anxiety to have it operating in his life. Harlan says he's "uncomfortable," "disturbed," and "bother[ed]" now when he sees that he is not "in integrity." Harlan acknowledges that integrity has become for him a criterion for living; he now has an existential standard—who he says he
370
CHAPTER 22
is and what he says he will do—against which he may subjectively compare his objective actions. Harlan locates the discursive source of much of his discomfort with his own inconsistency in our prior talks together (Lines 28-29). H:
Ahm:
33 34
K:
Why
35 36
H: K:
»Because [I'm not being« me: [What- what-)
K:
Umkay,
H:
I don't (0.5) hhhh I'm I'm s:ick and tired of not, being, (2.0) me, (0.1) And then when Im not in integrity I- (.) begin to(0.3) it's almost like I lo::se me.
31 32
(0.5)
(7.5)
37
38
(.)
39
40 41 42 43 44
(.)
H:
(0.8)
45
46
K:
Humm=
In Line 33 I asked Harlan why he is "bothered." Harlan responds (Line 35) that it is because he's not being himself. Using a common idiom, Harlan employs the metaphors of disease and exhaustion (Line 40) to characterize his displeasure at not being himself; he identifies his failure to maintain integrity with the ambiguous feeling of losing himself (Lines 43-44) as if he only truly possesses himself when he can recognize an integral relationship between who he says he is and how he behaves. 47 48 49 50 51 52
H:
K:
=Now I I- it's like everything (1.5) becomes blurred I an- and it's like »well who are you really trying to be« and it goes back into this: cycle of ( 0 . 5 ) nothingness (0.2) »THum«
Harlan uses the visual metaphor of a "blur" to characterize the phenomenological experience of a lack of distinction and clarity concerning his own person (Line 47). In Lines 48-49, Harlan adopts the second-person pronominal relation vis a vis himself—"well, who are you really trying to be?"— suggesting a critical awareness of self-as-object. Harlan metaphorically expresses his anxiety over his felt inability to be himself in terms of a "cycle of nothingness." Harlan is acutely aware of his failure to live in integrity as implying an abortive attempt at being anyone at all. 53
H:
And I(h) I- I don't want- I'm uncomfortable (.) with
THERAPEUTIC DISCOURSE 54 55
that and I'd rather (1 . 8) l'chuhh I need to be «comfterble» ( 1 . 7 ) about ( . ) who I am,
(2.1)
56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69
371
H: K:
H: K: H: H: H:
«A: :nd» (1.8) «not having to::» ( 1 . 0 ) always (.) cctnfo:rm to: (0.2) the society in a box «societal,» (1.0) concerns= =Umhum? (.) A:nd um Well who would you be if all that wasn't there, (1.0) Hhhhh »I don- know.« (1.0) I really don't know I um:, (1.0) tI don't know. That's a good question
Harlan restates his discomfort, and signifies his felt "need to be comfortable" about who he is (Lines 53-55). In Lines 57-58, he indicates a preference for internal (i.e., self-definition) as opposed to external forces (i.e., definition by others), but intimates that he has "conformf[ed] to the society in a box," a term reserved (here, as in previous conversations) for his religious community, which is metaphorically represented as a small, narrow container that encloses, or even isolates, its members. In Line 63, I ask who Harlan would be "if all that wasn't there." In asking this question, I was not implying that it is possible to fabricate a self in a vacuum, only attempting to query Harlan about the sort of person he authentically wishes to be, were he to be freed of the contingent, dependent association with his former cluster of significant relationships. With a marked sigh, Harlan displays his uncertainty concerning his identity apart from his past associations (Line 65). It is significant that Harlan thrice says that he doesn't know (Lines 65, 67, 69), nevertheless concluding that it's "a good question" (Line 69). The fact that we human beings routinely and recursively experience and, as in this fragment, express uncertainty regarding who we are—and even who we wish to be—is a compelling demonstration of the plasticity and symbolically organized quality of the self-system. Harlan's allegiances to multiple communities—together with their corresponding variety of values, each vying for the exclusive subscription of the subject—yield the palpable tension manifest in his talk. 70 71 72 73 74
H:
(.) I'm still, (0.3) I think because I'm partially still in the box that- (0.5) I haven't completely allowed- (.) ayuh I know I would enjo:y( (1.2) »oh like tonight there's a-« (0.4) giant birthday party for me.
372 75 76
77 78 79 80 81
CHAPTER 22 H:
H:
which«
(0.3)ah:m: (1.7) Therell be activities that w(h) (h)hhh no(h)t condoned h by bo- the box people, rand so
K:
82
83 84
(.) Yah ther- (.) going to be a party »in
i-Humm. (.)
H:
85
K:
86 87
H:
88 89 90 91
H: K:
^•Hhh Um:: I have in fact I played a h a significant part in initiating this party, (.) r°*Hhh° [Umhum,
And uh I(1.5) Um have full intentions of taking part, °in the festivities=° =Umhum, (-)
Harlan offers an insightful hypothesis as to the reason for his continuing uncertainty: He's "still partially in the box" (Lines 71-72). Harlan begins—but does not complete—two further utterances on this theme (Lines 72-73), before turning to a specific, illustrative case in point: a birthday party to be held that evening in his honor (Lines 73-74). In Lines 76-80, Harlan distinguishes the party as an event at which "there'll be activities not condoned by the box people." Though remaining nonspecific about these activities (perhaps signaling his embarrassment concerning them), Harlan fully expects that the party-goers will be involved in behaviors that will be inconsistent with the official morality of his religious community. Harlan admits his role in initiating the party (Lines 83-83), and frankly states his intention to "take part in the festivities" (Lines 8889). In other words, Harlan plans to do those very things of which his religious compatriots disapprove. Harlan recognizes the disparity between his commitments in two personally important social domains, one inhabited by his religious persona and the other his irreligious, party-going persona. Each of these communities is acknowledged as a relevant social referent in the fabrication and maintenance of Harlan's sense of self. Harlan exhibits his awareness that the respective—and mutually exclusive—behavioral expectations of each community, together with his membership status within each context, is both constitutive and illustrative of the source of his inner conflict. 92 93 94 95 my 96 97
H: K: H:
A h : : : m : : , parts of me, ( 1 . 2 ) are uncomfortable (0.7) Ye rah. L»°with it0 even though it's:« (.) a party for
K:
tbirth/day. Yeah.
THERAPEUTIC DISCOURSE (0.4)
98
99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108
373
H: K:
H: K: H:
K:
A h : : m : , (1.2) parts of me ar-ar- are <> that Hmm (0.4) And then again ny-= =But you have every intention of partici-pating LI have ev(h)ery intention tl know that I'm going to partici i-pate LRight
In Lines 92-95, Harlan employs the metaphorical figure of "parts" of himself to describe his discomfort; some of these parts have very different sorts of ethical commitments than others. Harlan reiterates his dualistic identification both with the party (it is for his birthday) and with the parts that are questioning his participation in the selfsame affair (Lines 95-99). In Line 104, I use a paraphrase to underscore Harlan's intention to participate, a statement that he enthusiastically echoes (Lines 105-107). (0.2)
109
110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 121a
H: K: H: K: H: K: H:
K:
My name's on the invitation so I have to participate no I choose to participate °I don't have too hh uh:m:= =Although there is a kind of (.) commitment Right. I feel an oblii-gation LThat that implies= =Rit:ght (.) a:nd Even if you printed em mbff-hhhh huh huh rhuh huh, L I - I didnt tprint them, but-, .Hhh bu(h)t uh huh, .Hhh my name is on it and-and the «tea:m» that put to- (.) the uh party together I guess ° (ge- r-enge- )° Lwell- let's look at that as as like
In Line 110, Harlan reasserts his ownership of the party with an appeal to an external artifact: His name is on the invitation. In a telling moment of reflective awareness, Harlan first says that he has to participate, rapidly amending his description of agency to the status of choice rather than mere obligation (Lines 110-111). I suggest that the existence of the invitation does intimate "a kind of commitment" to attend the party (Line 112), a sentiment that Harlan readily confirms (Line 113). In Lines 116-120, we share laughter over the suggestion that Harlan's commitment to attending the party might be emboldened by the possibility that he himself printed the invitation. 120 121 121a
K:
party together I guess ° (ge- i-enge- ) ° l-Well- let's look at that as as like
374 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135
CHAPTER 22
H: K: H: K: H: K:
H: K: H:
(.) a bit of (1.0) behavior Okay, (0.7) Or discourse (.) although it shows up in text= =Rig rht L j t ' s a printed invitation with your name on it Right. °.Hhh° can you «feel» how that does provide an obligation? ' (0.5) Tsure (.) yeah, ah- my name's gonna be there, (.) people expect me to tbe >there. tYeah. I've intvited people.
In Lines 121-127, I problematize Harlan's involvement in organizing the party—calling attention to the invitation, and his ambivalent talk about it— making it into an object for reflection. I ask if Harlan "can feel how that does provide an obligation" to attend (Lines 129-130). Harlan again affirms that his name is on the invitation, that people expect him to be there (Lines 132-133), and that he is responsible for inviting these people (Line 135). My effort was to foreground Harlan's prior social activities (i.e., preparing and sending the invitation) as projecting a commitment to a sequence of future activities that, given his (at least sometimes) divided self-system, now results in internal controversy. I am suggesting to Harlan that in so doing he, in essence, set one version of himself up for condemnation by another. 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157
K:
H: K: H:
K: H: K: H: K: H: K: H:
And even which you is gonna show Tup is pretty much determined= =Oh Ty_e >a:h By the [-nature of the roccasion l-O.Hhh0 LOh I can't show up there Tpreaching can I. (.) TNO cause it wouldnt fit the conterxt. LExactly (.) so I have pto, L And you Tknow this. (0.5) Right And there are certain s:- expectations that are gonna Tlive in that environment, (0.3) Right (.) That are gonna provide for:, (1.0) this Harlan as opposed to another Harlan to show up (0.2) at the party. Exactrly
THERAPEUTIC DISCOURSE 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165
K: H: K:
H: K:
375
L The party Harlan will show up, Right Although (.) not without perhaps a certain amount of discomfort cuz (.) Right, the tpreacher Harlan ( r ) L°Yeah° (dudnt) tPreacher man is- is gonna be uncomfortable.
In Lines 136-139, I direct Harlan's attention to the reality that these historical facts certainly influence the quality of personal performance, or selfpresentation, that would be likely at the party. Harlan affirms this analysis (Line 138), adding that he "can't show up there preaching" (Lines 140-141). I confirm that such behavior wouldn't fit the social context (Line 143); the expectations of his fellow party-goers would be violated by Harlan if he were to present himself in his preacher persona. After Harlan verifies this assessment (Lines 144-145), I emphasize his mindfulness of this systematic connection between his historical commitments and anticipated behaviors (Line 146), and suggest that the party-goers' expectations for Harlan's behavior have been determined by conventions for parties as social environments. I call Harlan's attention to the projective, programmatic character of expectations (his own and others') in relation to the matter of self-presentation in a particular social environment (Lines 154-156). Specifically, I state that the self-created exigencies for the event determine that "the party Harlan will show up," to the exclusion of any other style of selfpresentation, each with its own repertoire of predetermined behaviors (Line 158). I suggest that although certain social environments call for coordinate behaviors, Harlan may still feel discomfort because of the multiplicity of lifestyles he enacts from context to context (Lines 160-161). Harlan identifies the specific self, "preacher man," whose concurrent existence—or, rather, whose availability in memory—will be the cause of his discomfort (Lines 163-165). 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178
K:
H-. K: H:
K: H:
(.) vl'So. what if you arranged your lif :e (1.0) in such a twa:y ^that (1.5) the: you that you pretfer (0.3) could always show tup (2.3) Theres a tproblem with that. (.) Okay, why, Well becuz ( 0 . 4 ) I prefer to be m e : : , ( 0 . 2 ) > i t depends on which me youre ttalkin about.« (.) tRight. but you s:- you talk about a real me:, ^Right.
376
CHAPTER 22 (1.2)
179 180 181 182 182a 183 184 185
K: H: K:
As optposed to (1.0) other me:s including preacher man (.) Right. (.) (there would rbe) "-you never once: (.) that I cahave ever heard .Hh have drawn an identity relation ( 0 . 5 ) between preacher man and the real me
In Lines 167-169, barkening back to our earlier discussion of integrity, I ask the provocative question, "what if you arranged your life in such a way that the you that you prefer could always show up?" Understanding Harlan's discomfort as a product (at least in part) of inconsistency in self-presentation, I ask him to imagine what his quality of experience might be if his manner of communication of himself—both to himself and to others—was unified. Following a long pause (Line 170), Harlan admits to the fact that "there's a problem with" such a strategy (Line 171). After I ask why this should be a problem (Line 164), Harlan says that although he prefers to be himself, it depends on which self one is talking about (Lines 174-175). That is, Harlan acknowledges that there are multiple selves that he enacts, changing from context to context. I call Harlan's attention to the fact that he has—in this conversation and others—talked about a "real me" that is distinct from several others that he routinely personifies, including "preacher man" (Lines 177-180). I then state that Harlan has never "drawn an identity relation between preacher man and the real me" (Lines 183-185), attempting to lead Harlan to the realization that his discourse provides evidence that he does not identify but, rather, distinguishes his genuine, "real" self from Harlan-as-preacher. 186 187 188 189 190 191 192
H: K: H: K: H:
(1.7)
193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200
»There is none-« ther- they'r- they're uh:: distinctive theypre ( ) L Tokay. so you've already tlabeled a certain style of being Harlan Umhum= =As the real Harl r an. L t Oh: : : : .I see what you're saying
H: H:
K: H:
tYeah but I don-, I ' v e never, uhm, (6.0) tHe's always the guy that's looking so I've never behe's never been looked at. (.) Chum(h)hhhhh huh Thah (well r ) L»(Yeah and ya know
In Lines 186-187, Harlan confirms that these inconsistent selves are "distinctive," whereupon I infer that he has "already labeled a certain style of
THERAPEUTIC DISCOURSE
377
being Harlan ... as the real Harlan" (Lines 188-191). Harlan's uptake of my meaning is marked as immediate and emphatic (Line 192). Harlan provides an account for the fact that he does not identify his "real me" and "preacher man" (Lines 194-204), interspersed with two long pauses suggesting careful consideration (Lines 193, 195). This account is telling both of Harlan's internal struggle and of his capacity for reflective awareness. Harlan distinguishes his real self as a subject—or, rather, as the experience of subjectivity—as opposed to the object of perception. Harlan identifies his real self with the "T-phase," and the other selves-in-presentation with the '"me'-phase" (Mead, 1934). The real self is the subject onlooker; the other selves are objects of the real self s metaphoric gaze. Of course, the self-system is conventionally composed of both subject and object, of "T-phase" and '"me'-phase." Harlan is displaying an appreciation of the distinctive functions of these two phases of his own interactive process of selfing (Bruder, 1998). This understanding, however rudimentary its quality, admits the possibility of discursive reorganization with a view to positive change in one's sense of self. The self-as-subject may observe and critically appraise the self-as-object, and employ such knowledge in the organization of present action, the province of the subjective aspect of oneself (Mead, 1934). 199
K:
Chum(h)hhhhh huh hah (well
200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208
H:
L»(Yeah and ya know he ain't gonna be)« and he's the guy that's always examining everybody telse. He's the one that's trying to figure out (1.0) ah:: :: »excuse your french but« what the hells goin Ton= =Umhum,=And ( 2 . 0 ) so Tno: he's (1.2) he's (.) I don't know if he thas a (0.8) uh: :m: (1.0) a perscnna or a character or he- well he's tgotta have a character,
K: H:
r
)
In Lines 201-204, Harlan depicts the real self as "examining everybody else," as "the one that's trying to figure out. . . what the hell's going on." This realization leads Harlan to question whether his real self actually "has a persona or a character" (Lines 206-208). The tentative quality of Harlan's utterance suggests, perhaps, the novelty of his ruminations regarding the different aspects of his self. Yet Harlan has begun to grapple with the implications of the multiple phases of his own discursively ordered self-system.
378
CHAPTER 22
CONCLUSION In the foregoing, we may observe the counselor guiding the client in a sustained, recurrent consideration of the sorts of social actions whereby the latter fashions his sense of self. Harlan is an intelligent person who sincerely wishes to be "real" with himself and others. I endeavored to direct the flow of the interview so that Harlan would realize that and how he creates and maintains his identity in and through his interaction with others—and with himself. This identityconstructing social work is accomplished no matter our level of intentionality, but the systemic quality of the process admits the possibility of purposiveness: the deliberate application of interactive means to programmatic ends. This possibility suggests that, within certain personal and social limits, one can be who and what one chooses to be. Such a choice may serve as a kind of fixed point in social space—a commitment into which one enters with others in the context of relationship—that "holds" one to the course of action one has articulated. Inasmuch as one can secure agreement from significant others to modify their expectations of one—an essentially discursive venture—the horizon of one's self-reconstruction remains open. When "integrity" came up in this therapeutic encounter, I recognized and thematized it. We then played out that theme through a cooperative examination of Harlan's symbolic presentment of his own recollected and projected life experience. Focusing on his own selfpresentation afforded Harlan the possibility of discursive self-transformation. The present essay extends the range of application of this method for analyzing therapeutic interaction in terms of its practitioners, objects, and effects. Counselors wishing to expand the therapeutic tools at their disposal might profitably undertake to increase the "level of magnification" through which they consider clients' talk, even to the appreciation of what would otherwise seem to be insignificant details—especially those that feature (because they are constitutive of) clients' efforts at self-presentation. Counselors might also assist clients in examining discourse to which they themselves are a party (both within and outside of the therapeutic context), with a view to affording clients a new way of seeing themselves. This way of seeing, of experiencing life, produced in the practice of looking closely at talk in which one has participated, is organized around two central, and related, themes: first, that one's life and world are constantly created in and through specific discursive practices, many of which may be rendered visible through the examination of talk-in-interaction. Attention to these practices is itself therapeutic, yielding not only substantial self-knowledge, but fostering increased capacity for generating the same over a lifetime. Second, inasmuch as one cultivates awareness of one's discursive practices—activities that are responsive
THERAPEUTIC DISCOURSE
379
to the "moves" of one's interlocutors, yet also capable of intentional selection— one may be empowered to modify one's life and world through the programmatic performance of practices productive of more satisfying psycho-social outcomes.
REFERENCES Bruder, K. (1998). Monastic blessings: Deconstructing and reconstructing the self. Symbolic Interaction, 21(1), 87-116. Buttny, R. (1990). Blame-accounts sequences in therapy: The negotiation of relational meanings. Semiotica, 78, 219-248. Buttny, R., & Lannamann, J. W. (1987). Framing problems: The hierarchical organization of discourse in a family therapy session. Unpublished manuscript. Corey, G. (1996). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy (5th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Frankel, R. (1984). From sentence to sequence: Understanding the medical encounter through microinteractional analysis. Discourse Processes, 7, 135-170. Freeman, S. H. (1987). Introduction. Verbal communication in medical encounters: An overview of recent work. Text, 7, 3-17. Gale, J. (1991). Conversation analysis of therapeutic discourse: The pursuit of a therapeutic agenda. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Harre, R. (1992). The discursive creation of human psychology. Symbolic Interaction, 75(4), 515-527. Mead, G. (1934). Mind, self, & society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morris, G., & Chenail, R. (Eds.). (1995). The talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of medical and therapeutic discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. O'Hanlon, W. (1991). Preface. In J. Gale, Conversation analysis of therapeutic discourse: The pursuit of a therapeutic agenda, (pp. ix-x) Norwood NJ: Ablex. Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1995). Discourse analysis. In J. Smith, R. Harre, & L. Van Langenhove (Eds.), Rethinking methods in psychology (pp. 8092). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
380
CHAPTER 22
Rogers, C. R. (1942). The use of electrically recorded interviews in imporving psychtherapeutic techniques. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 12, 429-434. Waitzkin, H., & Britt, T. (1993). Processing narratives of self-destructive behavior in routine medical encounters: Health promotion, disease prevention, and the discourse of health care. Social Science & Medicine, 36, 1121-1136. Watts, A. (1961). Psychotherapy east and west. New York: Vintage Books.
23 Modeling as a Teaching Strategy in Clinical Training: When Does It Work? Anita Pomerantz University at Albany, SUNY Two important goals of clinical training in medicine are to teach interns to become competent professionals and to ensure that patients receive quality care. In training programs in ambulatory clinics in the United States, medical consultations are structured with the dual goals of teaching and patient care. After a medical intern takes history and examines a patient, he or she presents the case and discusses it with a supervising physician, called a preceptor. The preceptor then may see the patient. In some circumstances, it is institutionally and/or legally mandated for the supervising physician to gather firsthand information on the patient's condition; in other circumstances, it is discretionary. When the preceptor sees the patient, the intern is present in the examining room and participates to a greater or lesser extent with the patient and the preceptor. On the more participatory side, an intern may interject information he or she previously elicited or inquiry about areas of the patient's history that need clarification. On the less participatory side, an intern may situate him or herself on the sidelines and minimally acknowledge information that the patient gives to the preceptor. When the preceptor concludes the interaction with the patient, the preceptor and intern leave the examining room and confer again. After conferring, the intern returns to the patient to discuss diagnosis and treatment plans. Although the preceptor's seeing the patient clearly serves the purpose of ensuring good medical care, it also affords a training opportunity. This training opportunity, however, has a built-in complexity: Whatever teaching 381
382
CHAPTER 23
and/or learning is displayed occurs in front of the patient. Though teaching is important when preceptors see patients, it needs to be accomplished with some sensitivity to potentially conflicting interests of the intern and the patient. Because the activity of teaching defines the one being taught as not fully competent, teaching in front of the patient puts the intern in an awkward position, potentially compromising his or her position as a professional in the patient's eyes (Pomerantz, Fehr, & Ende, 1997). The dilemma of the preceptors' wanting to teach while at the same time wanting to avoid compromising the intern's position as a professional in front of the patient has a variety of solutions. One solution is to move the teaching out of the examining room. It is precisely this choice that the intern, quoted as follows, appreciated about the preceptor's teaching strategy. 8 / 2 2 / 9 5 - I I Stimulated Recall with Intern Intern:
[It's annoying when] the physician comes in and kind of takes charge, and starts more like kind of telling me what to do in front of the patient. He [the current preceptor] always waits to talk to me outside. Always does that. Which I think is great. I t ' s never the sort of thing "Well we should do this, this, and this." (emphasis added)
As would be expected, we found that the ways a preceptor interacts with an intern in front of the patient generally is an important issue for interns. There are lessons, however, that cannot be taught outside of the examining room and away from the patient's presence. These include demonstrating ways of taking history about sensitive matters, pointing out physical manifestations of medical problems, and showing the intern how to manipulate the patient's body as part of the physical examination. There are different ways of providing learning opportunities, ranging from the preceptor's observing and commenting while the intern interviews and examines the patient to the preceptor's interviewing and examining the patient while the intern observes. On only one occasion in our corpus did a preceptor instruct by commenting on the inadequacy of an intern's performance while she interviewed the patient in the presence of the preceptor. More frequently, the preceptors interviewed and examined the patients with the interns looking on. They sometimes explicitly instructed with asides that consisted of medical explanations or commentaries. However, much of the time, they did not explicitly teach. They conducted the interview and/or physical examination in ways that allowed the interns to observe and learn from their conduct. This chapter describes some features of using modeling as a teaching strategy and discusses some strengths and weaknesses of this practice.
TEACHING STRATEGY
383
METHODS Data Collection This investigation was part of a larger study of medical precepting conducted in a general medicine clinic at a university hospital. Between May 1990 and August 1995, 32 patient visits in the General Medicine Clinic were videotaped with the consent of all the participants. These recordings included the five interactional phases of each case: intern/patient interaction in an examining room, intern/preceptor discussion in the teaching room, preceptor/patient/intern in the examining room, preceptor/intern interaction in the teaching room or the hallway, and the intern/patient interaction in the examining room. Post-patient-visit commentary of preceptors and interns were solicited in 20 of the 35 cases. For 6 of these 20, preceptors and interns were asked to speak on their own into an audiotape recorder about their impressions of the sessions. For the remaining 14 of these 20 cases, stimulated recall sessions were held. For stimulated recall, the preceptor or the intern, together with a member of the research team, viewed the videotape of the medical interactions in which he or she had participated. The instructions to the preceptors were "Stop the tape when you think the intern needed to be guided, or when you're trying to teach or correct, or for anything else you want to say. The more you say the better." The instructions to the interns were "We've been studying precepting and focusing on preceptors. Now we need your point of view. We'd like you to comment on what was helpful and what wasn't helpful about precepting. Stop the tape at any point to make comments. The more you say the better." Interns who completed the stimulated recall sessions were paid $100 for their participation in the study.
Identifying Instances of Modeling Teaching implicates learning; the use of a particular teaching strategy structures the occasion such that some learning strategies over others become available for use. From the preceptor's perspective, teaching via modeling involves conducting the interviewing and examination of the patient with some awareness of being observed by the intern. From the intern's perspective, learning from a preceptor who teaches via modeling involves observing aspects of the preceptor's conduct that he or she appreciates as useful. Although the preceptor's use of a particular teaching strategy structures the occasion in which the intern presumably is engaged in learning, there is some independence between teaching and learning strategies. Even when a preceptor is aware of being observed and conducts an interview and examination in model
384
CHAPTER 23
form, an intern may fail to observe the preceptor's conduct or view any of it as useful. Likewise interns can leam from witnessing a preceptor's conduct even when that conduct is not intentionally pedagogical. The method used to identify instances of modeling relied on the explanations and accounts given by the preceptors and interns. They gave explanations and accounts in two contexts: (a) in commentaries that they gave individually, speaking into the tape recorder at the conclusion of the case, and (b) in stimulated recall sessions with a researcher while watching the videotape of the medical interaction. All instances were collected in which preceptors indicated that their conduct involved attempts to teach the interns and in which interns reported that they found some conduct of the preceptors useful. As would be expected, the preceptors offered more commentary than the interns. Because instances of teaching via modeling and/or learning via witnessing cannot be identified by simply analyzing the videotaped interaction, this project heavily relied on the participants' commentaries and stimulated recall comments. Even though the primary data for this study are the commentaries and stimulated recall comments, the availability of the videotaped interaction permitted the identification, review, and analysis of the specific conduct commented on by the participants. The benefits of analyzing both the interaction and the commentaries were discussed by Arliss (1989/1990) in her study of longstanding relationships: Based on the examination of interaction episodes, and related accounts of those episodes provided by the participants, it is argued that incorporating the accounts enriches (and complicates) the understanding of the particular interaction. Moreover, it is argued that the contextual information in the accounts provides background that is vital to understanding the generalizability and relational significance of the episodes under investigation.
In this study, the materials contained in the participants' comments provided a way to claim the teaching/learning significance for the participants of the episodes of interaction.
Identifying Instances of Successful/Unsuccessful Modeling An instance of successful modeling and one of unsuccessful modeling are discussed in this chapter. The criterion for selecting instances of successful and unsuccessful modeling was the compatibility or incompatibility between the preceptor's and the intern's accounts. For inclusion in this chapter, the clearest case of successful modeling was when the preceptor, having noticed the intern's
TEACHING STRATEGY
385
difficulty in obtaining information about the HIV status of the patient, solicited the information from the patient and the intern commented that he appreciated the way the preceptor solicited the information. The clearest case of an unsuccessful modeling was when the preceptor commented that he had hoped the intern would leam a lesson from some particular conduct and the intern commented that she found that conduct disruptive.
FINDINGS Two Different Contexts for Learning and Teaching: History Taking and Physical Examination When a supervising physician sees the intern's patient, he or she may ask the patient questions and/or physically examine the patient. These two activities are seen to comprise different contexts with respect to the types of knowledge to be taught/learned and the teaching strategies that are appropriate. The participants are aware that there are different types of knowledge to be taught/learned during history taking and during the physical exam. In the following two excerpts, interns display that they are aware of the different types of lessons to learn. In the first excerpt, an intern commented on observing the supervising physician's history taking: Stimulated Recall with Intern. 2 / 1 6 / 9 3 : 2 : 1 3 Intern: And I think the interactions in terms of the patient, see(ing) somebody who has a lot more experience than I interact with the patient, I think that's informative in the sense of how they narrow questions down or attain a history from a patient, I mean, I think that's just general learning, patient interaction..
In the next excerpt, an intern contrasted observing the supervising physician's physical exam and his verbal interaction. Commentary recorded by Intern. Set 2: 5/31/90 Intern: ... he [the preceptor] did some of the physical exam, which actually I find to be just as if not more helpful than the verbal interaction, because these are things, him being an emergency doctor, he knows a lot of these points and that was helpful to me.
386
CHAPTER 23
In the first excerpt, the intern reported that she appreciated observing the preceptor's taking history and interacting with the patient. In the second, the intern commented that she found observing the preceptor's physical exam particularly useful. The interns seem to treat what may be learned during the history taking as principally verbal interaction. In contrast, they treat what may be learned during the physical exam as physical manifestations of the patient's complaints and physical manipulations and tests by the preceptor. Not only do the participants distinguish between the different kinds of lessons that can be learned during history taking and the physical exam, they also see differing pedagogic strategies appropriate for teaching during history taking and during the physical exam. One supervising physician put it this way: 11/22/94 Supervising Physician Stimulated Recall:7 (Interviewer's mm mhm's omitted) P:
Whenever I go see patients with interns, most of the time, I try to teach ... just by doing, and watching the intern watch. As opposed to specifically pointing out things, unless they require that. So, for example, . . . I wouldn't necessarily point things out that I was asking; I would just ask them and hope that he was listening. And with the physical exam, obviously it's different. You might say "Look" at this particular finding, or something like that.
The supervising physician distinguished between two kinds of teaching strategies: (a) "teaching just by doing," or modeling, and (b) "pointing things out" in the course of performing medical activities. The preceptor suggested that modeling was appropriate most of the time during the history-taking phase whereas pointing things out was appropriate during the physical examination. This chapter discusses issues related to teaching and learning during the historytaking phase of the medical consultation.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Using Modeling as a Pedagogical Strategy With modeling, the preceptor acts in ways that could serve as lessons for the intern. There is no explicit talk directing the intern to attend to certain bits of the preceptor's conduct over other bits. There is an obvious benefit to modeling: that teaching can be done, and learning can occur, without an appearance of pedagogic activity. In an environment in which being a novice undermines the role of the professional clinician, the preceptor can provide learning opportunities without undermining the intern.
TEACHING STRATEGY
387
When a preceptor uses modeling, he or she has less control over what the intern will pick up on and see as valuable. The conduct needs to "speak for itself." A drawback to modeling is that lessons may be lost in a variety of ways. One way is that an intern may not attend to the conduct in question. For example, sometimes preceptors consciously select particular words for specific purposes. In the following two instances, it seems that the preceptors were aware that the word selection they were consciously using as a model might go unnoticed. 11.22.94 Preceptor, Stimulated Recall:8 P:
... the intern said "the reflux," and I said "heartburn." And that was a deliberate - I thought reflux might be too technical for the patient.
10/25/94 Preceptor, Stimulated Recall:15 P:
"Yes ma'am" is something I try to teach them too. The older Black women from the south, that's right to say "yes ma'am" to them. ... It sort of helps to let the patient relax I think. And every once in a while, an intern or resident will pick up on it and will do it.
An intern may not attend to the modeled conduct because he or she is focused on other conduct or issues relevant to the situation. Another way that a lesson may be lost is that the intern may notice the conduct but fail to appreciate the basis for using it. Notice that in each of the two preceding examples, the preceptor in the stimulated recall session gave a rationale for, or principle behind, his word selection. In the first instance, the preceptor said that he selected "heartburn" because he wanted to speak with vocabulary understandable to the patient. In the second example, the preceptor wanted to use a term of address that showed respect and hence would relax the patient. Understanding a lesson involves putting together a bit of conduct with a basis for its use. To illustrate this point, I provide two examples: The first is an instance of successful modeling; the second is not. In the first case, the intern found the conduct instructive; in the second case, she found it annoying.
Successful Modeling During the precepting interaction, the intern reported that he neglected to find out about the patient's sexual history. The preceptor, during the stimulated recall session, commented:
388
CHAPTER 23
11/8/94 Preceptor:10 P:
... obviously he felt uncomfortable asking about sexual orientation which would have been, I mean given that his friend died and there was no mention of girlfriend, so it was probably a male friend that died a week ago. And HIV was so much on my mind from the very beginning of this discussion about the patient's— I assumed that he was gay. And it was pretty amazing to me that the intern didn't actually directly ask.
When the preceptor went to see the patient, the preceptor and patient spoke about the friend's death. P: Pt: P: Pt:
Was it AIDS, er No it wasn't AIDS. No. I think he had like a (
)
In stimulated recall, the intern stopped the tape and appreciated the way the preceptor inquired about the topic. 11/8/94 Intern, Stimulated Recall:16 I: AP: I:
AP: I:
That was kind of a nice way of asking about ... You know, Cause of death. If he had a close friend who had died of AIDS, often it's, at least in an initial interview it would be inferred that it was possibly his lover. And then from there it sets the stage for evaluating him later for him being HIV positive. So that was a nice way of asking there. Do you think in watching it you know how to replicate it? In a way. I think it's over time. It's something that I could try to emulate. With the more patients I see, it's easier it is to ask those.... Seeing that come up, the way she did, helps in terms of my future discussions with patients about the same topic.
This instance of modeling was successful because the intern noticed the conduct (how the preceptor asked about AIDS) and recognized a use or purpose for that conduct.
Unsuccessful Modeling In this next case, both preceptor and the intern commented on the preceptor's inquiries regarding the patient's religious affiliation and activities. However, the sense they made of the preceptor's inquiries were quite disparate.
TEACHING STRATEGY
10/25/94 Preceptor, P:
389
Stimulated Recall:18
Here's another card you have to play when it comes up, which is the religion card. You always have to honor it, and listen to it, and explore it and (make it o u t ) . It turns out to be fairly important for this woman.
This preceptor's inquiries apparently were aimed at getting a better sense of what was important to the patient. This goal fits with a previous comment that he made in stimulated recall, namely that when he meets a patient, he attempts to form an image of the patient as a human being. The intern's reaction to the preceptor's pursuing the topic of religion was fairly negative. 10/25/94 Intern, Stimulated Recall:15 I:
That's kind of distracting. I think it's important to have a rapport with the patient. It was kind of distracting though. I think that what we were trying to get— basically the object—... The other thing was, it was a little distracting, though, when he starts talking about the church and all, because we sort of lost track of that teaching point, which had been: "Try to find out exactly what's bothering the patient." But then we sort of get side-tracked.... It's kind of hard though, if you want to establish a rapport, but if you're trying to make a teaching point, it's kind of helpful to try stay focused on that, so it doesn't get diffused.
The intern assumed that the preceptor's purpose for talking about the church was to build rapport. Given that purpose, she felt that the topic took them away from delving into what was bothering the patient. Rather than learning a lesson, she was annoyed that the preceptor did not stay focused. The lesson that the preceptor may have hoped to teach—that religion can be an important part of understanding a patient and understanding a patient is important in the medical encounter—apparently was lost on this occasion. In this instance, modeling as a method of teaching was unsuccessful, because the intern did not appreciate the purpose of the preceptor's asking about church affiliation.
DISCUSSION The set of features associated with the teaching strategy of modeling makes it particularly suited for use in some circumstances but weak in others. Two significant features of modeling are: (a) the teaching is invisible, and (b) the learner plays a greater part in shaping the lesson than is the case with other teaching strategies.
390
CHAPTER 23
The fact that persons can teach, or attempt to teach, without appearing to do so makes modeling a particularly good teaching strategy whenever the participants have good reason to avoid assuming the roles or identities of teacher/learner or expert/novice. One such circumstance involves interactions between preceptors, interns, and patients. In that interns need to maintain the status of competent professionals in front of the patients, modeling is a way of teaching that is designed to avoid compromising their status. There are other kinds of circumstances in which the participants would want to teach invisibly. The status of either of the participants, or both of them, might be seen to conflict with assuming the role or identity of expert-teacher or novice-learner. One can easily imagine an individual modeling conduct rather than more overtly teaching when the lesson is aimed at a superordinate or a recognized expert. The fact that the teacher plays a relatively a small part in shaping the nature of the lesson learned and the learner plays a relatively large part has the consequence of the teacher's having less confidence that the learner is learning the intended lessons. If the preceptor's stream of conduct has no special markings indicating that a lesson is in progress, it is up to the intern as observer to analyze the ongoing stream to see if there are lessons to be learned and, if so, what they are. The successful use of modeling as a teaching strategy relies on the learner's attending to the teacher's conduct, analyzing what the conduct seems designed to do, and appreciating it as good way to do it. For example, recall that the preceptor, having heard the intern say "reflux" in front of the patient, used the less technical term, heartburn, to the patient. If the intern attended to the preceptor's use of heartburn, he or she would have had to appreciate it as a less technical synonym of reflux. He or she would have had to seen the use of a less technical term to the patient as good practice. The lesson, then, is not simply about using the word heartburn but rather about the advisability of using less technical terms when speaking to patients. The teaching strategy asks the intern to attend to the word heartburn, hear it as a substitute for reflux, infer a basis or reason for its use as a less technical term appropriately selected for the patient, and apply the principle to other circumstances. There are several ways in which an attempt to teach via modeling can fail. One way is that an apprentice may fail to attend to the particular modeled conduct, instead attending to other aspects of the discourse or activity. A second way is that an apprentice may attend to the particular modeled conduct but see it as performing different functions or actions than the teacher intended. A third way is that an apprentice may view the teacher's conduct as something other than a normal performance by a competent professional. On a few occasions, interns who observed the preceptors' conduct interpreted what they saw as the preceptors' attempts to produce "model" conduct rather than perform as they usually do in such circumstances. They commented that the preceptors were
TEACHING STRATEGY
391
more thorough in their questioning during the videotaped teaching situation than they would otherwise have been. It seems likely that when interns perceive the preceptors as attempting to perform in atypical ways, they are less receptive to learning from the conduct. Because teaching via modeling involves the learner, rather than the teacher, largely determining what the lesson to be learned is, the success of the teaching technique relies on active and receptive learners. In two types of situations, interns expressed or displayed irritation: when the intern perceived the preceptor's going over the same ground that he or she already covered, and when the intern perceived the preceptor's spending too much time with the patient and being "too thorough" for no apparent medical reason. If a learner is angry, pressured, or annoyed, it is unlikely he or she will be receptive to learning the potential lessons to be gleaned from modeled conduct.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to Jack Ende and Frederick Erickson who, together with me, developed the research project out of which this chapter grew. Together we collected the data and analyzed it. I also am indebted to B. J. Fehr who transcribed the stimulated recall sessions and collaborated in the analysis. I would like to thank Jenny Mandelbaum and Kristine Fitch for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.
REFERENCES Arliss, L. (1989/1990). An integration of accounts and interaction analyses of communication in long-standing relationships. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 23, 41-64. Pomerantz, A., Fehr, B. J., & Ende, J. (1997). When supervising physicians see patients: Strategies used in difficult situations. Human Communication Research, 23, 589-615.
This page intentionally left blank
24 Indeterminacy and Uncertainty in the Delivery of Diagnostic News in Internal Medicine: A Single Case Analysis Douglas W. Maynard Indiana University
Richard M. Frankel Fetzer Institute In his book on telephone conversations, Hopper (1992) wrote, "As we examine telephone conversation's details, the notion that people own topics recedes before the workings of interactive emergence" (p. 155). By interactive emergence Hopper meant that participants "manage" and "negotiate" topics collaboratively. This matter may be plain enough, even expected, in conversations between status equals, who can codetermine how the trajectory of a conversation's topic may go. However, even in more restrictive circumstances where status and interactive dominance would be expected when, for example, a physician is talking to a patient,1 the phenomenon of interactive emergence shows its face. This is particularly true about the interpersonal delivery and receipt of "news," including that which occurs in clinical settings. To paraphrase 1 For discussions concerning the shortcomings of the theoretical literature on doctor-patient communications, see (for example) Treichler, Frankel, Zoppi, Kramerae, and Beckman (1985), and Maynard (1991b). 393
394
CHAPTER 24
Maynard (1997), diagnostic news does not represent something fixed and existing objectively in the world except as doctors announce, patients respond, and the two parties co-establish the presence or absence of some medical condition as tidings of a particular kind. Our spotlight is on an interview in which a physician reports on a number of tests that his female patient had taken during a previous, routine physical checkup. Most of the tests are routine and the results are inconsequential. The patient's mammogram, however, unexpectedly showed a lump in the woman's breast. Because the presentation of this result occupies the central part of this interview, it is also at the center of our analysis. The doctor and patient decide on a follow-up ultrasound test, which is performed later in the day at a breast clinic. After the results of the ultrasound become available, the physician calls his patient. Having news that the ultrasound apparently shows a cyst rather than a malignancy, he opens the phone call by saying that he has good news. However, his patient does not accept her physician's proposal of good news, and wants to know what should be done next to resolve the still indeterminate status of the lump. In fact, the patient's responses to the physician's suggestions for treatment codetermine the topical trajectory of the conversation and effect a different course of action than that which the physician, following radiologists' advice, initially advocated. Besides explicating the ways in which doctor and patient interactively handle the mammogram result, our purpose is to situate this focal news delivery in the overall context of the medical interview. Previous conversation analytic research on the delivery of diagnostic news (Heath, 1992; Maynard, 1992; Perakyla, 1998) involves collections of such deliveries from different interviews. Within these collections, each episode of delivery and receipt is examined as a singular instance, to be compared with others in the collection, but largely apart from the overall medical interview in which it is originally embedded. Ours is a single case analysis and complements these other studies by showing how physician and patient handle a troublesome diagnostic matter in relation to other news deliveries within the same interview.2 It appears that when there are numerous results to report, the physician and patient may buffer the troublesome
2
Maynard (in press, ch. 3) discussed the difference between "episodic" and "longitudinal" studies of bad and good news. Episodic studies are those that examine singular instances apart from larger courses of action in which they are embedded. Longitudinal studies are those in which, over time, news is delivered and received again and again. Parties may at one time be the recipient of the news and, later, the deliverer of the news to others. Or, when an individual becomes seriously ill, family members may be monitoring the situation and hearing and telling news according to how the individual's health status waxes and wanes. For longitudinal studies, see, for example, Beach (1996, 2001).
INDETERMINACY
395
matter by dealing with news about benign and inconsequential conditions at the opening and closing of the interview.
LEADING UP TO THE MAMMOGRAM RESULTS In this case, the physician has three kinds of news to convey. First, several tests show normal readings, and represent good news. Second, several test results are indeterminate but inconsequential. Third, the mammogram results, showing a dense area in one of the patient's breasts, are both indeterminate and of potentially great consequence, although (in the physician's own view) he and his patient had different perspectives on this. The interview illustrates a classic dilemma that the sociologist Hughes (1951) identified: Something that is one person's crisis may be another person's routine. The physician involved in this case was confident that the patient did not have a malignancy and saw the indeterminate mammogram as a relatively routine matter. However, because his patient had called him for the mammogram result the day before this visit, and because dense areas on mammograms represent, at a minimum, watching the dense area over time and entertaining the possibility of more testing, the physician was aware that the patient would be more anxious than he about the result.3 To some degree, the breast result was a "crisis" for the patient. The patient is a nurse who works in the hospital with which an internal medicine clinic and site for our data collection is affiliated. This nurse, Ms. V, is therefore not just a regular patient but a professional acquaintance of Dr. K. Prior to the interview that is the focus for our study, Ms. V had visited Dr. K for a regular medical examination and number of tests. Consequently, Dr. K now has various results to report to Ms. V. The encounter begins with the patient complaining about how difficult it was to get an appointment in the clinic; physician and patient discuss this difficulty and what might be done about it. Dr. K signals the commencement of the interview as follows: (1)
1.4:164 Dr. K: hhh Well you were interested in your mammogram resutlts Ms. V: Yeah an [that xray.] Dr. K: [an proba]bly all the other results too. Ms. V.- Yeah
3 In a post-hoc interview with the first author, the physician said, "I was not regarding this report as bad news really ... I did not expect that this was going to be a breast cancer. [But] . . . anything seen on a mammogram for a woman is bad news in that sense because it means more medical care. Something to worry about in the meantime."
396
CHAPTER 24
Notice how, in signaling the interview's commencement, Dr. K prioritizes the mammogram. As mentioned, this patient had telephoned Dr. K the day before and left a message that she wanted to know what that particular result was. Although Dr. K had returned her call, he was unsuccessful in reaching her.4 In any case, this opening appears to index those calls and his knowledge of what her primary concern is. At this point in the interview, rather than discussing the mammogram right away, Dr. K tells Ms. V that he has not gotten back a stool blood test, and she tells him that she has not done the test yet. Dr. K then urges her to complete that procedure, writes in her record, and goes on to read other results that he does have in hand: (2) 1.4:235 1. l-> Dr. K: Yer pa::p (.) is negative? 2. (0.4) 3. Ms. V-. Oh good. 4. 2-> Dr. K: Yer: leg xray is negative? 5. (1.0) 6. Ms. V: So di- So are you gonna tell me what's wrong with 7. my leg [then? ] 8. Dr. K: [I alrea]dy_ told you what's wrong. 9. Ms. V: Oh just tendinitis?
Whereas a negative pap test (arrow 1) is received as good news (Line 3), Ms. V treats the leg X-ray announcement (arrow 2), whose production format ("your x is negative") parallels that containing the pap report, in a different manner. Instead of a close positioned assessment, there is a substantial silence (Line 5), and then a query about "what's wrong" with the leg. Here is an example of what Maynard and Frankel (in press) called the symptom residue: The X-ray may be negative for disease or injury, but this leaves possible persistent discomfort or pain ("what's wrong . . . ", Lines 6-7) unexplained. In some circumstances, there is no explanation. In this interview, the patient and her doctor, in a joking way, settle on the tendonitis diagnosis: (3) 1.4:240 1. Ms. V: So di- So are you gonna tell me what's wrong with 2. my leg [ (then)? 3. Dr. K: [I already toldju what was wrong. 4. Ms. V: Oh. just tendinitis, 5. Dr. K: Uh::m:, is that what I told you? [(I think) 4
This information is from the interview of Dr. K by the first author (see Footnote 3.)
INDETERMINACY Ms. Dr. Ms. Dr. Ms.
397
V: [.hh hah hah K: [tendinitis V: [hah i(h)s th(h)at whatchu told me. Y(h)eah. K: Well:, [(I know is-) V: [.hh Well you gave me uh choice, tendiniti[s slash bursitis? K: [Tendinitis er bursitis, [okay. V: [Take yer pick. K: [Alright, [an' then you- you like tendinitis, V: [ ( O k a y , ) [.hh V: W e : h I li [ke tendinitis:, [ ( s o . ) K: [better? [Good.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
Dr. Ms. Dr. Ms. Ms. Dr.
18. 19. 20. 21.
(0.9) .hh Alri:ght, (1.0) Dr. K: Here's thuh results of your: femur ex ra:y,
Dr. K:
That whatever discomfort Ms. V has in her leg is a relatively mild condition is exhibited in the downplaying of diagnosis by mutual joking. Dr. K initially proposes that he has already told the patient (Line 3), thereby declining to retell her. She interprets this decimation as diminishing the condition ("just tendonitis," Line 4), and Dr. K follows this with a display of forgetralness and tentative diagnostic formulation (Lines 5, 7), to which Ms. V responds with laughter and a laughing receipt of his tentative diagnosis (Lines 6, 8). The two parties then portray the diagnosis as having been a two-pronged choice for the patient (Lines 10-17), with her choosing and liking tendonitis "better" (Line 17). Physicians often use the device of giving patients a diagnostic choice to indicate a condition for which the treatment is the same, regardless of how it is named.
THE DELIVERY AND RECEIPT OF MAMMOGRAM RESULTS Just as Ms. V's leg problem is jokingly put aside, doctor and patient remark on another result, concerning a femur X-ray (Lines 1-2 in Excerpt 4) as good news (Lines 4-6), and dismiss this topic as Dr. K moves to a discussion of the mammogram (Lines 9-10): (4) 1.4:263 1. Dr. K: Here's the results of yer:: femur xray, you can 2. read it yersel:f? It's perfectly tnormal. 3. (8.6) ((Patient is reading)) 4. Ms . V: Ah good. 5. (2.4) 6. Dr. K: . hhhhhh That' s good news ay. ? 7. (0.2) 8. Ms. V: (Uh huh)
398 9. 10. 11. 12.
13. 14.
CHAPTER 24 Dr. K: And this is the results of the mammogram. I'm gonna just scan it again, before hh I give it to you. (0.4)
Dr. K: °You have this one.0 Ms. V: °What kind of a pen is this0
As Dr. K gets ready to present the results (Lines 9-10), he shows Ms. V a copy of the report (Lines 12-13). Ms. V initiates a teasing routine about Dr. K's pen (Line 14), which goes on for several turns with Dr. K and Ms. V trading jokes about the pen and doctors' handwriting (data not shown) while Dr. K gazes at the mammogram report. Subsequently, Dr. K delivers the results to Ms. V, and both parties become very serious. Whereas testing showed the right breast to be normal, the report for the left breast is not so good. In Lines 1-10 in the following excerpt, Dr. K is reading from the report: (5) 1.4:311 1. Dr. K: Well:: circumscribed density, is identified in the 2. central portion o' the breast, with the lo:ngest 3. axis about one point three centimeters. This could 4. represent a cys: t but was not clea:rly: identified 5. .hhh on [a pr]ior mammogram. 6. Ms. V: [mhhh] 7. (0.4) 8. Dr. K: It says either ultrasou:nd to determine if this 9. mass is cystic or a single view: followup in six 10. months is warranted, .hhh to assure stability (1.2)
11.
12. 13. 14. 15.
Dr. K: So what they're say:ing is::: (0.6) they see something that they cannot (1.2) say: : is perfectly nor:mal. (0.4)
16.
MS. V: Mm hm[: :
17. 18. 19. 20. 21.
Dr. K:
22. 23 .
]
[But th]ey're not very_ worried about it either, because they suggest we can do another picture in six months ta tell if it's stable. Ms. V: .hhh >Okay-< but it wasn't on my las:t mammogram? Dr. K: That's what they said.
Ms. V:
(1.0) Sh: : : - okay.
After Dr. K finishes reading (Line 10), Ms. V is silent as she continues looking at the report (Line 11). By "citing the evidence" from the report, using an inferential form ("This could represent a cys:t"), and not "asserting" any condition (Maynard, 199la; Perakyla, 1998), Dr. K takes a cautious approach to delivering the news. Subsequently, Dr. K looks up and at his patient, offering an interpretation of the testing information (Lines 12-14) as suggesting a possible abnormality. When Ms. V says "Mm hm::" at Line 16, she also moves her gaze from the report to Dr. K, who then provides a positive cast to the
INDETERMINACY
399
recommendation for another mammogram (Lines 17-19). Ms. V asks to check her understanding about a possible contrast between the current mammogram and her last one (Line 20), which understanding Dr. K confirms (Line 21). After a delay (Line 22) Ms. V produces an "okay" receipt at Line 23. The preceding, cut-off "Sh:::" sound and hesitation may be deleting an expletive. Jefferson (1974) showed that an "error avoidance format," consisting of [WORDi +HESITATION + WORD2], can operate to indicate that an initially produced object projects an error or inappropriateness and that a subsequent object is its correction. Participants deploy such formats particularly for obscenities, whose use in conversation can indicate relational intimacy (Jefferson, 1974). Although Ms. V and Dr. K display a "joking" and informal relationship, it may not be one in which a word like shit (if that is what Ms. V projects at Line 22) is regular. However, Ms. V does use the word later in the interview—see excerpt 6. Here, Ms. V, by avoiding an obscene term, may be providing for relational distance that is sensitive to the participants' invocable doctor-patient identities. Physicians, after the delivery of uncertain news, proffer suggestions and remedial actions to deal with the announced situation. In this case, Dr. K raised the possibility of an ultrasound test, which could tell if the density in Ms. V's breast was a cyst. He also proposed that if on a physical exam, he did not feel anything in the breast, they wait 6 months and repeat the X-ray at that time. Ms. V agreed to these decision-making options, whereupon Dr. K proceeded to do the physical, during which he did find a dense area in the breast. In the mode of what Stivers (1998; see also Heritage and Stivers 1999) called "online commentary," Dr. K says, "I think I'm feeling what they're talking about.. . it's kind of like a jelly bean laying horizontal." And he goes on: (6) 1.4:502 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18 .
Dr. K: They said it was one point three centimeters in the lo:n:gest axis an' that- that is about what I feel as well . . . I: would be.-t that this is not (.) a malignant lump, ((noise)) It doesn't feel like a malignant lump. (0.5) Dr. K: But that's not a hundred percent as you know. Ms. V: Yea::h. (.) If it is:, I don't, give a sh:it. Dr. K: Why. Ms. V-. Becu- (0.5) I've managed to stay suicidal so if I (get-) get any diseases I don't care. (0.7) Ms. V: An' I will not have chemotherapy or anything else. I don't care for that. All I wanna know is if I get cancer I wanna know so I can Dr. K: But if it were lump you'd probably want it tuh be removed huh, (2.0)
400 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
CHAPTER 24 Ms. Dr. Ms. Dr. Ms.
V: K: V: K: V:
I don't know. Maybe if they do it under a local. There are- Well they probably will. Oh. Oka(h)y. .khh (I know.) Things have changed a lot you know That's true.
Online commentary, as a version of "forecasting" some diagnostic upshot (Maynard, 1996), regularly works to fashion a recipient's expectations by minimizing a condition (Heritage & Stivers, 1999). Here, discussing a possible malignancy according to how it feels upon physical manipulation,5 Dr. K's commentary (Lines 1-5) offers an optimistic version of her condition. Ms. V is silent at this point (Line 6). Dr. K then slightly hedges his optimistic rendering (Line 7) and Ms. V, in a step wise shift that moves from a focus on the proposal that the lump is "not" malignant, invokes the contrasting case of a possible malignancy and depicts her reaction to it with "don't care" announcements (Lines 8, 10-11). In the latter announcement (10-11), she also mentions feeling suicidal. Dr. K receives this announcement with silence (Line 12),6 after which Ms. V, in another step wise topical transition that still preserves the theme of a possible malignancy, moves away from the not-caring announcements and mention of suicidal feelings to project how she would avoid treatment options and "quit working" (Lines 13-15). Dr. K produces a disagreeing counterproposal that she would "probably want" the growth "removed" (Lines 16-17), to which the patient hesitatingly (Lines 18-19) and contingently agrees (Line 19). Overall, in a few seconds, doctor and patient migrate topically from a probable benign condition (doctor's version) to a possible malignancy (patient's version) to a brief mention of suicidal feelings to the very practical consideration of lump removal, and they end with a display of agreement regarding this matter (lines 20-23). Shortly after the excerpt, Dr. K repeats that he "would believe that this is not a malignant lump," and, according to the options they had discussed earlier, suggests a referral for her to see the physician at the breast clinic, for an immediate ultrasound.
5 Reference to what he "feels," as Perakyla (1998) noted, marks the inconclusive "epistemic" grounds of Dr. K's physical exam and tentative conclusion. It projects the need for more reliable and certain information. 6 Sacks (1972) argued that reports of suicidal feelings may be treated as either serious or humorous, somewhat independently of what the reporter may actually intend. Dr. K's silence stays away from the suicide topic and thereby avoids making an overt choice between responding in a serious or humorous fashion. However, in his interview with the first author, Dr. K indicated that this patient had been treated for depression and that she had even attempted suicide in the past. He and his patient regularly discussed her psychiatric state; it was his judgment in this interview that the reference to suicidalness was nonserious.
INDETERMINACY
401
EXITING FROM THE MAMMOGRAM DISCUSSION: RETURN TO TEASING; OTHER BENIGN RESULTS As Dr. K writes out the referral and then jots notes into his patient's chart, the two parties return to the teasing and joking way of conversing that preceded the rnammogram discussion. Ms. V, for example, offers to bake bread for him (as she has for other physicians), Dr. K accepts this offer, and then he quips that he is going to be caught on videotape "extorting" baked bread from his patient. Ms. V next initiates further talk regarding her test results: (7) 1.4:627 1. l-» Ms. V: Oh(hhh) we(hhh)ll hhh. What else theh- all my 2. blood work was okay? 3. (1.0) 4. -> Dr. K: Yes: ma'am 5. (0.4) 6. 2-^ Dr. K: .hhh [But we] can't even tell: if yer having= 7. Ms. V: [( )] 8. -> Dr. K: menopause or no:t. 9. Ms. V: Oh we ca::n't? = 10. Dr. K: =No.= 11. Ms. V: =Oh good cuz I can't tell ei(heh heh)ther(heh 12 . heh) . 13. (0.4) 14. 3-> Dr. K: Let's see yer sodium. 15. (1.0) 16. -> Dr. K: What is it. 17. (0.2) 18. -> Dr. K: Sodium? Is this sodium? 19. (0.4) 20. -> Dr. K: Yeah [these two. ] Sodium an:-.d what's this. 21. Ms. V: [Here's sodium.] 22. Ms. V: Creatine. 23. -> Dr. K: Greatinine are normal. 24. (0.4) 25. Ms . V: Okay goo:d. 26. 4-> Dr. K: But yer ef ess aich level 27. (0.2) 28. Ms. V: Is that-= 29. -> Dr. K: =is intermediate. See if you look down here at 30. -> the:se 31.
MS . V
32. -> Dr. K: 33.
MS . V :
.hh
[hhh
O h : : : : :
]
[r:esults it's sort of in] the= =oka [ : y : : ]
34. -> Dr. K: [inde]terminate (0.2) area. 35. (0.8) 36. Dr. K: It's a little hi:gher than what we'd expect fer 37. a cycling woman (0.2) .hh but it's not hi:gh 38. enough to clearly be in the menopausal range
402 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44 . 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53 . 54 . 55. 56. 57 . 58. 59. 60.
CHAPTER 24 MS. V Dr. K V: Dr. K
Ms. V Dr. K Ms. V Dr. K Dr. K
Ms. V Dr. K Ms. V
either. And it's definitely not pre- (0.2) pubertal either. [Puber]tal. "(What was the [word. ]= [No::.] [Right.] =pubertal° pre-pubertal. (1.0) So. According to the ef ess aich yer a post pubertal woman (.) Heh hm Who is not yet clearly menopausal. (0.2) Go:Od. (1.2) So yit means you could be nor:mal. (1.0) An' it means you could be: (.) just moving into yer menopause. (1.2) °Mmkay.° °Alright?o (0.4) So. Lotta help huh? hhhhhh ((sigh))
We have arrowed four news delivery segments that become progressively more specific. The serial fashion in which the doctor proceeds involves a battery of tests that have individual and collective meaning; one test affects the interpretation of the group. First, in response to the patient's generalized query about her blood (Arrow 1), Dr. K confirms that it was "okay" (Line 4). Second, Dr. K produces a summary report of indeterminacy regarding whether patient has entered her menopause (Arrow 2, Lines 6-10). The patient receives this news with an "oh good" assessment, tied to a laughing report of her own uncertainty (Lines 11-12). Third, presenting particular test results, Dr. K announces that her sodium and creatinine "are normal" (Arrow 3, Lines 14-23), which Ms. V receives with a positive assessment (Line 25). Fourth, he announces an "intermediate" and "indeterminate" FSH ("ef ess aich") level (Arrow 4, Lines 26, 29-30, 32, 34). Dr. K also explicates the indeterminacy (Lines 36-39), and Ms. V receives this news in a light or joking manner (Lines 40-41, 43). Dr. K subsequently offers an interpretation that is marked with further uncertainty (Lines 45-46, 49) and ambivalence (Lines 53, 55-56). The patient assesses the first part of this interpretation positively (Line 51) and then acknowledges the second part with a soft "okay" token (Line 58). Finally, Dr. K produces a summarizing, ironic assessment (Lines 59), to which the patient responds with a sigh (Line 60). Shortly after this, the interview arrives at a conclusion, as Dr. K recommends taking his referral to the breast clinic "now," asking the patient if there's "anything else" (to which she replies that she got "more" than she
INDETERMINACY
403
"expected"), and both of them exit the room while talking about referral forms and the clinic administration (a topic with which the interview had commenced). The end of the interview fits patterns that West (in press) identified. When a physician produces the "anything else" query after the patient and he have closed a topic and agreed upon the next step for treatment, it proposes a close to the encounter. The "making of arrangements" (Burton, 1991) for subsequent medically oriented activities and visits, argued West, is an aspect of how doctor and patient collaboratively make visible what is glossed as continuity of care as a feature of their visits.
FOLLOW-UP PHONE CALL: FURTHER UNCERTAINTY AND A RESOLUTION Ms. V did visit the breast clinic that day, and obtained an ultrasound exam of her breast; the clinic then sent the results to Dr. K, who called his patient to report these results. This phone call was approximately 3 weeks after she had visited him in the clinic. The two parties had tried but had difficulty connecting on the phone in the interim. At the beginning of their conversation, they briefly discussed these difficulties, and then Dr. K proceeded with his news: (8) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 2021. 22. 23. 24. 25.
1.4 Follow-up Dr. K: Ms. V: Dr. K: Ms . V: Dr. K:
.hhh Well w- uh:::m. I have good news for you. (0.4) Yah? (0.8) About yer ultrasoun::d.= =Uh ha: : Have you been expecting it?
(1.0) Ms. V: No: I wanna know whether er not I agree that it's good new:s. Dr. K: ^Ya::h. hh Well what the ultrasound .hh uh:: sh: :owed, is: : (.) uh: that they f.: ound that lump, that was se:en on the mammogram: an that we:: felt on the physical exam. .hh[hhhhhh] they f_: Ms. V: [uh huh] Dr. K: they found also: 'n they sa::y it appears .hhh uh:: ta be: a cys:t (0.6) Dr. K: But uh: :tn (1.2) tch but they can't be enti-.r:ely .hh um (0.2) tch reassur:ed about it because they said it doesn't look like a simple cyst in other words they think that the wa:11 of the cyst might be a little thicker in one place, .hhh 'n therefore they can't be real: s::ure that its no:t uh: : something gro:wing on e:dge. .hhh
404 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.
CHAPTER 24 Ms. V: Mm h [mm Dr. K: [But they're not very worried about it obviously because they: say that they do not recommend biopsy at this ti:me. (0.2) Ms. V: Okay Dr. K: An that they recommend uh: just another mammogram, a lateral vie:w, a medial lateral view of the left breast in six months. .hhh[h Now:] when they= Ms. V: [Okay. 3 Dr. K: =recommend tha::t hh uh::m one can be(hih) pretty assur::ed that they're not very worried about the way th'it looks. Ms. V: Okay.
Whereas Dr. K initially characterizes the results as "good news," Ms. V avoids aligning with this assessment (Lines 2-4, 9-10).7 Subsequently, Dr. K's delivery embodies "citing the evidence" (Maynard, 199la) and confirming what was previously seen (Lines 11-14). That is, he prefaces the report of a previouslyobserved "lump" with a formulation that this was "found" and follows this report with a formulation that this was "found also:". Having confirmed the lump's existence, Dr. K next (Lines 16-17) announces a diagnosis. He does so in a mode of uncertainty: It "appears" to be a cyst. There is no turn transfer at this point (Line 18), and Dr. K goes on to explicate the uncertainty (Lines 19-25). Subsequent to Ms. V's continuer (Line 26), Dr. K produces a "bright side," "good news exit" from the uncertain report of ultrasound results. We are drawing a parallel here to Holt's (1993) observation that subsequent to the news of a death, which is acknowledged as bad news, participants describe and evaluate the deceased person's life prior to death, and/or they characterize the manner of dying in a way that provides for positive assessments—a bright side to the death. Furthermore, Maynard (1989), analyzing the delivery of diagnostic news about developmental disabilities to parents of the involved children, showed that clinicians follow the bad news with a good news exit, such as the proposal that a mentally retarded child "can learn and will continue to learn." Here, at Lines 27-29, Dr. K suggests that although a lump has been confirmed and has "thicker wall," the radiologists ("they") are "not very worried. . . ", and he produces an account for this assessment (Lines 27-29). Ms. V's "okay" is slightly delayed (Lines 30-31), and Dr. K then relates the recommendation for a follow-up mammogram in a way that mitigates its significance (Lines 32-34, it is 7 See Frankel's (1995) discussion of how physicians' formulations of "good news" can be at odds with the patient's own perspectives and experiences, and Heath's (1992) discussion of how a physician's relatively upbeat diagnosis can question the severity of a patient's symptoms and threaten the legitimacy of his or her having sought professional treatment. Also see Maynard (1997) and Frankel (2001).
INDETERMINACY
405
"just another" one). Again, Ms. V's okay (Line 35), produced as Dr. K takes an inbreath and starts another utterance (Line 34), is slightly delayed, and Dr. K goes on to complete the bright side, good news exit with a further proposal of the radiologists not being worried. The delayed "okays" may indicate Ms. V's slight resistance. Dr. K proposes to place interpretation of the results in other hands. For primary care physicians, who are generalists and often rely on the expertise of specialists, providing quality and continuity of care involves a shared responsibility with these others. In this case, Dr. K's references to "they" involve the radiologists who read the mammogram. At this point, Ms. V asks Dr. K whether he thinks it a "good idea" to wait rather than do an immediate biopsy (data not shown). Dr. K answers in an ambivalent mode (Lines 1-9): (9) 1.4 Follow-up 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24 . 25. 26. 27. 28.
Dr. K:
Ms. V: Dr. Ms. Dr. Ms. Dr. Ms. Dr.
K: V: K: V: K: V: K:
Ms. V: Dr. K: Ms. V:
... the only thing I can tell you based on this ultrasound is that the radiologists appear to be: very much not worried abou:t it. .hhh Uh it depends upon::: what one's attitude is about it. I know some people would say Gee that's good new:s I'd be glad to wait six months .hh. I'm °cuz I'mo not very concerned about it and other people might say Gee: I wanna be real su:re. An' the only way we can be absolutely sure as you know .hhh is to:: uh biopsy it. Yeah, .hhh I know I've been rea:ding a lot about biopsies an' the controversy about whether or not one ought to do the work ...I jist wonder Su:re .hh what's better. Ta kno:w, Wh[at[once 'n fer all er Y: [ea-.h not. We:11 that's a matter of how you feel abou:t it. I think that I cannot make a very clear medical recommendation either fo:r biopsy .hh or for: waiting [and I ] think uh this is the- t- this is= [Mm hmm] =the kind of thing when you have ta help me: wehyou kno:w decide what's best fer you: .hh cause the truth the medical truth here is not so clear. Yeah
Ms. V's response is also ambivalent (Lines 11-13 and in data not shown), and she goes on, at Lines 13, 15, 17, and 19, with a kind of "my side" statement that can further "fish" for Dr. K's opinion (Pomerantz, 1980). Once again, Dr. K demurs (Lines 20—23) and then invites Ms. V to "help" him make the decision and formulates (Line 25-27) the uncertain medical position.
406
CHAPTER 24
Patient and physician here exhibit the limits of rational, authoritative medicine (Maynard & Frankel, in press), and perhaps the physician's role in providing care. Friendly as these two parties seem to be, indeterminate test results and uncertainty about what to do with regard to the breast lump pervade their interaction, with each one looking to the other for making a decision in the face of this indeterminacy and uncertainty. Almost now at an impasse, Dr. K proposes an "intermediate sort of step"—to have a regular medical examination after 3 months (data not shown). This would mean holding off the biopsy but not standing still for the full 6 months until another mammogram. Ms. V agrees to this, contingent on talking to her husband about it, and the telephone conversation comes to a close.
DISCUSSION Depictions of professional authority (Friedson, 1970) suggest that doctors, with their access to "esoteric" knowledge that the patient does not have, are in a unique position among consulting experts because they need not try to persuade patients of anything in terms of therapy and treatment. Rather, they can simply assert, and expect to have followed, diagnoses, recommendations, and advice. However, studies of actual interaction in medical settings show many layers of complexity to this abstract picture (Heritage & Maynard, in press). Accordingly, interactive emergence (Hopper, 1992) rather than unilateral imposition and formal role adherence is a useful organizing principle for studying the doctorpatient relationship. For example, when doctor and patient deal with relatively minor conditions, as in the case here, there may be considerable mutual teasing and joking, even about indeterminate results. The news delivery and receipt, therefore, is not necessarily a straightforward information transfer and can be laden with reciprocal banter and tokens of laughter that have positive relational implications (Glenn, 1995; Jefferson, Sacks, & Schegloff, 1987). With potentially more serious problems, the physician still does not unilaterally determine how the delivery of diagnosis and recommendations for follow-up will go. If, as here, the patient disagrees with the doctor, that patient may use silence and other mechanisms to resist assessments or advice a doctor makes. Particularly with the mammogram and physical examination, the patient withholds affiliating to her doctor's optimistic assessment. Furthermore, in the follow-up telephone call, the patient challenged the doctor's proposal of "good news" and persistently sought clarification of his view of the experts' opinion, eventually obtaining a suggestion for a 3 month checkup that cut in half the
INDETERMINACY
407
radiological recommendation of waiting 6 months (and then performing another mammogram). This avoidance of overt disagreement or conflict also preserves solidarity in the doctor-patient relationship. The problems of indeterminacy and uncertainty were paramount in this case. In the past, researchers have emphasized the anxiety that uncertainty produces in patients (Charmaz, 1991; Fallowfield, 1991; Jacobs, 1969) and physicians (Buckman, 1984), not according much attention to the interaction surrounding actual displays of indeterminacy and uncertainty. One picture emerging from the literature is that physicians deal with anxiety over uncertainty by concealing their lack of knowledge from patients (Fox, 1957; Katz, 1984).8 Such a tendency is not apparent in our interactional data: Dr. K is forthcoming in his displays of not knowing either what the lump in Ms. V's breast is or what course of action to take to resolve the issue. Of course, handling uncertainty is part of clinicians' taken-for-granted, tacit, and practical repertoire of skills that are rarely articulated in the medical curriculum (Hewson, Kindy, Van Kirk, & Gennis, 1996), so there may be considerable variation in different clinics. In any event, as a matter of interaction, our case study shows the physician being faced with having to define and interpret what the lack of definitive results imply. If the interview here is any indication, this often entails displays of "hope work" on the part of physicians (Good, Good, Schaffer, & Lind, 1990), who, facing the dilemma of their "routine" being the patient's "crisis," may give optimistic renderings of indeterminate results.
CONCLUSION Past research, using collections of diagnostic news deliveries from multiple interviews, analyzes such deliveries as episodic encounters and not fully within the overall interviews of which they compose a part. Our inclusion of the broader context of the interview shows that physician and patient may collaboratively buffer serious and inconclusive news with nonserious and good pieces of diagnostic news, cautiously approaching and exiting from the serious news by dealing teasingly and humorously with each other during the prelude and the aftermath. When their focus is on the serious news, and doctor and patient have different perspectives on what it means or what to do to resolve the indeterminacy, they may work with the discrepancy in ways that also preserve their otherwise affable relationship. In considering how physicians learn and practice medicine, therefore, it may be useful to broaden the scope of training to 8
On the various sources of uncertainty—incomplete mastery of available knowledge, limitations in current medical knowledge, and the interaction of both of these, see Fox (1957).
408
CHAPTER 24
specify how to handle the "drama" (Miller, 1992) of sharing serious results, the practices involved in less consequential diagnostic work (Perakyla, 1998), the sometimes overarching problems of uncertainty and indeterminacy, and the relational implications that are also pervasive in deliveries of diagnostic news.
REFERENCES Beach, W. A. (1996). Conversations about illness: Family preoccupations with bulimia. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Beach, W. A. (2001). Stability and ambiguity: Managing uncertain moments when updating news about Mom's cancer. Text, 21, 221-50. Buckman, R. (1984). Breaking bad news: Why is it still so difficult? British MedicalJournal, 288, 1597-99. Button, G. (1991). Conversation in a series. In D. Boden and D. Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and Social Structure (pp. 251-277). Cambridge: Polity Press. Charmaz, K. (1991). Good days, bad days: The self in chronic illness and time. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Fallowfield, L. (1991). Breast cancer. London: Tavistock/Routledge. Fox, R. (1957). Training for uncertainty. In R. Merton, G. Reeder, & P. Kendall (Eds.), The student-physician (pp. 207-241). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Frankel, R. M. (1995). Some answers about questions in clinical interviews. In G. H. Morris & R. J. Chenail (Eds.), The talk of the clinic (pp. 233257). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Frankel, R. M. (in press). Clinical care and conversational contingencies: The role of patients' self-diagnosis. Text, 21, 83-111. Friedson, Eliot. 1970. Professional dominance: The social structure of medical care. New York: Atherton Press. Glenn, P. J. (1995). Laughing at and laughing with: Negotiating participant alignments through conversational laughter. In P. ten Have and G. Psathas (Eds.), Situated Order: Studies in the Social Organization of Talk and Embodied Activities (pp. 43-56). Washington, DC: University Press of America. Good, M. D., Good, B. J., Schaffer, C., and Lind, S. E. (1990). American oncology and the discourse on hope. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 14, 59-79.
INDETERMINACY
409
Heath, C. (1992). Diagnosis and assessment in the medical consultation. In P. Drew and J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings (pp. 235-267). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J., & Maynard, D. W. (Eds.) (in press). Practicing medicine: Talk and action in primary care encounters. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, J., and Stivers, T. (1999). Online commentary in acute medical visits: A method of shaping patient expectations. Social Science and Medicine, 49,1501-1517. Hewson, M., Kindy, P. J., Van Kirk, J., and Gennis, V. A. (1996). Strategies for managing uncertainty and complexity. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 11,481-485. Holt, E. (1993). The structure of death announcements: Looking on the bright side of death. Text, 13, 189-212. Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hughes, E. (1951). Work and self. In J. H. Rohrer & M. Sherif (Eds.), Social psychology at the crossroads (pp. 313-323). New York: Harper & Row. Jacobs, J. (1969). The search for help: A study of the retarded child in the community. Washington, DC: University Press of America. Jefferson, G. (1974). Error correction as an interactional resource. Language in Society, 2, 181-199. Jefferson, G., Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. A. (1987). Notes on laughter in the pursuit of intimacy. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organisation (pp. 152-205). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Katz, J. (1984). The silent world of doctor and patient. New York: The Free Press. Maynard, D. W. (1989). Notes on the delivery and reception of diagnostic news regarding mental disabilities. In D. Helm, T. Anderson, A. J. Meehan, & A. Rawls (Eds.), The interactional order: New directions in the study of social order (pp. 54-67). New York: Irvington. Maynard, D. W. (199la, July). Deliveries of diagnosis and problems of meaning. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Current Work in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Maynard, D. W. (1991b). Interaction and asymmetry in clinical discourse. American Journal of Sociology, 97, 448-495.
410
CHAPTER 24
Maynard, D. W. (1992). On clinicians co-implicating recipients' perspective in the delivery of diagnostic news. In P. Drew and J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings (pp. 331-358). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Maynard, D. W. (1996). On "realization" in everyday life: The forecasting of bad news as a social relation. American Sociological Review, 61, 109131. Maynard, D. W. (1997). The news delivery sequence: Bad news and good news in conversational interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 30, 93-130. Maynard, D. W. (in press). Bad news, good news, and the benign order of everyday life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Maynard, D. W., & Frankel, R. M. (in press). On the edge of rationality in primary care medicine: Bad news, good news, and uncertainty. In J. Heritage & D. W. Maynard (Eds.), Practicing medicine: Talk and action in primary care encounters. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Miller, W. L. (1992). Routine, ceremony, or drama: An exploratory field study of the primary care clinical encounter. The Journal of Family Practice, 34, 289-296. Perakyla, A. (1998). Authority and accountability: The delivery of diagnosis in primary health care. Social Psychology Quarterly, 61, 301-320. Pomerantz, A. M. (1980). Telling my side: "Limited access" as a fishing device. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 186-198. Sacks, H. (1972). An initial investigation of the usability of conversational data for doing sociology. In D. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in social interaction (pp. 31-74). New York: Free Press. Stivers, T. (1998). Pre-diagnostic commentary in veterinary-client interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 241-277. Treichler, P. A., Frankel, R. M., Kramerae, C., Zoppi, K., & Beckman, H. (1985). Problems and problems: Dimensions of power in a medical encounter. In C. Kramerae, B. Schultz, & W. O'Barr (Eds.), Language, power, and ideology (pp. 63-81). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. West, C. (in press). Coordinating closings in primary care visits: Producing continuity of care. In J. Heritage & D. W. Maynard (Eds.), Practicing medicine: Talk and action in primary care encounters. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
25 Body Movement in the Transition From Opening to Task in Doctor-Patient Interviews Daniel P. Modaff Ohio University The medical consultation, like other forms of social interaction, requires the participants to sustain some semblance of mutual involvement in the business or topic at hand and to thereby coordinate their actions and activities.—Heath (1984, p. 311)
Though many doctor-patient interviews begin with an opening phase consisting of mutual identification and a series of rapport-building utterances, these encounters must at some point shift to the task at hand—the question-answer or information-gathering phase. When the coparticipants reach the point in the encounter when they must make the transition from the opening phase to the task phase of the interaction, they must do so interactionally. In other words, at least one of the participants in the interaction must display to the other an intention to move to the task of the interaction. Both participants must then coordinate their actions (vocal and physical) such that the transition is coaccomplished. How do the patient and the doctor "coordinate their actions and activities" (Heath, 1984, p. 311) during the transition from opening to task in the medical interview? Consider the following segment from a doctor-patient interview: Street 5 7 8
Dr:
Ya visited the E R en- (0.8) they said no we-wanna send you over here 411
412 9 10 11 12 13
CHAPTER 25 P.N: Dr: N: Dr:
("Yeah l-Huh huh huh *O::*kay. ((H&^))1 Uhuh What's ^happening to you
Figure 25.1: Street 5 (Line 11). In this example, the doctor constructs an utterance in Line 11, "*O::*kay.," that serves to mark the transition from the opening phase of the interaction to the task phase, with the task beginning in Line 13 when the doctor utters, "What's ^happening to you." As he utters "*O::*kay.," the doctor shifts his orientation from the patient to the stool on his right (see Fig. 25.1). Why does the doctor orient toward the stool instead of to his cointerlocutor at this turning point in the interaction? It is argued here that orientation away from a coparticipant toward a task-relevant physical object at the point of transition is a resource available by one participant to orient the other to the transition.
MARKING THE TRANSITION TO TASK IN INSTITUTIONAL INTERACTION Prior research has addressed how the task is oriented to or how the topic is shifted in different forms of institutional interaction (Atkinson, Cuff, & Lee,
1
The ((6^")) indicates that a frame grab from the video at that particular moment in the interaction has been taken and imported into the text. Digital video computer technology was used in this project to isolate and more closely study the details of the interaction.
BODY MOVEMENT
413
1978; Beach, 1991). The research illustrates how coparticipants interactively construct and orient to transition-relevant utterances that allow them to move on to next-positioned matters. For example, Atkinson et al. described the "recommencement" of meetings and distinguish between background talk during a break and the utterance(s) that serve to recommence the meeting (i.e., stop the small talk and officially begin the business part of a meeting). They argued that there must be an utterance or an act by one of participants that is heard as an intention to recommence the meeting. Additionally, that utterance or set of utterances must be uttered by a participant who is seen by the other participants as having the power or position to recommence the meeting. Beach (1991) detailed how an utterance, such as "okay," can display a "state-of-readiness" (p. 2) for movement to next-positioned matters (e.g., the task phase of an interaction). He argued for the "dual character" of "okay" by saying that "okay" can "simultaneously resolve the problem of attending to prior talk (e.g. acknowledging/affirming) and paving-the-way-to next-positioned matters (e.g. reassuring/assessing)" (p. 14). Although the transition marker is useful explication of what is said at the time of transition, it offers no detail of what is being done with the body(ies). It would seem that body movement would be involved at this time to either reflect or display that a transition is about to occur or is occurring. Because the transition marker is a vocal display of the transition, we concentrate our analysis of body movement at or near the time of production of this marker. Erickson (1975) suggested that body movement may be used at times of transition: "changes in interpersonal distance during interaction ('proxemic shifts' which may also involve changes in body orientation of speakers) seem to accompany changes in topic or in the social relationship between speakers" (p. 176). In his analysis of 26 10-minute films of junior college counseling interviews, Erickson found that proxemic shifts operated as markers of important segments in the interaction. Erickson also found that a proxemic shift is the best predictor of a new segment of talk. Heath (1986), in an investigation of body movement and speech in British medical encounters, found that eye contact and other nonvocal activities are used within the openings of these interactions for various purposes, one of which is to aid in the transition into the business at hand. Consider the following segment from his data. The utterances are transcribed in Transcript 1. In Transcript 2, the gaze of the participants for the segment of interest is transcribed: Fragments 2:4 Transcript 1 Dr: Hello P:
Hello
414
CHAPTER 25 Dr: P: Dr: Dr: ->
Dr:
P: Dr: P: Dr: Dr: P:
Ohhh (.5) its Mister Kou[gh.-.L( ) (.) No Hough Yes yes (.5) Just come in an:: sit down Mister Hough (.7) Er:: (.4) you saw Doctor Lehar:: (.3) ah a fortnight ago two weeks ago two weeks ago (1.0) cos you were getting::? um:: (.3) gastric ulcer
Fragment 2:4 Transcript 22 Dr:
Mister Hough
err::
you saw Doctor Lehar::
Heath argued that the beginning of the doctor's utterance (—>), "Err::," is content free and is in response to the coincidental gaze of the patient toward him. The doctor's utterance, "Err::," is a way of indicating to the patient that he has recognized the patient's gaze as a display of recipiency. The doctor's gaze at this point is down, orienting toward the medical record in front of him on his desk. After the doctor looks up from the medical record, he begins the content portion of his utterance, "you saw Doctor Lehar." Heath argued: "Though not ready to begin, the doctor acknowledges the patient's nonvocal action, the shift of gaze, and produces a response, transforming the environment from one of open opportunity to his responsibility at some particular moment" (p. 31). In other words, the doctor shows the patient that the transition into the business at hand may be about to occur by orienting his gaze away from the medical record to the patient. This indicates to the patient that the doctor is orienting to the business at hand and that it is time to engage in activities that promote the facilitation of the task. It is important to note that this transition is accomplished interactionally.
2
The gaze of the speaker (doctor) is transcribed above the line and the gaze of the receiver (patient) is transcribed below the line. A series of longer dashes, , represents gaze toward an object; a series of continuous dashes, , represents a pause, with each dash equal to one tenth of a second; a series of periods, ..., represents gaze that is being moved toward the coparticipant, whereas a series of commas represents gaze that is being moved away from the coparticipant.
BODY MOVEMENT
415
By orienting gaze toward the doctor, the patient puts himself in a recipient mode, thereby allowing the doctor to construct the next utterance.3 Heath showed in his analysis of British medical interviews that body movement can work in conjunction with speech near the point where the task of the interaction is begun. The same holds true in the Street 5 instance presented earlier. If we revisit that instance, we can see how body movement is used to mark the transition to the task phase of the interview: Street 5 5
Dr:
the E R en- Pleased ta meecha
6
P.-
7 8 9 10 11 -» 12 13
Dr: P: N: Dr: N: Dr:
°Me tooo Ya visited the E R en- (0.8) they said no we-wanna send you over here [Yeah [Huh huh huh *O::*kay. ((&s)) Uhuh What's ^happening to you
In Lines 5-6, the doctor is standing in front of the patient, who is sitting on the examination table. His gaze is toward her. During the (0.8) second vocal pause in Line 7, the doctor shuffles twice to his right. His right arm bends at the elbow, down, in the direction of a stool to his right. He then puts his arm back to his side. In Line 9, while uttering "Yeah," the patient turns her head to her left and orients her gaze down toward the stool. During the production of his utterance in Line 11, "*O::*kay." the doctor bends down to his right and grabs the stool with his right hand as shown earlier in Fig. 25.1. The patient's gaze is still orienting toward the stool at this point. As he utters "What's ^happening to you" in Line 13, the doctor sits on the stool and orients his gaze toward the patient. It appears that the doctor is using both a verbal transition marker in the form of "*O::*kay." and a nonvocal transition marker simultaneously to mark the transition to the task phase of the interaction. The nonvocal transition marker is
3 The medical interactions Heath (1986) used as his data are from Britain. It appears that in British medical interactions, the patient enters a room where the doctor is already present. This is markedly different from the American medical interaction where, the majority of the time, the doctor enters a space already occupied by the patient. This contrast seems to have one primary implication that can be seen in a passage from Heath's book: "The doctor is able to discern when the patient is physically available and ready to begin, frequently withholding the start of business until the patient has sat down and assumed a face-to-face orientation" (p. 47). In American medical interactions, the doctor does not have this resource available because the patient is already "in position" and it is the doctor who is mobile. The data used in this essay were gathered from a clinic in Lubbock, Texas.
416
CHAPTER 25
his reaching for the stool at the time of the transition. This movement is not a product of one actor acting alone; it appears to be in response to the patient's gaze orientation away from the doctor toward the stool. After the patient removes her gaze from him and orients to the stool, the doctor removes his gaze from her, reorients his body toward an object in the room, and reaches for that object eventually coming to rest on it. The type of physical object to which the doctor orients is important because of its relevance to the task of the interaction. The stool is a task-relevant physical object that puts the doctor's body in a task-ready position. The task phase of the medical interview usually begins with data gathering (as evidenced by the doctor's utterance "What's ^happening to you"). By orienting to and sitting on the stool, the doctor not only physically marks the transition to task but also readies himself for the next actions he must perform, namely, recording the patient's answers to his questions. The fact that this coconstructed set of body movements happens at the time of transition does not seem coincidental. Consider another doctor-patient interaction where a very similar set of movements takes place: Street 22 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Dr: P: Dr: P: Dr: P: Dr: P: Dr: Dr:
Hi Corretta ((patient flipping through magazine)) (0.3) ((patient gaze toward doctor)) Hi ((patient gaze back at magazine; flipping pages)) (0.2) How 'r you doin ((gaze at patient)) (0.4) I'm alright ((gaze at magazine)) (0.7) Are you a good [actor (.) actress ((gaze at patient)) [(warm the nurse told me) ((gaze toward doctor)) (0.5) ((patient hands magazine to doctor)) Uh (.) huh r huh huh huh huh huh huh 'hh[h huhuh [ huh [sometimes huh ^huh Okay. (0.2) ( (&s) ) ((noise:, (0.7) well, got the results of your ultrasound here
This instance begins with an exchange of greetings (Lines 1-2) and then moves to an initial inquiry by the doctor with an appropriate response by the patient (Lines 6-8). The interaction progresses through some rapport building (Lines 10-17) and then the doctor utters the transition marker "Okay" and begins the task phase of the interaction.
BODY MOVEMENT
417
Figure 25.2 Street 22 (line 15) If we consider the body movements in this interaction, we find that they are very similar and seem to operate as do those in the previous example (Street 5). During the (0.5) second pause in line 14, which is in the middle of the rapport-building utterances, the patient hands the magazine she has been flipping through to the doctor. During the shared laughter in Lines 15-16, the doctor puts the magazine away in an open drawer to his immediate right and he starts to close the drawer while the patient orients her gaze toward her feet. After the doctor completes his laugh token in Line 17, he completely closes the drawer and there is an audible sound. After the sound, the patient orients her gaze toward the drawer (which is in the direction of the doctor). At this point, the doctor utters the transition marker "Okay," which serves to close off the previous talk and display his readiness to move on to next-positioned matters. During the (0.2) second pause that follows "Okay." the doctor reaches his right leg toward the stool to his right (see Fig. 25.2). The ((noise)) transcribed after the (0.2) second pause is a result of the doctor's foot coming in contact with the metal leg of the stool. During the (0.7) second pause that follows, the doctor pulls the stool toward him with his right leg. As he utters "well" he begins to sit, and by the time he utters "ultrasound" he is sitting on the stool. As in Street 5, it appears that the doctor in Street 22 uses body movement to mark the transition from the opening to the task phase of the interview. Directly after the production of the transition marker "Okay." the doctor engages in a body movement that indicates a transition is taking place. It is important to note here that the transition markers, both vocal and non-vocal, may have been constructed as a result of the patient having engaged in a body movement that signaled her readiness to move on to the task. The patient, in Line 14, handed the magazine to which she was orienting to the doctor, thereby indicating that any future orientation would be toward him (or at least no longer toward the magazine). Additionally, the patient gazes toward the same stool that
418
CHAPTER 25
the doctor is now orienting to thereby indicating that she has oriented to his move. The similarities between these two examples are striking (Fig. 25.3). In both instances, a transition marker in the form of "okay" is uttered by the doctor. A nonvocal transition marker is also constructed in the form of orienting to and reaching for the stool. The vocal and nonvocal transition markers in both instances are preceded by a nonvocal action by the patient that indicates that they were both ready to move on to the task at hand—gaze toward the stool in Street 5 and handing the magazine to the doctor in Street 22.
Figure 25.3: Street 5 & 22 In both examples, the doctor and the patient orient away from each other during the time of transition. It appears that an orienting away from the coparticipant at this delicate moment in interaction is actually an orienting to the transition. By the doctor reaching for a task-relevant object (i.e., stool) available in the space, that participant is able to physically (as well as vocally) mark the transition. The patient responds both with complementary role uptake (vocal) and gaze directed at the stool (physical) thereby providing both a response to and an analysis of that set of actions as an attempt to make a transition into task. One final example shows how body movement, such as the kind described in the preceding examples, can serve to mark the transition even in the absence of a vocal transition marker. In the following instance, after the participants engage in the activities of the opening moments, they make the transition to task. But in this instance, the doctor proffers no transition marker, instead reaching for the stool at the time the transition marker would have been uttered. Street 33 6
Dr:
Michael Steers?
BODY MOVEMENI 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 -» 14 15
16
P: Dr: P: Dr: Dr:
P:
419
((door closes)) Yessir My name's Doctor Damascous (0.2) »Please to know ya« ((clears throat)) ( 0 . 7 ) ((sitting down)) Seems to be the problem? (0.4)
((&s) )
Well jus-
After identifications in Lines 6-9, and a ritual interchange utterance in Line 11, the doctor reaches for the stool positioned to his right in Line 13. Sequentially, this is where the transition marker would be uttered, but it is absent. At this point in the interaction, both the physician and the patient orient to the stool (see Fig. 25.4). Immediately after he sits on the stool, the doctor begins the task phase of the interaction by proffering an initial question, "Seems to be the problem?" The task has begun.
Figure 25.4: Street 33 (line 13) At the beginning of the current investigation into the role that body movement plays in the transition to task, this last example was treated as a noninstance—one that exhibited no indications or markers of the transition other than the task-initiating question itself. But when digital video technology was employed to investigate the nonvocal elements, this was clearly an instance where the transition was marked. Although there is no vocal transition marker in Street 33, the doctor physically marks the transition with a major postural shift (i.e., he reaches for and sits on the stool). This indicates to the patient that what is to follow should be considered part of the "official business" of the medical interview.
420
CHAPTER 25
The stool is part of the doctor's gear, a part of what makes that room a medical examination room. Hence, by reaching for and sitting on the stool at this point in the interaction, the doctor is in a sense invoking the institution. By reaching for the stool at that moment the doctor indicates position in the institution. In doing so, the doctor's physical movement toward a piece of institutionally based medical equipment foregrounds a movement in the conversation as well, movement toward the medically based reason for the interaction. In the next section, we see how all three instances described previously unfold similarly. At precisely the same moment in interaction, the physician invokes the institution and physically marks the transition from opening to task (see Fig. 25.5).
Figure 25.5: Street 5, 22, & 33 CONCLUSIONS: THE BODY IN TRANSITION This essay began by asking how the participants manage the transition to task in medical interviews through vocal and nonvocal activities. Through detailed
BODY MOVEMENT
421
analysis, it was found that the doctor may signal the transition vocally by uttering a transition marker such as "Okay," "Anyway, " or "So." The transition marker serves the dual purpose of attending to prior talk by closing it off and paving the way to next-positioned matters, or the task. The transition marker is followed by the doctor's task-initiating question to which the patient appropriately responds displaying his or her recognition of the transition. The doctor may also signal the transition nonvocally through the use of body movement or postural shift. At the time of transition, when the transition marker is uttered (or would be uttered), the doctor shifts his or her body away from the participant toward a stool. This movement is a physical marker of the transition designed to signal the end of the opening and the beginning of the task phase of the interview. The data presented in this essay illustrate the subtlety with which the participants construct their actions, which in turn allow them to manage the transition to task interactionally. We were able to live through this transition with the participants as they negotiated it. We were able to see and "hear" how moment by moment, movement by movement, they performed their interactional roles. As Frankel (1983) reminded us: "Phase transitions are of general interest for the ways in which interactional boundaries are signaled, negotiated, and re-established among coparticipants" (p. 33). Given the ambiguity surrounding this phase transition, the coparticipants relied on vocal utterances and body movements to assist them in interactionally accomplishing the transition. We were able to see how body(ies) and voice(s) work together to move the interaction forward. The remarkableness of these data may be underestimated by some readers. Consider that the coparticipants have no script for this interaction, that they must manage it on the scene as it unfolds. Given that, at precisely the same moments in interaction, the physicians rely on a combination of very similar vocal and nonvocal actions to carry the participants into the next phase of the interaction. The patients orient to these actions both with gaze (while the physician reaches for the stool) and with a relevant next utterance after the physician has asked the task-initiating question. There is no script that tells the doctor to reach for the stool at that exact moment in interaction; no medical-interviewing textbook even mentions this interactional moment. These actions are constructed on the scene. The doctor utilizes an element of the institution (the stool) at precisely the moment that the institution is being drawn upon to begin the task. The digital video technology used in the present project made the findings of this essay possible. If it were not for the nonlinear capabilities of the
422
CHAPTER 25
computer technology, we would not have been able to easily manipulate the videotaped data such that comparisons across instances could be made. By freezing the digitized images of three separate instances at the moment of transition on the computer screen quite by accident, we were able to see that the doctors utilized the same postural shift at precisely the same time (see Fig. 25.5). Further visual inspection in comparison with the transcripts led to the findings described here. In this case, the technology not only assisted theory building but also generated it.
REFERENCES Atkinson, M. A., Cuff, E. C., & Lee, J. R. E. (1978). The recommencement of a meeting as a member's accomplishment. In J. Schenkein (Ed.) Studies in the organization of conversational interaction (pp. 133-153). New York: Academic Press. Beach, W. (1991, November). Establishing transitional regularities in "casual" "okay" usages. Paper presented at the Speech Communication Association annual meeting, Atlanta. Erickson, F. (1975). One function of proxemic shifts in face-to-face interaction. In A. Kendon, R. M. Harris, & M. R. Key (Eds.), Organization of behavior in face-to-face interaction (pp. 189-198). Paris: Mouton. Frankel, R. M. (1983). The laying on of hands: Aspects of the organization of gaze, touch, and talk in a medical encounter. In S. Fisher & A. D. Todd (Eds.), The social organization of doctor-patient communication (pp. 19-54). Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Heath, C. (1984). Participation in the medical consultation: The co-ordination of verbal and nonverbal behavior between the doctor and patient. Sociology of Health and Illness, 6(3), 311-338. Heath, C. (1986). Body movement and speech in medical interaction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
IV Emerging Trajectories: Body, Mind, and Spirit To date, language and social interaction (LSI) research has focused mostly on talk, privileging forms of discourse most readily transcribed, attending to features of communication that audibly scratch upon the surface of human interaction and experience. There is growing recognition that communication is necessarily and fundamentally embodied. Interaction involves our physical bodies, which fill social space as they move, see, smell, touch, sometimes talk, but inevitably become entangled with the material world within reach (things, objects, artifacts, tools, representations), which is both a resource for emergent interaction and a residue of past acts of meanings. As a suggestion of things to come within the field of LSI, this fourth part begins with chapters that attend more fully to the whole-bodied performance of everyday social life. The trajectory of Robert Hopper's research, as it pertained to the issue of embodiment, was somewhat of two minds. Although he relied more and more upon videotaped data during the final decade of his career and acknowledged inadequacies associated with audio recordings, he maintained that speech—"the great poem speaking us"—should be the central concern of communication scholars. For example, his (1992) book on telephone conversation focused on "pure speech" and celebrated "the centrality of speech to communication and the centrality of dialogue to interaction" (p. 6). He treated speech as a special "pathway to understanding the human spirit, language, and social interaction" (p. 8). The final chapters of this section are a tribute to Hopper's creativity in matters of the human spirit, and his openness to extending disciplinary boundaries in a search for solutions to ongoing social problems and everyday hurts against the human heart. Jurgen Streeck (chap. 26) contemplates an unfortunate dualism that lingers within LSI research. The prevailing distinction between so-called "verbal" and "nonverbal" communication, couples with the social scientific tendency to separate mind and body (i.e., the Cartesian view), such that research subjects are routinely and artificially disembodied from their own communicating bodies, in effect. The author revisits his own research on gesture and draws upon the philosophy of Heidegger to suggest that human 423
424
PART IV
behavior and social interaction should be regarded as inherently mindful, and that speech is not some sort of spirit that can be exorcised from bodies being in the world. Gene Lerner and Don Zimmerman (chap. 27) discover "full-fledged sociality" among small children or toddlers (ages 22 to 30 months) within daycare settings. Children who have not yet learned to speak may nevertheless produce and recognize embodied actions (e.g., gestures) involving objects (e.g., toys) during social interaction (e.g., play) with peers. The authors focus upon "offer-withdrawal sequences" in which one child offers a hand-held toy to another, but then quickly withdraws it before the other child is able to obtain it. Such "teasing" moments captured on videotape evidence of cooperation and conflict among toddlers, who not only produce and recognize embodied actions but also employ the appearance of one action in the course of accomplishing something else, thereby revealing an orientation to their own body behavior as social action. Social interaction among small children is more than embryonic—although limited in their ability to speak, toddlers are able to move their bodies among toys (the world within reach) and thereby interact in rather sophisticated ways. John Modaff (chap. 28) examines the speech intonation contours (or "speech melody") of American radio personality Paul Harvey. Working in the sociolinguistic tradition, the author shows a keen interest in describing particular features of speech and language usage in coming to understand how they shape and are shaped by our social worlds. Using computer-generated "transcripts" of vocal melody visually displayed, Modaff couples his analysis of speech with an interpretation of the speaker's rhetorical devices and ends. This study reflects the rhetorical criticism tradition long prominent in the field of communication. Notions of embodiment and performance are magnified in chapter 29, which resonates with Robert Hopper's poetic tendencies and celebrates the performance studies tradition within the field of communication. Nathan Stucky and Suzanne Daughton describe a classroom method called Everyday Life Performance (ELP), which helps students to appreciate—no, to experience as if for the first time—the details and orderliness of everyday social interaction. The method involves recording and transcribing naturally occurring talk, then reperforming the data according to the trans-"script"—including the subjects' voice inflections, pauses, speech overlaps, and so forth. Needless to say, such reperformance is difficult. Students soon learn that talk is basically embodied: Lung capacities, heart rate, flexibility, stress, memory, disposition, muscle tone, body shape, and countless other factors affect the performer's task. As students discipline the bodies and reperform their subjects, they awaken awareness usually absent. Would-be scientists/humanists who first analyze their data are then inspirited by it.
PART IV
425
Maria Cristina Gonzalez (chap. 30) offers a critique of current ethnographic methods and calls for an experiment in matters of spirituality and faith. As ethnographic approaches have grown in popularity, so has experimentation with ethnographic forms of data gathering, analysis, and writing. Gonzalez both calls for a spiritual ethnography and provides us a glimpse into what that might look like. Mary Helen Brown (chap. 31) traces parallels between the Tao Te Ching and narrative theory and research. The essay begins and ends with stories that are parts of a larger story frame. Through several sections, titled with phrases from the Tao, she discusses ways that the Tao and narrative may be understood in parallel fashions. The study of narrative links closely to LSI interests in naturalistic storytellings and performance in everyday life. Brown invites scholars of two very different domains—everyday narrative and Taoist philosophy—to consider what they might learn from each other's sacred texts. Kent Drummond (chap. 32) employs conversation analytic methods in combination with Robert Hopper's notion of the "taken for granted" and frame theories to explore conceptual premises of the film The Truman Show. The film provides a fascinating study of a comprehensive, fictional context created for a television audience, unbeknownst to its central character. Drummond shows that maintaining this deception depends on keeping certain taken-for-granted understandings in the background. He analyzes in detail key moments in which these assumptions unravel, allowing Truman to see through the ruse. Emanuel Schegloff (chap. 33) contemplates uncanny conversational occurrences that he calls "ESP puns," and brings conversation analytic resources to bear on a phenomenon for which traditional conversation analytic resources do not exist. Is it possible for someone, through a particular lexical choice, to display impossible knowledge of just that which was unspoken, but on your mind? Schegloff takes up some enchanting interactional magic, touching Hopper's lay and professional interest in puns and his playful approaches to scholarship and life.
REFERENCES Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
This page intentionally left blank
26 The Body Taken for Granted: Lingering Dualism in Research on Social Interaction Jurgen Streeck The University of Texas at Austin Our field has come a very long way since the time when it was common to make a categorical distinction between "verbal" and "nonverbal" communication and to use ill-formed expressions such as "body language," even "nonverbal language," to conceptualize contributions of body motion to social interaction and communication. We no longer reserve scrutiny of body motion and action for cases where talk, considered alone, appears ambiguous and inconclusive, but routinely (e.g., in our data sessions) study talk and bodily action in their mutual embeddedness and contextualization. We are no longer afraid that, once we turn our attention to the bodily interaction of conversation participants, we might get lost in a sea of data. Instead, our observations are informed by a large and growing body of empirical knowledge about the contextualization of talk within embodied frameworks for participation (Auer & diLuzio, 1992); we know about the roles of gaze in the organization of turn taking (Goodwin, 198la) and how interactional axes are established and sustained (Kendon, 1970); we also understand how gestures are incorporated in turns-at-talk (Schegloff, 1984; Streeck & Knapp, 1992). We have even begun to move beyond the realm of "communication proper" to investigate the orchestration of talk and communicative acts of the body within trajectories of practical, instrumental (rather than primarily communicative) action (Goodwin, 1996; Heath & Luff, 1992).
427
428
CHAPTER 26
And yet, it appears that we are still without an adequate conception of the human body, of its different, yet overlapping roles within conversational contexts on the one hand and contexts of practical action on the other, and that some of the terminology that we currently employ—for example, "embodiment"—reasserts a conception that we have long believed to have discarded, notably the "body-mind dichotomy." In these pages, I illustrate this diagnosis by reflecting upon my own research on gesture. I also suggest that a more adequate and productive conception of the body in communication and practical action can take inspiration from Heidegger's philosophy (Heidegger, 1926/1979; see also Dreyfus, 1991). In fact, it was Robert Hopper who suggested this to me years ago when he gave me Sein und Zeit for my birthday. Had I heeded his advice sooner than I have, I might now be in a position to offer more than mere suggestions. As it is, the following remarks can be considered preliminary at best.
THE SUBJECT-OBJECT DICHOTOMY: THE BODY AS A COMMUNICATION TOOL When we examine sequences of conversation in which a participant produces hand gestures to describe phenomena in the world that he or she is talking about—a type of gesture traditionally labeled "iconic"—we can observe with great regularity that the speaker temporarily withdraws gaze from the interlocutors) and shifts it to his or her own gesturing hands. The following is one from among numerous instances that we have found in our corpus of videotaped conversations. (A wave line indicates gaze to the speaker's hands; above the line of transcript, it represents speaker gaze, below listener gaze. A dotted line indicates that hand movements are "frozen.") The first three segments are taken from a conversation in which a young woman, Christine, gives her friend Susi a report about an avant-garde theater performance that she has attended. In the first segment, after giving a general assessment of a scene, she describes part of the stage set. (1) 1 2
Christine
Dritte Szene wa:r- ohne Worte. Third scene was- without words. Fing erst ohne Worte an. Began first without words.
BODY TAKEN FOR GRANTED 3
4
429
Das war dann irgendwie so:- m .hh sehr metaphThat was somehow- very metaphI uhm najam. Metaph(h)ysisch, w(h)eiB auch nich. uhm well. Metaphysical, I d(h)on't know either. wiggles 1
5
.hHHH Hatten se so::- Fetzen? Von:::- von Fo:tos? They had like these- scraps? From photos? size
6
Also- vergroBerte, zerschnippelte Like- enlarged, cut-up photos?
Fo:tos?
size 7
So in diesem Format . hhLike in this format
The transcript shows that the speaker brings her gaze to her hands twice during the gesture phrase, the first time while she performs an unspecific gesture (she wiggles her fingers) that accompanies the descriptor "scraps" (of photos), the second time as she utters "photos," during a gesture that shows the format of the photographs. The turn exhibits several features that are generic for turns housing gestural descriptions: The speaker focuses gaze on her hands as she produces a deictic (or "phoric") element that precedes the descriptive element in the sentence; in German, this is typically the word so ("such," "like this"; Lines 5 and 7), in Japanese ko (also "such," "like this"), in English this. What varies between languages are the syntactic constraints of these elements. In German, so can easily be merged with an indefinite article, rendering son (masc., neutr.) and sone (fem.), but it can also precede verbs (in which case its syntactic role is that of a deictic adverb), as well as adjectives (so klein, "this small"). In English, these roles are distributed between demonstratives (this thing, this small) and demonstrative prepositional phrases (like this) which, in contrast to German so, cannot precede verbs. Different languages offer different resources for the coordination of talk and descriptive gestures, but the differences can be considered minor.
430
CHAPTER 26
Taking into consideration their coordination with deictic elements, we can notice about the gaze shifts during such turns that they direct the interlocutor's attention (and sometimes gaze) to the gesture: Whereas the deictic element in the talk refers the interlocutor to the environment for a full understanding of the utterance under production, the gaze shift shows where in the environment this meaning component can be found (cf. Goodwin, 1981b). Whether or not the interlocutor also shifts gaze to the gesture depends on the precise location of the gesture in her field of visual perception, as well as the gesture's size. More often than not, descriptive gestures are made in front of the speaker's chest where they can be observed without the listener needing to shift gaze away from the speaker's face, unless the gesture is "micro-motoric" and requires an adjustment of vision. If the gesture is made outside of the listener's field of vision, as in Example 2, we can often observe the listener also shifting gaze to the gesturing hand: (2) 1 Christine
2
Susi
Sie stand unten? She stood down below? skirt
Mit som weiBn Rock nur? Had this white skirt on, only?
3 4
(---) Obenrum hatte se nichts an? Up here she was wearing nothing at all. Mit dem Rucken zu den Zuschauern. Her back turned to the spectators.
What is of greater interest to us in the present context is the relation that the speaker assumes to her own body in the production of these descriptive gestures, and her stance toward the world that is embodied in them. She sees her gestures; they are part of the outside world and under the control of her "visual system" (Gibson, 1966). In other words, she uses body parts as communicative tools and visually controls their movements, aiming for a representation that is adequate to her communicative intent at the moment. To the world that the speaker talks about and represents in part by gestures she also adopts an observational stance. The gestures, thus, bespeak a twofold subject-object relation, between the speaker and her body, on the one hand, and between herself and the (reported) world, on the other.
BODY TAKEN FOR GRANTED
431
A SPEAKER DIVIDED IN TWO Compare this to the following bit of talk and gesture by the same speaker, from the same episode in the same conversation. Here, she mentions that the "blond boys" on the stage were playing musical instruments. (3) 1
Christine
.hh dann hat- (0.2) links und rechts saBen so Then hasto the left and right sat these Cello 1 Kna:bm. Irgendwie blonde Kna:bm (.) habm (.) Geige boys like blond boys playing violin
2
3
oder Klarinette gespielt. or Clarinet
4
( .)
5
Nee, Cello wa:rs. No, it was cello.
6
7
(0.3)
Susi
Cello. Cello.
Much is the same in this segment: The speaker reports an event that she has observed, and she uses her hands to describe some of the event's visible features. What is different is that her body enacts these features (rather than, say, "drawing" them) and that the speaker herself cannot see this enactment. Her gesture is entirely under the control of her "haptic system" (Gibson, 1966): The gesture is not a phenomenon in the external world that she sees, but a bodily action that her body knows how to do and that "she," the speaker, experiences kinesthetically but curiously remains unaware of until her turn is completed. It is only after the completion of her turn that she recovers the meaning that her body has displayed from the outset. It seems likely that this mismatch between bodily enactment and concurrent talk is due to the fact that the speaker cannot see what her body is doing. But the segment raises other interesting questions. Who is "she," Christine? The speaker or her body, or "both"? For once, the speaker and her
432
CHAPTER 26
body, which produces the gestures, do not seem to be identical with one another. There is Christine, the body, and there is Christine, the producer of talk. What, then, does the pronoun she refer to? The speaker's body appears to possess knowledge that initially escapes her "mind" (if we regard the "mind" as the source of the content of talk). The previous examples in retrospect appear as successful attempts, under the control of the visual system, of bringing body and "mind" (i.e., communicative intent) into alignment. Or, rather, they are cases in which, as we have said, the speaker relates to her body in a subject-object mode, which is not the case in Segment 3, where the hands participate in a schematic enactment of a skill that a body may possess (an "em-bodied" skill) and that, in the context of the conversation at hand, has representational functions. How can we conceive of such "embodied skills" and their roles in gesture?
THE BODY'S BEING-IN-THE-WORLD With an impetus not unlike Wittgenstein's pervasive attack against all versions of philosophy that regard representation (or assertion) as the paramount language game (Wittgenstein, 1953), Heidegger has argued that Western philosophy since Plato has unconvincingly privileged the theoretical or observational stance of Dasein ("being-in-the-world") as the paramount mode in which knowledge is gained. Gaining knowledge in a subject-object vein to Heidegger (much like the assertive, fact-stating use of language to Wittgenstein) is only one among an infinite number of possibilities, and a secondary one at that. As Dreyfus (1991) summarized Heidegger's view, the "subject/object epistemology presupposes a background of everyday practices into which we are socialized but that we do not represent in our minds" (p. 3). "'Mindless' everyday coping skills are the basis of all intelligibility" (p. 3). Our understanding of the world is, in the first place, "contained in our knowing-how-to-cope in various domains rather than in a set of beliefs that such and such is the case" (p. 18); it is embodied in our undiscovered, taken-for-granted skills. Coping skills are primarily bodily skills, bodies' ways of being-in-theworld. Heidegger conceived the body not as a natural entity, but in terms of its "worldliness," that is, its primordial practical involvements with the world. Our understanding of being derives from these involvements. Although "mindless" and preconceptual, they are nevertheless epistemic. As our bodies acquire competencies, from walking to opening containers to playing the cello, they acquire knowledge of the world that constitutes the ground for all conceptual (Johnson, 1987) and theoretical (or observational) knowing. "The situated use of
BODY TAKEN FOR GRANTED
433
equipment is ... prior to just looking at things and . . . what is revealed by use is ontologically more fundamental than . . . context-free properties revealed by detached contemplation" (p. 61). These skills—"worldliness"—make up our bodies. The body and the world that it inhabits (which is largely a human-made world) are not separate, but constitute each other. "Human beings," Dreyfus (1991) wrote, "are a set of meaningful social practices" (p. 34). Most important to our bodies' Dasein (being-in-the-world) is their uninterrupted involvement with equipment (Zeug), human-made things and tools whose being-in-the-world is constituted by their "towards-which-ness" (Dreyfus, 1991, p. 94), their "affordances" (Gibson, 1986), the human purposes for which they are made or, more fundamentally, their roles in the activities within which they have come into existence and acquired their features. Equipment is "defined by its function ... in a referential whole. ... To actually function, equipment must fit into a context of meaningful activity" (Dreyfus, 1991, p. 91). Thus, knowing and communicating in a subject-object vein, that is, from a "theoretical" or "observational" stance in which the world is perceived as separate from the self and the communicating body as separate from both self and world, are possibilities. But our shortcoming is that we have focused almost exclusively on them. In the present context, this means that we have concentrated on gestures and other bodily actions in which the body serves is in the role of an "object" controlled by a speaker-"subject" (but see LeBaron & Streeck, 2000; Goodwin, 2000). In particular, we have focused on the ephemeral products that emanate from bodily activity (e.g., gestures), and abstracted them from the bodies that are making them. Thus, we have treated the body itself as a generic machine that, by virtue of its motility, is capable of making gestures—much as the vocal apparatus is capable of producing language sounds—, but we have regarded this primarily as an abstract semiotic process, and disregarded what the body, besides its motility, may bring to the process. In sum, we have in fact been underwriting the very mind-body dichotomy that we have at the same time been trying so hard to overcome. This conception, a view of the body as a communicative organ, an object under the control of a disembodied "subject," the speaker, is adequate to the analysis of gestures of the type instantiated in the first two segments; but it gives us little guidance toward a fuller understanding of the body's participation in moments of communication in social life. What reveals itself in Christine's "cello" gesture (in Segment 3) and takes precedence over her observer's description of the events on the stage, is her body's practical, nontheoretical skill, however developed, to play the cello. This skill reveals itself in the background, undiscovered by her, before she even provides the first label for an instrument, and subverts this description from the
434
CHAPTER 26
outset. The speaker's body participates in this sequence as a primordial, autonomous "owner" of skills, much rather than as a "neutral," dexterous but inexperienced, communicative tool to be used when situated representation needs must be met.
A WORKING BODY'S GESTURES In our habitual, disclosed, taken-for-granted involvements with the world, we acquire from the outset "mindless" skills and practices—pretheoretical understandings of the world—that constitute our bodies' Dasein. They make up the knowledgeable, intelligent "organ" that acts and communicates while we are talking (and sometimes when we are not). When we state that "X makes a gesture," the personal reference term inevitably refers to a body that is socialized and possesses generic and specific skills and that does not simply "belong to," but is a person. To separate the gesture from the particular person making it and to imply that the gesturing body is somehow distinct from the body that is otherwise practically engaged with the world may at first seem like a viable research strategy, but it ultimately conceals the experiential ground from which the skill and practice of gesture emerge. We can perhaps best appreciate this by looking at a body that possesses specific skills—a working man's skills—and routinely displays them gesturally in moments of communication in the workplace, its primordial habitat. The body in the following segments is Hussein Chmeis, the owner and mechanic-in-chief of a car-repair shop. Hussein gestures abundantly, but in contrast to most other speakers in our data, we never see him looking at his hands as he gestures. He gestures in a different mode. In the first segment (4), he is in the process of inspecting a car that has just been brought to the shop. He has opened the hood, and as he talks to the car's owner, Ms. Nancy, he instructs her daughter who is in the driver's seat, to start the car. (Hussein makes several other gestures in the following segments—all of them schematic enactments of actions—that have been deleted from the transcripts.) (4) TURN KEY 1
Hussein
Try to start the car.
As he says "start the car," Hussein performs a brief gestural enactment of the turning of an ignition key. Now he begins the
BODY TAKEN FOR GRANTED
435
diagnosis of the engine trouble by asking Ms. Nancy a number of questions.
(5) 1 Hussein
When you call me it use to do this.
2
Nancy
M hm.
3
Hussein
It did that noise?
4
Nancy
Yeah. CRANKING GESTURE
5
Hussein
point
TURN KEY
You hear the engine crankin like this, try again. Try again.
Again, when he instructs Kathy to start the car ("try again"), Hussein enacts the turning of the key. He had done so several times before during this episode, which began by a call by Ms. Nancy during his lunch break. She told him that her car would not start, and he instructed her how to identify the nature of the problem and how to "push-start" the car so that she would be able to drive it to his shop, rather than having it towed. (6) L
Hussein
If you have enough light, the car, it should be cranked. TURN KEY
2
When you try to turn the key and it crank, TURN KEY
3
Do you get any response, crank but no start, or not.
4
Okay. But you have light,
5
then you have little bit left in the battery.
6
Now to push-a start the ca:r,
7
you need to put- second gea:r,
8
turn the key to see light on the dash.
436
CHAPTER 26 onset I
TURN KEY I
9
When you notice when you turn your key to start the car,
10
you see light it's on the da:sh.
11
That it's mean your ignition is okay.
After the phone conversation, Hussein turned to the author/camera-operator and explained the topic of the conversation. (7) 1 Hussein
She's outside of New Brownsville, and her car
2
broken down ( - - - - - ) I'm a tryin' to help her
3
to start the car, cuz towin' too much money,
4
and she has nobody to know about this. TURN KEY
5
Turn the key on, put second gear, somebody
6
push, take off, maybe start.
Thus, the body Hussein enacts the turning of an ignition key habitually and in a diverse range of contexts: when he gives instructions to someone who can see his hand, when he gives instructions over the phone and the recipient cannot see his hands, and when he reports these instructions to a seeing interlocutor. One might say that the association between the concept of the action (variously instantiated as "cranking," "turning key," and "starting the car") and its physical enactment is habitual for him. But one must be careful not to suggest that this "concept" has an existence apart from the body Hussein Chmeis, "in his mind" or "in the language." Rather, shifting contextual circumstances—the need to give instructions, a request for explanations, or a car waiting to get started—trigger responses by the body-mind Hussein Chmeis, some of them linguistic and situation-specific, others bodily and habitual. When he gets into a car that needs diagnosis, his body "automatically" turns the ignition key "for real"; in communication situations, he performs the action schematically in response to a conceived situation. In other words, this body's (i.e., this person's) skills and the understandings embodied in these skills, as well as the body's stance toward the
BODY TAKEN FOR GRANTED
437
world are equally visible in contexts of action and contexts of conversation (which more often than not overlap anyway). We may characterize this stance as a sustained readiness to respond to emerging practical needs within shifting situation by taking practical action (Joas, 1992). What changes is the context, not the body/person acting within them. Heidegger has suggested that human beings—in the first place, human bodies—are ensembles of socialized, intelligent, worldly skills, some of the endemic to the human race (or rather, its "generic" habitat), others specific to the particular work that they do or the material culture that they live in. Our task will be to unearth these skills and practices and exhibit how they are enacted in the symbolic realms of communication.
FROM THE DISEMBODIED TO THE WORLDLY BODY Hussein's gestures (of which we have given only one example for many of the same kind) suggest a reconsideration of our current views of gesture and the bodies making them. Among gesture researchers whose work is presently widely discussed, McNeill (1991) has suggested that gestures provide a window into the mind: "Gestures are like thoughts themselves. They belong, not to the outside world, but to the inside one of memory, thought, and mental images" (p. 12). In this view (with its separation between inside and outside), the body is construed as a container of mental phenomena that are externalized and made visible as gestures. The body is both container of mental imagery and communicative tool, but it otherwise has no involvements with the material world (or, at least, remains unaffected by them); it is a mere mediator between mental content and symbolic form. McNeill also asserted that "gestures are an integral part of language .. . [that] gesture and language are one system" (p. 3). But this suggests that a human body, when it gestures, is entirely under the control of the process of utterance production, that its "linguistic" (or symbolic) productions are an entirely different matter than the actions that it otherwise performs as it goes about its daily business in the world in which it dwells. Kendon in some of his older publications has described gestures as "visible bodily action by which meaning is given voluntary expression" (Kendon, 1980, p. 13, emphasis added). "Speech and movements ... [are] manifestations of the same process of utterance; 'ideas' being encoded in speech are also encoded in the movement patterns being produced" (Kendon, 1980, pp. 208-209). "Speech and movement that directly accompanies it ... are under the guidance of the same controlling mechanism" (Kendon, 1972, p. 206; Kendon
438
CHAPTER 26
no longer holds this view but regards gesture and speech as two mutually adjustable modes of expression; Personal Communication with A. Kendon, Spring 1999). In this view, Hussein's gestures would appear to be deliberate "encodings" of the "idea" of starting a car (or cranking it, etc.). But Hussein does not give any indication that he is at all aware of making these gestures (nor does Christine in Segment 3). The problem with these approaches (as well as my own previous writings on gesture) is that they continue to disembody the body: They disembody the body by depriving it of its own inherent "mindfulness" (Langer, 1989) and skilled circumspection, of its worldly experiences that are sedimented in its habits and skills, of its intelligence that it has acquired in coping with material tasks—tasks for which a "mind" in the traditional sense is often not required; they remove the body from the world in which it dwells and in which each becomes the particular, singular human body that it is. What this also means is that we have forgotten that bodies are owned; they belong to—no, they are persons. We have proceeded as if the fact that the body in moments of communication is an individual, skilled, worldly person, is irrelevant to our project, as if the body, once it begins to "encode" ideas or produce symbolic representations, loses its personhood, its "personal unity" (Whitehead, 1933). But throughout his working hours, Hussein's body reveals a very specific stance toward the world, an attitude that is not, in the first place, a theoretical attitude, but an unceasing readiness to act, to become physically involved with a problem or task. This is "just the kind of person" that this body is. In practical as much as in communicative situations (which are themselves embedded in practical ones), it reveals the particular way in which it inhabits a world. The gestures are just one of the many ways in which this stance plays itself out. The cognitive-psychological, semiotic, and linguistic approaches to the body's activities in communication have taken the body for granted by conceptually and methodologically depriving it of the competencies that it has acquired in the world, by subjecting it entirely to the speaking subject's communicative will. The project we will have to take on in the future is to explicate this body, to identify and describe its worldly skills that display themselves in gestures, to lay bare the preconceptual schematic experiences and practices from which our gestures—as much as the conceptual structures of our languages (Johnson, 1987)—are ultimately derived. At the same time, we must take into consideration the various stances that bodies/persons adopt within the many "body games," the practical activities, within which they act and communicate.
BODY TAKEN FOR GRANTED
439
How this can be done is far from clear to me. Obviously, we would not want to replace our advanced methods for analyzing segments of human interaction by some infinite ethnography of the daily lives of individual bodies. Perhaps we will only be able to recognize and elaborate upon the identity between the communicating and the working body in limited and specific settings such as places where bodies work. Chances are, however, that the recognition that we have, unbeknownst to ourselves, reinvoked the mind-body dualism that we had set out to overcome, will gain us some analytic advantage somehow.
REFERENCES Auer, P., & diLuzio, A. (Eds.). (1992). The contextualization of language. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Dreyfus, H. L. (1991). Being-in-the-world. A commentary on Heidegger's "Being and Time." Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Goodwin, C. (198la). Conversational organization: Interaction between speakers and hearers. New York: Academic Press. Goodwin, C. (198 lb,). Shifting focus. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, Canada. Goodwin, C. (1996). Practices of color classification. Ninchi Kagaku, 3(2), 6281. Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1489-1522. Heath, C. C., & Luff, P. K. (1992). Crisis and control: Collaborative work in London Underground control rooms. Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 1(1), 24-48. Heidegger, M. (1979). Sein und Zeit [Being and Time]. Tubingen, Germany: Niemeyer. (Original work published 1926) Joas, H. (1992). Die Kreativitdt des Handeln [The Creativity of Action]. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
440
CHAPTER 26
Kendon, A. (1970). Movement coordination in social interaction: Some examples described. Acta Psychologica, 32, 100-125. Kendon, A. (1972). Some relationships between body motion and speech. In A. Seigmann (Ed.), Studies in dyadic communication (pp. 177-210). Elmsford, NY: Pergamon. Kendon, A. (1980). Gesture and speech: How they interact. In J. M. Wiemann & R. P. Harrison (Eds.), Nonverbal interaction (pp. 13-45). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Langer, E. J. (1989). Mindfulness. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. LeBaron, C., & Streeck, J. (2000). Gestures, knowledge, and the world. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 118-138). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind. What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1984). On some gestures' relation to talk. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 266-295). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Streeck, J., & Knapp, M. L. (1992). The interaction of visual and verbal features in human communication. In F. Poyatos (Ed.), Advances in nonverbal communication (pp. 3-24). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Whitehead, A. N. (1933). Adventures of ideas. New York: Macmillan. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
27 Action and the Appearance of Action in the Conduct of Very Young Children Gene H. Lerner and Don H. Zimmerman University of California, Santa Barbara Young children engage in orderly, recognizable conduct with peers before they are able to speak. Early-appearing forms of peer communicative action are carried out through visible body behavior (including the deployment of objects) and nonverbal vocalization. When children begin to speak, they employ this newly available interactional resource within and by reference to already established practices of peer sociality. In this report, we examine the use of body behavior as observable action among very young children, and in particular, we show how the observability of this conduct is itself a resource for accomplishing action in interaction. We aim to show that very young children can not only produce body behaviors that count as communicative actions, but that an orientation to the availability of this conduct to their peers—as recognizable action in a course of action—can itself be a constitutive feature of those actions. Specifically, we examine two ways that very young children recurrently employ objects: presenting an object to another child and putting an object away. However, here we examine cases where these actions are used to accomplish something else. In each case, the recognizable or exposed course of action turns out to have one or another embedded trajectories that differs from or subsumes its initial appearance. That is, we show how very young children employ the appearance of one action to accomplish another. 441
442
CHAPTER 27
From a methodological point of view it seems important to establish, at the outset of a line of investigation into the social life of very young children, that their conduct is understood by them—that is, it is produced and treated by them—as recognizable actions in structured courses of action, since this very basic feature of sociality can legitimately be called into question in the case of these children. Examining practices that look like they are designed to be recognized as launching one course of action while turning out to be in the service of another course of action seems like a perspicuous site for establishing this, in the case of very young children. The materials examined here come from a corpus of videotape recordings that have been collected from several classrooms at two infanttoddler programs in an ongoing study of peer sociality among very young children 12 months to 30 months of age.1 At times, the daycare setting affords us an opportunity to examine very early forms of peer communicative action relatively unencumbered by the asymmetrical competencies and "scaffolding" of adult-child interaction. In what follows we first show how presenting an object to another child can be used to set up a presentation-withdrawal tease sequence and then we show how putting a toy away can be used as a method for retrieving a similar toy from a playmate.2
AN ECONOMY OF OBJECTS The possibility of object transfer is a commonplace circumstance among toddlers in a group care setting. Moreover, the mere availability of a play object can provide an occasion for a take attempt whether it is being offered by another child or not, or whether it is in use by another or not. The looming possibility of object transfer is a source for both cooperation and conflict—and constitutes a training ground for sociality. The practices involved in the repeated handling and transferring of play objects may provide one basis for the early recognizability of action and action sequences. Such early forms of sociality as
1 This project was supported by grants from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, through the "Research Across Disciplines" program. 2 In both cases, we examine sequences of action that have sequence-initiating and sequenceresponding parts. However, it is important to note that these "action pairs" do not fully conform to what has been termed "adjacency pair" organization (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), since the initiating and responding actions take place as embodied action in the absence of any talk. As these actions are not constrained to placement within adjacent turns at talk, they need not be constrained by the organization of turn taking as is the case for adjacency pair organized action sequences. For example, the relationship of a presentational offer of a toy figure to its acceptance/rejection can include its continued production until recognized or responded to and does not have to come to an end or be renewed at the next possible completion of a turn-constructional unit.
CONDUCT OF CHILDREN
443
object acquisition and object defense are built upon the recognizability of object transfer sequences. Toddlers can treat objects as being bound to other children in only a very weak fashion—that is, visible social connection to an object may not be regarded as a strong claim or entitlement for continued possession. Even "in hand" and "in use" objects can be treated as potentially takable by current possessor/user and potential next possessors/users alike. Potential takers sometimes design their take attempts in a fashion that makes it clear they are treating the object as a (defendable) possession of the other child and sometimes they treat it as merely residing with that child—i.e., as freely available. In both cases the object is nevertheless treated as take-able. This "weak purview" over objects can shape the structure of peer encounters.3 For example, one child, involved in play with a toy, can orient to a foreseeable possible course of action from the mere approach of a second child; the first child can treat the approach—before any outright attempt has been made—as an incipient take attempt. We plan to make these assertions the subject of a subsequent report (see Lerner, Kidwell, & Zimmerman, 1999, for a preliminary sketch); we mention them now only to furnish a conceptual context for the more limited investigation reported here. We now turn to an examination of how "presenting an object" (ostensibly to launch an object transfer sequence) can be used to conceal and launch a derivative course of action: an offer-withdrawal or "mock transfer" sequence.4 We examine a series of three offer-withdrawal sequences (from VYC tape 980213A1-LC) in which a small play object (a "Mommy" figure) is presented by one child (Kelly) to another child (Derrick) and then subsequently withdrawn each time before the other child can gain possession of it. (Some may find it useful to know that both children are 22 months old.) In the parlance of childhood (cf. Knapp & Knapp, 1976), one child attempts to "trick" or "fool" the other child into responding, and then when response is provided, the first child teasingly refuses to give over the object. (Derrick's mother [Mom] is also
3
Correspondingly, one recurrent task for caregivers seems to be detecting and enforcing the entitlement of a current possessor of an object to continued use until the object is voluntarily given up or the child loses interest in it. 4 Developmental psychologists begin to observe teasing behaviors such as this in children who are about 20 months of age. For example, Shatz (1994) mentions two examples of teasing at about this age. However, she does not distinguish the very different types of action sequences involved in these two cases, nor does she explain the practices that comprise them. It is only through the description of these practices and sequences of action accomplished through these practices that we can gain an appreciation of the specific analytic resources that are available to very young children in the management of their daily lives.
444
CHAPTER 27
present for the first presentation, but for the most part, we do not examine her participation in the interaction here.) In the following discussion we do not specifically address how this series of sequences may be related to each other as, for example, a sequence of sequences. It will have to suffice to say that after each of the first two offerwithdrawal sequences the engagement between the participants is broken off and there are intervening engagements with others in the setting. And in addition the initiation of each of the three tease sequences constitutes a fresh approach by Kelly to Derrick during or right after he has been engaged elsewhere. There is some continuity in Kelly's intervening actions, but the later presentations do not seem to be specifically designed as subsequent versions or attempts—nor do they seem to be treated as such, (Of course, these are quite difficult matters to establish when examining the interactions of very young children.)
Presenting an Object In the first of the three presentation sequences, Kelly approaches Derrick and Mom from behind as Mom is attempting to disengage herself from Derrick and leave. Kelly extends her right arm with her hand grasping the small Mommy figure and then, leaning over the edge of the table, presents the figure to Derrick as shown in Fig. 27.1. There is no attention paid to the "fact" that she is entering an ongoing encounter, except insofar as she has to maneuver around Mom's body to get in position to present the doll. In response, Derrick truns his gaze from Mom to the approaching figure (i.e., to the approach of the figure that is coming toward his face) and then to the (stationary) figure itself. He smiles as he does this, but as far as we can tell does not make an immediate move to reach for it.5 At just this point, after Derrick has fixed his gaze on the figure, Kelly rapidly withdraws her hand (seemingly, from Derrick's possible reach which could foreseeably come next) and then brings the figure to rest against her chest as in Fig. 27.2. Just as Kelly withdraws the figure, Mom says, "Oh::, you're giving that to Derrick? What is that". The timing and relative speediness of the withdrawal and the destination of the retreating hand seem designed as a response to an anticipated attempt at taking the figure. Demonstrating resistance to an anticipated (or even hoped for) attempted retrieval shows that Kelly is oriented to her object presentation as a recognizable proffer which has made relevant an impending
5
This event was caught in the "crossfire" of two cameras, so in addition to the view visible in Fig. 27.1, we were able to examine a frontal view of Derrick from a second camera.
CONDUCT OF CHILDREN
445
Figure 27.1
Figure 27.2 retrieval by Derrick. Kelly's action treats Derrick as a possible taker (whether or not he was that during the presentation) and this proposed alignment to the object and action can be consequential for subsequent action. Moreover, resisting what can thereby be seen as an anticipated take can establish the object as worth having and worth taking. Thus, Kelly's action can embody an invitation to play—acting as if the recipient of the object presentation may be a potential taker invites him to act in just that fashion at the next opportunity. In sequence-organizational terms, her action establishes or implicates an opportunity to participate for her recipient as not or not only a viewer of the object presented, but as a possible taker at the next opportunity—and that opportunity is not long in coming.
446
CHAPTER 27
Anatomy of a Tease As Sacks (1992:1, pp. 363-369) noted, children learn that their actions are observable from their appearances. And once they learn this, they can use it as a resource for producing actions that are different than they appear to be. In the case under discussion, Kelly launches what appears to be one course of action— an object proffer—which turns out to be the beginning of a mock offer sequence which is one sort of tease sequence. This might even be characterized as a practical joke—a joke that hinges on a completely practical course of action—in which the recipient is tricked. The success of the mock offer sequence depends upon the initial recognizability of the proffered figure as a serious offer to hand it over—that is, success hinges on its concealment as launching a mock offer sequence in which the offer will be abruptly withdrawn. We now turn to a discussion of the second presentation, which is also part of an object presentation-withdrawal sequence, but in this one Derrick actually "takes the bait" and reaches out to retrieve the figure from Kelly's outstretched hand.6 Fig. 27.3 shows Kelly again presenting the Mommy figure to Derrick. This takes place about 20 seconds after the first presentation and just as Derrick's mother departs. During this time there are several exchanges between Kelly and Mom about the figure and then Mom turns back to her son Derrick in order to complete her leave-taking. Kelly first turns away from the table and then begins to prepare for the next presentation. Kelly moves into Mom's place just as she (Mom) leaves and begins the presentation. The figure is moved to within Derrick's reach, though he is at first turned away from its approach as he is watching his mother depart; indeed, the figure is almost literally pushed into his face to bring his gaze to it. One might say Kelly is actively fishing for Derrick to attempt taking what is seemingly being offered to him. This presentation puts the figure into a transfer-ready position and seems to be treated by its recipient as an offer or even an attempt to give it to him. He must pull back from the figure, which is at the corner of his left eye, and turn toward it to be able to see it. As before, he first seems to orient to the movement by turning toward it and pulling back, and then stabilizes his gaze on the object once his head movement stops. At just this point he reaches up to take the figure as shown in Fig. 27.4. Kelly has provided Derrick with an opportunity to take possession of the figure—one might even say that she has tempted him with the 6
As has been mentioned there is also a third presentation-withdrawal sequence. This occurs about a minute later and runs off in a fashion similar to the second sequence. We will not discuss it further in this short report; however, note that even though it is the third presentation of the figure, Derrick does not treat it as a presentation-withdrawal challenge. That is, he still does not compose his retrieval effort in a fashion that attempts to pre-empt the withdrawal of the figure. This may be in part because the object is again presented without warning as a form of re-engagement to a child who does not see it coming. One might even suggest that in all three instances teasing was used as a method for initiating engagement.
CONDUCT OF CHILDREN
447
Fig. 27.3
Figure 27.4
Figure 27.5
448
CHAPTER 27
Figure 27.6 figure—and he attempts to take it. Significantly, there is no hint in the manner of his reach that he is oriented to the possibility of a withdrawal of the figure (even though she had preemptively withdrawn it a few moments earlier). However, she again rapidly withdraws her hand (Fig. 27.5) just as he begins to close his fingers around the figure and then she laughs. Derrick then extends his arm and grasping hand in what appears to be an appeal for the figure (Fig. 27.6). That is, he is pursuing the object rather than, for example, acknowledging the teasing nature of Kelly's actions. In this case, the recipient seems to treat the presented figure as a genuine offer, since he has not make a grab for it and when it is withdrawn his hand follows it with what might be characterized as a pleading gesture—an open handed reach. Here instrumental action (retrieval) is transformed into its gestural counterpart (pleading) as the behavior moves from one position in the sequence of actions to another.7 As Kelly withdraws the figure to her chest, she steps back from the table and so there is no possibility that Derrick's reaching hand could actually grasp the figure. (In fact, she almost stumbles back from the force of the figure withdrawal.) One criterion for a "successful" tease is met when a recipient takes up a course of action that is seemingly implicated by the teaser's initiating action, followed by the teaser withdrawing from that course of action before it can be completed—that is, revealing, post hoc, the different course of action the presentation was actually launching. In this instance, the teaser succeeds in eliciting a take response and withdraws the figure. She then marks this success by laughing. On the other side, the child who has been "taken in" does not ratify the success or even existence of her accomplishment in any way; indeed he 7 There is also at least some negative evidence that Kelly is designing her sequence initiating action as a proffer and not an open challenge. She holds the figure out with a fully extended arm, and does not wiggle it around in the way someone might if they were marking the proffer as a challenge to the recipient to try and take what will surely be withdrawn when the attempted retrieval comes.
CONDUCT OF CHILDREN
449
pursues the transfer as if it were still the operative course of action. At this point, they are not treating this sequential environment in symmetrical ways— there is what Jefferson (1981) called "interactional asymmetry" in their orientations to the ongoing action sequence and therefore their opportunities to participate within it. This might be compared to one type of "po-faced" response to teasing described by Drew (1987) in which a recipient of a teasing remark ignores the teasing or humorous feature of the action and responds "innocently" to the matter that carries the tease. (Note that Drew is describing a response to an openly teasing remark, whereas Derrick's response is to a tease that was accomplished though a trick he has fallen for—that is, he has already committed himself to an "innocent" response to a prior action.) Of course, this plays directly into Kelly's tease in that Derrick's continued interest in the figure allows the tease to be extended. Kelly next upgrades her withdrawal by first drawing the figure (which is hidden in a twohanded grasp) to her side (Fig. 27.7) and then by moving it behind her and holding it there with both hands behind her back (Fig. 27.8). She is responding to his plea by pointedly doing "moving it out of his reach" thus extending the tease sequence. (Note that she was not actually within his reach and he is trapped in a "box chair" he could not quickly exit.) At this point she initiates a sequence of verbal teasing oppositional assertions between herself and Derrick concerning whose parent (figure) this figure represents. As he pleads for the figure (and possibly says something about it), she responds with "No, my mommy" to which he responds with an in kind oppositional assertion, and this is then followed by another round of oppositional assertions. Kelly seems to be continuing the original tease sequence (which Derrick did not acknowledge) by action accomplished through talk, and this time Derrick takes part.8 Object-withdrawal teases are not limited to children. In one case involving adults, the current user of a butter dish, after repeated requests and coaxing, finally picks up the dish and extends it toward the requestor. But as the requestor reaches for the dish, it is pulled out of his reach momentarily. This is followed by an exchange of laugh tokens as the transfer is completed. Unlike the presentation-withdrawal tease discussed previously, this one is inserted into a transfer that fulfills a request, whereas Kelly's proffer of the Mommy figure seems composed as a tease sequence from its beginning. However, in each case, the recipient treats the object as transfer-ready when it is presented. 8 It is worth noting that after the second round of oppositional assertions they are clearly no longer referring to the figure, but to their actual parents (and it may be that even the first oppositional assertions were not or not only or not distinctly referring to the figure in Kelly's hand). From this point on they no longer address each other, but are both seeking assurance about they parents' whereabouts from a caregiver, while continuing to use the format of the oppositional assertions.
CHAPTER 27
450
Figure 27.7
Figure 27.8 This type of tease, then, is something like a "sequential surprise." To initiate the sequence it is necessary to produce an action (presenting the figure) that appears to implicate a subsequent action (handing over the figure) which the presenter can then noticeably fail to follow through on, after the responding party commits to the initiated course of action. Note, however, that there is a risk to the presenter, because the offer that is being feigned has the possibility of succeeding before it can be withdrawn. An orientation to this possibility can be seen in the "premature" withdrawal of an object as seen in Fig. 27.2 described earlier. So, how then does one produce a successful tease? In simple terms, its realization is "parasitic" on the launching of a recognizable object proffer
CONDUCT OF CHILDREN
451
sequence. Here the tease, when it is revealed, is seeable as having been a second alternative to an object proffer (cf. Sacks, 1992:2, p. 456).9 This sort of tease plays off of the recognizability of one type of action sequence in the service of accomplishing another. We now apply our understand of this practice—using the appearance of conduct as a resource in producing a course of action—to another domain in order to show that this form of action organization is not unique to tease sequences among very young children (though it may find a home there), but may constitute a more general interactional resource.
ESTABLISHING A PERSPICUOUS OCCASION FOR ACTION EMULATION In this section, we describe how even a very young child can act in a fashion that is designed to get another child to follow their lead. This is done by producing an action—timed and positioned to be seen by another child—that provides an occasion for, or even makes specially relevant, a corresponding action by the other child, as part of a recognizable joint activity.10 In the present case, the joint activity consists of putting away toy tools after finishing with them. Our interest is not only in the emulation of an action per se, or even in the fact that a child can be shown to be oriented to the position and design of their own actions in order to get another child to follow suit. We undertake this analysis here because it illustrates another way in which the appearance of an action as an element in one course of action can be used as a resource in implementing a course of action with a different trajectory.
Putting a Toy Away as a Method to Regain Possession of Another Before describing the play completion sequence in which a plastic hammer is returned to its basket, it may be useful to sketch out some of the initial events of the incident. At the beginning of this course of action (from VYC:980121A19 Sequences of action can have a range of relationships to other sequences—for example, as a preliminary sequence or a reciprocal sequence or a counter sequence, and so on. See Schegloff (1995) for an inventory of sequence relationships. The "second alternative" sequence exhibits another relationship between sequence types. 10 For the most part, the social psychological literature on modeling has been concerned with the effects that one person's behavior and attributes (usually an adult) have on another person's behavior (usually a young child). The modeler's actions are seen as only unintentionally furnishing a public display that could be noticed and repeated in a disconnected way. This literature ignores the situated use of modeling by the modeler and the sequential relationship between the first occurrence of an action and its subsequent emulated realization by another. See Lerner (2002) for one discussion of utterance and gestural matching that takes these matters into account.
452
CHAPTER 27
LC) Alan, who has been playing alone next to a basket of plastic tools, makes a direct attempt to take back a plastic hammer that Barb has just come over and taken from the basket. (Both children are close to 2 1/2 years old.) First, he successfully takes it out of Barb's hands, saying "that's my tools, okay," as he returns the hammer to the basket from which she has just drawn it. However, she immediately retrieves it again and draws it to her chest. Alan directs her to put it back into the tool basket as he again attempts to take it from her. This time, however, Barb resists and carries the hammer off. (As she leaves the play area, Alan appeals to the nearest adult, but the adult does not intervene.) From the outside, Barb then begins hammering on the cabinet that forms the boundary of Alan's play area, but withdraws abruptly (pulling the hammer to her chest) when he stands up and moves toward her, even though the cabinet is between them. When Barb goes off with the hammer, Alan first hammers on the cabinet with his fist and then picks another hammer from the basket and continues hammering, while positioning himself so as to be able to monitor Barb's whereabouts and so she can see his hammering. (He seems to be demonstrating the proper use of the tool to her—in his words, "for working.") A few moments later we come to the sequence of actions we are interested in examining: Alan again attempts to get the hammer back—but this time he does this by putting his own hammer away. When Barb returns to Alan's.play area just under a minute after first acquiring her hammer, Alan abruptly stops hammering and quickly pivots to face the tool basket as she approaches it. With Barb gazing at the basket, he stoops slightly and drops his hammer into it (Fig. 27.9).n Alan then slowly straightens up while still looking at his deposited hammer. He seems to be waiting for her to follow suit here. When she does not, he looks up at her—actually he seems to direct his gaze toward her hammer (Fig. 27.10). He holds this gaze for a moment, but she neither makes a move to follow suit or retreat. He then does what might be characterized as an instmmentally shaped or iconic point to the tool basket (Fig. 27.11). That is, his point takes the form of an arm motion that looks like he is (feebly) tossing something into the basket, again culminating in a point at the apex of the gesture. Barb begins turning to leave as he completes this gesture and he turns his gaze from her hammer back to the basket.
11
Though it is not completely clear, it does look like that when he releases the hammer it is done in a fashion that results in something like a point. This may just be the result of how he releases the object, but it is possible that he is building a pointing gesture onto the instrumental action of releasing the hammer.
CONDUCT OF CHILDREN
453
Figure 27.9
Figure 27.10
Figure 27.11
454
CHAPTER 27
What is Alan doing here? We suggest that he is doing "being done." It is not simply that he happened to finish playing at just the moment Barb arrives back in his play area. Rather, he seems to be using a play-completing action and therein initiating a possible play-completing sequence as another attempt to regain possession of the hammer. This is an indirect attempt—or better, an embedded attempt—to retrieve the hammer after prior, more exposed attempts have met with resistance and failure. He is using the appearance of his action (returning his hammer to the tool basket just as Barb approaches) as a recognizable play-completing action and as a recognizable play-completion sequence initiating action. Dropping the hammer into the tool basket can here embody the return of a toy to its appropriate place and thus (hopefully) make relevant or suggest the same action to Barb. He has constructed an occasion—a momentary sequential environment or context—for Barb to follow suit and relinquish her hammer. This attempt also turns out not to succeed, but lack of success does not invalidate the practice. He then makes clear that the hammer toss was performed on Barb's behalf by looking to her. When she again makes no move to emulate his action, he then makes explicit the intent of his actions by pointing to the basket with a tossing motion.12 At this point we can consider the possibility that this form of sequence organization might draw upon another form of sequence organization—action emulation sequence organization. The organization of Alan's actions around returning his hammer to the basket and the next action it makes relevant for Barb may build upon the emulation practices that can structure toddler social play. Briefly, one child will begin some activity and then one or more other children will produce the same actions themselves, more or less elaborately, and the originating child can then acknowledge this in some fashion. In sequence organizational terms, action emulation sequences furnish a way to launch social play from Second position—in response to another's action—rather than from First position, in which a child must specifically design an action that invites another child to participate in a joint activity.13 We are just beginning to investigate how such individual play 12 Additional evidence for what he is up to here comes just after Barb leaves without relinquishing her hammer. After watching Barb leave, Alan turns back to the tool basket, retrieves his hammer and resumes hammering, while continuing to monitor the whereabouts of the hammer Barb has taken with her to another play area. Moreover, sometime later, Alan does sneak over to Barb's adjacent play area and retrieve the unattended hammer while she has her back turned. He then runs back with it, places it in the tool basket and moves the basket out of sight. 13 We are not suggesting that very young children do not launch any sequences of action with a First position initiating action (for example, see Jones, 2000), only that they are just beginning to find ways to launch joint play sequences. They are still novices when it comes to inviting others to play with them.
CONDUCT OF CHILDREN
455
establishes occasions for action emulation and nascent social engagement. We can only briefly mention the beginning of one such instance here. One child (Randy) walks over to a small portable platform with wooden sides and begins to hammer on it with a spatula. At the same time, another child (Veronica) steps off of a different part of the platform and picks up another spatula Randy had been using earlier. With spatula in hand, Veronica sees and hears the onset of Randy's hammering. She then alters her direction of travel, walks over to the side of the platform Randy has just hammered on, and proceeds to hammer on the edge of the same platform side Randy had targeted. The first child, Randy, then resumes hammering, this time in exactly the same spot that Veronica is hammering. Each of their actions furnishes an occasion for the other to act and each acts in a fashion that can be seen by the other as connected to the prior action —as occasioned by it. Thus, they come to be hammering together on the same spot. This establishes a visible connection of activities: one child does something, another child emulates that action in the presence of the first child. This can be followed by some recognition or appreciation of the shared action— that it is a shared action—by one or both participants in the activity. In this example, the first child adjusts his hammering target to match the child who was emulating his action. Returning to the case in which a hammer is dropped into a basket, Alan's actions may draw on this form of organization. However, there seem to be two additional organizing features beyond action emulation; (a) Alan produces actions designed to be emulated, and then, in pursuit of emulation; and (b) there is the stronger sequence relationship of a next action being made relevant by a prior action as parts of a sequence of actions. Here following suit would be more than emulating an action; it would be producing an action that was implicated by a prior, corresponding action as part of a joint activity— putting away toys after use. And here these recognizable and achievable structures of action are used formally. They are not (just) employed in their own right, but as components in a differently construed course of action—one that could lead to the repossession of the hammer by Alan. This episode is reminiscent of an old folk tale popularized in a children's book by Esphyr Slobodkina (1988 [1940]). In short, a peddler gets all of his merchandise (caps) back from a tree full of monkeys when he finds that throwing his own cap onto the ground in frustration is followed by all of the monkeys throwing their caps to the ground as well. Unlike the peddler, Alan seems to have already learned this lesson—that what you can be seen to be doing can be consequential for what others do.
456
CHAPTER 27
CONCLUDING REMARKS The observability of action furnishes members of every society with a fundamental resource for understanding the organization of human sociality and engaging in predictable, coordinated conduct. In this view, the early development of a "theory of mind" is bound up more with the acquisition of commonly held practices for producing and observing action than with the translation of recognized action into terms of individual motive (cf. Frye, et al., 1991; Whiten, 1991). It is, in part, the in situ recognizability of action that counts as "knowing the mind of another." One question, then, for investigators of social life must be, "what are the earliest traces and forms of the observability of action?" One can describe the beginnings of full-fledged sociality—its organizational forms—if one can spot the beginnings of the observability of action. Work in this area must certainly examine mother-infant and more generally adult-child interaction. However, one can find this resource exercised in the peer interactions of very young children as well. When left on their own, they can not only produce and recognize embodied actions, but as we have shown they can also employ the appearance of one action to accomplish something else, thus revealing an orientation to their own body behavior as social action.
REFERENCES Drew, P. (1987). Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics, 25, 219-253. Frye, D., & Moore, C. (1991). Children's theories of mind: Mental states and social understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Jefferson, G. (1981). The rejection of advice: Managing the problematic convergence of a "troubles-telling" and a "service encounter". Journal of Pragmatics, 5, 399-422. Jones, S. (2000). Children's use of "pointing" as a sequence initiating action. Paper presented to the American Association of Applied Linguistics, Vancouver. Knapp, M., & Knapp, H. (1976). One potato, two potato . . . . The secret education of American children. New York: Norton. Lerner, G. H. (2002). Turn-sharing: The choral co-production of talk in interaction. In C. Ford, B. Fox, & S. Thompson (Eds.), The language of turn and sequence, pp. 225-256. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lerner, G. H., Kidwell, M., & Zimmerman D. H. (1999, May). Object transfers, emergent sequence organization, and the recognizability of actions among very young children. Paper presented at the International
CONDUCT OF CHILDREN
457
Communication Association, San Francisco. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation. Edited by Gail Jefferson, with an Introduction by Emanuel Schegloff. Oxford: Blackwell. Schegloff, E. A. (1995). Sequence organization. Unpublished manuscript. Department of Sociology, UCLA. Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289327. Shatz, M. (1994). A toddler's life: Becoming a person. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Slobodkina, E. (1988 [1940]). Caps for sale: A tale of a peddler, some monkeys and their monkey business. New York: Harper Collins. Whiten, A. (1991). Natural theories of mind: Evolution, development and simulation of everyday mindreading. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
This page intentionally left blank
28 Speech Melody and Rhetorical Style: Paul Harvey as Exemplar John Vincent Modaff Morehead State University WHY EXPAND TRANSCRIPTS OF SPEECH Unless something is known about how a certain set of words was uttered, subsequent analyses of a speech are narrowly qualified. That is, whereas literature may be analyzed from a rhetorical perspective using no more than a nomic text, vivacious speech may not be well represented nomically. Put another way, there is more to speech than language. Speech is language plus prosodic features and the pragmatics of interaction. One very important aspect of spoken language is "speech melody" (Bolinger, 1986; Rush, 1872). Of the "cues" speakers use to manage spoken meaning, speech melody may be most effective (Bolinger, 1986). Speech melody is a term that can be appreciated to entail many if not all features of prosody. Of "prosodic cues," Gumperz (1982) had much to say: They carry some of the weight of selecting among a variety of possible interpretations by directing the listener among shades of meaning inherent in the semantic range of the words used; [and] . . . they tie these key semantic features together into a theme, and mark out a developing line of argument, (p. 104, emphasis added)
Speech melody, otherwise known as intonation, is the musical aspect of speech, formed by variation in vocal pitch, duration, and intensity. Speech melody is akin to the tune of a song, but its intervals are less precise; that is, there is really no such thing as a "note" in speech melody such as we might find in common music notation. However, people produce and expect to hear melodic intervals 459
460
CHAPTER 28
and intonations that can be perceived as expected—or, in other words, as "permissible" or "impermissible" a la Hadding & Naucler, 1980). This chapter demonstrates some of the means by which a rhetorical analyst can expand the appreciable qualities of speech by illustrating performance details of a news commentary by American broadcaster, Paul Harvey. Harvey is chosen because his style is highly melodic, even quaint, and therefore ideal for demonstration purposes. A rationale for the study of speech melody and rhetorical style requires some clarification of the role speech melody plays in the language culture of Americans. In spoken American English, virtually regardless of dialect, speech melody can be described as performing several essential functions. First, speech melody has grammatical/syntactic function (Malmberg, 1968). For example, intersyllabic pitch variation may place sufficient stress on a key syllable to make a distinction between "CONduct" (noun) and "conDUCT" (verb). Although this stress-accent may also be accomplished by means of lengthening or intensity, intonation is the most efficient means of accenting. Length and intensity are not as expressively flexible as the fine increments of variations in pitch (Bolinger, 1986). Second, when variation in pitch moves beyond the single syllable, it begins to mark the beginning of a semantic/pragmatic function for speech melody. Bolinger (1986) illustrated how speech melody makes possible backgrounding and foregrounding of words or word groups. Consider, for example, the different semantic content and pragmatic coherence of the following lexically identical questions (read higher pitch if higher on the page, lower pitch if lower): What's that in the What's that in the
road -. a -.--.H road
head head
a
The preceding comparison illustrates how speech melody may be used to carry essential semantic information. The first utterance is a common enough question (although questions usually take on a rising melody at the cadence.) One may interpret the first utterance to mean: "I see something ahead of us in the road and I don't know what it is—could you tell me?" The second utterance, lexically and grammatically identical as nomically transcribed, may be interpreted for quite a different meaning: "I see something in the road that looks like a head; can you verify that?" Quite different semantic information is conveyed by speech melody in otherwise identical sentences. A third function of speech melody is perhaps the most important context of the present study—its expressive
SPEECH MELODY
461
function. This third function makes possible the vocal communication of attitude and emotion (Abe, 1980; Bolinger, 1986; Ladefoged, 1982; Malmberg, 1968; Ohala, 1985). The rhetor's attitude toward the moment, the audience, and the topic of talk may be in a large part made evident through speech melody, and perceived attitude has great rhetorical significance. Consider, for example, the opening line of a hypothetical address: "I am very happy to be here today." If stated: am
I
very happy to be here today.
the question might arise in the mind of a listener, "Who said you weren't?" The marked melodic stress on the word am could logically induce such a question. In contrast, if the speaker states: very I am
hap py
to be here today
the lack of melodic marking would render the opening statement routine, and thus non-educive of wonder in the audience. Its effect, if at all rhetorical, is the effect of the cliche, the expected, opening. In this way, speech melody can evoke an attitude (in the many rich meanings of that word attitude.)
"TRI-TEXT": AN EXPANDED TRANSCRIPTION METHOD What follows is a brief analysis of a news-commentary presented by ABC announcer Paul Harvey. Before a demonstration of how analysis including speech melody data might proceed is provided, however, some explanation of the transcription method is in order. The method combines three "lines" of data for each line of text: (a) nomic orthography; (b) phonetic transcription, and (c) computer-generated pitch tracing of variation in fundamental frequency (one aspect of "speech melody"). Here is a sample, taken from the first line of the commentary under study:
462
CHAPTER 28
The lower line is the common alphabetic representation called nomic orthography. The middle line is a phonetic transcription, which serves two functions: (a) it provides a link between the nomic and pitch data, and (b) it allows an accurate rendering of the details of dialect and idiolect as performed by the speaker. The top line is the "trace" of pitch, generated by a computer equipped with a Covox Voicemaster speech processor. The name given by this author to text appearing in this manner is "tri-text," because each "line" of transcribed performance-text includes three lines of data. Taking the three lines separately and then together, the analyst is provided with details of performance that no other text would indicate as thoroughly. Rhetorical analysis can now proceed based on data that indicate performance details that could greatly qualify language choices made by the speaker. Also, performance details that are not formally linguistic, but are still audiometric, can be subject to analysis.
DEMONSTRATION ANALYSIS USING TRI-TEXT Space limitations here do not allow a complete setting forth of the entire 358 lines of transcribed news-commentary (ABC, network radio, June 4, 1986). Instead, this section provides analysis of certain key moments in the 15-minute broadcast. The purpose is to illustrate how rhetorical analysis can be undertaken to consider both language and performance. (Because the original broadcast signal was a radio signal, other nonverbal aspects of performance are not relevant to this analysis.) Once the formal matter of the expanded transcription is treated, one is ready to proceed with descriptive analysis. Some questions one might ask about Harvey's performance are: (a) how does Harvey stress certain portions of utterance? (b) how does Harvey accent and emphasize portions of utterance? and, (c) how does he express attitudes to educe cohesion with his audience beyond the mere assumption of attention?
SPEECH MELODY
463
HARVEY'S SPEECH MELODY AND STRESS Harvey uses speech melody to single out parts of words for special notice. There are at least three specific structures of stress that Harvey uses speech melody to achieve. First, he often takes a one-syllable word and expands it melodically. For example, in line 002 Harvey does this twice: on the word by and on the word news. Uttering the word by, Harvey adds to its length by means of an aspirated, tremulous [h] between the [b] and the [ai]. There is no abrupt rise or fall of pitch, but the tremulous effect is melodic just the same—akin to "tremolo" used by singers. The lengthening accomplished by inserting the over aspirated [h] provides extra material upon which the tremulous scale may be sounded. The effect is of energy stored (the tremulous restraint) combined with release (the heavy exhalation of the [h]). This energetic stress comes in the second breath group of the broadcast. A second example of Harvey's use of length and pitch contrasts with the first. In the same line (002), Harvey ends the breath group by lengthening the word news. Unlike the first example, here the stress is accomplished with a quick, high rise in pitch over the lengthened nasal and diphthong. Unlike his utterance of the word by, no extra phoneme per se is added here. The abrupt high rise combines with extra length on all phonemes, but particularly the diphthong. No other word in the first two breath groups is given the melodic quality of "news." By stressing "news" in this manner, Harvey melodically underlines the word. This foregrounding of the word 'news" gives the word the primary accent in that tone group. Harvey often singles out words for special accent, and he does so with such unusual (or unexpected) combinations of stressed pitch and length as we have seen previously. Such deviations from the common experience are effective just because people have a background or history of built-up experiences from which to form expectations. Gumperz (1982) noted "the process is always situated or context bound. It begins with informed guessing based on what we know about the physical setting, the participants and their backgrounds, and how we relate the situation at hand to other known activities" (p. 101, emphasis added). Another tactic for stress that Harvey regularly uses is best described by Rush's (1872) term vocule. A vocule is that compact burst of sound that is released after a word has reached is terminus. The vocule is a punctuating and lengthening tactic. Sometimes the vocule is simply the isolation and foregrounding of a phoneme that might otherwise go unpronounced or be
464
CHAPTER 28
minimally pronounced. For example, the command "Shut up!" might be pronounced with a vocule at the end of both words, in which case the final [t] and the final [p] are nearly given the currency of syllables. An extra burst of air is used to set them apart in their terminal position, and the sounds are thereby used to stress the terminal beyond its citation form. A typical Harvey vocule appears in Line 154:
In this line, Harvey stresses the final syllable of the verb nibbled by performing the vocule on [d]. The phonetic transcription sets apart the [d] to indicate the stress. The vocule is remarkable because it contradicts the expected energy fall at the end of the word. The vocule's extra burst of energy often comes at a time when air supply is partially or almost fully depleted. Now that we have illustrated some of the means by which Harvey creates stress markings in speech using melodic components, let us turn to accent.
HARVEY'S SPEECH MELODY AND ACCENT By what means does Harvey foreground an entire word in a breath group? One tactic that Harvey often uses combines steady-state pitch and increased length to accent a word. The word all in Line 130 is accented in this way. Observe how the word is held steady and given length:
This sustained intonation sets the word apart, providing an opportunity to combine sound and sense. This combination of sound and sense might be described as an onomatopoetic function of melody. The word "all" has an
SPEECH MELODY
465
arbitrary relation to its meaning, but when Harvey lengthens the word and sustains its pitch, he is, in a sense, doing "all." He is performing the "bigness" of all. He is saying "all is big; all is a lot," and he says it in a way to make it materially evident. His speech makes the tiny word 'all" big like its referent. Perhaps because the word "all" is so distinctively unpoetic (i.e., its size has no correlation to its idea) Harvey sees fit to stretch it out to better match its meaning. In this situation, the rhetorical impact of this otherwise unremarkable word is enhanced melodically. In contrast to the steady-state pitch described earlier, Harvey accomplishes melodic foregrounding in at least two others ways: (a) by diminution, and (b) by sustained pause and pitch. Diminution functions by the same rule as increasing force except it is more remarkable because it is, in fact, less. (Accent is not always equal to more. It can be less. Harvey would seem to know this.) Take, for example, Line 259, which indicates the end of a breath group:
The diminutive sound Harvey makes at the end of the group gives an accent to that morpheme that no word in the phrase receives. The accent is accomplished by a relatively sharp fall in pitch and a quick decay. And, to further set it apart, the morpheme is isolated from the rest of the breath group by a substantial pause. Harvey is well known for his use of pause to accent. However, pause alone may not be the only accenting device at work. Consider an example of the combined use of pause and pitch variation to foreground one key word in Lines 298 and 299:
466
CHAPTER 28
The pause following the questions—"And guess which one gives you the most/ opportunity for the least investment/" (slashes here indicating content of Line 298—is the longest pause in the broadcast. It is perhaps the clearest example of Harvey's use of pause to contribute to accent. But as mentioned previously, the pause alone is insufficient to accent the word following, because pause normally functions to signal the end of a breath group and thus the thought. Harvey maintains a relation between the part before and the part after the pause by means of matching pitch. His intonation of the word "Servicemaster," put simply, picks up melodically where he left off with "investment." The pitches used to utter "Servicemaster" are the scalar adjacents of the pitches used to utter "for the least investment." In this manner, the word is set apart by pause whereas its connection to the preceding utterance is maintained by speech melody.
HARVEY'S SPEECH MELODY AND EMPHASIS As we progress from stress to accent and now on to emphasis, definitional distinctions are difficult to establish. Several examples from Harvey should suffice to demonstrate the benefit of considering "theme" one achievement of intentional melodic emphasis. Gumperz (1982) discussed "theme" extensively. Additionally, the paired concepts of "theme" and "rheme" out of Bolinger
SPEECH MELODY
467
(1955; 1986) become useful here. These are established by accent and stress, but are broader features. The theme is the background that, once established, provides the contrasting material required to make a rheme stand out. For example, in metrical scansion of poetry, one might say the thematic foot is the dominant foot, and the rhematic foot is the exception or substitution. In speech melody, the thematic is the broadly redundant contour against which the rheme may stand out when the speaker varies the basic contour in some remarkable way. Concepts from music theory and appreciation corroborate notions of theme and rheme but with a slightly different vocabulary. Theme is established by the developmental relationship of "motive" and "phrase." Theme becomes an organizing concept as repetitions of phrasal motive build up over a piece. Departure from an established musical theme, however, occurs in the same ways in speech melody: Some notable "marked" change of phrase and motive occurs, throwing into the foreground a portion of the "utterance." To establish Harvey's theme is to note his basic melodic contour, that is, that tone-group pattern that he strings together more often than any other. Notwithstanding a quantitative analysis of all contours in the sample broadcast, a careful visual scanning of the pitch text reveals that the predominant contour is the "A contour" (rise-fall—the so-called "hat pattern" because the trace in a way resembles a peaked hat) (Bolinger, 1986). Thus, Harvey's dominant melodic theme would be considered General American English by many linguists. What is remarkable is how Harvey strays from this background pattern during phrases wherein rheme or motive are foregrounded. The A contour (or "hat pattern") is established within the first two syllables of the first breath group (Line 001). With his energetic "Hello," Harvey presents his basic thematic material; he uses this contour (rise-fall) as background for rhematic excursions. Bridging the first two A Contours with the word "Americans" on a slow falling pitch, Harvey finishes breath group #1 with three more quick A contours: "this is," "Paul," and "Harvey." He ends the first series of two phrases establishing a motive (motif), which in turn becomes thematic. The second breath group (Line 002) takes the motive and magnifies it beyond thematic boundaries. The pitch has jumped several intervals, and the A contour is so exaggerated that the grammatical phrase is broken by melody into short phrases "stand by" and "for news." Quite outside the expected full fall at the end of the second breath group, to repeat the theme established in breath group #1 Harvey stresses and accents "news" as previously described. Now, after two breath groups a theme has been established and also varied. The motives arising hereafter maintain this unpredictability. Consider an example more broadly illustrated in the Lines 008 through 026:
468
CHAPTER 28
SPEECH MELODY
469
470
CHAPTER 28
SPEECH MELODY
471
472
CHAPTER 28
These lines provide an illustration of how Harvey establishes a theme and uses it to foreground a central idea by rhematic shift. Notice that all through Lines 008-026, Harvey has maintained an habitual pitch and has used the A contour more than any other. He does accent the final word in many groups just as he ended breath group #1 (with a sharp fall). Then a most dramatic shift in pitch height and contour shape comes in Line 026, containing the climactic thought: "Aren't you glad you have electricity today?" From 008 to 025, speech melody establishes a flat and repetitive theme that corresponds with the lexical content. When relief is provided by lexical content (i.e., Line 026), melody shifts also to a new motive and a thematically verified resolution. In this way, Harvey uses melody to achieve rhetorical emphasis.
HARVEY'S PRAGMATIC: EDUCING COHESION In musical nomenclature, Harvey's predominant cadence (ending of phrase, movement, or piece) is exceptional insofar as he rarely terminates with a full fall (the so-called authentic cadence). His cadence is best described as the "halfcadence" (Piston, 1978). This variety of cadence is distinctive for its abrupt rise in the penultimate tone and the incomplete ultimate fall toward the tonic.
SPEECH MELODY
473
What is most peculiar about Harvey's use of the authentic and exceptional cadence is his placement. He uses the exceptional cadence to mark major boundaries, such as the beginning and end of the broadcast, just where one might expect the authentic cadence (especially at the end of the broadcast). But when Harvey uses the authentic cadence, it is usually to set boundaries between subsequences in longer series (such as the checklist of squalor before the electricity pitch noted earlier) or to end a story in the interior of the broadcast. The pragmatic effect of this peculiar use of cadence is to maintain momentum into and throughout the broadcast. The finality of the authentic cadence is sparsely used, and the sense of finality in the broadcast is reduced. Each series leads to another, and sentences are divided more in their middles than at their grammatical termini. In conversation, such placement of the exceptional cadence often operates as an invitation to respond. Accenting "Servicemaster" by long pause and continuous melody, for example, leaves a peculiar gap that more than simply isolates the word "Servicemaster" in time. The pause can also be read as an invitation to respond. It is as if Harvey says "guess which one?" And the listener is given the chance to say "which?" Harvey then responds with the answer, as if in a riddle: "Servicemaster." The cadence on "Servicemaster" is the half-cadence, not final in any respect, opening the way for a continuation of the topic with further information, assuming a need for elaboration, which is then carried on with a license to elaborate. Harvey thus variously complies with and violates so-called maxims of conversation offered by Grice (1975). Speech melody can be analyzed in the case of Paul Harvey to be operating as a sort of invitation to conversation—dialogic form within monologue. This brings us to even broader considerations speech melody and analysis of rhetorical style.
HARVEY'S MEANS AND ENDS With the means of sound as well as language at his disposal, Harvey's choices are nearly infinite including all the shapes that vocal sound can take. However, Harvey's choices may be limited by what is appropriate and what is possible— that is, by cultural context. One might call this limitation of means "what's expected." Given his longevity and his institutional standing in the culture, Harvey's means are constrained to a certain degree by his own broadcast history. He must "perform" himself every day for over 20 million listeners. His range of possible means now is nowhere near as large as it was when he stepped up to the microphone for the first time. His broadcast persona has become his
474
CHAPTER 28
own context and a means to himself. This context is both a limitation and an asset. Because Harvey is classified as a news commentator, one might infer that his ends include information and editorial comment. The reverse may also be true: that his ends are opposed to those of the information giver (i.e., he intends mainly to entertain). That he wishes to move simultaneously toward these two ends is also possible. Because Harvey is an employee of a commercial radio network, one might safely infer that his ends include the making of profit via product promotion during commercial endorsements. When one tunes in to listen to Paul Harvey News and Comment, one receives a sort of "fresh-off-the-wire" headline style that mimics the structure of both newspaper and newscast. There is frequent editorial comment, but the basic structure of the program is that of a newscast moving through a list of regular topic or departments. "Stories" are strung together. What melody is appropriate to the news provider? Broadcasters are trained to follow closely the general dialect most widely used by educated people. A form of speech has developed that is almost too perfect for conversation, designed to reduce barriers for a diverse listening audience. Given this rather strict and restricted context of performance, certain of Harvey's melodic tactics become relevant here. Of particular interest is the vocule. Harvey uses it frequently throughout the broadcast. When, for example, the phoneme [s] appears in the final position and the first position of two adjacent words (as in "Britain's schools"), Harvey overcodes the [s] phonemes and their boundary. He is speaking like a provider of information, making sure that each sound is made distinctly. But he is also exaggerating the necessary distinction. The vocule is just one location where Harvey performs this exaggeration. His frequent over application of the rules of clear articulation call to attention his style, and, like his other melodic features, these over applications may have the rhetorical effect of re-calling the attention of the listener via a deliberate overcoding of the rules of clear speech.
HARVEY AND THE POSSIBLE MELODY Paul Harvey exaggerates the pedantic articulation associated with "Broadcastese." However, he also very often provides information using a speech melody appropriate to conversation, thus educing "answering." Put simply, his rhetorical style as manifest in speech melody invites response. A contrast may serve to make the point. Imagine Bob Edwards (National Public Radio news announcer) or Dan Rather of CBS asking a direct question over the
SPEECH MELODY
475
air and then giving time for an answer. The closest either of them comes to an implied dialogue with the listener is "have a nice evening, won't you?" In contrast, Harvey uses direct address frequently, each time inviting, one might even say mandating, listener engagement. The exceptional cadence in Harvey derives from his chronic refusal to use the grammatical period as a terminus. The declarative quality is muted as the general pattern of the rising contour takes the place of the grammatically determined fall. With the continuous exceptional cadence, Harvey is speaking as a provider of information might in conversation, making informative statements and all the while melodically asking: did you know this? Harvey's use of pause ("rest" being another feature of musical melody) may be considered unconventional if he is perceived as a newscaster only. As a possible conversational partner, he performs quite conventionally. His pauses mark the expected placement of turns and create opportunities for response to rhetorical questions. These quaint qualities of Paul Harvey's speech melody, which contradict the standard in newscasting, are not necessarily liabilities. The contradiction of one convention establishes another. Harvey's pedantic articulation places him within (even beyond) the standards of broadcast news; his widely divergent melody (e.g., exceptional cadence and use of pause) places him within the norms of lively conversation. Analyzed poetically Harvey's melody emerges as modally lyrical and dramatic. Exaggerated aspects of his speech melody create meaning for him in both modes. At times he follows certain rules of broadcast diction; at other times he violates the same rules to accommodate the rules of conversation. The listener is invited to converse in an unusual context. For more than 20 million people each day, this rule maker and rule breaker is apparently quite appealing. Insofar as he melodically highlights certain silent or non morphemic spaces in his broadcast, Harvey may be heard to articulate the silences. This notion emphasizes Harvey's creation of an empty acoustic space that must be filled in by the listener. As a manipulator of sounds Harvey uses the free range available as means. Though his printed copy may not appear poetic in form, the tri-text of his vocal performance reveals an engaging aesthetic aspect that relies on conventions and peculiarities of speech melody. One should not be restricted to phonology alone when considering Paul Harvey. He engages his huge audience with a rhetorical/poetic embedding of the strange within the familiar.
476
CHAPTER 28
HARVEY AND THE EXPECTED MELODY People who have listened to Paul Harvey for decades remark that he sounds little different today than the first time they heard him. Put another way, Harvey consistently accomplishes himself. Harvey's expressive style becomes a constant form whereas his content becomes variable. Harvey's ritual opening and closing of broadcasts form an example of how expressive form can itself become content. Each repetition is a sign of his longevity, of his duration. Harvey's stories, by contrast, are unpredictable, thus rewarding the listeners' expectation of "news." At the same time his purposeful ambiguity allows one to experience novel engagement and surprise, even within a highly predictable and familiar format. Harvey accommodates basic qualities of broadcast and conversation contexts; his duration itself creates another context through speech melody. Thus, we may find a certain argument embedded within his poetic that lends credibility to his rhetoric.
CONCLUSION: TOWARD AN APPRECIATION OF THE SOUND OF SPEECH Analysis of rhetorical speaking, and perhaps any analysis of language-in-use through speech, can proceed using transcriptions that include more data than a nomic text provides. Tri-text is an attempt to combine a reliable trace of speech melody, phonetic data, and nomic text so that students of rhetoric and speech communication can see, appreciate, and include in critical remarks ever more aspects of a performance. A performer like Paul Harvey—arguably one of the most listened-to Americans in the world—cannot really be appreciated from a rhetorical perspective without some consideration of the details of vocal performance. "Rhetorical style," then, becomes an expanded concept, one that includes both language and its musical play through voice. This chapter has been a brief attempt to illustrate how considerations of speech melody can combine with an analysis of the inferred rhetorical ends of a speaker. The Harvey performance may be treated as an aesthetic text idealized by the tri-text transcript and not just a nomic language structure. Concepts from semiotic, linguistic, and aesthetic criticism provide some means for considering such qualities as intonation and the articulation of silence. Harvey uses sound in quite unconventional ways without offending against convention itself. He performs as an energetic provider of information a mild parody of the news anchor. And he simultaneously performs as a conversational partner for each listener. What many listeners who both love and hate Harvey's style may merely
SPEECH MELODY
477
refer to as stylistic oddity, a careful study of speech melody reveals as a consistent pattern that we might, for now, label dialogic monologue.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This chapter is a revision of a paper presented at the annual convention of the International Communication Association, Chicago, May 1996.
REFERENCES Abe, I. (1980). How vocal pitch works. In L. Waugh & C. H. van Schooneveld (Eds.), The melody of language (pp. 1-24). Baltimore: University Park Press. Bolinger, D. (1955). Melody of language. Modern Language, 40, 19-30. Bolinger, D. (1986). Intonation and its parts. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. Syntax and Semantics, 3, 41-58. Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hadding, K., & Naucler, K. (1980). Permissible and impermissible variation in pitch contours. In L. Waugh & C. H. van Schooneveld (Eds.), The melody of language (pp. 127-133). Baltimore: University Park Press. Ladefoged, P. (1982). A course in phonetics. New York: Harcourt Brace. Malmberg, B. (1968). Manual of phonetics. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Ohala, J. (1985). An ethological perspective on common cross-language Utilization of f-zero of voice. Phonetica, 47,1-16. Piston, W. (1978). Harmony (4th ed.). New York: Norton. Rush, J. (1872). The philosophy of the human voice. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
This page intentionally left blank
29 The Body Present: Reporting Everyday Life Performance Nathan P. Stucky Southern Illinois University, Carbondale Suzanne M. Daughton Southern Illinois University, Carbondale In his classic essay, "Romanticism and Classicism," T. E. Hulme (1924) described the poet's challenge in capturing the essence of experience into expression as getting "the exact curve of the thing" (p. 137): You know what I call architect's curves—flat pieces of wood with all different kinds of curvature. By a suitable selection from these you can draw approximately any curve you like. The artist I take to be the man who simply can't bear the idea of that "approximately." He will get the exact curve of what he sees whether it be an object or an idea in the mind. I shall here have to change my metaphor a little to get the process in his mind. Suppose that instead of your curved pieces of wood you have a springy piece of steel of the same types of curvature as the wood. Now the state of tension or concentration of mind, if he is doing anything really good in this struggle against the ingrained habit of technique, may be represented by a man employing all his fingers to bend the steel out of its own curve and into the exact curve which you want. Something different to what it would assume naturally, (pp. 132-133) Hulme's metaphor invites the reader to see the process of writing fine poetry as hard physical work, as an embodied form of art, comparable to architecture, or painting, dance, or sculpture. Hulme was reacting with distaste to what he saw as the romantic "metaphysic which in defining beauty or the nature of art always 479
480
CHAPTER 29
drags in the infinite," and defending the idea that the highest kind of poetry may "confine itself to the finite," that "beauty may be in small, dry things" (p. 131). His words are telling in the care that the artist takes with details. Getting the exact curve of the thing in order to find the beauty in small, dry things may be at first glance, but at first glance only, a modest goal, one that rewards the poet, the artist, and, we argue here, the performer, in subtle yet powerful ways. In the mid-1980s Robert Hopper, along with a number of his colleagues, students and former students at the University of Texas and other institutions, began working with the reperformance of conversation.1 This work has largely been a classroom affair, designed, in part, to develop understanding about the nature and structure of talk and the organization of human interaction. On a few occasions, the work moved into more elaborate theatrical productions shown to public audiences, and at least one set of performances utilized tape-recorded conversations from President Lyndon Johnson's White House instead of more mundane conversations about who is fixing dinner or picking up the kids.2 In all of these cases, however, actors have worked to "get the exact curve of the thing," to perform the paralinguistic complexity of the voices they hear on recordings. These performances derive much of their power from the work of conversation analysts: first, because of the detail made apparent through the conversation analysis style transcription techniques developed by Gail Jefferson, and second, because of the conversation analytic project of looking for order and structure in "ordinary" talk. The actors, or students, attempt to reproduce pauses, inflection, overlapping utterances, and other details of the talk. In so doing, they are putting their bodies through an intensive modeling of "the Other"—an other whose life tracings are etched in the magnetic field of the tape and whose behavior serves as the basis for a subsequent performance. The spontaneous talk captured on the audiotape thus constitutes a conversational parallel to what Hulme's artist sees; we might then think of the performers as reperforming "body prose" to create "body poetics." In the last fifteen or so years of his life, Robert Hopper devoted remarkable energy to the project of what he called everyday life performance (ELP) (Hopper, 1993). He sought to humanize the study of human communication, with his conversational research which included the extensive use of performance at scholarly conventions, in the classroom, and elsewhere. 1 An introduction to many issues related to the performance of conversation may be found in a special issue on "Performance and Conversation" of Text and Performance Quarterly guest-edited by Robert Hopper (e.g., Hopper, 1993; Gilbert, 1993; Stucky, 1993; Stucky & Glenn, 1993). 2 Stage performances of conversation-analysis style transcripts include: Believe Me, I'm Lying, Believe Me, University of Texas at Austin 1985, dir. Nathan Stucky; Conversation Pieces, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 1987, dir. Bryan Crow; Naturally Speaking, Louisiana State University, 1990, dir. Nathan Stucky; Talking Relationships, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, dirs. Ronald Pelias and Phillip Glenn, 1991; and Presidency on the Line: Lyndon Johnson's First Month in Office, University of Texas at Austin, 1996.
EVERYDAY LIFE PERFORMANCE
481
The first artistic combination of conversation analysis and performance was developed by Hopper and Nathan Stucky collaboratively in 1984. One early result of that work was a play, Believe Me, I'm Lying, Believe Me, staged at the University of Texas in 1985 (Stucky, 1988). Hopper brought conversational performance to the Speech Communication Association national conference in 1986 (Hopper & Stucky, 1986). From that point until his death in 1998, Hopper worked closely with students and colleagues to develop and extend conversational performance and his ideas of conversational poetics. He left his impression on master's theses and doctoral dissertations, on colleagues in any number of disciplines, on the many students whose classroom experiences have included ELP, and on many in the fields of both performance studies and language and social interaction. Although the methods of developing conversational performances are developed in more detail elsewhere, it may be useful to offer a brief summary here. We use natural performance as an umbrella term to indicate "a wide range of performance acts from the ordinary conversational quote to fully staged everyday life performances" such as those drawn from tape-recorded interviews, oral histories, ordinary conversations, and telephone talk (Stucky, 1993, p. 169). ELP refers to a more limited range of activities than natural performance, specifically those involved in rehearsed and staged replication of interaction. The process involves five basic steps: recording, transcribing, analyzing, rehearsing, and performing. Although there have been a number of refinements over the years, notably the occasional use of video, the process outlined by Stucky in 1988 continues to serve as a general pattern: The collection of materials typically requires that informants are asked to place a tape recorder in their home, or on their telephone, and turn it on during a time when they are probably going to be talking. . . . The privacy, consent, and anonymity of the individuals is maintained. Conversation analysts create detailed transcripts of these recordings using a notational system developed by Gail Jefferson, which identifies such features as simultaneous utterances, overlap, intervals between utterances, rising and falling intonations, laughter, louder and softer utterances, and extended syllables, (pp. 31-32) Students are either given materials by the instructor that have been gathered (and sometimes transcribed) previously, or these steps are part of the class. As Hopper's use of ELP for his undergraduate classes evolved, he often skipped over the first two steps (gathering recordings and transcribing), moving directly to rehearsal and analysis. His reasoning was that the students needed to get right to work on the performance experience that was the core of the project. However they are developed, once the materials are in hand, the rehearsal phase begins:
482
CHAPTER 29 The rehearsal process of conversational materials includes frequent use of tapes and transcripts. Each performer is supplied with a conversation analysis style transcript of the "play" and also an edited cassette copy of the original recordings. . . . One technique for learning parts is to listen repeatedly to the tape while following the transcript, then to speak aloud along with the tape, and finally to speak the parts without the recorder, but still reading from the transcript. . . . [The] performers use two texts (written and audio) neither of which would have much impact singly. The recording of the original event itself provides an aural impression which includes a sense of speaker conveyed through the paralinguistic cues. (Stucky, 1988, pp. 33-34)
Scripts that develop in this way, unlike a typical dramatic play script, contain a high level of detail. They present the actor with specific challenges for replication and they "raise questions about mimesis and verisimilitude" (Stucky, 1993, p. 168): [Although there are variations on the process of working with conversational data for performance,] working with recording and transcript, [students] practice replicating the talk. While doing the repeated listening required for both transcription and replication, students focus on the communicative issues in the talk that are relevant to the specific class. Over the course of rehearsals, students memorize the interaction from recordings and transcripts and add visual staging elements. They then perform the scenes for the class. Finally, post-post-performance discussion and papers provide opportunities for audience reaction, individual reflection, and consideration of course-related issues. (Stucky & Glenn, 1993, p. 192)
In contrast to Americanized versions of Constantin Stanislavski's "method acting," with their focus on the "psychological" and internal elements of characterization, ELP requires a careful examination of empirical evidence. In method acting the actor asks, "What would I do if I were this character?" In ELP the actor asks, "Exactly what did the character do?" The end result of ELP often looks astonishingly realistic (like some method acting), but the underlying logic is more akin to presentational theater or storytelling than it is to Western realism because the actor is, in effect, performing a carefully rehearsed quotation. Although it clearly has value for actors, the primary value of ELP, as we have experienced it within the context of language and social interaction, is that it works to reveal the intricacies and nuances of human interaction. It is an embodied study of interpersonal communication. This chapter examines what is happening when this reperformance occurs. Specifically, we draw on the phenomenological work of Drew Leder and
EVERYDAY LIFE PERFORMANCE
483
on the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida as we consider students' reports about their performance experience in university classes where this work has been integrated into the curriculum. We develop an argument that the difficulty experienced in performing conversation serves as a key source of its value, that the disciplining of the body awakens an awareness usually absent, that the act of ELP makes manifest two bodies—the actor's and the invoked Other's— ultimately bringing them together. Leder's (1990) conception of "absence" provides a way to clarify this discussion: Human experience is incarnated. I receive the surrounding world through my eyes, my ears, my hands. The structure of my perceptual organs shapes that which I apprehend. And it is via bodily means that I am capable of responding. . . . Yet this bodily presence is of a highly paradoxical nature. While in one sense the body is the most abiding and inescapable presence in our own lives, it is also essentially characterized by absence. That is, one's own body is rarely the thematic object of experience, (p. 1)
For a performer, this absence is the subject of some conscious attention. A pianist, for example, may focus for a time on the fingers of the left hand perhaps to strengthen or quicken them to handle a difficult passage, an actor may do vocal exercises to develop breath control, but in such cases the performer is attending to a body's need to do something different: Insofar as the body tends to disappear when functioning unproblematically, it often seizes our attention most strongly at times of dysfunction; we then experience the body as the very absence of a desired or ordinary state, and as a force that stands opposed to the self. (Leder, 1990, p. 4)
In disease or injury, the body's dysfunction captures our attention. There is a saying that if your shoes are comfortable, you don't think about your feet. In a more extreme analogy, sprain an ankle and you become aware of the work your feet have been doing all along. (And the rest of your body becomes sore and tired because of the contortions it performs to compensate for the injury.) Leder used a "figure-ground gestalt" (p. 24) analogy to describe the body's awareness of itself. That is, when a person is attending to the use of a given sense (e.g., the use of the eyes when looking at a painting), the other bodily actions that support that looking (e.g., use of muscles to hold the spine erect) recede from consciousness. For the ELP performer, the paradox of the absent body presents two challenges. First, the "original" speaker was largely "absent" during the behavior
484
CHAPTER 29
recorded on tape. Whatever mechanisms, actions, inflections, gestures, involved were habituated into that other person. Second, the performer likely moves through the world in a similarly absent state. Even when the performer may develop or possess a conscious mimetic skill, much remains absent. So, the performer must reenact an absent body through a second absent body. This performance is not without difficulty. The actor can seldom match all of the details heard on the tape. The challenge of working with the tape recording can be seen in the following student commentary: [The tape-recording is] a "shackle" because it contains parameters such as pauses and false starts that define rigid parameters of performance that must not go overlooked. . . . "Messing up" was the huge fear that loomed over our heads, especially while we were in the midst of our first performance. Whenever lines were skipped in rehearsal we would stop and start over again from the beginning due to the difficult nature of establishing our clashing rhythms of speech.3
Ironically, the performer's most daunting challenge often involves the deliberate, controlled reenactment of an Other's disfluencies, her or his original "mistakes." And because real-life conversations rarely consist of the clean monologues that typify traditional play scripts, the two (or more) parties to a conversation must perform their intricate dance of disfluency in complete synchrony with one another, "establishing our clashing rhythms of speech." So the "messing up" referred to in the previous quotation can be simply synonymous with a theatrical performer's familiar worry about forgetting or mixing up a line, but it can also mean the failure to repeat accurately the Other's speech "error," or the failure to "interrupt" or overlap the speech of another in just the right way, at just the right time. In this sense, the heretofore absent bodies of Other and performer both become most noticeably present to the performer during times when the conversation is less than smooth, or we might say, when the linguistic feet hurt. In Hulme's (1924) terms, the conversational performance artists are "struggl[ing] against the ingrained habit of technique" (p. 133), trying to recreate the "right mistakes." His description of the goal of poetry sounds as if it could have been written as a guide to conversation analysts and performers: The great aim is accurate, precise and definite description. The first thing is to recognize how extraordinarily difficult this is. It is no mere matter of carefulness; you have to use language, and language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact Student responses, from writing projects in one of the first author's Conversational Performance classes, are quoted here by permission. The authors thank the following students for their contributions: Patreece Boone, Jennifer Gibson, Shane Kreke, Edward Linton, Michael O'Donohoe, Valerie Parga, and Jay Ramer.
EVERYDAY LIFE PERFORMANCE
485
thing but a compromise—that which is common to you, me and everybody, (p. 132)
Another way to look at the difficulty involved in the reperformance of conversation is that it attends to the ways in which conversation deconstructs itself, and faithfully insists on presenting all of those competing nuances available, not simply the ones that further a given rhetorical point or objective. In his essay on "Plato's Pharmacy," Jacques Derrida (1972/1981) documented Plato's use of a range of drug imagery in his body of work. In a move both counterintuitive and convincing, he argued that the overwhelmingly thorough representation of all but one of the available terms of pharmacology makes noticeable the one term from that group that is absent, thus making that term present in its very absence: One can say in any event that all the "pharmaceutical" words we have been pointing out do actually make an "act of presence," so to speak, in the text of the dialogues. Curiously, however, there is another of these words that, to our knowledge, is never used by Plato. If we line it up with the series pharmakeia-pharmakon-pharmakeus, we will no longer be able to content ourselves with reconstituting a chain that, for all its hiddenness, for all it might escape Plato's notice, is nevertheless something that passes through certain discoverable points of presence that can be seen in the text. The word to which we are now going to refer, which is present in the language and which points to an experience that was present in Greek culture even in Plato's day, seems strikingly absent from the "Platonic text." But what does absent or present mean here? Like any text, the text of "Plato" couldn't not be involved, at least in a virtual, dynamic, lateral manner, with all the words that composed the system of the Greek language. Certain forces of association unite—at diverse distances, with different strengths and according to disparate paths— the words "actually present" in a discourse with all the other words in the lexical system, whether or not they appear as "words," that is, as relative verbal units in such discourse. They communicate with the totality of the lexicon through their syntactic play and at least through the subunits that compose what we call a word.... The circuit we are proposing is, moreover, all the more legitimate and easy since it leads to a word that can, on one of its faces, be considered the synonym, almost the homonym, of a word Plato "actually" used. The word in question is pharmakos (wizard, magician, poisoner), a synonym of pharmakeus (which Plato uses), but with the unique feature of having been overdetermined, overlaid by Greek culture with another function. Another role, and a formidable one.
486
CHAPTER 29 The character of the pharmakos has been compared to a scapegoat. The evil and the outside, the expulsion of the evil, its exclusion out of the body (and out) of the city—these are the two major senses of the character and of the ritual, (emphasis in orginal, pp. 129-130)
Many different presences, absences, and bodies are featured here: the body of the Greek language and the body of pharmaceutical terms, the body of Plato's works, the body politic, and the forcibly absented body of the scapegoat, the pharmakos, Socrates. (Even the body of Socrates's work is present only in absence, silhouetted and memorialized only in Plato's dialogues.) In every case, just as in the case of the reperformance of conversation, that which is absent, although apparently submerged, invisible, irrelevant, is waiting just below the surface to be called forth by the terms we use and the disfluencies that escape our lips. Derrida's deconstructive reading of Plato's body (of work) attends to the linguistic roads not taken, thereby expanding the textual artifacts in question as it unravels them. Once the absent term in the lexicon is named, its presence looms over the text, weaving new connections over old. The "fact" that Plato "did not mean to say" the term for "scapegoat" does not impress Jacques Derrida, just as things that we "did not mean to say" (such as mistakes and "Freudian slips") in conversation are fair game for ELP practitioners. Perhaps Plato was not even "consciously" aware of the seemingly significant omission. No matter. The absence of attention on the part of the party originally producing the discourse may even make it more incumbent upon the subsequent analyst/performer to notice these details. In fact, performers rehearsing for an ELP production often notice subtle "poetic" repetitions and connections that the original speakers appear to produce unconsciously. When we practice ELP, the conversational false starts and "mistakes" expand our awareness of how ordinary people sound (ourselves, as well as the others whom we perform). In contrast, when we teach, we tell nervous public speakers not to fret overmuch about disfluencies: "Speech is ephemeral," we say. "In two minutes, no one will remember a couple of 'ums' and 'ers.'" But ELP, like deconstruction, is not so forgiving. Neither will politely ignore a "loose end," but will instead tug on it to see what happens. And what happens is always an expansion of understanding: of the text, of the Other, of the self. Our concern with bodies and absence is literal and physical as well as metaphorical. Lung capacities, heart rate, flexibility, stress, memory, disposition, muscle tone, body shape, and countless other factors affect the performer's task. One student wrote that "One of the problems that we all encountered while rehearsing was that there was a natural tendency to adjust the text to fit our own speaking style, something that was very difficult to overcome." Another student summarized the challenge this way: "Trying to imitate the character's physical and vocal mannerisms was the first difficulty." Whereas in traditional theater, an
EVERYDAY LIFE PERFORMANCE
487
actor may seek to find points of emotional or psychological identification with a character first, and let that lead her or him to the development of particular patterns of speaking, in conversational reperformance the performer is presented with the patterns of speech in all of their glorious, messy abundance, and must work "backward" to achieve that sense of identification. In her article, "Staged Replication of Naturally-Occurring Talk," Deleasa Randall (1993) recounted struggling with memorization of the "imperfections" in the talk and with the necessary attention to "the somatic focus on all my sensory capabilities" (p. 197): My usual ease in memorization was complicated by overlapping utterances, incomplete thoughts and sentences, stutters, stammers, and other "imperfections" found in natural talk. My partner and I scheduled additional rehearsal time. I began walking across campus, carrying my Walkman and listening to our segment of talk. As I walked I repeated my character's words aloud, (p. 197)
Randall's experience, especially the challenges of working to get one body to begin to follow the pattern of another's prior performance, is a recurrent theme in student writing on this work: Randall discusses how memorization became a complex task for her to accomplish when she had to concentrate on the "overlapping utterances, incomplete thoughts and sentences, stutters, stammers, and other imperfections." I found that this was also a great challenge for me. In the conversation I performed, my character's stories were often punctuated by "and so" and "but uh." While I find that they're not too hard to say when you're the original author of these words, engaged in your own personal conversation, they're quite difficult to remember to perform in staged natural conversation.
In addition to memorization, a second theme arises—that of identification, or psycho-physical alignment with the character. Randall (1993) argued that carefully reproducing the details of the talk created a close affiliation with her character: My character and I became intimately connected. ... I began to realize that as a performer I could not breathe this woman's breaths, pause her sometimes excruciatingly long pauses (one was 11.4 seconds mid-sentence), and speak her carefully chosen words without bonding with her in a frighteningly intimate manner. Through working with the intricacies of her talk, this anonymous "someone," this "mystery woman" became a person, and part of that person merged with me. (p. 197)
488
CHAPTER 29
Of course, the very description of the Other as a "character" is problematic. One of the factors of ELP is that the reperformance is of another living human, not a fictional creation. This appears to frame the experience differently from that of more traditional theater. In an earlier essay, the first author argued that "What distinguishes this 'natural' outer world from a work of fiction partly lies in the suggestive power of its status as reality. Because 'this is how it was,' the performer may feel an additional responsibility" (Stucky, 1993, p. 173). Randall recounted that the person she was playing "merged with" her. For other performers this merging remained elusive, as in the following student response: I did not find that I became connected with my "character" in the same way as [Randall] did. I did experience the same difficulties in breathing and often found myself wanting to use my own rate, which imposed on my character. As a theatre graduate I too had the question of creativity in mind, but also found a great level of creativity was needed to accomplish this task.
The experience of a disjunct between the performer's behavior and that deduced from the data helps bring into brief focus, not just the Other, but the actor's own body. It invokes the first person "I": "I can't breathe that way, or speak in that manner." The difference thus marked suggests a step toward the particular—to do a specified action with two different bodies. Leder (1990) noted, citing Merleau-Ponty, that the body "is never just an object in the world but that very medium whereby our world comes into being" (p. 5). Accordingly, the ELP actor is, in effect, attempting to access an entirely new world. Often accessing a new world presents specific challenges for the performer. Leder (1990) approached the mastering of a new skill as a process of "incorporation" (p. 31). A skill, he reasoned, "is finally and fully learned when something that was extrinsic, grasped only through rules or examples, now comes to pervade my own corporeality" (p. 31). For example, in learning to swim a person may pay attention to rules of swimming and may even watch another person swimming, but eventually "this watching must give way before the body's need for direct performance" (p. 31). In ELP the body must move to incorporate a body different from the performer's; sometimes those differences are highly pronounced. In recognizing those differences, the actor becomes aware of his or her own body, aware of the typically absent body, aware of both self and other. For example, one student noted both physical and behavioral differences that required attention in performance: My character in our class performance was one hundred pounds heavier than I am, a football player, which I am not, and much less articulate than I am. . . . The more we rehearsed, and the harder I
EVERYDAY LIFE PERFORMANCE
489
tried to become "Blain," the more connected I felt to him. I had become a college jock watching television with a strong interest in four pound burritos.
This practice of incorporation of an Other's behaviors, like Derrida's expansion of Plato's text to include words not-actually-written, recalls the image of the scapegoat, but in reverse: Whereas the scapegoat was exiled from the body politic to purge the sins of the collective, in ELP, the Other is recognized as similar to, in some way sharing an identity with, the self, and is welcomed. The process of becoming another for a performance makes present the absence of ordinary experience during the times of rehearsal and performance. As Leder (1990) argued, "Incorporation thus has a temporal significance. The body masters a novel skill by incorporating its own corporeal history of hours and days spent in practice" (p. 32). The ELP actor must account, not only for the ordinary behaviors of the Other, but for those skills the Other has developed. One student noted the specific behavior of smoking, something she did not ordinarily do, as a skill possessed by the person she was portraying. She described her process of incorporation this way: I had to learn the art of smoking. When do I inhale, exhale, and how often do I inhale all became very critical questions and ones that helped me to deal with the gaps in the performance. ... All in all, this was a powerful performance experience as I learned all the intricacies involved in human interaction and how we as both performers and listeners can understand and communicate more effectively with each other by studying "everyday talk."
Exactly how this incorporation works, though, is difficult to explain. Leder (1990) argued that we can experience a bodily transcendence in which the Other serves to expand our possibilities: "I come to see the forest not only through my own eyes but as the Other sees it" (p. 94). Leder called this phenomenon mutual incorporation in which "we supplement our embodiment through the Other" (p. 94). But Leder cautioned that we do not become one with the Other, rather, we put ourselves in others' places and adopt their perspectives. Whereas Leder is using the idea of putting oneself in another's place in the usual metaphoric sense, ELP (and indeed, all of "natural performance") demands a physical investment in that placement. The perspective shift entailed in this work requires flesh and blood as well as imaginative accountability. Leder's concept of mutual incorporation allows us to get at the process. An actor takes in, incorporates, the Other, just as the transcript and recording of the Other's words ultimately surround the actor, allowing the actor to become part of the Other. This process of mutual influence is a theme described in the following account of a classroom performance:
490
CHAPTER 29
Performing Pam in the classroom presentation that I did with Allan was, certainly, a challenge. Perhaps, foremost, it was a challenge because Pam's 13 year old girl's body has very little in common with my 34 year old man's body. But our bodies do have some things in common and it was by considering what those things were that I was finally able to understand and perform Pam. . . . We both engage our bodies to communicate the clustering of emotions that are bundled in our everyday performance. ... I found Pam's conversation sinking into my skin as I worked on the performance. Phrases that she used and the way she produced them have become part of my personal lexicon. During the rehearsal stage as I began to notice this occurring it became easier for me to imagine how Pam would use her body as she said, "re::ally funny." As I began to use my body with Pam's conversation it became easier for me to empathize with her. It was empathy that helped me most to perform Pam. Before I began to understand Pam with my body, I didn't feel the responsibility that is associated with performing someone else's real story. But empathy helped me feel that responsibility. It helped me to look deeper than the surface of the conversation to discover something closer to her soul.
So, for this performer, there is a blending, a mutual incorporation leading to something that is described as somehow beyond the body, "something closer to her soul." What he describes as "empathy" arises from the incarnate. He relies on his body to engage a strip of behavior, copy it, then "feel" it. This empathy becomes a body, a "lived experience," a way of kinesthetic knowing. The work of ELP demonstrates one way performance pedagogy leads to a deeper understanding of human communication. ELP is embodied knowledge. The student/actor/scholar learns something important about the structure of interaction, about interpersonal communication, about what it must feel like to do what another person did. In taking the virtual breaths of another human being the student experiences an intense contact with an other—a fundamentally intercultural experience. When the performer successfully moves through the work of ELP, there is a strict attention paid to the empirical details of another's prior performance. Because the historically prior performance is immutable (in the data remaining on the tape recording), you can't perform stereotypes in ELP. Ultimately this work tells us not only about difference, but about ourselves. When working to inflect a phrase, to breathe, or to pause as heard on the tape recording, the actor's own physical apparatus becomes apparent. This, in Leder's sense, truly makes absent bodies present. How do we explain what may be achieved in such performances? We may conclude with Leder's (1990) point that rejecting the Cartesian dualism of a mind/body split suggests the concept of a "lived body," one in which "the
EVERYDAY LIFE PERFORMANCE
491
reasoning mind and the body are not in fact opposing substances but intertwined aspects of one living organism" (p. 149). Furthermore, our body is made of the same material "stuff as the rest of the universe. The ancient Chinese concept of "Ch'i" ("vital force," "material force," "life force") points to "an embodied unity of all things" (Leder, 1990, p. 156). When the performer matches behavior with another, he or she will be channeling the Ch 'i or "life force" in harmony with that other. We term this the "oneness" of performance. When we say we are "at one" with another we mean that, in some small yet fundamental way, we "know" by breathing the same life force as another, the Other. And by allowing that life force, messy though it may be, to come through us in its self-constructing and deconstructing way, we make briefly present the absent body, creating a conversational poetics of embodiment. For Robert Hopper (1993), "this procedure feeds good science, and science thereby regains some of its poetry" (p. 181).
REFERENCES Derrida, J. (1981). Plato's pharmacy. In Dissemination (B. Johnson, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1972). Gilbert, J. R. (1993). Inspiration and conversation: Breat(h)ing the Other. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 186—188. Hopper, R. (1993). Conversational dramatism and everyday life performance. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 181-183. Hopper, R., & Stucky, N. (1986, November). Message research in the future. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association, Chicago. Hulme, T. E. (1924). (Romanticism and classicism). Speculations: Essays on humanism and the philosophy of art. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Leder, D. (1990). The absent body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Randall, D. (1993). Staged replication of naturally-occurring talk: A performer's perspective. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 197-199. Stucky, N. (1988). Unnatural acts: Performing natural conversation. Literature in Performance, 8(2), 28-39. Stucky, N. (1993). Toward an aesthetics of natural performance. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 168-180. Stucky, N., & Glenn, P. (1993). Invoking the empirical muse: Conversation, performance, and pedagogy. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 192196.
This page intentionally left blank
30 Ethnography as Spiritual Practice: A Change in the Taken-for-Granted (or an Epistemological Break with Science)1 Maria Cristina Gonzalez Arizona State University To meditative minds the ineffable is cryptic, inarticulate: dots, marks of secret meaning, scattered hints, to be gathered, deciphered and formed into evidence; while in moments of insight the ineffable is a metaphor in a forgotten mother tongue. (Heschel, 1997, p. 7)
In 1951, Suzanne Langer "wrote of the restriction on discourse that sets bounds to the complexity of speakable ideas" (cited in Daly, 1973, p. 152). Daly responded to Langer's concern that our language is a "repository of faded metaphors" (p. xix) by exploring the notion that we have lost sense of the nature of metaphor. Daly's interpretation is that metaphor is inherently a feminine linguistic dynamic, that along with other "pseudo-propositions" has been cast by patriarchal religious institutions and practices into the lot of that which is called silence. She challenged us to engage in what she called "Webster Work" (p. xxiii), which I see as the creative reinterpretation and reconstruction of language use that does not serve the purpose of expressing anything but that which has already been taken for granted as being true. Doing such Webster Work, we may 1 My initial efforts to develop this approach are reflected in my work on the four seasons of ethnography (Gonzalez, 2001) and "Painting my White Face Red" (Gonzalez, 1997). This essay represents progress that has been made in my contemplation and practice of the methodology. 493
494
CHAPTER 30
begin to once again see the colors of Langer's faded metaphors, as well as naming into being new ones. This power to name is the power to call into being. Indigenous earth-based cultures have always practiced this knowledge, and even today persons and buildings, dogs and automobiles are given names that allude to a particular reality that is bestowed on that entity. From the time of naming, all those who knowingly engage with the name (as the entities become identified with the name) will take for granted all sorts of assumptions about the nature of its being. In that sense, naming begins the conversation. With that in mind, I have chosen to name the methodology, that I employ in my research—ethnography—a spiritual practice. It is my assumption that both of these terms, ethnography and spiritual practice, carry with them a heavy load of taken for granted assumptions. Leonardo Boff, in his examination of spirituality and sex (1995), provided an insightful view at how we might approach our look at ethnography and spiritual practice. In the following quote, I have substituted the word ethnography for Boff 's use of the word sex to make my point: The first [approach] is to look at both terms—spirituality and ethnography—as a twofold reality with certain natural similarities and differences, then to scrutinize them for compatibility, suggesting points of contact and divergence. . . . [This approach] conceives of spirituality and ethnography as essentially separate phenomena as far as our experience of them is concerned. This approach relies on a certain philosophical understanding. . . . [or] notion of reality that objectifies it as so many self-justifying data in need of no further explanation. The second approach tries to see spirituality and ethnography as the result of a more profound vital process. Although in this view we may still think of reality as consisting of a number of concrete data, we may also see it as made up of various elements that are simultaneously aspects of a single, much deeper process. This more profound reality is always open. . . . They are not selfexplanatory but call for an explanation. (Boff, 1995, pp. 163-164)
What Boff described, I would suggest, is the elimination of an "epistemological obstacle" (Bachelard as cited in Gutting, 1989), which Gutting defined as: "any concept or method that prevents an epistemological break. Obstacles are residues from previous ways of thinking that, whatever value they had in the past, have begun to block the path of inquiry" (p. 16). To Bachelard, an "epistemological break" can occur when "objects of experience" are placed "under new categories that reveal properties and relations not available to ordinary sense perception" (Gutting, 1989, p. 15). Bachelard
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
495
was here concerned with the natural sciences, and my application of his terminology is perhaps naive. However, I seek to construct a "new system of value and belief (Anderson, 1990, p. 208) for the methodology of ethnography: ... a new system of value and belief, created, as new systems usually are, out of bits and pieces of old systems of value and belief, with no apparent feeling of obligation to swallow any of them whole ... A spirit of innovation . . . incompatible with absolutism. (Anderson, 1990, p. 208)
The epistemological break that I am claiming to make is that the subject of one's research need not be objectively observable, its subjectivity preserving its empirical value. This epistemology is rooted in an ontology that privileges spiritual reality equally with material experience. Spiritual reality, in this ontology, pervades material experience. The implied epistemology calls for a relationship to material experience that seeks to identify and know this pervasiveness. It is an epistemology of subjective openness, of tentative certainty (Gonzalez, 1994). This subjectivity is located in the experience of logos or the word, more specifically the unconstrainable reality of spirit that can only find its way into the social world through language. Metaphor is the preferred linguistic form, due to its nonliteral, thereby intrinsically less constraining form for conveying meaning. Daly (1973) reminded us that the word metaphor itself is metaphoric (as is all language) when she told us that the Greek meta and pherein together suggest: ". . . the power of words to carry us into a Time/Space that is after, behind, transformative of, and beyond static being—the stasis . . . " (p. xix). I therefore claim that the methodology based in an epistemology and ontology that seeks to know spirit must focus on language, on the metaphor, as that which invites us to a form of knowing that can propel us to a form of understanding that is transformative. Further, I claim that methodology of ethnography can allow for the consistent practice of rigorous subjective openness and tentative certainty that seeking the spirit requires. I have made the claim elsewhere (Gonzalez, 1994) that spirit is a neglected dimension when we look at human experience, focusing solely on the biological, psychological, and social. I believe this to be the case because these three areas of experience are the identifiable containers, or organizing constructions that allow us as humans to believe we are dealing with something of reality. The absence of the definition of the spiritual as essential to what it is to be human (in much of the literature of social science), as opposed to the spiritual as something that humaris "do," indicates an emphasis on the physically or intellectually tangible as essentially human. A definition to me, is the way in
496
CHAPTER 30
which we present to others our parameters for understanding, a sharing of the struggle of determination in which we engage with a given phenomenon. The absence of the spirit as essential prevents the understanding of those things characteristic of human experience that can not be apprehended (in Spanish, the verb aprender is "to learn," aprendido is "learned") through physico-deductive methodologies. Methodologies therefore must be adequate enough to allow such learning. My definition of "spirit" is that it is that aspect of existence that is pervasive and "One," and that by its nature, resists organization. Organization, is that feature of existence that provides order and predictability, and humans are inordinately, among all other creatures, capable of willful organization, whether through language, adjustment of space, creation of ideological systems, culture, and so on. However, "spirit," as the pervasive Oneness of existence, cannot be contained or delimited by organization. Paradoxically, as humans, we must be confined to systems of organization, whether our physical bodies, our language systems or conversational norms, relationships, and so forth, as ways through which we engage in our lives. It is the sustained presence in the "place" of tension between the inherent pervasive Oneness of spirit, and the reified and thereby taken-for-granted forms of organization that is the site of mystical experience, or the "unio mystica" spoken of by theologians of various religious traditions. It is from experience of this mystical place of awareness that I believe ethnography can be transformed to provide insights into the multiple layers of meaning that operate for us as human spirits embodied and functioning through multiple forms of organization. Boff (1995) reinforced the "unitarian" combination that would include spirit with the mind and body, suggesting that spirituality operates within the dimension of spirit, that dimension that has the properties of "reflection, inwardness, and contemplation" among other features. Boff told us that in order to keep our equilibrium in our everyday lives, we have to develop a certain degree of spirituality. Spiritual practice, I offer, is the human behavior that awakens the awareness of pervasive spirit, making its presence something of which we are consciously aware, bestowing our lives with a degree of spirituality, or tension between the taken-for-granted and the pervasive One. This spirit, as I have suggested (Gonzalez, 1998) is the aspect of our human nature that resists organization. It is the impetus for liberation and "no," the trademark of the mystic in everyday life (Fox, 1994). The mystic's cry of "no" to the taken-forgranted is based on the spirituality of experience of the tension between the pervasive One and organized life. Spirit is not something that is simply "in" us, but that pervades our being and with which we can dialogue in a truly elliptical and Escherian sense. Boff (1995) offered that this dialogue is conducted by
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
497
means of contemplation, reflection, and inwardness, "in short, through the power of subjectivity" (p. 165). This subjectively open awareness of the simultaneous organized materiality and social nature of life and its pervasive spirituality is soul—that which sees the nature of our existence and experience as a whole. This subjectivity gains its power, in turn from symbolic forms, including words: Spirituality feeds on the vast symbolic world and is generally expressed through symbols. We may say that to the extent that we create a symbolic universe, we shall be spiritual, and vice versa. Without that language the spirit languishes and becomes sterile. (Boff, 1995, p. 172)
The traditional methods of ethnography include participant observation, interviewing, note taking and jouraling, and the writing of thick, descriptive texts (i.e., Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995; Geertz, 1973; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983; Spradley, 1980, among many others). In breaking with traditional scientific epistemology, care must be taken if these methods are to be truly useful as spiritual practice, the search for knowledge of the Spirit. The traditional emphases on materiality and the initiative of logical deduction in scientific method can place demands on the practice of ethnography, remaining as residues that hamper the use of the methods for spiritually inclusive (and inviting) learning. The resistance to that which cannot be operationalized, which is not systematically generalizable or externally valid upon surface inspection will hamper the search and expression of spirit. It will reflect itself in attitudes of certainty, in broad claims, rigid methodology and concrete reports with Langer's "faded metaphors." I refer to these sorts of methodological emphases as positivistic residue (Gonzalez, 1994), and they are, in fact, evidence of the sort of epistemological obstacles of which Bachelard (cited in Gutting, 1989) reminded us. Therefore, I propose radical breaks in the practice of traditional methods used to "gather data," while all the while preserving their core activities. This sort of methodology is highlighted by Neil Douglas-Klotz (1990), in his hermeneutic and deconstructive work on the language of prayer, informing us of the traditions of native Middle Eastern and Hebraic mysticism: . . . Each statement. . . must be examined from at least three points of view: the intellectual, the metaphorical, and the universal (or mystical). From the first viewpoint, we consider the face value of the word . . . the "literal" meaning . . . From the second viewpoint, we consider how a statement of story presents a metaphor for our lives . . . From the third viewpoint, ... we must embrace the wordless experience to which the living words of the mystic point. (p. 1)
498
CHAPTER 30
Perhaps an example of how this "works" might aid in this preliminary presentation of the practice. In the early 1990s, when looking at a poster on the campus of Arizona State University, I was struck by something very powerful. It was a poster created as part of the university's efforts to increase the appreciation of cultural diversity. I examined the poster as a cultural artifact, and used the methodology of ethnography as spiritual practice. Instead of simply reading it, recording it among the phenomena and artifacts that made up my catalogue of acceptable campus activities and efforts, I engaged the poster in spiritual dialogue, or the opening up to the message that is greater than the taken-for-granted organizing form presented to me. As I gazed upon the poster, I looked at the drawing of a hand clutching a bunch of different flowers, and the word diversity so close to the word university. The "literal" interpretation was simple: We were being told we must appreciate the difference among us, as in a beautiful bunch of flowers. The somewhat more deeply metaphoric message was more insightful to me—I could see the flowers were clutched, destined to die an unnatural death, picked for human goals. Such an interpretation could lead to questions such as how the university's efforts to appreciate diversity might be similar. From this metaphoric state of awareness, I could move to the third viewpoint suggested by Douglas-Klotz, the "embracing of the wordless experience." Just what is this like? I explain this methodology as being one of surrender, of practicing a disciplined and well-developed detachment from intentional and conscious acts of interpretation, allowing for an openness to a more purely subjective, intuitive, and spiritual reading. What makes it subjective is its location within the observer. The intuitive nature is due to its nondeductive derivation. The spiritual based on the intentionality of connectedness to an unnamed source or oneness, which permeates and infuses subjectivity if so allowed, leads to intuitive insights. People are often able to have such experiences on varied and everyday occasions—those intuitive hunches and insights that can pop up and greet us throughout our experience. What I am describing, however, is the intentional practice of this form of insight as a methodology of meditation, as methodology for insight while in the midst of observation or listening, even reading.2 When such a practice is engaged, the result is a cooperative one. By this, I mean that it lends itself to understanding. This is differentiated from one's 2 Such a form of meditative insight as method for insight while engaged in inquiry first became part of my routine way of understanding, in the early 1980s, after many hours spent with Robert Hopper discussing interpretations of data.
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
499
"inner voices," which are predominantly emotions and preferences finding expression through reflection. The subjective experience of such reflective insights is "this is what 'I' think/know/believe/see, and so on," whereas the result of the meditative practice of ethnographic observation is "this is what I see, when I am willing to suspend my preferences and preconceived notions of who I am, what I know, what I want, and so forth." In a sense, we are asking for a development of observation with a sense of a bracketed ego. Because of this, one's insights may often not be palatable socially, personally, or politically, because they are not in service to ego. In the case of the poster, upon such meditative reflection, I was struck by the actuality of the language, rather than the structured message. The words diversity and university were both prominent on the poster. Opening myself to see what it revealed, I "heard" the insight, "di-versity is the opposite of university. " I was taken aback by the power of this idea and the many layers of insight that it offered. The whole purpose of what we call "higher education" began to be questioned in my mind. I was no longer "in charge" of my thoughts—the language was teaching me to see. It became a mystical experience of learning. This sort of mystical experience of interpretation is part of the methodology of ethnography as spiritual practice. It is an opening to the power of metaphoric language to tell us more than literal interpretation or even literary appreciation will allow at inspection of symbols. Spirit, unable to be contained in linguistic or symbolic form, will inevitably break forth if we allow ourselves to stay present long enough to notice. The experience of discovery thereby becomes one infused with mystical experience that connects us to the spiritual nature of our existence. The openness to a level of communication of meaning that is not tied to the taken-for-granted allows us to play with the levels of constructed meaning possible, freeing us from the limitations of taken-forgranted, received meaning, and opening us to the reality of multiple meanings. I believe this is vital for us as human beings in what has been called a postmodern existence (Anderson, 1990; Bohm, 1994; Jencks, 1992). Kenneth Gergen (1991) claimed that we have become "multiphrenic" because of the multiple roles and realities which we face each hour of each day in our postmodern existence. We are, in his opinion, all social constructionists making our lives what they are through our ways of processing our experience. Paul Watzlawick (1984) went so far as to call our realities "invented," demonstrating the creative and intentional aspect of the process. Similar to all these views is the notion that nothing in our experience is, in and of itself, "real." At the same time, everything and anything in our experience can be "real." Reality, I believe, is at the heart of our love affair with validity and reliability. Constructivist or constructionist approaches would tell us that something is valid
500
CHAPTER 30
as long as persons can agree that it is, for reality is such a slippery enterprise that a simple change in perspective can cause it to alter its nature or cease to exist altogether. Reliability, I presume, would mean that we continue to see it. It tells us of the social nature of interpretive moves. But the point I want to make here is related to the nihilism inherently possible in this perspective. Baudrillard (1992) told us that profuse communication and its resultant "ecstasy" are aspects of the postmodern existence. In addition to the fact that we realize we are all the master constructionists of our own realities, we are now bombarded by images and information that in a more constrained social reality were relegated to what he called a "private universe" (p. 154). It is an "era of hyperreality," in which: . . . What was projected psychologically and mentally, what used to be lived out on earth as metaphor, as mental or metaphorical scene, is henceforth projected into reality, without any metaphor at all, into an absolute space which is also that of simulation. (p. 152) Baudrillard (1992) called this "obscene" and said it "puts an end to representation" (p. 154). Using such methodology as I have suggested, we can open up to the words in his discourse and see what we discover. In my reflection, the word obscene became ob-scene, and the word obscuro, meaning "dark" in Spanish, came to mind. Obscuro made me think of the English word obscure or "difficult to see." The ob-scene is the hiding of the scene, the turning out of the lights, through the transformation of all settings as contexts for all. We remove the scene. Without context, nothing can be appropriate. Nothing can be "in its place." When the metaphors are removed in this absolute space of which Baudrillard spoke, there can be an inherent sense of liberation for those who have had their speech and expression, their symbolic experience, marginalized. The postmodern turn offers the freedom to express through the absence of identifiable "place." But this occurs in a paradoxically meaningless world, where words become ob-scene, without scene, without frame (Goffman, 1974). One can not take a step without beginning somewhere, in some place. Owens (1992) told us that there is intention in this effort, that the "systems of power that authorise(s) certain representations while blocking or prohibiting others" (p. 334) are being exposed. Representation is not transcended, or would not cease, to return to the claims of Baudrillard. A "given" of the postmodern society, is, according to Walter Truett Anderson (1990) that: ". . . our major issues involve the definition of personal roles and the fabrication of stories that give purpose and shape to social existence" (p. 108). Whereas, Owens would claim, these were provided for us before. This awareness of our ability to construct powerful social realities that compete with
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
501
the taken-for-granted and institutional realities of our world is what I would argue is evidence of our growing awareness of our spiritual nature, albeit an often ignorant awareness. When place is no longer taken for granted we realize our own potential to create it. And similarly, our engagement in the study of symbolic worlds is no longer bound by taken-for-granted realms or trajectories for interpretation. As Gergen's (1991) multiphrenics, we are inundated with messages; we shift roles endlessly to meet the interactive demands of the multiple voices that we encounter each day. Baudrillard (1992) advised us of the obscenity of the communication "ecstasy" that characterizes the realities with which we are faced on a daily basis. Not knowing the scene, we do not know how to interpret. But he also told us that a price for this elimination of the private sphere is the loss of alienation that comes from no longer being able to recognize the "Other." By existing in our private bounded worlds, we could be sure of our "selves" and distinguish them from others. When all becomes part of the public screen, or as Baudrillard suggested part of our "private telematics" or our remote sovereignty and ability to create, he claimed that is the end of metaphysics (p. 154). In a sense, I believe I am claiming that it can actually be the beginning of the mystical. Another thing that happens when multiple voices begin to be heard is that we become aware of the plurality of culture. Paul Ricoeur (1965) wrote: When we discover that there are several cultures instead of just one and consequently at the time when we acknowledge the end of a sort of cultural monopoly, be it illusory or real, we are threatened with the destruction of our own discovery. Suddenly it becomes possible that there are just others, that we ourselves are an "other" among others. All meaning and every goal having disappeared, it becomes possible to wander through civilisations as if through vestiges and ruins. (p. 278)
It is these aspects of the social experience that we face as part of an increasingly postmodern existence that suggest to me the immediate need for a break with an epistemology of mastery for the study of human interaction and culture. Culture, as the systems of representation that groups enable and maintain through routine behavior, interaction, and patterns of interpretation, is no longer a static reportable reality. David Bohm (1994), writing of "postmodern science and the postmodern world," said that we previously: ". . . assumed that nature could be thoroughly understood and eventually brought under control by means of the systematic development of scientific knowledge through observation, experiment, and rational thought" (p. 342). Ethnography, as a study of
502
CHAPTER 30
culture(s), functioning under the epistemological assumptions of modem science, is no longer appropriate for the world in which we live. We can no longer be concerned with mastery as the imperative motivator for inquiry. The ecstasy of mysticism is distinct from the ecstasy of postmodern obscenity from the perspective of Baudrillard. The mystical methodology of surrender to the pervasive Oneness present in all organization transforms relativism into a cosmology of potential creativity and discovery, rather than a nihilistic place of meaninglessness and nonaccountability. Stories become full of meaning, as meaning is seen as the enterprise in which we, as human spirits are primarily engaged. And as such, ethnography becomes richer, more dynamic, and not tied to description, but morphogenic discovery. With the so-called enlightenment and the resulting transformation of knowing to the application of the scientific method, spirit disappeared from conscious awareness. The strict scientific form of thinking is a "hard" form of thinking—inflexible. Horkheimer and Adorno (1994) claimed that, "The only kind of thinking that is sufficiently hard to shatter myths is ultimately selfdestructive" (p. 45). I believe we are seeing this self-destruction with the light of the postmodern experience. In the postmodern era, I believe we are being invited to open our conscious minds to the real presence of spirit, to return the mystical power of language and its ways of production, to come to know these through a radically different way of studying culture. In the widespread meaninglessness of a world in which everything and anything can have its own meaning at a moment's whim, there is a need for something that can provide a sense of truth. However, our experience with the enlightenment and its rational epistemology, and the spread of scientific modes of thinking to support it, have left the individual living in a postmodern society often handicapped in the search for a truth. As Horkheimer and Adorno (1994) reflected: "The individuality that learned order and subordination in the subjection of the world, soon wholly equated truth with the regulative thought without whose fixed distinctions universal truth cannot exist" (p. 48). The idea that fixed distinctions must accompany the existence of truth is an epistemological obstacle that must be transcended in order to reach an experience of "universal truth" in which spirit plays a part. But first, we must remove the obstacle we face with the word universal, itself plagued with epistemological baggage that implies the theoretical possibility of generalizability according to "fixed distinctions" (to borrow the language of Horkheimer and Adorno) of phenomena. If we look at the word universal, we see that it is much like the word uni-versity. A uni-verse and uni-versity are places in which there is "one verse" or one way of expressing something. It is linked with language. However, the notion of oneness itself can get caught up in
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
503
the obstacle of the assumed goal of mastery inherent - an example of scientific residue. Gregory Bateson believed the greatest epistemological fallacy of the Western world was to see the self or "I" as separate from others, rather than as part of an interlocking, co-orienting processes (Macy, 1992). It is this same epistemological fallacy that creates an obstacle when we consider the possibility of a universal truth. A uni-versal truth from an epistemology of spiritual engagement is one in which uni means one, as in the "unbroken wholeness" (Bohm, 1994) of the scientific universe. It is the "one word" of spirit, the unbroken, unorganized, uncategorized Spirit. Macy (1994) referred to this as a form of "non-dualistic spirituality" (p. 297). In ethnography as a spiritual practice, it is this universal truth of the pervasive One, present within the organization of culture that we seek. As we swim in a sea of multiple interpretations, what do we find as we engage spiritually with "the field?" With our subjectivity unfettered and open to experience that does not fit into previously defined categories, what do we find in "the other?" As we report with tentative certainty, our experience of sharing our knowledge can become transformed from one of masterful authority to one of spiritual engagement with the universal wholeness of what it is to be a human, social being. And the iterations continue. In their groundbreaking work, Women's Ways of Knowing, Blenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) shared with the academic world their concern about the "lack of personal involvement in the pursuit of knowledge" (p. 124). The solution to this was to seek a form of knowledge that went beyond a "procedural knowledge" that is "tilted toward accommodation" to the shape of the object rather than "assimilation" of the object to the shape of the knower's mind (p. 123). The shape of this mind, when considered outside of the realm of science, as we have known it, is without limits. The methodology that is suggested by this epistemological break has several characteristics. First, it is pervasive, reflecting the nature of spirit itself. What this implies is that it involves a discipline in one's style of living, where the enterprise of learning is no longer one's job or professional career, but one's life's work (Fox, 1994). It becomes the purpose for one's life. Second, it is organic, or natural, finding its order from the signs and signals provided in one's environment. This requires a development of attention to the small details of one's everyday contexts, rather than simply to one's ideas, intentions, or desires. Third, the methodology is often cyclic, reflecting the inherently forgiving nature of the spiritual world, in which opportunities arise repeatedly, with only one's stubborn will interfering (i.e., "but I wanted to do it this way"). A cyclic methodology lets go of attachments to plans that impede knowledge as it is emerging. Horkheimer and Adorno (1994) reminded us that with the
504
CHAPTER 30
enlightenment and notions of mastery came the idea that, "the process is always decided from the start" (p. 48). Fourth, a methodology for ethnography as spiritual practice will include meditation, reflection, and introspection as regular practices. This would involve traditional spiritual meditative practices, guided journaling, and honest reflection and introspection. Abraham Heschel (1997) provided us with the wisdom for the fifth and sixth characteristics of this methodology. Fifth, it would be a methodology of awe: Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme...what we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. (p. 3)
We do this when we look at something or someone we have taken for granted as "knowing" and suspend this knowledge, allowing the mystical aspects of their being to speak to us, as much as when something catches us off-guard and does the same. Sixth, it is one of humility, or the awareness of the nature of that upon which we gaze. Heschel told us, "the right of interpretation is given only to one who covers his face" (p. 6). Tentative certainty is a reflection of this characteristic. Seventh, this methodology would be integral. The works of Ken Wilber (1995; 1997) have demonstrated this openness to the wisdom of knowledge from all sources, seeking the oneness in wisdom and awareness that surfaces if the seeker maintains the subjective openness that I have earlier mentioned. Eighth, it is honest. There is no need to feign. One reports only what one has experienced, and is forthright about the source of one's insight or interpretations. The practices of reflection and introspection are based on the honest seeking, and provide the answers for how to frame one's eventual texts. Ninth, it is relational. As a reflection of the essential wholeness, the notion of the lone ethnographer in a tent vanishes. Even in remote sites, traditional methods change, as in the practice of writing letters to significant others about one's field experiences, and allowing these letters to stand as "field notes" that do not feign objectivity, but honor the perspective always present in our gaze. And tenth, the methodology is one that honors the creative power of images and word. Poetry, metaphors, stories and visual images are recorded and used as both record and text. The epistemological break suggested is more than a plea from a standpoint epistemologist begging to be heard among others. It is a call to transform the nature of what is understood when one hears the word, university.
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
505
and what is considered "scholarship." The scientist in the true spiritual sense of the word, is one who seeks to understand. The distortion of the metaphor through the institutionalization of methodology to support an epistemology of mastery maintains the occult nature of spirit from the world of that which is considered knowledge. To engage in ethnography as spiritual practice is but a step along the path that leads to the reinvention of work (Fox, 1994) in the academy as we see it. It is not an attack on what we have gained through the discoveries of science as it took form, but a call to consciencitization, the bringing of consciousness, to the academy about the wholeness of the uni-verse, and the illusion of a uni-versity. Using the methodology of mystical understanding, "consciencitization" itself is the opening of science in our minds. The opening of science to its spiritual form.
REFERENCES Anderson, W. T. (1990). Reality isn't what it used to be. San Francisco: Harper. Baudrillard, J. (1992). The ecstasy of communication. In C. Jencks (Ed.), The post-modern reader (pp. 151-157). London: Academy Editions. Blenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M., Goldberger, N. R., & Tarule, J. M. (1986). Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind. New York: Basic Books. Boff, L. (1995). Ecology and liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Bohm, D. (1994). Postmodern science and a postmodern world. In C. Merchant (Ed.), Ecology: Key concepts in critical theory (pp. 342-350. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Daly, M. (1973). Beyond God the father: Toward a philosophy of women's liberation. Boston: Beacon Press. Douglas-Klotz, N. (1990). Prayers of the cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic words of Jesus. San Francisco: Harper. Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. I. (1995). Writing ethnographic field notes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fox, M. (1994). The reinvention of work: A new vision of livelihood for our time. San Francisco: Harper. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gergen, K. (1991). The saturated self: Dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York: Basic Books. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
506
CHAPTER 30
Gonzalez, M.C. (1994). Invitation to leap from a trinitarian ontology in health communication research to a spiritually inclusive quatrain. In S. Deetz (Ed.), Communication yearbook XVII (pp. 378-387). Gonzalez, M.C. (1997). Painting the white face red: Intercultural contact presented through poetic ethnography. In J. Martin, T. Nakayama, & L. Flores (Eds.), Readings in cultural contexts (pp. 485—495). Mountainview, CA: Mayfield. Gonzalez, M.C. (1998). Abandoning the sacred hierarchy. In M. L. Hecht (Ed.), Communicating prejudice (pp. 223-234). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Gonzalez, M.C. (2001). The four seasons of ethnography: A creation-centered circular ontology for the method of ethnography. The International Journal for Intercultural Relations. Gutting, G. (1989). Michel Foucault's archaeology of scientific reason. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (1983). Ethnography: Principles in practice. New York: Routledge. Heschel, A. J. (1997). I asked for wonder: A spiritual anthology. (S. H. Dresner, Ed.) New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (1994). The concept of enlightenment (J. Cumming, Trans.). In C. Merchant (Ed.), Ecology: Key concepts in critical theory (pp. 44-50). Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Jencks, C. (1992). The post-modern reader. London: Academy Editions. Macy, J. (1994). Toward a healing of self and world. In C. Merchant (Ed.), Ecology: Key concepts in critical theory (pp. 292-298). Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Owens, C. (1992). The discourse of others: feminists and postmodernism. In C. Jencks (Ed.), The post-modern reader (pp. 333-348). London: Academy Editions. Ricoeur, P. (1965). Civilization and national cultures. In History and truth (C.A. Kelbley, Trans.). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Spradley, J. P. (1979). The ethnographic interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Wilber, K. (1995). Sex, ecology and spirituality: The spirit of evolution. Boston: Shambhala Publications. Wilber, K. (1997). The eye of spirit: An integral vision for a world gone slightly mad. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications. Watzlawick, P. (1984). Invented reality: How do we know we know. New York: WW Norton.
31 The Tao and Narrative Mary Helen Brown Auburn University I was walking by a river one day and came across two great teachers having a conversation about life. One was an old man with a long white beard; the other was a youngish fellow with the slightest bit of a Texas accent. Both had a twinkle in their eyes. The old man said: "He who stands on tiptoe doesn't stand firm. He who rushes ahead doesn't go far. He who tries to shine dims his own light."1 The younger man agreed, adding: "Just like the guy who's looking for his keys under the street light. When you ask if that's where he lost them, he says, 'No, but this is where I can see.'"2 "Precisely," the old man laughs. They talk for a while longer and the old man says, "The gentlest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world." "Precisely," the younger man responds, "it's like roller skating on clouds. . . . " Attempting to examine the Tao Te Ching as narrative may be like roller-skating on clouds. The surface may be puffy and white, flat and slate colored, or boiling with thunderheads. The crucial variable, however, is its underlying structure, and to be successful, one must take-for-granted that it will hold long enough to get across. Above all, one should never look down or back. On the other hand, roller skating on clouds may be completely impossible and not to be attempted at all, but where's the fun or challenge in that?
1
Quotations by the older man and headings come from the Tao Te Ching (Mitchell, 1988). This quotation can be found in Chapter 24. 2 Selections from Robert Hopper, the younger man, come from my class notes (1979-1982). Yes, I still have them.
507
508
CHAPTERS 31
Robert Hopper was always one to roller skate on clouds, so I also take the challenge and try what may prove impossible, but I do not look down or back. The Tao Te Ching is one of the most translated texts in the history of the world. Three major reasons at least partially account for its popularity. First, the Tao Te Ching is a basic source book for religious and philosophical Taoism and also works as the underpinning for all Chinese religion. Second, the Tao Te Ching is brief, encompassing about 5,000 words. Along this line, scholars readily admit that commentaries on the Tao Te Ching (including this one) are usually more lengthy than the Tao Te Ching itself. Third, and most important to this chapter is its "deceptive simplicity" (Mair, 1990). Even so, the relationship of the Tao Te Ching to religion and meaning remains a mystery (Bell, 1993). Its "deceptive simplicity" houses a complex set of adages with seemingly contradictory morals that result in an ambiguity that leads to limitless interpretations (Wu, 1993). Thus, the Tao Te Ching should never be considered scriptural in the Western sense; centuries of interpretations make it impossible to judge the Tao Te Ching as "the book" of knowledge (Sivin, 1978). Indeed, the Tao Te was not considered a ching, or sacred text, until well after it was written (Chen, 1989). One way to examine the Tao would be through a narrative lens. Richard Harvey Brown (1994) contended that the use of a narrative examination provides rich new ways for individuals to think about and experience fields such as literature, philosophy, and even astronomy. This approach has been echoed by many other scholars interested in pursuing the "truth," (Boje, 1995; Borneman, 1996; Lewin, 1994; Phillips, 1995; Richardson, 1990; Schiffrin, 1996; Templeton & Groce, 1990) and, thus, narrative seems an appropriate way to approach the Tao. For example, Templeton and Groce (1990) argued that such an approach "respects the complicated processes through which people understand the world and illuminates the ways in which mistaking interpretation for final, whole truth has real and often detrimental effects" (p. 41). Along these lines, Czarniawska (1997) pointed out that: ". . . the notion of narrative knowledge comes close to the metaphor of the world-as-text; it alerts us to the ways in which the stories that rule our lives and our societies are constructed" (p. 5). Moreover, Brown (1987; 1989) indicated that narratives provide a way for individuals to create and interpret the worlds around them and that these narratives help provide individuals with the power to define these worlds. Thus, taking a narrative approach provides a powerful base from which to launch an analysis of cryptic source material (Borneman, 1996). So, this chapter argues that the characteristics of the Tao Te Ching with its morals imbedded in a structured framework make it akin to modern narratives in its ability to transmit meaning to a variety of people despite its many contradictions and uncertainties.
TAO AND NARRATIVE
509
For example, even the authorship of the Tao Te Ching is in question. The Tao Te Ching is generally credited to Lao Tzu, a librarian who may have lived about the same time as Confucius (Mitchell, 1988). However, some scholars believe that it was written by Laoists who were inspired by Lao Tzu's ideas (Chung, 1997). Other scholars believe that the Tao Te Ching is comprised of familiar "sayings" that were collected in this slim volume (LaFargue, 1994; Waley, 1958). The Tao Te Ching continues to fascinate humankind despite the complexities associated with understanding it. It has been examined in hundreds of ways beyond the scope of this essay. Some of these areas would include Taoism as a religion versus a philosophy, mysticism and the Tao Te Ching, exercise regimens originating in studies of the Tao Te Ching, Taoism as a comparative religion, the political and leadership implications housed in the Tao Te Ching, and so on. Instead, this chapter uses narrative to look at the Tao Te Ching by focusing on but a few of the characteristics shared by the Tao Te Ching and narrative. The chapter also examines how these two simple, yet complex forms help us move toward understanding of the human experience. To do this, the chapter explores how knowledge of the narrative characteristics of the Tao Te Ching can focus a reading of the text by: (a) considering both as deriving from the oral tradition to provide a gateway to understanding; (b) discussing the inadequacy of words to completely capture meaning and the inherent ambiguity and the possibility of multiple interpretations that may arise from this inadequacy; (c) exploring the use of these limited forms to provide guidelines for living that are encapsulated in these sources; and (d) defining "wu wei" as a lifestyle that is comparable to the concept of "homo narrans," so that the natural course of humans is as storytellers; therefore, narrators and their narratives begin to merge.
THE GATEWAY TO ALL UNDERSTANDING Many narratives are originally transmitted orally and through time (Layoun, 1996). Similarly, despite questions about its authorship, the Tao Te Ching is considered to spring from an oral tradition (Mair, 1990). Its origins have even become a part of this tradition. One story about the Tao Te Ching's origin notes that after many years, Lao Tzu decided to leave his homeland. At the frontier's border, he encountered a guard who recognized Lao Tzu as the "Old Master." The guard asked Lao Tzu for guidance before he left the country. Lao Tzu then wrote the Tao Te Ching as a guidebook for living and presented it to the guard.
510
CHAPTER 31
No hard evidence exists to prove this story, yet it and the Tao Te Ching exist. In the same way, narrative exists as the proof that something happened. Narratives are useful as evidence because they appear in a form that makes the truth of the narrative to be apparent (Martin, 1982). In the course of day-to-day conversation, we present narratives (stories) as our evidence that our interpretations are correct and as our means to help others understand whatever phenomenon or event we are attempting to describe (Martin, Feldman, Hatch, & Sitkin, 1983). Zhang Longxi (1985) pointed out that the Chinese character for Tao has several meanings. The most often cited meaning for the term Tao is "way" or "gateway." However, two other meanings for Tao may possibly be at work here—"thinking" and "speaking." Thus, Longxi argued, Lao Tzu may be using these meanings interchangeably and as puns, so that the way becomes speaking, speaking becomes thinking, thinking becomes the way, or some other combination. Extending this notion, then, to narrative, we may find that the event becomes the interpretation, the interpretation becomes the story, the story becomes the event, and so on. This pattern could be continued to the point where: "The world that appears in a fictional narrative is therefore not really fictional at all" (Phillips, 1995, p. 634). On a related theme, Catherine Bell (1993) contended that Lao Tzu was attempting to present us with the "truer reality within the real" (p. 185). She posited that this may be a universal quest and that we are continually attempting to create knowledge in our social interactions. Lao Tzu used framing to help guide us on this quest (LaFargue, 1994). His framing devices form the structure through which seemingly contradictory notions are blended and brought together harmoniously (Waley, 1958). This capability, again, is not unlike that of narrative for, as Schiffrin (1996) posited, our use of narrative has "consequences for the way we construct our social relationships within those worlds" (p. 196). The Tao Te Ching consists of brief chapters of sayings that are seen as spiritual truths (Waley, 1958). Lao Tzu used framing to work them into a pattern that is consistent, familiar, and recognizable even when the ideas themselves seem disparate. Some of the framing devices noted by LaFargue (1994) include mirroring passages at the beginning and end of a chapter, repeating material in a thematic fashion to tie elements together, rhyming, and making self-contained points in a succinct and striking fashion. In short, Waley and LaFargue both pointed out that the Tao Te Ching would lose much of its ability to reach people if these framing devices were not present. The relevance of the Tao Te Ching to humanity through the centuries might, therefore, be lessened. Similarly, the form a story or narrative takes plays an important role in how well it transmits meaning. Fisher (1985a) pointed to narrative probability as
TAO AND NARRATIVE
511
an important element in whether a story is received and how well it is interpreted. At least a part of a narrative's probability rests in its structural framing (Weick, 1995). We expect that a story will present a sequence of events in a familiar, at least somewhat, predictable form (Jefferson, 1978). A well-told story generally is framed by a preface that tells us why we should pay attention to the story and a conclusion that generally gives us a moral or some statement about why the story is relevant (Goodwin, 1984). In between, comes a recounting that presents the details of the event (McLaughlin, 1984). Without proper "telling," a narrative loses much of its power to facilitate understanding (Ellis & Bochner, 1992; Weick & Browning, 1986). Thus, it may be best to look at the Tao and narratives as a means to understanding rather than to focus on them and the endpoint. Both may be best understood as conduits with multiple outcomes. In this way, we focus on the appropriateness of the interpretation, for an individual, as pathway rather than path's end.
FOR LACK OF A BETTER NAME, I CALL IT THE TAO3 Even when presented in the most familiar of forms, true understanding of both the Tao Te Ching and narratives is restricted by the limitations of language. As Spiegelberg (1993) noted, Lao Tzu created a book that focuses on expressing how inexpressible the Tao is. In other words, Spiegelberg wrote, Lao Tzu was ". . . showing what Tao could be called if one wished to explain it, though it is better not to do so" (p. 203). Fung Yu-Lan (1969) agreed that Lao Tzu was trying to describe the indescribable. He continued Spiegelberg's point by explaining that Lao Tzu had to designate the concept Tao because writing about it required a name. Thus, the Tao had to have a name even though the name is completely inadequate to capture real meaning. This theme, that language is incapable of transmitting the deeper reality of life, is carried throughout the Tao Te Ching. For example, Lao Tzu wrote in chapter 56, "Those who know don't talk. Those who talk don't know." In the same way, stories are limited by language. Karl Weick (1995) observed that: "When people put their lives into narrative form, the resulting stories do not duplicate the experience. The experience is filtered. . . . Stories are inventions rather than discoveries" (p. 128). Weick was pointing out that it is impossible for stories to simply re-create an event or experience. The event or experience is "filtered" through the way narrators edit their tales and through In this chapter, Tao Te Ching refers to the book; Tao and Te refer to the concepts.
512
CHAPTER 31
the language they choose. Paraphrasing Lao Tzu as Yu-Lan did might result in the following: "As long as I'm telling this story, I might as well tell it this way." The limitations of language lead to ambiguity in interpretations of both the Tao Te Ching and narratives. This ambiguity raises the possibility of multiple interpretations (Eisenberg, Murphy, & Andrews, 1998; Meyer, 1995; 1997). For example, the Tao Te Ching has been viewed as many things, including a simple guidebook for living, a mystical force, a set of fables, and a political manifesto to name a few. In the same way, a story about a meeting to restructure an organization might be interpreted as a promise of better times to come, bureaucratic finagling, a threat to employment, or a host of other possibilities (Gabiel, 1995; Ledwell-Brown & Dias, 1994). Even when the language used is as specific as possible, it is limited by its very nature. The responses to a story of "Well, you had to be there," or "It was funny at the time," highlight the inadequacy of language to completely capture an event. In fact, Waley (1958) explained that attempts to understand the Tao Te Ching as objective or absolute resource result from a lack of imagination. As such, it might be argued that the very nature of the Tao Te Ching and, perhaps narrative, rests in ambiguity, giving us a variety of ways to reach understanding.
THE MORE YOU KNOW, THE LESS YOU UNDERSTAND Even though, because of the limitations of language, the Tao Te Ching and narrative cannot express reality directly, they both act to provide us with guidelines for living. Win-Tsit Chan (1963) noted that about 80% of the Tao Te Ching is devoted to how the Tao works in the world and as a source book on the proper way to live. In fact, some of Lao Tzu's followers, most notably Chuang Tzu, use the communicative form of specific stories to transmit the principles of the Tao Te Ching more clearly (LaFargue, 1994). The Chuang-Tzu consists of approximately 30 chapters (depending on the translation) that present a blend of stories and fables that illustrate Lao Tzu's major principles (Hendricks, 1989). As such, much of the information found in the Tao Te Ching can serve as morals for a variety of stories. These morals, then, are at the same time guidelines and narrative building blocks. Ch'en Ku-ying (1977) remarked that the principles housed in the Tao Te Ching are obvious and applicable even in the modern world. In fact, the Te in Tao Te Ching can be generally defined as "virtues" or desirable ways to behave in line with the Tao. In other words, Te relates to the way in which the Tao should be made manifest in the physical world. Therefore, the Tao and Te
TAO AND NARRATIVE
513
can be considered to be a set of self-contained principles for living that provides a pattern through which humans can model their behavior. The Tao Te Ching takes a holistic approach to these principles, asking us not only to place its observations into apparent situations, but also to observe how context affects the apparent. For example, many of the principles in the Tao Te Ching reflect Lao Tzu's interest in circularity. A modern way to express this notion might be a combination of "what goes around, comes around" and "it's always darkest before the dawn." In many cases, Lao Tzu pointed out that a bad situation, for instance, contains the potential for good, whereas a fortunate situation may be but a prelude to disaster. Many contemporary stories reflect the principle of circularity. Examples might include "rags to riches" stories or "fall from grace" stories. Thus, in current times, stories and their morals continue to serve as guidelines for living For example, when individuals face a new situation, they try to remember stories about similar circumstances that might provide guidelines for how they should behave (Fine, 1984; Meyer, 1997). Similarly, stories can provide models of behavior that tell a great deal about how individuals believe experiences reflect their values (Rappaport, 1993; Shaw, 1997; Tommerup, 1990). Consider the following story as an example of the value given to a hopeless situation turned positive: When he first came here, he was in a wheelchair and could barely take care of himself. Nobody thought he'd last very long. And he was so blue. He'd just about give out. But, some of us decided that he was too sweet to just sit there all day, so we began to work with him. And, now he's gotten some nutrition in him and some better care, you know. And he began to perk up and now he's everybody's favorite. He gets up every morning and helps deliver the mail and he's always visiting the others. He's just full of energy. It just shows what can happen.
This contemporary story illustrates Lao Tzu's principle of circularity by showing the potential for good to emerge out of what seemed to be a hopeless situation. Even so, both the Tao Te Ching and stories would be of little value if they were not judged to be relevant. Fisher (1984; 1985b) called this narrative fidelity, the extent to which the story "rings true." Norrick (1977) agreed, pointing out that a "story is tellable if the narrator can defend it as relevant" (p. 217). In terms of the Tao Te Ching, Ch'en Ku-ying (1977) claimed that it would be little more than an "intellectual abstraction" if it could not be placed in context. For instance, if we can understand the principle of circularity as
514
CHAPTER 31
outlined by Lao Tzu, we should be able to realize the potential for good in what seems to be a bleak context and perhaps avoid or at least lessen the potential for disaster that lurks within even the most prosperous of times.
SEE THE WORLD AS YOURSELF Lao Tzu believed that a key to being at one with the Tao is to practice "wu-wei" (Link, 1969). Wu-wei can be translated in a variety of ways; however, the most common translations are that wu-wei is a state of "having no activity" (Yu-Lan, 1969), "doing not-doing" (Mitchell, 1988), or "nonaction" (Ku-ying, 1977). Even so, these and other scholars are quick to point out that Lao Tzu's insistence that wu-wei is critical to successful living does not mean that Lao Tzu believed the "secret to life" is to sit passively and do nothing. Instead, Lao Tzu was saying that it is most important to let events follow their own way naturally (Mair, 1990). As Ku-ying (1977) contended, wuwei: ". . . means waiting patiently for the course of natural development to bring the problem and the solution to light without initiating elaborate measures to deal with a non-existent difficulty" (p. 29). When individuals do act, they should do so naturally and spontaneously. Arbitrary, artificial, or forced behaviors have no place in Lao Tzu's conception of the Tao (Yu-Lan, 1969). For humans, few things are more natural than telling stories. Indeed, Fisher (1984) defined humans as homo narrans, natural storytellers. We tell stories from a very young age and tell them readily throughout our lives. Stories are our most natural way to order our experiences and to make sense of them (Lewin, 1994; Weick, 1995). Storytelling, then, is not an activity that is forced, artificial, or arbitrary. When it is, the stories don't work. Instead, they work best when they reflect the spirit of wu-wei and are spontaneous and natural. Thus, without overt effort, storytelling performs many functions that guide our day-to-day living, tell us what to value, and lead us to our Te. This idea relates back to the Tao Te Ching. Another element related to wu-wei is that, in a natural state, an observer becomes one with the phenomena under observation (Fu, 1992). Hence, all things are interlocked, interdependent, and equal. This approach implies that a narrator is one with the narrative being told. In fact, the traditional title of the Tao Te Ching is the Lao Tzu (Chen, 1989). The interchangeable nature of the author and the book exemplifies the notion that in Chinese philosophy the author is the "authoritative text" (Longxi, 1985). Thus, Lao Tzu, the writer, becomes Lao Tzu, the text. Extending this idea we might find that humans as homo narrans will merge with the narratives they tell.
TAO AND NARRATIVE
515
Earlier it was noted that an event may become an interpretation, the interpretation may become the story, and the story may become the event. Carrying out this point through the philosophy of wu-wei adds the narrator to the mix. In this way, viewing narrative through the Tao Te Ching would lead to the conclusion that narrators, events, interpretations, and narratives are interlocked naturally in a way so that while one exists, all exist.
IF YOU WANT TO BE IN ACCORD WITH THE TAO, JUST DO YOUR JOB, THEN LET GO The similarities between the Tao and narrative lead us to, for the purposes of this essay, a brief research agenda. First, future research might focus on the role of the Tao/narrative as a pathway to understanding. In this way, research might focus on elements that make a particular pathway clear or cluttered, attractive or unattractive. Also, along these lines, research could examine the characteristics that make appropriate interpretations possible. The key here rests in the notion that interpretations are appropriate on an individual basis rather than on a global right or wrong. A second line of research might explore the role of ambiguity in the Tao/narrative. In this way, research might examine whether individuals find ambiguity to be helpful or not helpful as they develop their interpretations. Similarly, research might determine that the nature of ambiguity is entirely contextual. That is, what is ambiguous in one situation to one individual may be perfectly clear to another person in another situation. Determining how different persons work with ambiguity might also prove promising. A third general area of research would focus on the "naturalness" of these pathways. Research, for example, could look at the blending of narrator and narrative to see how a particular story affects its narrator and to see how a narrator affects a particular story. Here, too, research might focus on the effort required to tell a good story. The Tao would seem to indicate that the best stories are those that are spontaneous rather than forced, natural rather than artificial. Therefore, the notion of wu-wei might provide further insight into the telling of a tale. In short, the Tao and narrative offer a wide variety of possible interpretations and possibilities. It may be time now to let go of this analysis and move on to examining them.
516
CHAPTER 31
EXPRESS YOURSELF COMPLETELY, THEN KEEP QUIET ... I listened to the two great teachers for quite a while. Finally, I interject, "I don't think I understand. I guess you had to be there." "Precisely," they say in unison.
REFERENCES Bell, C. (1993). In search of the Tao in Taosim: New questions of unity and multiplicity. History of Religions, 33, 187-201. Boje, D. M. (1995). Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as "Tamara-Land." Academy of Management Journal, 38, 997-1035. Borneman, J. (1996). Narrative, genealogy, and the historical consciousness: Selfhood in a disintegrating state. In E. V. Daniel & J. M. Peck (Eds.), Culture/contexture: Explorations in anthropology and literary studies (pp. 214-234). Berkeley: University of California Press. Brown, R. H. (1987). Society as text: Essays on rhetoric, reason, and reality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brown, R. H. (1989). Social science as civic discourse: Essays on the invention, legitimation and uses of social theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brown, R. H. (1994). Logics of discovery as narratives of conversion: Rhetorics of invention in ethnography, philosophy, and astronomy. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 27, 1-34. Chan, W. (1963). The way of Lao Tzu. Indianapolis: Library of Liberal Arts. Chen, E. M. (1989). The Tao Te Ching: A new translation with commentary. New York: Paragon House. Chung, J. K. (1997). Taoism in Christian perspective. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 9, 173-178. Czarniawska, B. (1997). Narrating the organization: Dramas of institutional identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eisenberg, E. M., Murphy, A., & Andrew, L. (1998). Openness and decision making in the search for a university provost. Communication Monographs, 65, 1-23.
TAO AND NARRATIVE
517
Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (1992). Telling and performing personal stories: The constraints of choice in abortion. In C. Ellis & A. P. Bochner (Eds.), Investigating subjectivity: Research on lived experience (pp. 79—101). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Fine, G. A. (1984) Negotiated orders and organizational cultures. Annual Review of Sociology, 10, 239-262. Fisher, W. R. (1984). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument. Communication Monographs, 51, 1-22. Fisher, W. R. (1985a). The narrative paradigm. Communication Monographs, 52, 347-367. Fisher, W. R. (1985b). The narrative paradigm: In the beginning. Journal of Communication, 35, 74-89. Fu, H. (1992). Deconstruction and Taosim: Comparisons reconsidered. Comparative Literature Studies, 29, 296-321. Gabiel, Y. (1995). The unmanaged organization: Stories, fantasies and subjectivity. Organization Studies, 16, 477-501. Goodwin, C. (1984). Notes on story structure and the organization of participation. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Studies of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 225-246). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hendricks, R. G. (1989). Te-Tao Ching: A new translation based on the recently discovered Ma-Wang-Tui texts. New York: Ballantine. Jefferson, G. (1978). Sequential aspects of storytelling in conversation. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the organization of conversational interaction (pp. 219-248) New York: Academic Press. Ku-ying, C. (1977). Lao-Tzu: Text, notes, and comments. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center. LaFargue, M. (1994). Tao and method: A reasoned approach to the Tao Te Ching. Albany: State University of New York Press. Layoun, M. N. (1996). Fresh lima beans and stories from occupied Cyprus. In E. V. Daniel & J. M. Peck (Eds.), Culture/contexture: Explorations in anthropology and literary studies (pp. 84-104). Berkeley: University of California Press. Ledwell-Brown, J., & Dias, P. X. (1994). The way we do things here: The significance of narratives in research interviews. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 8, 165-185. Lewin, P. (1994). Categorization and the narrative structure of science. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 27, 35-62.
518
CHAPTER 31
Link, A. E. (1969). The Taoist antecedents of Tao-an's Prajna ontology. History of Religions, 9, 181-215. Longxi, Z. (1985). The Tao and logos: Notes on Derrida's critique of logocentrism. Critical Inquiry, 11, 385-398. Mair, V. H. (1990) Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching. New York: Bantam. Martin, J. (1982). Stories and scripts in organizational settings. In A. H. Hastorf & A. M. Isen (Eds.), Cognitive social psychology (pp. 255305). New York: Elsevier/North-Holland. Martin, J., Feldman, M. S., Hatch, M. J. & Sitkin, S. B. (1983). The uniqueness paradox in organizational stories. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 438-453. McLaughlin, M. L. (1984) Conversation: How talk is organized. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Meyer, J. C. (1995). Tell me a story: Eliciting organizational values from narratives. Communication Quarterly, 43, 210-224. Meyer, J. C. (1997). Humor in member narratives. Western Journal of Communication, 61, 188-208. Mitchell, S. (1988). Tao Te Ching: A new English version. New York: Harper Perennial. Norrick, N. R. (1977). Twice-told tales: Collaborative narration of familiar stories. Language in Society, 26, 199-220. Phillips, N. (1995). Telling organizational tales: On the role of narrative fiction in the study of organizations. Organization Studies, 16, 625-649. Rappaport, J. (1993). Narrative studies, personal stories, and identity transformation in the mutual help context. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 12, 239-256. Richardson, L. (1990). Narrative and sociology. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 19, 116-135. Shaw, C. L. M. (1997). Personal narrative: Revealing self and reflecting other. Human Communication Research, 24, 302-319. Schiffrin, D. (1996). Narrative as self-portrait: Sociolinguistic constructions of identity. Language in Society, 25, 167-203. Sivin, N. (1978). On the word "Taoist" as a source of perplexity. With special reference to the relations of science and religion in traditional China. History of Religions, 17, 303-328. Spiegelberg, F. (1993). The old man and his book. In R. Eastman (Ed.), The ways of religion (pp. 201-208). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Templeton, A., & Groce, S. B. (1990). Sociology and literature. Sociological Inquiry, 60, 34-46.
TAO AND NARRATIVE
519
Tommerup, P. (1990). Stories about an inspiring leader: "Rapture," and the symbolics of employee fulfillment. American Behavioral Scientist, 33, 374-385. Waley, A. (1958). The way and its power: A study of the Tao Te Ching and its place in Chinese thought. New York: Grove Press. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Weick, K. E., & Browning, L. D. (1986). Argument and narration in organizational communication. Journal of Management, 12, 243-259. Wu, K. (1993). On reading the "Tao Te Ching" Philosophy East & West, 43, 745-750. Yu-Lan, F. (1969). Lao Tzu. In A. M. Frazier (Ed.), Chinese and Japanese religions (pp. 90-102). Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
This page intentionally left blank
32 Conversational Enslavement in The Truman Show Kent G. Drummond University of Wyoming Processing the TFG is like examining a mosaic. Imagine yourself standing in the ruins of Pompeii, examining an ancient wall that has many tiles fastened to it. There are many colors of tile, and there seem to be patterns of color. There are also, presumably due to the great age of the work, many tiles missing. —Robert Hopper (198la, p. 229)
In an award-winning article written over 25 years ago, this is how Robert Hopper (198la) described the process of trying to illuminate taken-for-granteds (TFGs). Together with its companion piece (Hopper, 1981b), these articles make the discomforting observation—to the communication researcher, at least— that much of face to face interaction is finally incomplete, ambiguous and unknowable. Interlocutors derive a great deal of necessary play from such ambiguity, but the researcher is thrown into a quandary. To return to the earlier metaphor, when so many tiles are missing, what can be said, conclusively, about the mosaic? Small wonder, then, that Hopper ended his article with a very different metaphor: a can of worms. Yet, as Hopper concluded, a can of worms works quite nicely as bait. In the spirit of that sentiment, the present essay applies several properties of the TFG to a contemporary Hollywood film, in order to explain that film's dramatic pull over the audience. Specifically, The Truman Show is described as the interplay of two radically different taken-for-granteds, whose collision fuels the film's narrative trajectory, thus maintaining dramatic interest. 521
522
CHAPTER 32
BACKGROUND The Truman Show is a 1998 feature film directed by Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock; Dead Poet's Society) and starring Jim Carrey (Dumb and Dumber; Liar, Liar). Carrey plays Truman Burbank, the benighted star of a 24hour-a-day documentary soap opera called The Truman Show. Every moment of Truman's life is broadcast to a worldwide audience of millions, although Truman himself is unaware that anyone is watching. The island community on which Truman lives—Seahaven—is, in the reality of the film, an elaborate, made-for-television set populated with thousands of hidden cameras. The ocean surrounding Seahaven is actually a huge tank containing 650 million gallons of synthetic salt water. The sky is a cyclorama made of a polymer fabric where the sun rises and sets on cue. So elaborate is the set and so complicated its camera system that the control room is situated 221 stories above Seahaven, in what passes for the moon. Even more startling than the scale of the set is the conspiracy maintained by a cast of hundreds. For everyone on the set is a paid actor, including Truman's wife, his mother, and his best friend, and anyone else he might have occasion to encounter during his tightly controlled day. Under the watchful eye of Christof, the show's creator and director, cast members follow stage directions and story lines so seamlessly that Truman has never guessed his world is anything but "real." On the two occasions when prominent actors did threaten to reveal the show's conspiracy to Truman—the unexpected return of his drowned father (posing as an extra), and the spontaneous outburst of an attractive young woman named Sylvia—an omnipresent security force intervened, leaving Truman momentarily confused, but still ignorant. Also in the film are certain audience members, shown watching the show from their locales around the world. In Germany, two older sisters sit on a sofa clutching a Truman pillow, transfixed by the show. In New York, a Cheersstyle bar plays Truman nonstop, as customers provide running commentary. And in Taiwan, a family gathers to eat dinner while watching the show. Because The Truman Show runs 24 hours a day, there is no time for commercial breaks. The solution, then, is to incorporate product ads into the show itself through a series of product placements, usually engineered by Truman's wife. By prominently displaying brand-name housewares, appliances, food items, and clothing during her conversations with Truman, she generates enough advertising revenue to offset the show's astronomical expenses. In addition, she tries desperately to seduce Truman so that the birth of their first child will coincide with "Sweeps Week" 9 months later.
CONVERSATIONAL ENSLAVEMENT
523
HOW TFGs WORK IN THE TRUMAN SHOW The Truman Show is an extremely clever film, chock-full of implications for communicators acting and watching in a postmodern world. Blurred distinctions between real and fake, between scripted and spontaneous, between actors and audience—all would prove rich fodder for the communication analyst. Yet a discussion of these distinctions by themselves proves incomplete in explaining the vast audience appeal of either the television show or the movie. An examination of the central TFGs in the film may yield exactly that, however. As Hopper (198 la) noted, "Knowing the prepositional content of one TFG tells us little about the process of taking for granted, but it may help us to understand a particular situation" (p. 230). Indeed, the first thing that strikes the viewer about TFG's in The Truman Show is that they exist on two levels: the micro and the macro. At the micro level are the thousands of everyday interactions one performs with another, such as this exchange Truman has with his neighbor every morning: Spencer: Truman:
Morning, Truman. Morning, Spencer. And in case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.
Here, Truman and his neighbor exchange a greeting that some conversation analysts would term an adjacency pair. Truman takes the exchange a step further by offering the first portions of three more adjacency pairs: one for the afternoon, one for the evening, and one for the night. In so doing, he effectively "closes down" the day before it has begun. Yet it is precisely this type of hyper-ritualistic, telescopic behavior on Truman's part that gives great comfort to the show's director, leading actors, and advertisers: it means that Truman is theirs for yet another day, and that the game is still on. And the game is the fact that there are two TFGs at the macro, ontological level. One is the TFG on the part of everyone on "The Truman Show" but Truman that "This is fiction." And the other is the TFG on the part of Truman himself that "This is real life." As the movie begins, these two mutually exclusive TFGs coexist peacefully, but only because Truman is unaware of that a TFG other than his own exists. However, as the film progresses, Truman—an explorer by nature—becomes increasingly aware that "maybe I'm being set up for something." The movie The Truman Show, then, is not so much the story of
524
CHAPTER 32
his attempted escape from Seahaven (as touted by the movie's trailers and shooting script)as it is Truman's dawning awareness that he and the rest of the world are operating on the basis of two radically different ontological assumptions. How these two TFGs get revealed and reconciled is the force behind the film's narrative trajectory. More than anything else, it explains why the audience keeps watching the show and the movie: Quite simply, we want to see when the game is up.
THE THREE-PHASE PROCESS Of course, the game is not up all at once, nor is it up very soon; that would make for a short and uninteresting film. Rather, the game takes its time to unravel. But by tracking the alignment of micro TFGs at various points in the film, it is possible to determine the state of alignment of the two macro TFGs. This analysis suggests three phases of interaction at the micro level. The first is interactional enslavement, followed by incipient awareness, and concluding with liberation.
Phase I: Interactional Enslavement Early on in the film, cameras follow Truman through an ordinary day—which turns out to be the same, day after day. Typical is this exchange between Truman and Tyrone, the owner of an Italian deli. Tyrone: Truman: Tyrone: Truman: Tyrone: Truman:
How's it going, Truman? Not bad. I just won the State Lottery. Good. Good. Tyrone, what if I said I didn't want meatball today? I'd ask for identification. ((hands Truman a meatball sandwich)) See you tomorrow, Truman. You can count on it.
Here, Truman participates in a typical service encounter, one that he engages in daily. But there may be attempts at play. In response to "How's it going," Truman delivers in a deadpan voice "Not bad. I just won the State Lottery." But this marked response gets no uptake. Rather, Tyrone answers with "Good. Good," which is fitted neither to Truman's extraordinary news (if it were true) nor his attempt at play (it is not). Then Truman asks a question: "What if I said I didn't want meatball today?" The question is really a metacommunication, a commentary on the daily
CONVERSATIONAL ENSLAVEMENT
525
ritual of always ordering and eating the same thing. Tyrone's response, "I'd ask for identification," suggests that Truman wouldn't be Truman if he deviated from this pattern, and that someone would be monitoring his behavior if he did. The encounter ends with a fairly typical closing, although Truman's "You can count on it," performed ironically, suggests a self-consciousness about the endlessly repetitive nature of such encounters. Like the exchange of greetings with his neighbor every morning, this interaction is highly routine but somewhat marked. Truman takes the right turn in the right slot, but his speech is restless, pushing at the borders. In a schoolroom flashback, we are shown that Truman wanted to be an explorer, only to be rebuffed by a teacher who told him "There's nothing left to explore." But in conversation, Truman can explore at the micro level: What would happen if...? At this point, all of Truman's interlocutors are engaged in interactional enslavement. It behooves them to discourage Truman's exploration, even at the micro level, for too much is riding on a real discovery: the loss of advertising revenue, the loss of their jobs, the end of the show. Each has an array of interactional devices at hand to encourage glossing and discourage examination. Spencer, the next-door neighbor who lives alone, empties a large barrel of garbage every morning, even though it is highly unlikely that a single person could generate that much garbage in a single day. Similarly, the deli manager artfully brushes off Truman's commentary on the banality of their daily interaction. His let-it-pass is rewarded, as Truman assures him that he can count on seeing him tomorrow. A pair of elderly twins always bump into Truman on his way to work. And at the insurance agency where Truman works, coworkers continually stop by to warn him of the dangers of travel, particularly over water.
Phase II: Incipient Awareness Due to a series of technical and interactional glitches, Truman becomes increasingly restless, impatient—and suspicious. A light falls from the cyclorama sky, and Truman's best friend must convince him that it fell off a jetliner flying overhead. Scanning his radio while driving to work, Truman happens upon the frequency that tracks his movements: He overhears two male voices announcing his exact location. Too many things don't fit; Truman's dawning awareness that "I'm being set up for something" is displayed in increasingly tense scenes with his wife, Meryl, a surgical nurse. Note this scene from the screenplay: Truman: Meryl:
How did it go today? A man tripped and fell on a chainsaw.
526
Truman: Meryl: Truman:
CHAPTER 32 We got three of his fingers back on. ((Disappointed at seeing his golf clubs)) I was hoping we could have a special evening! I won't be late. Did something happen today? What COULD happen?
In this exchange, Truman shows increasing awareness that the world is set up in such a way as to thwart any attempts he makes at freedom. Meryl's brief description of her day at work, which one might expect would provoke a response of sympathy or horror, gets nothing. Instead, Truman looks forward to hitting golf balls. When Meryl asks if something happened, Truman's answer— "What COULD happen?" —shows that he feels increasingly fenced in, even at a micro level. In a sense, the interactional enslavement has been too well performed. Other incidents take place to heighten Truman's discomfort. Glancing through his wedding album, he discovers that Meryl has her fingers crossed in one picture. Agitated at what this might signify, he follows her to a surgery at the hospital—only to find that the "patient" on the table, awaiting an amputation, isn't anesthetized. In a climactic scene for this phase, Truman confronts Meryl about the core assumptions of their relationship. Truman: Meryl:
Truman: Meryl: Truman:
Why do you want to have a child with me? You can't stand me. That's not true. Why don't I make you some of this new Mococoa Drink? All natural. Cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua. No artificial sweeteners -What the hell are you talking about?! I've tasted other cocoas. This is the best. What the hell has that got to do with anything? Tell me what's happening?!
Meryl frantically tries a product pitch in the middle of Truman's breakdown. But as Truman becomes more agitated, she picks up a potato peeler to protect herself. Truman turns it against her. She shouts, "Do something!" But who is she shouting to? This is a seminal moment for Truman, for Meryl breaks the "fourth wall" where the television audience is watching. Fearing for her life, she calls out to the crew on the set, but they are too far away to help. Truman's best friend suddenly rings the doorbell and enters. Truman is finally calmed, but not convinced. Something has indeed happened. At this point, Truman's awareness of a competing TFG has moved from distraction to preoccupation to obsession. There are too many holes in the
CONVERSATIONAL ENSLAVEMENT
527
scenery to continue life as it has been, but what lies behind them is still unknowable. It is at this point that he must overcome his greatest fear —water— in order to discover a larger Truth.
Phase III: Liberation As the film nears its climax, Truman discovers that his world is filled with hidden cameras. He has been watched all of his life, but by whom? He decides he must escape from Seahaven, but no buses or airplanes are leaving town, and the causeway is flooded out; the only alternative is to sail away in a small boat. Christof, the show's creator, director, and (repressed) father-figure to Truman, orders an intense storm in a last-ditch attempt to prevent Truman's escape. But to no avail: Truman sails on, until the bow of his boat punches a hole in the painted backdrop of the sky. Near the hole is a staircase leading to a door. At this moment, Christof chooses to speak to his "creation" for the first time in 30 years. Christof:
Truman:
Truman, I've watched you your whole life. I saw you take your first step, your first word, your first kiss. I know you better than you know yourself. You're not going to walk out that door---You never had a camera in my head.
Here, Truman takes umbrage at Christofs presumption that he could know everything about him. The cameras recorded everything except the interior of Truman's mind, where the assumptions about communicative acts reside. Seconds later, the movie's final exchange is this one, between Christof and Truman. Christof: Truman:
Say something, damn it! You're still on camera, live to the world...! In case I don't see you --good afternoon, good evening and good night. ( (steps through the open door))
Truman's parting shot is, of course, highly mimetic of Truman's daily interaction with Spencer. Yet, spoken in the context of imminent escape, his words are at once peremptory—Truman leaves Christof no time to refute the escalated leave taking—and conclusionary—as if there is nothing more to say or do in this cloistered world. So Truman walks out the door, and the film ends.
528
CHAPTER 32
CONCLUSION Near the close of one article (198 la), Hopper observed that "if a proposition will draw refutation, assert it; if a proposition will escape refutation, take it for granted" (p. 233). The Truman Show is a film about propositions of a most basic nature, which initially go unchallenged by the protagonist. This state of ignorance enables all other characters to let it pass, knowing that their interactions with Truman should keep him in a tightly ordered, self-contained world. As Truman's awareness grows, so must everyone else's attempts at interactional enslavement. But now, such attempts take the shape of bald assertions designed to turn back Truman's posing, "Why that there?" On-the-spot rebuffs are more easily accomplished through words than actions. One can more easily fabricate an account ("That light fell from a jetliner") than produce a willing amputee. It is for this reason that those actors closest to Truman got the highest hazard pay: they were most privy to his challenges, and they had to ad lib at a moment's notice. It could be argued that all good drama is a story of conflicting TFGs. From Oedipus Rex to Six Characters in Search of an Author to Waiting for Godot, characters inhabit different perceptual worlds—either from each other, or from the audience—and their story is a journey toward discovering that difference. Their sense of incompleteness is overcome by first their own insights, and then their own actions. To use Hopper's metaphors cited at the outset of this article, they use their cans of worms as bait, and their efforts in doing so prompt us to call them heroes. The extent to which their authors allow them to succeed is often the difference between comedy and tragedy. Hopper's startling contribution to our knowledge of the details of everyday life is that on the interactional surface, things will look pretty much the same even after the most profound revelations have been discovered. At the micro level, people of Galileo's time interacted the same after they heard the earth was no longer the center of the solar system as they did before. Similarly, Truman will find that people still greet each other when they take out the garbage, and that obtaining a meatball sandwich requires virtually the same interactional steps outside Seahaven as it did within it. Whether on stage or off, the overwhelming majority of our Truman's interactional moments will remain taken for granted. As Hopper illustrated, so will ours.
CONVERSATIONAL ENSLAVEMENT
529
REFERENCES Gofftnan, E. (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper and Row. Hopper, R. (198la). How to do things without words: The taken-for-granted as speech action. Communication Quarterly, 29, 228-236. Hopper, R. (1981b). The taken-for-granted. Human Communication Research, 7, 195-211.
This page intentionally left blank
33 On ESP Puns Emanuel A. Schegloff University of California, Los Angeles I eventually provide an analytic map locating the topic of this discussion within the larger domain of phenomena and practices of talk-in-interaction. But let me begin with an anecdotal account of the initial glimpse of the phenomenon. This is not only a convenient way into the matter, but turns out to be peculiarly apt to the topic, and, in a curious way, methodologically inescapable in explicating it. In the late 1970s, Gail Jefferson and I were doing some work together in my office at UCLA. She was making occasional notes about the discussion and so sat with a pencil at the ready in her right hand. In her left, she held the cigarette she was smoking. At one juncture, in launching a move to take another drag on the cigarette, she brought to her mouth the hand holding the pencil rather than the one holding the cigarette. Seeing that move triggered in me the following recollection. While a graduate student at Berkeley in the late 1950s, I once served as a reader for a course in political sociology taught by the distinguished political sociologist, Seymour Martin Lipset. One day, while lecturing, he was fiddling with a piece of chalk when he apparently experienced an itch in his ear. To relieve the itch he brought the piece of chalk to his ear and inserted it, but then removed his hand while leaving the chalk sticking out of his ear! There is a clear relationship between my noticing my colleague's physical movement in my office and this recollection that it triggered —a clear basis for the triggering: A writing implement (pencil/chalk) brought to a bodily orifice (mouth/ear) for which it was inappropriate. The recollection of the Lipset incident apparently brought a smile to my face, a smile that Jefferson noticed and understood to be responsive to her miscue in bringing the pencil rather than the cigarette to her mouth. Displaying her grasp of my smile's source, she remarked, "Oh, that's an earmark of mine." I registered at once the pun like character of her remark, the interest in vernacular poetics being one shared by the two of us and our then-recently531
532
CHAPTER 33
departed colleague, Harvey Sacks (see, e.g., Sacks, 1973, and Jefferson, 1996).1 I was especially sensitive to puns in ordinary conversation, which are overwhelmingly unintended and unheard, and I had developed an annoying habit of taking overt notice of such otherwise-unheard puns when they occurred in conversations in which I was a participant. I was about to comment on the one I had just heard from Jefferson when I realized that the comment "Oh, that's an earmark of mine" constituted a pun on something that had not been said but had only been "thought" or "recollected" or "flashed." It was, in that sense, an "ESP pun,"2 however absurd that appeared to be to someone who did not believe in parapsychological phenomena. With considerable animation (and puzzlement) I pointed out what had just happened to Gail. The next day, she reported the following incident, the account of which I reproduce here from the note that she sent me. Specimen #2: 'Telepathic pun' Jefferson, March 9, 1978 I'm at the bank with my mother, who is doing a transaction. I'm leaning against the counter, right next to her, idly gazing at the teller who is working on the transaction with her. I look at the next teller, and it turns out that both tellers are wearing identical earrings, little gold dots. I'm thinking it seems to be a fad, they're both wearing button earrings. At which point, the teller working on my mother's stuff says to her, "Right on the button!".
Aside from providing a "second case," the importance of this incident is that it partially addresses an inescapable feature of this phenomenon, one that makes it virtually impossible to engage while respecting the usual methodological constraints of conversation analytic work. That feature is the key role played in the phenomenon of something that was not said or physically done but only "thought." It is that feature that makes the anecdotal character of the present report inescapable (as suggested in its first paragraph), for there is no other way of bringing what is punned-on (or the "pun-source") into the account than to have the one who "thought it" recount it.3 But another consequence of this feature is the unchallengable authority claimed by the noticer of an occurrence of the phenomenon; no one else can lay claim to access to what they were "thinking," or can claim to describe it 1 Accounts of my own long-standing interests in puns, sound phenomena, gist-preserving errors, context-sensitive whistles, and the like have until now been restricted to the classroom, except for one conference presentation, (Schegloff, 1997). 2 For those unfamiliar with the usage, "ESP" is an acronym for "extra sensory perception." 3 Indeed, there is no one else who can know that a possible event of this sort has occurred, although speakers of the pun-containing utterance may subsequently report having registered something "noticeable" about their utterance, without knowing quite what or why, as reported in some of the exemplars recounted later.
ESP PUNS
533
differently, or to correct it, or otherwise take exception to it. Accordingly, it is especially important to collect specimens for which the author of this chapter, and the principal investigator of its candidate phenomenon, is not the key "informant." And Jefferson's anecdote speaks to that issue. It is she, not I, who tells what she was "thinking" or "about to say" when another said something for which it served as pun-source or punned-upon. Of the 20. candidate instances that I have collected, I am the authoritative rapporteur for 11 of them. I wish the distribution were skewed the other way, but conditions make that difficult. Only persons who have been alerted to the possibility of such a phenomenon are in a position to register that a "something" may have happened when all the ingredients are present, and are in a position to recognize features of the moment as ingredients-of-a-possible-ESPpun. Only some of them will find it worthy of writing down and collecting. In a sense, the contribution by others of 9 candidate instances is remarkably high given its unusual and (for academics) counter intuitive premises, given the very small number of people who have had it called to their attention as a possibility, and given the fact that virtually all reports from such persons have been contributed within a day or two of their exposure to the possibility of this phenomenon, after which its relevance to them fades, and with it the likelihood of their recognizing a possible instance or registering its occurrence. I suppose that this more than offsets the well-known propensity of persons to "cooperate with science" by being forthcoming with what they believe an investigator wants to hear (Rosenthal, 1966).4 Before recounting a number of additional instances of candidate ESP puns, I want to simply note several features of the candidate phenomenon, using the first one described earlier—"Oh, that's an earmark of mine"—as a case in point where possible. These features often reappear in other specimens, although in some instances it has not been possible to establish their presence or absence. First, the utterance that contains the pun—and the pun itself in particular—may involve a slight error, and one germane—even critical—to constituting the pun. For example, in the first case, "earmark" is not quite right; the common expression is that something is a "hallmark" of some person or place or institution. "Earmark" is thus a slight error, one apparently prompted by the very pun-source that the pun is locating ("thinking about putting chalk in ear"), the "locating" relationship being constituted by the distortion in the original expression (from "hallmark" to "earmark"). 4
Let me here express my appreciation to the following persons—colleagues, friends, graduate students, and undergraduate students (categories that are not mutually exclusive)—who have taken the trouble to write down the episodes they noticed and contribute them to the collection, but whose contribution may or may not be reproduced here. In addition to Gail Jefferson, I want to thank (in alphabetical order) Kelly Glover, Chuck Goodwin, Celia Kitzinger, Amy Snyder Ohta, Lisa Pizzurro, Mel Pollner, Jonathan Stewart, and Myma Gwen Turner.
534
CHAPTER 33
Second, the ESP pun is not a customary or stereotypical usage by the speaker. In collecting puns of all sorts, it is important to avoid ones that could be the product of random permutation and combination. For example, some speakers have as a distinctive stylistic practice a frequent use of apparently to begin utterances. On occasion, an utterance that has begun in that way will have as its topical content something about children, yielding the apparent pun combination of "apPARENTly" and "child." But in such a case, the underlying phenomenon that makes puns of interest—namely, the coselection of words composing an utterance by reference to features of sound, semantics, metaphor, and so on, and the sequential organization implicated in that—is not in fact instantiated by the event, which is simply the product of a repetitive use of apparently across utterances of diverse topical content. This consideration applies to all puns, and requires the exclusion of candidate instances that can have been produced by this kind of juxtaposition. It holds as well for candidate ESP puns. In the first instance reported previously, then, it needs to be said that "That's a hallmark (or earmark) of mine" is not a recurrent usage by its speaker.5 Third, the punning utterance is often slightly unidiomatic or inappropriate in context. This feature has been noted about other wordselectional phenomena or aspects of vernacular poetics as well. For example, Jefferson (1996) remarked regarding a particular sound-row usage: (3.a.l) Martha: Jan: Martha:
[GJ:FN] I called Terry and told her to come over around nine thirty. It's nine thirty now. Well then she'll be here momentarily.
There's something in this instance that we've noticed now and then. Sometimes a word occurs that seems a bit special, maybe out of character, maybe not register fitted to the surrounding talk. In this case, momentarily is such a word. And it may have been selected from alternatives such as "any minute now" by the sound relationship between the word "Terry" and the last bit of "momentarily." A sound-row. What we're learning to do is to track back into the talk and see if we can find a possible source for some striking word.
This feature of inappropriateness or ill-fittedness does not seem to characterize the two candidate ESP puns so far introduced, but it may be exemplified in the following one from the collection.
5
In what follows, I often decline to employ candidate ESP puns reported by others because the pun could plausibly be figured to be the product of such a permutation and combination with a recurrent usage, and no steps were taken by the rapporteur to establish that the usage was not a recurrent one for the speaker.
ESP PUNS
535
Specimen #3: My wife and I are visiting our daughter at college. Sitting at lunch, I ask my daughter what she'll be working at after lunch. She says, "recycling" (this being a volunteer activity previously described to us as involving picking up recyclable trash left by residents of the area) . I think to myself, "my daughter the garbage collector," and my daughter then says/continues, " . . . hence my garb."
I take it that garb is a term ill-fitted (or only ironically fitted) to the topic and the register otherwise in effect for the talk then in progress. These three features—nonhabitual usage, slightly-in-error construction, and slightly ill-fitted to the context—all suggest a virtual "reaching out" to talk in the fashion of the ESP punning utterance. Far from happenstance, these utterances have the feel of effortfulness about them, of being specially designed—and obtrusively so—to capture, and be affected by, what prompts them. Here, then, are some more. Specimen #4: I encounter in the hallway of my department's offices a colleague who I know is being courted by a number of other highly regarded universities. As we approach one another, I greet him conventionally with "Howyadoin1," while reflecting that he is #1 on a prominent school's recruitment list, and preparing to follow up my initial inquiry with "Are you staying or leaving?" Before I ask that, however, he answers my initial inquiry, "Neither here nor there." In this case, I took the occasion to recount to my colleague what had just happened. His response: "That's pretty good." Note, by the way, the slight inappropriateness of the response; it is of the genre "comme ci, comme ca, " or "so so"; but "neither here nor there"?
Specimen #5: I am discussing with a colleague's wife the child-rearing practices of a family of mutual acquaintance, and, in particular, the inattention paid to cultivation of the body and physical activity. I am thinking, and "gestating" as a next utterance, something like "Why don't they just ride bikes together?!" when my interlocutor says, "Physicalness is actually derided."
Here again I undertake to describe to my coparticipant the phenomenon we had just brought off, and she remarks on having registered as odd and somewhat antique her use of the verb derided as she said it, and having attributed it at that moment to her recent reading of a novel by Dickens.
536
CHAPTER 33
Specimen #6: A colleague is recounting what he had heard about a recent conference in which a number of mutual colleagues had participated. He allows that his account is based ". . . on a biased sample of reports." He continues (and at this point I am wondering about the reception accorded my colleague Lucy Suchman, who was on the program), "I didn't hear paeans of praise that such and such had given a wonderful paper."
I note only that "such and such" is not the ordinary form for this kind of unspecified definite person reference; rather the form is "so and so." Again, the "thought" appears to have invaded and slightly malformed the utterance being produced in a manner reflecting its own constitution. Specimen #7: I am in a coffee shop with seven other people taking a break from a working session, ordering lunch to take out. After completing some nth order, the clerk says, "Eight total?" I hear that as "ate Total" ("Total" being the name of an American cold breakfast cereal), and think to myself: "I wonder if that's what Chuck (another member of the party) had for breakfast," (knowing that he had had some cereal for breakfast) . Just then Chuck says to Lucy (our host for this consultation trip), "By the way, I've been putting all the breakfasts on my bill; I hope that's alright." The incidental, unoccasioned, and even possibly misplaced production of this utterance is marked by the speaker's use of the misplacement marker "by the way" (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) in launching it; it marks that there is no accessible local basis for saying that thing at that point. Is there then an inaccessible basis for it?
Now for a few in which I do not figure as rapporteur. I quote from the written accounts provided by those who noted the occurrence. Specimen #8: I was at work when a secretary came in looking for her pen. Long discussion ensued which didn't include or interest me and I began to daydream. The previous night the rivers in the area had flooded and we'd been out at the canoe club moving boats to higher ground, etc. We saw a picnic table which is usually on the lawn, floating, and two of us got some rope and were about to set off in a boat to secure it when someone told us it had already been tied to a tree. Just after my mind turned to this incident someone told the secretary that she should have the pen tied to her with a string. Specimen #9: I was speaking to M.G. [a mutual colleague—EAS] and he mentioned that he had to pick up his brother at the airport. I said that I looked forward to meeting him and that I liked to meet sibs generally so that I could see "what is genetic about
ESP PUNS
537
you and what is you about you." Mike said that I almost made a great pun because his sister's name is Janet.
Specimen #10: Over the weekend I was talking with new friends who asked why my husband (who is Japanese) prefers living in the States rather than in Japan. I responded, "Well, he marches to a different drummer. He's not into group-think." Returning home, my husband asked over dinner about my weekend, and I told him about this question I was asked as to why he prefers living in the U.S. Before I could say what my answer was, my husband began to "drum" his plate with his chopsticks.
Specimen #11: The event in question occurred in Fall, 1991, around two o'clock in the afternoon on a weekend. My fiance and I were driving around doing errands, and were on our way home from the grocery store. We were stopped at a red light near our apartment. We were both lost in thought, not speaking or listening to the car radio. I noticed a poster in a shop window that was advertising something. The colors were purples and pinks all swirled together encircling a person with wild and messy hair. I thought to myself, "That looks like something you'd see if you were on LSD." Just then, my fiance started drumming on his steering wheel the opening rhythm to the song "Go -Ask Alice," a nightmarish song depicting an episode from Alice in Wonderland through the eyes of a drugged-out protagonist. Startled, I told him what I had just been thinking, and he claimed he hadn't see the poster. (Handwritten postscript: "When I initially shared this story with our class, I mistakenly recalled the song in question as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.")
Specimen #12: Characters: Beth #1 and Myrna are former classmates from CSU, and Myrna and Beth #2 are former classmates from UCLA. Beth #1 and Beth #2 had not met each other before this day. Beth #1 and Myrna had already sat down at the table in the Cafe; our meals had been given to us in "proper" bowls and plates. Beth #2 sat down and I noticed that her meal was in a "take-away" box. Then: Beth #2: I don't know why she [the server] gave me my meal in this. Myrna: (thought to herself: cause you eat like a bird and you'11 probably need to take home half of your meal anyway.) Beth #1: she [the server] probably thought you looked like you were going to fly."
Specimen #13: I was visiting my best friend at his parents' house. His sister was digging in the freezer; he was in an adjacent room unable
538
CHAPTER 33
to see her, me, and the rest of his family. My friend said, "Dad? . . . Dad? . . ." as he tried to get his father's attention. (He, as I mentioned above, was in a different room.) Just as the sister extracted a popsicle from the freezer, my friend said, "Pop?" to call his dad. I mentioned this to him and his sister, and they both thought it was odd that he'd use that word, since none of us could remember him having used it before.
Specimen #14: (Telling about a vacation trip to Thailand). "New Years Eve, not yet midnight, Sue has just changed her blouse and is talking about the day's snorkeling, and I am not giving her my full attention, but thinking instead (and thinking it preparatory to saying it, once she has finished talking) 'you've got a label sticking out at your neck.' I don't get to say it because she doesn't give me time - a split second after I've formed the thought 'neck,' she rushes straight from the end of what she is saying about snorkeling into the question, 'How soon do you think we can open our nectar?, ' meaning the champagne, which isn't really champagne as that's ludicrously expensive in Thailand, but some sort of bubbly wine, and NEVER, EVER before has she referred to such a drink (or ANY drink) as v nectar.' Spooky!"
Finally, two more from my own experience. Specimen #15: I am visiting with friends in England, talking about the behavior of fans at sporting events. He is comparing cricket and football (soccer) in England. I am thinking of telling, when the turn is mine, about the soccer game my wife and I attended in Campinas, Brazil, after which the fans set fire to newspapers in the stands. My friend is telling me that families go together to cricket matches but not to football, and says, "They've burnt off families going." Subsequently he says that he "flashed on" the phrase "burnt off" a few moments before using it, which would be just as I was forming up my next tellable. And, it turns out, this is not an ordinary usage of his, and is unidiomatic in context.
Specimen #16: I am chatting (at my home in a southern California canyon) with a British friend who is an academic. She is telling me about visiting Australia, and, in particular, about an encounter with aboriginal people in Alice Springs. Hearing that, I am "reminded of"— and am preparing to tell — my "Alice Springs story," about the power outage that hit while we were there, and that rendered the nighttime Southern hemisphere sky luminous and wonderful to behold. Then she, having just been talking about the Aborigines, sharply changes course, and asks whether from our house it is possible to see the then-close-toearth Hale-Boggs comet. I am struck by her disjunctive shift to the astronomical observation question, that is, about looking
ESP PUNS
539
at the skies, at just the moment when I am about to tell just such a story.6 This is not, of course, a pun. But is it part of the same phenomenon?
The domain within which ESP puns—if they are real—are situated is that of word selection. Word selection is concerned with the practices that directly (by word selectional practices) or indirectly (by practices such as sound patterning, pun organization, or item carryover, which have word selection as a consequence) issue in the words that compose the units out of which are constructed the sequences of which are constituted the conversations that are one of our major research mandates. This is a very large domain and still a largely mysterious one, so mysterious that we must be prepared to entertain such apparently fringe possibilities as ESP puns. But it is worth pondering the import of the use of fringe here. It is the initial take on something unsuspected and "far out." As more and more cases are displayed, the fringe may turn out to be as robust a part of the fabric as any other—composed of the same warp and weft. It is only that we did not know how to look before. That is my rationale for filling this contribution largely with candidate instances, at the expense of other things to be said about them. If there is a real phenomenon here, and if the exemplars are apt and well chosen, it is their cumulative effect that will render the phenomenon visible, and by no means unthinkable.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This chapter was prepared for a volume dedicated to Robert Hopper, who will best understand the basis for its selection. It was drafted while I was the grateful beneficiary of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fellowship in Residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, under support provided to the Center by The National Science Foundation through Grant # SBR-9022192.
6
One colleague has suggested as a possible alternative account that I glanced up at the sky in unthinking anticipation of the tale I was about to tell. Alternative accounts may suggest themselves for other of the specimens reported above as well, prompted by the implausibility of what seems otherwise to be being proposed, and they may well be the more cogent accounts. This must be weighed against their grounding in the reader's imagination rather than the participant-observer's report, and the probability of each such conjecture turning out to have been correct (were such a "checking" even possible). For the present specimen, the fact that the conversation was being held indoors and not outside should be weighed in assessing the cogency of a glance upward, or of its being registered as "at the sky."
540
CHAPTER 33
REFERENCES Jefferson, G. (1996). On the poetics of ordinary talk. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16(1), 1-61. Rosenthal, R. (1966). Experimenter effects in behavioral research. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Sacks, H. (1973). On some puns with some intimations. In R. W. Shuy (Ed.), Report of the Twenty-Third Annual Round Table Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies (pp. 135-144). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (2002, this volume). The surfacing of the suppressed. Studies in language and social interaction: In honor of Robert Hopper (pp. 241262). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289327.
V Robert Hopper: Teacher and Scholar Robert Hopper was an accomplished scholar, teacher, and friend whose wideranging interests allowed him to forge connections with a great many people. This was evident at a session held in his memory at the November 1999 National Communication Association meeting. Speakers included departmental colleagues, former students, and colleagues and friends from the discipline. Some of the speakers had had only tangential contact with him, but he made such an impact on them that they felt moved to participate in his memorial. This testimony to his extraordinary character as a colleague and friend is further borne out in the chapters in this final section of the Festschrift. They pay homage to some of the remarkable personal qualities that made Hopper a truly exceptional scholar and much loved and appreciated person. The personal reflections on Robert Hopper's contributions begin with Jenny Mandelbaum's account of his intellectual history. It shows how much of his work took up the enterprise of excavating the taken-for-granted. By addressing the moral character of his work, Sandra Ragan shows how the detailed study of language, and a quest to understand how speech works, can be driven by a moral imperative to make the world a better place through the "scribblings" of academics. Leslie Jarmon's chapter addresses the original and inspiring character of Hopper's teaching. This chapter summarizes the innovations that made him a captivating and puzzling teacher, whose classes challenged and energized his students, and worked like time-release capsules. Wayne Beach's piece merges reflections on personal friendship with scholarly collaboration in recounting how he and Hopper shared moments of discovery. Jim Bradac's poem speaks eloquently for itself, and reminds us of Hopper's rich poetic inclinations. The final piece, placed so in the spirit of giving Robert Hopper "the last word," is the text of a brief address he wrote that his daughter Christine read at an event honoring him during the 1998 National Communication Association Convention. In it, playfully drawing on a software metaphor, he challenges those studying communication to help upgrade humans "from person 1.2 to person 2.0." This section provides testimony to the fact that 541
542
PART V
Robert Hopper, in addition to being a rigorous scholar with broad intellectual interests, a strong mission to understand how communication works, and concern with making it work better, pursued his research and teaching agendas in highly innovative and inspirational ways.
34 Robert Hopper: An Intellectual History Jenny Mandelbaum Rutgers University Robert Hopper's intellectual history illustrates the interplay of scholarly and secular life. With his ear tuned to the poetic frequencies of language, coming of age during the 1960s and 1970s, with an interest in language development that may have been born with his children, Hopper was ideally positioned to find rigorous ways to bring social science's Linguistic Turn (Rorty, 1967/1992) to the (Speech) Communication field. In his scholarly career he worked in, or made important scholarly contributions to, many of the major currents of work to be found in Language and Social Interaction. His early work focused on speech effects. He then became interested in speech act theory and discourse analysis, focusing particularly on alignment talk. Next he became intrigued with conversation analysis (CA). In the process of becoming a conversation analyst, he worked through many issues regarding the possible intersections between conversation analysis and such bordering territories as ethnography of communication, social psychology, and performance studies. In his later work, he used conversation analysis to address some of the communication field's traditional questions and issues, and also explored what conversation analysis can offer to the medical field. He did all of this with his special brand of creativity and originality, inspiring his colleagues, undergraduates, and graduate students. In an award-winning essay, Hopper (1981) reexamined work on "takenfor-granteds," the implicit, functional and principled incompleteness in language use. His focus in this piece was that which is in some way left unsaid, and may or may not be left unquestioned. This essay contains some important clues to understanding what drove Hopper's work. We see the ability to first notice and then question taken-for-granteds as a common thread that runs through Hopper's work. This can perhaps be traced 543
544
CHAPTER 34
to a kind of liminality that may be a prerequisite for scholarly achievement. For as a conversation analyst whose scholarly upbringing was rigorously quantitative, and whose early work examined speech effects, Hopper had a particular vantage point on both CA and the communication field (cf. chap. 2, this volume). This place to look from enabled him both to see communication from a CA point of view and CA from a communication point of view, putting him in the position to have original insights with regard to each. Whatever he was studying, Hopper had the ability to uncover the taken-for-granted, and the skill to see it in new ways. This is evident throughout his scholarly career. Hopper's career was driven by his persistent search for a rigorous science of speech. This led him to participate in innovations that have transformed segments of the communication field. In the early 1980s, he was part of a group of scholars who met at small conferences exploring different approaches to the study of language. He was one of the initial proponents of discourse analysis in general, and a primary instigator in the bringing of CA to the communication field. In his early work, Hopper was interested in how children leam to talk. With Rita Naremore, he published a book on children's language development that has become a classic text in the field, and was reprinted in a third edition in 1990. Hopper was keenly attuned to the language of what he sometimes called the "underdogs"—women, children, and other minorities who are sometimes discriminated against by the "favorites," those who do the discriminating. His work on speech effects examined language attitudes—how people perceive and react to the speech of others. This work suggested that we tend to take for granted the transparency of others' talk. Hopper raised the possibility that we should take into account how shades of skin color, gender, age, and so on may influence how speech is interpreted in addition, or in contrast, to how it is produced. Much of this work indicates how perceptions of speech are influenced not so much by the speech itself, but by how recipients interpret it, based on social stereotypes. His work on language effects made an important contribution toward questioning the field's established "speaker effectiveness" paradigm (cf. Bradac, Wiemann, & Hopper, 1989, for a summary of this work). Even more important, this work makes the case that what Hopper often called a "science of speech" involves understanding it as an interaction. Communication studies' origins in rhetoric and public speaking may contribute to the tendency of work in the field to use a one-way "sender— message—receiver" model, with a strong focus on the sender and the "packaging" of the message. Hopper's early work made the case for understanding the role of interpretation in the communication process. In this way, he added new dimensions to our understanding of the conventional
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
545
relationship between "underdogs" and "favorites," as he called the powerless and the powerful, and people of different races and genders (Hopper, 1986). Speech Act Theory's emphasis on the active character of speech as action (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969), Wittgenstein's (1958) theory of language games, the work of de Saussure (1966) and the French structuralists, and the work of Bateson (1972) and his colleagues all influenced Hopper's thinking at this time. His focus shifted from how people react to features of language to how people enact them. This work can be characterized as a form of discourse analysis. For instance, a series of publications and dissertations examined the nature of alignment talk (Morris & Hopper, 1980). This concept, derived from Stokes and Hewitt (1976), examined conversations to see how communicators negotiated understandings. The variety of data sources Hopper used, and encouraged his students to use, for this work is testimony to the entrepreneurial spirit with which he approached the study of language and social interaction. For instance, Ragan (1980) looked at audiotaped employment interviews, Scott (1983) looked at audiotaped conversations between married couples, and Sims (1983) looked at audiotaped parent-child interaction. The practical and ethical difficulties of examining interpersonal communication at the beginning or ending of relationships presented challenges that led to new approaches. Ragan and Hopper (1984) looked at the discourse of couples in the terminating stages of relationships by drawing the conversations from works of literature. Mandelbaum (1983) used novels and plays as a data source to examine the beginning stages of relationships. In the Spring of 1983, Hopper took a sabbatical in Oxford where he attended data sessions at Wolfson College's Center for Socio-Legal Studies with (among others) Max Atkinson, Anita Pomerantz, Paul Drew, and John Heritage. This began his apprenticeship in CA, which offered solutions to the problem of working in a rigorous fashion with "real" data. While at Oxford, he read the manuscript of CA's coming-of-age volume, Structures of Social Action, edited by Max Atkinson and John Heritage. Upon his return to Texas in June 1983, Hopper embarked on a multipronged effort to develop his own and his students' understanding of CA and to bring the work to the communication field. This involved such steps as establishing the University of Texas Conversation Library, an archive of hundreds of hours of audio- and video-recorded, transcribed, naturally occurring conversations from casual and professional settings; conducting weekly "listening sessions" or data analysis workshops; encouraging his students and colleagues in the field to listen carefully to the
546
CHAPTER 34
patterns and nuances of everyday talk; and in various ways bringing the Communication field's attention to the contributions CA can make to an understanding of communication. In addition to organizing a wide variety of conference panels and events, and bringing CA scholars to our conferences, in various ways through his published work Hopper was a strong instigator in opening up debate with regard to CA. Hopper's conversation analytic work began with a thorough reexamination of a taken-for-granted medium, the telephone. Whereas previous conversation analytic work took the phone to be simply another place to examine everyday or institutional conversation, Hopper took the phone to be a medium the study of which promised particular riches for the communication field. He suggested, Telephony undergirds our theories about communication. Telephone speech splits sound from the rest of the senses, splits the dyad from the rest of society, and splits communication from other activity. Telephone conversation is pure dialogic speech communication. Hence, descriptions of telephone conversation are central to theories of language, conversation, and interaction. (Hopper, 1992, p. 41)
In this way, he showed how a focus on telephone talk promotes "the rediscovery of speaking," helping us to explore in greater depth aspects of communication that often have been either glossed or simply taken for granted. Next his study of telephone talk took him into an institutional setting, the Cancer Information Service of the American Cancer Society. Hopper took the role of teacher seriously. This included outreach. In the millennium issue of Research on Language and Social Interaction, Hopper (1999) advocated finding tangible pay-offs of a "science of speech." In his final book manuscript, Gendering Talk (in press), Hopper brought together a number of his interests and approaches. The book consists of conversation analytic, discourse analytic, and poetic approaches to understanding gender. Hopper asked, can "genderlects" be described in terms of linguistic features? What is the effect of addressee sex on language? How does the language of "love" connect to other forms of gendered language? Using data from casual conversation, movies and TV shows, novels, poems, and songs, Hopper integrated his interests in the organization of interaction, and its moral dimension, questioning one of social life's most taken for granted concepts, gender. Shifts in Hopper's work have paralleled shifts in the study of language and social interaction in the communication field. Hopper played an active role
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
547
in the Speech Communication Association (now National Communication Association) Speech and Language Sciences Division, serving in leadership roles in the Division from 1978-1981. He was active in the name shift from Speech and Language Sciences Division to Language and Social Interaction Division. In 1989 he started the Language and Social Interaction Interest Group at the International Communication Association (1CA). This group gained enough members to shift to Division status faster than any interest group in ICA history. Hopper led the Division for its first 2 years, and in 1996 was honored with its Scholarly Publication Award for his article on the taken-for-granted (Hopper, 1981). With CA in hand, and having established the University of Texas Conversation Library, Hopper made some strikingly original forays into the taken-for-granted. His work actively participated in making the field aware of the possibilities CA offered for a rigorous study of communication phenomena. I take three different examples to show where Hopper's work in bringing CA to the communication field bears out E. M. Forster's (1910) adage in Howard's End, "Only connect." First, Hopper did something that conversation analysts are particularly well equipped to do: He took some speech communication fundamentals, and reexamined them from a conversation analytic perspective. Second, he explored the possibilities and limitations of the intersection between CA—a new approach to communication for the field—and other approaches. In particular he investigated in public fora the intersections between CA and social psychology, which has driven much of traditional research in the field, and also ethnography, which has often been the first alternative to standard quantitative approaches in communication. Third, he successfully took the risk of exploring the intersection between art and scholarship, both in his writing and in his part in the Everyday Life Performance (ELP) project. I explore each of these contributions in more detail.
COMMUNICATION FUNDAMENTALS REEXAMINED As Hopper's insight that telephony brings to prominence some fundamental characteristics of the communication process indicates, CA has enabled researchers to reexamine some concepts and processes previously taken for granted. For example, in work with Kent Drummond, Hopper took on from a CA
548
CHAPTER 34
perspective some fundamental notions in speech communication. For instance, Hopper and Drummond (1992) showed how relationships can be seen to be displayed and accomplished in and through interaction. This contrasts with the received view in the communication field that relationships are free-standing social categories that can be treated as independent variables, and that their preexisting character influences how interaction proceeds. In studies of this kind, we see part of the pay-off of CA for the communication field. This work shows us how relationships are inherently communication phenomena—human social activities that are accomplished in and through the cooperation, the working together, of interactants. Thus the ethnomethodological insight that relationships are something we DO rather than something we HAVE can be spelled out, with CA providing the resources to examine such prime sites of connection as telephone openings. This then is a way that Hopper's work provides a connection between CA and the communication field, where CA provides a new perspective on some taken-for-granted aspects of how human social activities work. In the spirit of seeing what is ordinarily taken-for-granted, coming from communication to CA put Hopper in a good position to explore the border territory between CA and social psychological approaches, and between CA and ethnography.
THE INTERSECTION OF CA AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; THE INTERSECTION OF CA AND ETHNOGRAPHY In the process of exploring these possible intersections, Hopper instigated debate that brought conversation analytic work to the attention of communication scholars. In "Speech for Instance. The Exemplar in Studies of Conversation," Hopper (1988) showed how different research traditions—Chomskian linguistics, speech act theory, CA—each use examples in their research. He then moved on to a contrast between the use of the exemplar, and the use of the experiment. He asked, "How do we establish paths by which experimentalists and exemplists (for instance, conversation analysts) may speak to each other without undisciplined eclecticism or unbridled paradigm-bickering?" In this piece, Hopper seemed optimistic about the possibilities for and desirability of bringing together CA and experimental approaches. In particular he cited how, working with Sam Lawrence and Nathan Stucky, the matched guise technique (where, e.g., the same speaker says the same things using different accents, and researchers measure listeners' evaluations of various ways of speaking) was
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
549
adapted using conversation analytic transcription techniques in order to examine perceptions of male and female speech (Lawrence, Stucky, & Hopper, 1990). Traditionally this research could only be done by having subjects read transcripts, because it was not plausible for the same person to be both male and female. With the detailed level of transcription afforded by CA, they showed how actors can be trained, so that a male's speech can be reenacted by a female or vice versa, very closely approximating the character of the other sex's speech. For studies of speech evaluation, this creative use of CA transcription provides the phlogiston that permits an experimental distinction between speech features that were generated in real life by biological males/females, and those delivered in female/male pitch and vocal patterning (Hopper, 1988). The difficulties associated with research of this kind are familiar. However the application of CA transcription methods, and the innovation of training actors in this level of detail, allows the study of language attitudes toward gender differences to base itself in a data source much closer to "real life" than having subjects read transcripts. Despite the optimism reflected in "Speech for Instance" regarding border treaties between CA and traditional approaches to studying speech communication, in a piece published a year later in Roger and Bull's (1989) collection exploring possibilities for the melding of CA and social psychology (or SP), Hopper clearly delineated the two, and emphasized the disjunctives between them. He noted that work that has attempted to combine them tends to "offer operational definitions and coding procedures, and the cross-tabulation of occurrence of defined items with psychological variables," and thereby overlooks phenomena of interest to conversation analysts. His conclusions, then, were more pessimistic regarding the possibilities of combining CA and social psychological approaches. He proposed that we "respect CA and SP as left and right branches of the description of interpersonal communication" (Hopper, 1989, p. 63). Doctoral dissertations provided a forum for Hopper to oversee work that tests the intersections between CA and other ways of working, and at the same time bring CA work and its contributions to a "science of speech" to the attention of speech communication scholars. This is notable, for example, in Kent Drummond's work revisiting "back channels." As the instigating part of a colloquy in ROLSI, Drummond and Hopper (1993), along with Wieder (1993), Zimmerman (1993), and Tracy (1993) explored the intersection of quantification and CA. In two papers in this collection, Drummond and Hopper first took
550
CHAPTER 34
Jefferson's (1984) suggestion that a "yeah" from a story recipient is more likely to precede the recipient taking the floor than a "uh huh" or an "mm hm." They combined conventional cross-tabulations of the occurrence of these acknowledgment tokens and the probability of further speech by the speaker of the token with analysis of the fragments. They used the analysis to lead them to refine their findings. Thus rather than stop at the cross-tabulation, Drummond and Hopper examined the interactions that constitute their data in what could simply have been unexplicated examples. In attempting to combine CA methods with quantification, Drummond and Hopper (1993) pointed out the difficulties associated with treating all socalled "back channels" as doing the same job. The three respondents then thrashed out the issues with respect to attempts to combine CA with traditional social psychological approaches. In this way the "back channel," a term frequently used unreflexively in a wide range of research, was thoroughly taken to task. In the process of showing the interactive work that it does, larger issues were addressed. A similar approach was taken in examining the relationship between CA and ethnography. Michael Moerman's (1988) book, Talking Culture, prompted a good deal of debate regarding the relative merits of CA and ethnography, and the possibility and desirability of combining them. In a special edition of ROLSI Hopper brought together a wide variety of perspectives in a format in which the debate could be played out. In each case, he provided a forum for a constructive encounter between conversation analytic perspectives and traditional, often unquestioned approaches in communication. Addressing connection and difference is crucial as CA becomes more widely practiced in the communication field. CA developed initially under the auspices of the sociology discipline. Therefore articulation of CA itself, and of its relationship with other approaches in the communication field is vital if we are to appreciate and realize fully the potential contributions of CA to the study of communication phenomena, or as Hopper often put it, to a "cumulative science of speech." Through conference presentations and special issues of journals in addition to his own publications, Hopper played a key role in providing fora for the communication field to explore the opportunities CA afforded for studying communication.
EXPLORATION OF THE POETIC A third arena in which we see Hopper's work making a unique contribution, and a mind-stretching set of connections, is in his pursuit of the poetic. Robert was a
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
551
poet and songwriter, and generously shared his creativity. His scholarly writing is poetic too. He used words in such a way as to stretch the established categories, the given ways of thinking. This affinity for the poetic shows itself in various other ways. He used to ask sometimes for class assignments to be written in poetry rather than prose. Hopper is one of few in communication to count among his refereed publications a poem (published in Communication Theory, Hopper, 1991). Again we see his eagerness to engage beyond the established boundaries, to gently rough up the smooth surfaces of the intellectual taken-for-granted. The poetic is manifested in two ways in particular in his scholarship: in his work on the poetics of talk, and in his part in the ELP project. Hyde and Sargent in their article in Hopper's (1993) special edition of Text and Performance Quarterly on Performance and Conversation noted that typically Communication approaches play "as a strategy for managing and manipulating interactive episodes." They pointed out that Hopper's work on the poetic has, as they put it, "turned this around a bit." Building on Sacks' and Jefferson's work on poetics, Hopper brought to the attention of the communication field "the play of poetics and the poetics of play." This was most notable in his 1992 article in Text and Performance Quarterly on "Speech Errors and the Poetics of Conversation," in which he laid out various arenas in which we can leam from the poetic character of "speech errors." In his book on Telephone Conversation, Hopper (1992) suggested that "playful interaction" may be "the natural state of conversational speaking." He put it like this: "Play episodes lift up a corner of the universe to reveal the great Poem, speaking us" (p. 190). This work along with that of some of his students, most notably Phillip Glenn (Hopper & Glenn, 1994) helps us to begin to understand the work of play in everyday interaction, grounding that understanding in the details of everyday talk. In addition, Hopper's persistence brought about the publication in Text and Performance Quarterly of a magnificent piece by Gail Jefferson on the poetics of ordinary talk, that was developed from a talk she originally gave in 1977 (Jefferson, 1996). Attention to the details of everyday talk brought about the Everyday Life Performance project. It began in the early 1980s when Nathan Stucky worked with Hopper to put on a performance of reenacted naturally occurring conversations. Stucky trained actors to re-produce conversations, studying them with tapes and conversation analytic transcripts, until they could, as it were, "sing along" flawlessly. The results were striking. Hopper used the ELP
552
CHAPTER 34
learning method in classes to bring students close to the details of conversation. Some of the results are documented in the special edition of Text and Performance Quarterly that Hopper (1993) edited. Again, an original twist on the contributions of CA transcription conventions is made accessible, and a new aspect of their importance to the field is displayed. In these three major arenas then, Hopper was an innovator and a groundbreaker. His work challenges both researchers' and interactants1 takenfor-granteds. He was a primary instigator in bringing CA to the Communication field, in his search for a cumulative science of speech. This involved taking on and reexamining some concepts that are often taken for granted in the Communication field. It also involved experimenting with CA to solve some of the communication field's highly resistant research conundrums. In the process of doing this, he provided various fora for addressing issues that are fundamental to the research enterprise in this field. All of this has been done with an ear tuned to the poetic frequencies of language-that which is seen but unnoticed. All the while, Hopper was teacher, friend, and mentor to more than 30 doctoral students and 10 master's students. In his teaching also, he was never afraid to risk being interesting, to challenge the taken-for-granted, and to spin enticing connections. Hopper was a remarkable role model as a teacher and scholar. His tenaciousness in wrestling issues to the ground, the extent to which he lived his work, his persistence in leaving no stone unturned, and his intellectual generosity toward and moral support for his graduate students were all extraordinary. No one who was in his classes, or saw him present at conferences, will forget his originality in these settings. In 1990 he received the University of Texas' Award for Distinguished Graduate Teaching. In 1994 he received ICA's B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award for service to students and communication research. In 1998 he was the inaugural recipient of NCA's Mentoring Award. He also won ICA's Outstanding Scholar Award from the Language and Social Interaction Division in 1996, as well as winning NCA's Outstanding Scholarly Publication Award in 1996. All of this was done with humility, with the selfprofessed stance of a "bricoleur," and with a keen ear for wordplay and puns. In a recent report of research productivity in communication studies (Communication Monographs, June, 1999) Hopper was ranked was ranked 16th in the country. His intellectual legacy speaks for itself. His impact on his students, both graduate and undergraduate, and on his colleagues and friends in the field and beyond, guarantees his immortality.
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
553
REFERENCES Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine Books. Bradac, J., Wiemann, J., & Hopper, R. (1989). The study of message effects: Retrospect and prospect. In J. J. Bradac & J. M. Wiemann, (Eds.), Message effects in communication science (pp. 294-318). Los Angeles: Sage. Drummond, K. & Hopper, R. (1993). Back channels revisited: Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 157-178. Forster, E. M. (1910). Howard's end. New York: Putnam. Hopper, R. (in press). Gendering talk. Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press. Hopper, R. (1999). Going public about social interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 32, 77-84. Hopper, R. (1993). Special edition. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13. Hopper, R. (1992). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation, Text and Performance Quarterly, 12, 113-124. Hopper, R. (1991). Observer: Steps to an ecology of mind. Communication Theory, 1, 267-268. Hopper, R. (1989). Conversation analysis and social psychology as descriptions of interpersonal communication. In D. Roger & P. Bull (Eds.), Conversation, (pp. 48-66). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Hopper, R. (1988). Speech, for instance. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 5, 47-63. Hopper, R. (1986). Speech evaluation of intergroup dialect differences: The shibboleth schema, in W. B. Gudykunst, (Ed.), Intergroup communication (pp. 127-136). London: Edward Arnold. Hopper, R. (1981). The taken-for-granted. Human Communication Research, 7, 195-211. Hopper, R. & Drummond, K. (1992). Accomplishing interpersonal relationship: Telephone openings of strangers and intimates. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 3, 185—200. Hopper, R. & Glenn, P. (1994). Repetition and play in conversation. In B. Johnstone, (Ed.) Perspectives on Repetition, Vol. 2 (pp. 29-40). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
554
CHAPTER 34
Hyde, M. J., & Sargent, D. K. (1993). The performance of play, the "great poem," and ethics. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 122-138. Jefferson, G. (1984). Notes on a systematic deployment of the acknowledgement tokens "yeah" and "mm hm." Papers in Linguistics, 17, 197-206. Jefferson, G. (1996). On the poetics of ordinary talk. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16, 1-61. Lawrence, S., Stucky, N., & Hopper, R. (1990). The effects of sex dialects and sex stereotypes on speech evaluations. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9, 209-224. Mandelbaum, J. (1983). Speaking of love. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Texas, Austin. Moerman, M. (1988). Talking culture: Ethnography and conversation analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Morris, G. H., & Hopper, R. (1980). Remediation and legislation in everyday talk: How communicators achieve consensus. In S. J. Sigman (Ed.), Introduction to human communication: Behavior, codes, and social interaction (pp. 319-327). New York: Simon and Schuster. (Reprinted from Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 266-276.) Ragan, S. (1980). Alignment talk in the employment interview. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin. Ragan, S., & Hopper, R. (1984). Ways to leave your lover. Communication Quarterly, 32, 310-317. Roger, D., & Bull, P. (1989). Conversation. Avon, England: Multilingual Matters. Rorty, R. (1992). The linguistic turn: Recent essays in philosophical method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1967.) de Saussure, F. (1966). Course in general linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill. Scott, L. (1983). Formulations in married couples' conversations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin. Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sims, A. (1984). The compliment sequence. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin. Stokes, R., & Hewitt, J. (1976). Aligning actions. American Sociological Review, 41, 838-849. Tracy, K. (1993). It's an interesting article! Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 195-203.
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
555
Wieder, L. (1993). On the compound questions raised by attempts to quantify conversation analysis' phenomena, Part 1. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 151-157. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations. New York: Macmillan. Zimmerman, D. (1993). Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency revisited. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 179-195.
556
CHAPTER 34
APPENDIX THE OEUVRE OF ROBERT HOPPER Refereed Publications Bell, R., Zahn, C. J., & Hopper, R. (1984). Disclaimers. Communication Quarterly, 32, 28-40. Browning, L. D., Whitehead, J. L., & Hopper, R. (1976). Organizations as systems of influence. Group and Organizational Dynamics, 1, 355369. Coleman, L. G. Daly, G. A., & Hopper, R. (1980). Expletives and androgyny, Anthropological Linguistics, 22, 131-137. de la Zerda, N., & Hopper, R. (1979). Employment interviewers' reactions to Mexican-American speech. Communication Monographs, 46, 126-134. Drummond, K., & Hopper, R. (1993). Acknowledgement tokens in a series. Communication Reports, 6, 46-53. Drummond, K., & Hopper, R. (1993). Back channels revisited: Acknowledgment tokens and speakership incipiency. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 26, 157-178. Fitch, K., & Hopper, R. (1983). If you speak Spanish, they'll think you're a German. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 4, 115-127. Flores, N., & Hopper, R. (1975). Mexican-Americans' evaluations of spoken Spanish and English, Speech Monographs, 42, 91-98. Gundersen, D. F., & Hopper, R. (1976). Relationships between speech delivery and speech effectiveness. Communication Monographs, 43, 158-165. Hopper, R. (1995). Episode trajectory in conversational play. In P. ten Have & G. Psathas (Eds.), Situated order: Studies in the social organization of talk and embodied activities (57-71). Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Hopper, R. (1993). Conversational dramatism and everyday life performance. Text and Performance Quarterly, 13, 181-183. Hopper, R. (1992). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation. Text and Performance Quarterly, 12, 113-124. Hopper, R. (1991). Hold the phone. In D. Zimmerman & D. Boden (Eds.), Talk and social structure (pp. 217-231). Cambridge, England: Polity Press. Hopper, R. (1991). Observer: Steps to an ecology of mind [poem]. Communication Theory, 1, 267-268.
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
557
Hopper, R. (1989). Sequential ambiguity in telephone openings: "What are you doin." Communication Monographs, 56, 240-252. Hopper, R. (1988). Speech, for instance. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 5, 47-63. Hopper, R. (1981). How to do things without words: The taken-for-granted as speech-action. Communication Quarterly, 29, 228—236. Hopper, R. (1981). The taken-for-granted. Human Communication Research, 7, 195-211. (Received SCA award from Language & Social Interaction Division, 1996.) Hopper, R. (1977). Language attitudes in the job interview. Communication Monographs, 44, 346-351. Hopper, R. (1973). Is deprivation linguistic? Kansas Journal of Sociology, 9, 209-216. Hopper, R. (1973). Remarks on teaching grammar. The Southern Speech Communication Journal, 38, 279-284. Hopper, R. (1972). Overgeneralization as a learning strategy in communicative development. Western Speech, 47-52. Hopper, R. (1971). Communicative development and children's responses to questions. Speech Monographs, 38, 1-9. Hopper, R. (1971). Expanding the notion of competence. The Speech Teacher, 20, 29-35. Hopper, R. Speech in telephone openings: Emergent interaction v. routines. In S. J. Sigman (Ed.), Introduction to Human Communication: Behavior, Codes and Social Interaction (pp. 118-127). New York: Simon & Schuster. (Reprinted from Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 178-194.) Hopper, R., & Bell, R. (1984). Broadening the deception construct. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70, 288-302. Hopper, R., Bosma, J. H., & Ward, J. A. (1992). Dialogic teaching of medical terminology at the Cancer Information Service. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 11, 63—74. Hopper, R., & Chen, C. (1996). Language, culture, relationship: Telephone openings in Taiwan. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 29, 291-313.
558
CHAPTER 34
Hopper, R., & Doany, N. (1989). Telephone openings and conversational universals: A study in three languages. International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 13, 148—170. Hopper, R., Doany, N., Drummond, K., & Johnson, M. (1991). Conversational universals in telephone openings. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 24, 367-385. Hopper, R., & Drummond, K. (1988). Language use and media: A microanalytic perspective, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 5, 163166. Hopper, R., & Drummond, K. (1990). Emergent goals at a relational turning point: The case of Gordon and Denise. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9, 39-65. Hopper, R., & Drummond, K. (1992). Accomplishing interpersonal relationship: Telephone openings of strangers and intimates. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 3, 185—200. Hopper, R., & Fitch, K. (1981). The informing function in second language instruction, The Journal of the Communication Association of the Pacific, 10, 51-58. Hopper, R., & Glenn, P. (1994). Repetition and play in conversation. In B. Johnstone (Ed.), Perspectives on repetition, Vol. 2. (pp. 29—40). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Hopper, R., Knapp, M. L., & Scott, L. (1981). Couples' personal idioms: Exploring intimate talk. Journal of Communication, 31, 23-34. Hopper, R., & LeBaron, C. (1998). How gender creeps into talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31, 59-76. Hopper, R., & Miller, L M. (1972). Children's dependence upon visual context in sentence comprehension. Speech Monographs, 39, 140-143. Hopper, R., Thomason, W. R., & Ward, J. A. (1993). Demographic questions in telephone calls to the Cancer Information Service. Southern Journal of Communication, 58, 115-127. Hopper, R., & Williams, F. (1973). Speech characteristics and employabiliry. Speech Monographs, 40, 296—30 Hopper, R., & Wrather, N. (1978). Teaching functional communication skills in the secondary classroom. Communication Education, 37, 316—321. Knapp, M. L., Hopper, R., & Bell, R. (1984). Compliments: A descriptive taxonomy, Journal of Communication, 34(4), 12-31. (A revised version was published in Psychology Today, 19, 1985, 24-29.) Lawrence, S. G., Stucky, N. P., & Hopper, R. (1990). The effects of sex dialects and sex stereotypes on speech evaluations, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9, 209-224.
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
559
Modaff, J. V., & Hopper, R. (1984). Why speech is "basic?". Communication Education, 33, 37-42. Morris, G. H., & Hopper, R. (1993). Remediation and legislation in everyday talk: How communicators achieve consensus. In S. J. Sigman (Ed.), Introduction to human communication: Behavior, codes and social interaction (pp. 319-327). New York: Simon & Schuster. (Reprinted from Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 266-276). Morris, G. H., Hopper, R., Zahn, C. J., & Bell, R. (1985). Measuring language attitudes: The Speech Evaluation Instrument. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 4, 113-123. Ragan, S. L., & Hopper, R. (1981). Alignment talk in the job interview. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 9, 85-103. Ragan, S. L., & Hopper, R. (1984). Ways to leave your lover. Communication Quarterly, 32, 310-317. Stringer, J., & Hopper, R. (1998). Generic he in Conversation? Quarterly Journal of Speech, 84, 2, 209-221. Thomason, W. R., & Hopper, R. Pauses and transition relevance. Human Communication Research, 18, 429-444.
Invited Essays & Portions of Books, etc. Bradac, J. J., Wiemann, J. M., & Hopper, R. (1989). The study of message effects: Retrospect and prospect. In J. J. Bradac & J. M. Wiemann (Eds.), Message effects in communication science (pp. 294-318). Los Angeles: Sage. Doany, N. K., & Hopper, R. (1994). Saussure at play: From linguistics to poetics. In R. Conville (Ed.), Philosophical approaches to language and communication (pp. 11-22). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Drummond, K., & Hopper, R. (1991). Misunderstanding and its remedies: Telephone miscommunication. In N. Coupland, J. Wiemann, & H. Giles (Eds.), Handbook of miscommunication and problematic talk (pp. 301-315). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Hopper, R. (1998). Flirtation: Conversation analyses in life and fiction. In S. Banks & A. Banks (Eds.), Fact/Fiction. Alta Vista Publishers. Hopper, R. (1990). Describing speech phenomena. In J. Anderson (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 13 (pp. 245-254). Beverly Hills: Sage.
560
CHAPTER 34
Hopper, R. (1990). The telephone and the re-discovery of conversation. In M. Medhurst (Ed.), Communication and the culture of technology (221238). Washington State University Press, Pullman. Hopper, R. (1989). Conversation analysis and social psychology as descriptions of interpersonal communication. In D. Roger & P. Bull (Eds.), Conversation (pp. 48-66). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Hopper, R. (1986). Speech evaluation of intergroup dialect differences: The shibboleth schema. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.,), Intergroup communication (pp. 127-136). London: Edward Arnold. Hopper, R. (1986). Switching partners in conversation. Belfast Working Papers in Language and Linguistics, pp. 221-242. Hopper, R. (1983). Interpretation as coherence production. In R. T. Craig & K. Tracy (Eds.), Conversational coherence (pp. 81-99). Beverly Hills: Sage. Hopper, R. (1982). Powerful is as powerful speaks: Linguistic sex differences reconsidered. In L. Larmer & M. B. Badami (Eds.), Communication, language and gender (pp. 162-170). Madison: University of Wisconsin Extension Press. Hopper, R. (1977). The verbal symbol system. In R. E. Bassett & M. J. Smythe, Communication in instruction. New York: Harper & Row. Hopper, R. (1976). Development of Language Codes. In R. R. Allen and K. Brown (Eds.), The development of communicative competence. Chicago: National Textbook Co. Hopper, R. (in press). What we know about telephone conversation. In H. Sawhney, (Ed.), Telephonic Communication. Hopper, R., Koch, S., & Mandelbaum, J. (1986). Conversation analysis methods. In D. G. Ellis & W. A. Donohue (Eds.), Contemporary issues in language and discourse processes (pp. 169-186). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Hopper, R., & Street, R. L. (1982). A model of speech style evaluation, in E. Ryan & H. Giles (Eds.), Attitudes toward language variation (pp. 175188). London: Edward Arnold. Hopper, R., Thomason, R., Sias, P. M., & Ward, J. A. (1995). Disclaimers in telephone calls to the Cancer Information Service. In G. H. Morris & R. Chernail (Eds.), Talk of the Clinic (pp. 171-184). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Williams, F. et al (including R. Hopper). (1976). Explorations in the Linguistic Attitudes of Teachers. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Wood, B. S. et al. (including R. Hopper). (1977). Development of functional communication competencies, pre-K-grade 6. ERIC.
INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
561
DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS AND MASTER'S THESES DIRECTED BY ROBERT HOPPER Dissertations Black, D. R. (1987). The not said: Advantages of not being explicit. Brown, M. H. (1982). That reminds me of a story: Speech action in organizational socialization. Damhorst, M. L. (1981). The impact of formality and similarity of attire on observers' descriptions of interpersonal events. de la Zerda, N. (1977). Employment interviewers' reactions to Mexican American Speech. Doany, N. K. (1992). Donner la parole a Saussure. Drummond, K. (1990). Back-channels revisited. Glenn, P. (1987). Laugh and the world laughs with you: Shared laughter episodes in conversation. Gundersen, D. F. (1974). Speech delivery and effectiveness. Jarmon, L. (1996). Embodied actions and turn-taking in conversation. Johnson, M. (1995). Tejano Speaking. Jones, C. (1993). Supportiveness in physician-patient interviews: The case of the missing assessments. Lawrence, S. G. (1988). The effects of sex dialects and sex stereotypes on speech evaluation. LeBaron, C.D. (1998). Building Communication: Architectural gestures and the embodiment of new ideas. Mandelbaum, J. (1987). Recipient-driven storytelling in conversation. Modaff, D. (1995). Openings in doctor-patient interviews. Morris, G. H. (1980). A cybernetic model of alignment. Ragan, S. L. (1982). Alignment talk in the employment interview. Scott, L. (1983). Formulations in married couples' conversations. Sims, A. L. (1984). The compliment sequence. Soukup, P., S. J. (1985). The term 'medium' in United States communication research, 1920-1940. Street, R. L. (1980). Evaluation of noncontent speech accommodation.
562
CHAPTER 34
Stringer, J. L. (1997). The performance of bilingual interaction in a Latino community. Tilghman, P. P. (1976). Influence of visual cues on children's comprehension strategies. Thomason, W. R. (1992). The non-transition-relevant turn. Watkins, C. E. (1974). White teachers' evaluations of black children's speech. Williams, L. (1991). Ethnic dialects and the employability question. Wrather, N. D. (1997). Side sequences and coherence in children's discourse. Wrobbel, E. D. (1994). Interactive processes in family therapy. Zahn, C. (1986). The bases for differing evaluations of male and female speech.
Theses Bosma, J. H. (1991). Dialogic teaching of medical terminology at the Cancer Information Service. Chen, C. (1993). Telephone openings in Taiwan. de la Zerda, N. (1974). Mexican Americans' evaluations of spoken Spanish and English. Fitch, K. (1982). A frame analysis of language switching. Koenig, C. (1998). Ah in Spanish Conversation to Mark the Receipt of New Information. Mandelbaum, J. (1983). Speaking of love. Modaff, J. V. (1982). Why speech is basic. Morris, G. H. (1978). The remedial interchange. Sims, A. L. (1980). Children's responses to assertions of adults and peers. Warfel, K. (Hawkins). (1982). Evaluation of Male and Female Speech. Wrather, N. D. (1976). The informative function in the first grade classroom.
35 The Scientist as Humanist: Moral Values in the Opus of Robert Hopper Sandra L. Ragan University of Oklahoma No one would argue Robert Hopper's consummate social scientism. Whether in his early scholarship as a social psychologist of language and interaction or in his conversation analytic work over the last two decades, Robert's work has exhibited a rigorous empiricism. Yet there is a quality in his writing that sets it apart from much scholarship in the social sciences and that elevates it to a status beyond that attained by Robert's considerable contributions to communication theory in language, social interaction, and gender. Throughout his work runs, unabashedly it would appear, a values orientation that extols Robert's beliefs in the essential goodness of the human condition, while also gently prodding his readers toward bettering their own and others' humanity. Three themes— eliminating social injustice, educating the "students" of speech communication, and advancing the notion of dialogue in human interaction—inform the moral component of Hopper's work. Although they are present even in Robert's earliest studies of "linguistic underdogs," they enjoy fruition in his later works (e.g., Telephone Conversation (1992) and, particularly, in his latest manuscript Gendering Talk (in press)). Although all of Hopper's work is devoted to eliminating the discrimination wrought by privileged communication and privileged communicators, or in leveling the communication playing field, he was ever the speech teacher. A major component of his teaching was the primacy of human dialogue; through dialogue is our salvation—whether it be in the sounds of children or in the informational discourse of a cancer patient and an information hotline staffer. Never is the premium on dialogue as high as it is in Telephone Conversation and Gendering Talk, however. 563
564
CHAPTER 35
TELEPHONE CONVERSATION An advanced primer in the conversation analysis of telephone openings, closings, turns, and trajectories, Telephone Conversation (Hopper, 1992) also offers practical aid for the "telephobic" as well: Telephone speaking skills, a mundane taken-for-granted, are not taught, Hopper bemoaned: "We lack a pedagogy for this speech environment because we have not explored it" (p. 5). Hopper's promise is to help readers achieve an "increased critical awareness of your own speaking patterns" (p. 5). He delivered. In a practitioners' epilogue at the book's end, Robert advised in a list of 11 dicta how speakers can increase their contentment, insight, and effectiveness in telephone conversations, ending with Walt Whitman's advice to listen to our own poetic voices. A commitment to educating his reader can also be traced through his work. Robert's research manifests throughout his career his dedication to learning—whether that learning be in children's acquisition of competent communication patterns, in cancer patients' needs to know of current treatment options, in women's and men's understanding of communication and courtship behaviors that create and reify gender stereotypes. More importantly, Robert's work grounds learning in dialogue. He queried in Telephone Conversation (Hopper, 1992): "How do we educate members of society to be effective communicators when communicative tasks are not best described as work done by individual speakers?" (p. 67). That is, how do we as communication educators teach dialogic skills, achieved over sequential turns of talk, rather than educate students in the traditional mode of being effective encoders and decoders? Moreover, specific to telephone talk but perhaps to other speech genres as well, how can we educate students in the "difficult to specify pas de deux" that are the "dances of good persons conversing well" (p. 67) but that do not, necessarily, embody traditional speech imperatives to be clear, precise, and vivid in speaking? Robert's answer: "We must seek ways to tailor speech instruction to students as community members—as dialogue partners. We also must learn the uses of dialogic muddling through as a complement to precise message encoding" (p. 67). The art of good speaking, good listening and, apparently, of good living is the art of becoming a competent "dialogue partner," although Robert would scarcely define "competent" in some of the prescriptive ways employed by the discipline. Rather his notion of competent, gleaned from his most recent work, but also hearkening back to his earliest scholarship, is of communicative artistry. This notion finds fruition in Robert's most recent manuscript, Gendering Talk.
SCIENTIST AS HUMANIST
565
GENDERING TALK The culmination of almost 25 years of teaching and researching in gender and communication, this book is a brilliant and innovative treatise on a topic that has almost become hackneyed in our discipline—and yet is one that myriad volumes before Robert's have only partially illuminated. Robert's theme is that ordinary speech practices and performances between women and men—in flirting, courtship, lovemaking, and decoupling—produce the very gender "differences" that our culture has come to see as natural, fixed features of communication between the sexes. Robert does not see women and men hailing from different planets, a prevailing view in the popular literature, nor does he believe that intercultural communication differences account for the relational and communication difficulties between men and women. Instead: We are co-makers of performed gender upon the social planet we all inhabit. The human conversation, to which our lives are a brief visit, carries our performances of gendering talk. Human languages are poems that speak us, gender identity and all, into being. Let us listen carefully to each other, with that special rapt attention we might bring to poetry being read aloud, (p. 7)
Early in the text of Gendering Talk, Robert reiterated his predisposition to dialogue over monologue, associating monologue, with its emphasis on accuracy and dominance, with the masculine gender (a view in which gender troubles are the consequences of differences), and dialogue, with its features of interaction and community building, with the feminine gender ( a view in which men and women share the same problems and work collaboratively to resolve these). Dialogue thus permits us to ". . . engage optimistically in the communicative tasks of mutual understanding, support, intimacy, and politics" (p. 11). At the same time, however, Robert revealed that dialogue by itself does not spell competent communication, that effective communicators have to be able to operate in both dialogic and monologic modes. Finally, although he favored the dialogic explanation, his questioning of the gendered associations of monologue and dialogue, his wish to "uncouple this dichotomy of communication forms from oversimplified assignment to gendered categories" (p. 11) surmounts any susceptibility to the very gender stereotypes he declaimed. Gendering Talk purports to show us how everyday, mundane talk, that same talk that has been the basis for all of Robert's conclusions about the human condition, exhibits and continues our gendered practices. Yet throughout his discussions of flirting, sexual violence, couple formation, and differences in talk
566
CHAPTER 35
about and talk between women and men (an encompassing view of gender that sees the darkest forces in the battle of the sexes at the far end of a continuum that begins with seemingly innocuous courtship rituals), Robert aimed to educate us, perhaps to indoctrinate us in his empirically grounded belief that "if we learn to understand that range of and variety of gendering talk, we might yet discover that women and men inhabit a single slowly-improving planet" (p. 14). Toward the end of the book, Robert returned to one of his old themes— that speech practices can create level playing fields for speakers rather than privileging standard versus nonstandard speakers, linguistic bulldogs versus linguistic underdogs, telephone junkies versus "telephobics," men versus women. Speaking optimistically, as is always his wont, Robert implored: If we wish to change the world to provide a more level playing field for men and women, we might develop greater awareness of these gendering performances and seek to bring them into a greater degree of self-control. I am optimistic that this can and should be done, but believe it to be the work of multiple generations of speakers, women and men—people—from Earth, (pp. 260-261)
At the end of Gendering Talk, a book whose premises and conclusions are more empirically grounded than most on this topic, Robert was ever the speech teacher, still the advocate for considered dialogue, as he warned the reader against easy fixes (e.g., correcting another's speech) in leveling the playing field. His parting note is a dictum that we try to achieve male-female parity with "great seriousness" and with "our most cosmic sense of humor" (p. 291). Educating, dialoguing, leveling—these artistic performances are the hallmarks of Hopper's communication ethics; these are the moral guidelines transparent in his life work. I don't recall him telling his graduate students that the highest good of social science research was at once the celebration of and the improvement of the human condition, yet his scholarship and his teaching consistently manifest that credo. One discovers only rarely in life a good scientist or a good humanist. In Robert Hopper, we blessedly know both.
REFERENCES Hopper, R. (1992). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hopper, R. (in press). Gendering talk. Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
36 The Great Poem Leslie H. Jarmon University of Texas at Austin This essay honors the teaching methods practiced by Robert Hopper as experienced by one of his students. I completed my doctorate in communication under Hopper's supervision in the summer of 1996. One of the works favored by Hopper in his courses on social interaction and performance was Plato's dialogue, Phaedrus. If a champion of conversation analysis had existed among the ancients, it surely might have been Socrates, a teacher with an appetite for learning. Just as surely, Hopper's appetite for learning kept his classes vibrating with a dynamic spirit of face-to-face conversational inquiry, no mean feat in the 1990s of multimedia and distance-learning. As Socrates and his student, Phaedrus, explore the relationship between discourse and love, a double-layered portrayal of teaching emerges. Socrates contrasts written texts with the embodied dialogue that can take place between two thinkers who are copresent. Socrates moves through his discourse on discourse while he and Phaedrus simultaneously move, talk, listen, and rest themselves along the river banks of the Ilissus, immersed in the orality and physicality of face-to-face interaction. The dialogue models the teaching practice it describes: While arguing explicitly for the profound advantages of co-present interaction in the learning process, Socrates also admits that written texts can be for him like bait for hungry beasts, and he playfully tells/teases Phaedrus, ". . . so you brandish before me words in books and could lead me on a tour of all Attica and anywhere else you pleased" (Plato, 1956, p. 7). Thus, in word and action, in speech and in performance, we hear and see Socrates teach about the sacred nature of discourse and the power of the spoken word to sow seeds in souls. Late in the dialogue, Plato (1956) obliterated any remaining doubt about Socrates' position (p. 70): 567
568
CHAPTER 36
Phaedrus:
Socrates:
Do you mean the living, animate discourse of a man who really knows? Would it be fair to call the written discourse only a kind of ghost? Precisely
And in this way did Hopper's teaching method entice students with a feast of "ghostly" texts, written discourses on human communication and the floating mystery of language. Carefully selected for their conceptual and philosophical kernels of recorded wisdom, Hopper brandished before his students the ideas of Plato, Burke, the Batesons (father and daughter), Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Gadamer, Bakhtin, Foucault, Sacks, and choice others. At his instruction, we read them and made what sense of them we could. Weekly, at his instruction, we wrote what he referred to as a "fragment," a 1 or 2-page vertical plunge into a single idea or insight in the text that snagged our attention. And, again, at his instruction, in this fragment of writing/thinking we were asked to include a concrete example of whatever we might be writing about, to include, that is, an instance from everyday life. Thus prepared with the reading, some small piece of writing, and a glimpse of connection to our daily lives, we would reenter the classroom and Hopper proceeded to engage us as participants in his foray into the text. On any given day, this was the essence of the Hopper performance: He asked. He listened. He widened his eyes, shook his head back and forth, raised gangly arms, and burst into a river of discourse. Sometimes, with closed eyes, he almost whispered. The special element was this: Right there before our own open eyes, Hopper conjured up the spirit of the ghostly writer and wrestled with him or her over what it is that is so critically compelling about their idea and why we should care. We were entranced by the naked vulnerability of this animated scholar who was articulating, of all things, an ethics within the spirit of inquiry. Not knowledge for the sake of itself; but rather, for the sake of our very souls. Hopper's soul was singing and was inviting us to listen carefully to the structures of his songs, to the themes of the songs of other thinkers. There is method to this madness, quite a lot of method. In fact, seduced then by the openness of someone who was himself still learning, we trusted his guidance into a world of rigorous method. Hopper often used the metaphor of a monastic order to describe what he called our "submission" to a new path of study. He had us "novitiates" enter into a disciplined, empirical routine of the analysis of the details of human communication. He would have us do no more than he was willing to do, and, in fact, did do on a daily basis. Like a dancer at the bar exercising daily, he actually
GREAT POEM
569
modeled the behaviors we would come to acquire through practice, practice, and more practice. Repetition was the Order of the Day in Hopper's universe. But with each new repetition, one covered new territory, heard and seen as though it had not been there all along. The method Hopper perfected was built on the simple practices of Harvey Sacks and other conversation analysts. Those of you familiar with the practice of conversation analysis are intimately familiar with its rigorous, meticulous, and time-devouring routine. Hopper had his novices follow this pattern, more or less: • We collected representations (record in various forms) of humans interacting "in the wild." • We watched/listened to these representations and created logs of them. • We pursued those sequences of interaction that captured our attention for any reason at all, and logged them more carefully in still more detail. • We wrote field notes on those sequences, paying as close attention as we might to greater and greater levels of detail. • We transcribed those sequences while continuing to write field notes; this cycle involves innumerable repetitions of hearing-seeing-describing the enriched levels of detail in the sequences' structure and content. • With so much repetition, we were by then on very intimate terms with a particular instance (in some of his classes, we would even perform the conversations, with "pinpoint accuracy" as our goal). • Hopper emphasized that at this stage we were working in a new paradigm wherein the increasing degree of detail we were becoming aware of (i.e., was coming into being for us) had a synergistic effect on the kind of field notes we were able to write for that sequence. • Furthermore, on any given day, with repeated engagement of the data, new phenomena could emerge that required us to seek out prior research and the findings of other analysts. • Finally, other related instances, similar or contrasting, could begin to occur to us and thereby could enrich the discovery/recovery process of the patterns of structure underlying the interaction order. At some point, say, one third of the way into a semester, Hopper would hand out a gentle instruction sheet that guided one's efforts throughout the remainder of the course. This was usually a half-page of text, all lower case (a rhetorical move that lessened the intimidating impact of what was contained therein). Hopper indicated that we were to, simply, compile "collections" of instances (transcribed) that seemed to have some relation to one another, and, as we progressed in our observing-tfanscribing-writing routine, to keep the best
570
CHAPTER 36
example of a given collection on top of each stack. He recommended attaching any field notes to each instance, and to revisit them on occasion. As patterns continued to emerge, and he was utterly confident that they would, we were encouraged to decide whether we had something to write about that was "paper-like." Again, what is so special here is that he did not claim to know what we would find. His method of teaching us was fundamentally true in spirit to the conversation analysis methodology whose richness lies in the spontaneity and unpredictable nature of its output. Hopper engendered in us the confidence that we, too, if we truly walked the path of this discipline, would be "catching some of the details of actual occurrences" (Sacks, 1984, p. 25) of human communication. And, of course, this can work wonders. And many of us, who later have found ourselves in the position of teaching others, borrow heavily and confidently from Hopper's method of teaching, from the design of his assignments, from his reading lists, from his annotations, from our class lecture notes, and from his archive of recordings and transcriptions of human interaction. His inspiring performance as a teacher/scholar was seen not only in his own classrooms, but is seen today in the re-performances and echoes of his teaching practices as they are embodied by us, his former students, in numerous other classrooms around the country. The poetic and ethical streams of his modeling are ever-present. For example, in "Speech Errors and the Poetics of Conversation," Hopper (1992a) concluded the article with this observation: "We approach embodied interactive phenomena by way of evidence that speech errors make manifest. This evidence shows figures of speech operating in everyday interaction, and reveals fragments of the great poem speaking us into being" (p. 122). Hopper was a poet-scholar whose own embodied performances invited so many of us to feel a shared and connected sense of the great poem speaking us into being. At the end of the "Envoi" section in his book, Telephone Conversation, (1992b) Hopper's last (but not least) recommendation, Item 11, to the telephone interlocutor is as follows: "Listen and respond with a poetic ear. Listen for and cherish puns, figures of speech, rhyme, assonance, rhythm, allusion, and the like. Follow Walt Whitman's advice: listen to our poetic voices. Put your ear on the line" (pp. 220-221). And, always the dialogic teacher inviting one to continue the conversation, Hopper's last words in the book are: "Let me know what you discover" (p. 221). His appetite for learning was never satiated! And we are forever grateful.
GREAT POEM
571
REFERENCES Hopper, R. (1992a). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation. Text and Performance Quarterly, 12, 113-124. Hopper, R. (1992b). Telephone conversation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Plato. (1956). Phaedrus. (W. C. Helmbold & W. G. Rabinowitz, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Liberal Arts Press. Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on methodology. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action (pp. 21-27). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
This page intentionally left blank
37 Phone Openings, "Gendered" Talk, and Conversations About Illness Wayne A. Beach San Diego State University The interactional exemplars herein offer only a sketch of Robert Hopper's research, a small sampling of ordinary yet complex interactions we had the opportunity to share curiosity and concern about: phone openings, men talking about women, and conversations involving cancer. Drawn from larger sets of data, these materials provide seemingly endless analytic puzzles. These puzzles prohibit boredom while injecting regular doses of humility as the incessant search for "patterns" goes forward.
"HOW ARE YOU TODAY" Regarding the work of "How are you today" (and variations thereof) in phone openings, and some of the interactional aftershocks of their utilization, let me provide here yet another instance for existing collections. As a backdrop, I should note that it is by no means easy to elaborate on Schegloff's (e.g., 1968, 1979, 1986, 1987) exhaustive work on phone openings; he left few stones unturned in his analyses. Yet Robert offered some useful insights on matters of how strangers and intimates display and thus accomplish for one another their "relational history" (e.g., 1989b, 1989c, 1992b; Hopper & Drummond 1992). As Robert noted (Hopper, 1992b) in both summarizing Schegloff's original work on phone openings and making a case for further research on "recognition" as an exceedingly dense and complex matter, fraught with a seemingly endless array of 573
574
CHAPTER 37
conversational practices: "marked turns in telephone openings become selfexplicating bits of context. ... On the slippery and elusive path that meanders toward description of the planet-wide human conversation, the telephone opening plays an important role" (pp. 80, 91). A brief overview must suffice. During phone openings "How are you's" typically occur following "greetings," within inquiry/response slots and exchanges, are typically initiated by the caller, and once completed (if they occur at all) lay grounds for launching of first topic. Further, "How are you's" are typically, though not exclusively, utilized by intimates rather than strangers. In response to "How are you," a routine "Fine. How are you" is altogether unmarked. In contrast, marked responses may indicate problems and/or "special circumstances of some sorts"—that is, divergences from routine, apparent sequential ambiguities revealing that "something is up." For example, these features may be marked by (a) pauses following "How are you's," (b) failures to reciprocate greeting/inquiry, and/or (c) premonitoring and projection of possible problems (e.g., "pretty good I guess"; see Jefferson, 1980). In a nutshell, that's the background. Now, here's the story.1 It has always stood out in my mind as a classic introduction to conversation analytic possibilities. In the late 1970s I was working with a collection of "pre-sequencing" instances (see Beach & Dunning, 1982). I believe it was in 1980, after reading Schegloff's (1980) particularly provocative "pre-pre" paper (Robert always liked "sound rows"; see Beach 1993a; Hopper 1992a; Jefferson, 1996; Sacks 1992a) that I called him at UCLA to set up an appointment during an upcoming visit to Los Angeles. It is a reconstructed conversation, but it is all I have, so take it for what it's worth. In any case, I only remember the first few moments of the call, my version of which goes like this:2 (1)
Reenacted Fieldnotes 3 ((Ring Ring)) M: Hello? W:
Professor Schegloff?
1
During the panel presentation, I noted that 1 had only shared this exemplar with Manny Schegloff "yesterday," but for Robert this should be a first hearing, qualifying him as an "unknowing recipient." This instance, then, provided an appropriate display of "relational history" for the gathering we were participating in. Further, it was with some hesitancy that I employed a "reconstructed" example, noting that "of all the panels this should be the least receptive to reconstructed conversations as data!" 2 I also noted, tongue-in-cheek, "that this will be historically, I believe, the one and only time where not only will Manny perform with me a reconstructed conversation, but a conversation that is allegedly 16 years old," in response to which Manny offered "Historical CA." 3
Transcription details are generated from the recorded reenactment.
PHONE OPENINGS
-> -> ->
M:
Ye : : S .
W:
Hi.=This is Wayne Beach calling. >How are you today.< (1.8) You must be from the midwest.4
M:
575
Here, of course, we have two strangers on the phone, the caller (W) initiating a "How are you today." often reserved for intimates, and/or some other special work, and a recipient (M) who did not (and probably could not!) let such a moment pass: Rather than providing a reciprocal "Fine. How are you.", or one of several other typical responses, and rather than answering the question more or less directly, M offered a declarative and conclusionary "You must be from the midwest."—decidedly not a question. As I recall, at that moment I was both astounded and perplexed: How had he proferred such a correct guess? Here I was calling from the University of Nebraska, having been born and raised in Iowa, yet had not volunteered such information. I remember thinking: "What an amazing ability to operate on the materials of the moment like that"—to discern enacted background and extrasituational knowledge—from the scenic details made available through particular sets of practices and apparent in not just any, but altogether contingent sequential environments.
MEN TALKING ABOUT WOMEN For nearly a quarter century Robert instructed a course on "speech and gender" at the University of Texas, Austin, the latter portion of which I began teaching a course on "stories" in conversational interaction at San Diego State University. Quite independently, one set of materials we became interested in (and continually work with students on) were practices coenacted by some men during talk about women, typically nonpresent, and commonly in "demeaning and derogatory," at times "sexist" fashion (see Hopper, 2001; Beach, 2000). Conceptual terms like demeaning, derogatory, sexist, and gender are altogether problematic analytic terms, of course, and debates regarding interactional evidence warranting these invoked concepts (or not) cannot be reoccasioned here.5 Suffice it to say, however, and contrary to popular opinion and traditional 4
At the completion of this reenactment, I turned to Robert and noted: "Robert, that performance is for you. You may never see one like it again." 5
One analytic problem, for example, might be stated as follows: Attributions of "sexism" tend to reflect negative evaluations rendered by external audiences, overhearers, and/or eavesdroppers,
576
CHAPTER 37
social scientific folklore, we have both concluded that women and men are more similar than different. Or as Robert put it during a joint lecture series we were fortunate to collaborate on at my alma matter, the University of Utah (May 1997),6 "Men and women don't really talk different, they just listen the same." One set of practices we both identified involves men enacting "choral performances" when describing women's physical appearance (e.g., "breasts"). Such activities might be characterized as follows: voiced, prosodically echoed moments of overlapped and finely synchronized "turn sharings" (see Lerner, 1996), often involving extended laughter, reflecting properly simultaneous and informal manifestations of coconstructed intimacy (Beach, 2000). The first instance I recognized is drawn from a video recording vernacularly entitled "Two Guys"; a short excerpt is overviewed next, followed by a brief contrast with one of Robert's extracts: (2)
SDCL: Two Guys l:5-14 W: > I went out with Meli:ssa l a s ( t ) ni:ght. < = T: W:
l->
T: W:
2->
T:
3-» 4->
= T T'uh
[ : h ? ] [We: w e ] n t
W:
T:
to:'u:h.(0.2)>
In n 1 Out? < Uh huh, pt .hhh An(d) uh > she's all like < T I'm uncomfortable in my dre:ss: le'me go ho:me and $cha:[ : n g : e] $ ! ! ! [$Uh HAH HAH] HAH -I HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH $ ! ! ! . e h h ( g h ) ? = Too: much cle:av[a g e ? ] $[Y: (h)es. ]
hu: 5->
hu:
[:(mph) $ ] [Mm:?mm:. ]
In (1—») W's "she's all like" previews an intonationally marked and falsetto characterization of Melissa's demeanor, a hearably mocking attempt to depict Melissa as "whiny" and stereotypically picky about her clothing. At the end of his utterance, W's final and laughingly produced word, "$cha::ng:e$ !!!," offers an invitation for shared laughter (see Glenn, 1989; Jefferson, 1979, 1984a, 1985; Jefferson, Sacks, & Schegloff, 1987). Though T's acceptance to laugh (2—») occurs immediately and in overlap, as an upshot of his close monitoring of the whereas those speakers "accused" of producing "sexist actions" are stereotypically unaware of any misconduct or wrongdoing. This special occasion involved a colloquium on "Interaction, Sexism, and Gender" and a special working session on "Communication in Medical Interviews." Appreciation is extended to Robert Avery and colleagues at the University of Utah for their timely and thoughtful hosting of this event—in retrospect, Robert's last "lecture performance." 6
PHONE OPENINGS
577
unfolding character of W's personification of Melissa as inherently laughable, it is also both prolonged and sonorous in its extreme loudness. Designing his response to W's prior disparaging performance of Melissa (1—>), T's laughter offers a contribution in its own right: Not just accepting, but also extending W's invitation with an invitation of his own, as Melissa's "cle:avage?" (3—>) is offered as having shared and recognizebly special significance. In essence, T works to "sexualize" the story by providing a sexually relevant analysis of a potentially non-sexual issue (i.e., Melissa's reason for changing her dress). This coarsely intoned and marked escalation is made available to W as T envisions what Melissa's dress may have been revealing, thereby inviting W to confirm this lewd orientation. That T's laughter and "cle:avage?" in (3—») invited crude reference to Melissa is evident in (4->): As W overlaps with a coarse and resounding "$Y:(h)es. hu:[:(mph) $]," he displays his momentarily willingness to collaborate as a vulgar coparticipant by demonstrating his understanding of T's proposed "impropriety" (see Jefferson, et al., 1987, p. 168). Finally, and in upgraded fashion, T's "[Mm:?mm:.]" (5—>) offers a flavorful assessment of the sexual project W and T have now, though momentarily, produced together. And the story proceeds next as W shifts back to reconstructing his experiences with Melissa whereas T, as story recipient, continues to pursue increasingly sexual projects and W's involvements in them. A similar example collected by Robert appears in Example 3: (3)
1—» 2-> 3-» 4-> 3-> 5-» 5—>
UTCL: L17.3 (Hopper, 2001) Jeff: Leslie Leslie with the big- whangers. (0.4) Dan: Yeah. Jeff: [A::w. Dan: [Yeh-uh (.) up in two o four? The bi- you know two o four. Jeff: Big girl, bi:g.= Dan: =We're talking bd.g everything's [big on her= Jeff; [gig. Dan: =O:h Lord.= Jeff: =huh heh hen huh huh huh [huh huh huh huh huh Dan: [How sweet, how sweet. Jeff: Indee:d, indee:d a:h yes: your- your type for sure. Dan: Yes.
Briefly, following Jeffs initial pronouncement regarding "Leslie with the bigwhangers," in (l-> & 2->) Dan and Jeff simultaneously enact, with emphasis, "big/Big." This is immediately followed by Dan's postenactment assessments
578
CHAPTER 37
(3->) of their coorientation in the midst of Jeff's extensive laughter (4->), including Dan's savory "How sweet, how sweet." And in (5-») Jeff escalates by proposing Dan's unequiovocal affinity with Leslie-as-described, a possibility Dan quickly affirms. Excerpts 2 and 3 above provide a beginning collection of storyable moments where men collaborate in addressing, envisioning, and even savoring women's "cleavage/whangers." At key moments these coeneactments emerge as voiced and prosodically resonant "turn sharings," that is, "choral performances" enlivening their disparagements and creating opportunities for shared intimacy, yet without specifically treating one another's actions as inappropriate or (and excuse the pun) tasteless. From examining interactions such as these, insights into Gendering Talk (Hopper, in press) can begin to be realized by anchoring our concerns in real time, everyday communication processes.
TALKING ABOUT AND THROUGH CANCER It has recently been observed that "one out of every three families in the Western world is touched by cancer" (Baider, Cooper, & De-Nour, 1996, p. xvii), and that "Each year, over 1.2 million Americans learn they have cancer. . . . The American Cancer Society estimates that approximately 565,000 Americans die each year from cancer-related causes" (Haylock, 1998, pp. 171-172; see also Landis, Murray, & Bolden, 1998). Each contributor to this volume, and no doubt many readers as well, have spoken with one another (and perhaps also, at some point in time, with Robert) about his "cancer journey" (see Kristjanson & Ashcroft, 1994; see also my chap. 10). Clearly, as most persons have directly known or know about others adversely impacted by a cancer diagnosis, and fewer though significant numbers of individuals are themselves cancer patients, talking about and through cancer is seemingly omnipresent and thus omnirelevant in everyday life. But if by chance any given individual has not been affected in some way by cancer diagnoses, daily life is replete with talk about other maladies that qualify equally well: For though cancer is predominant, it is only one of a myriad of passing, chronic, and/or terminal conditions receiving (at times demanding) our attention. However, little is known about the distinctive features of illness-related conversations, occurring predominantly outside of the clinic, though not infrequently about clinical matters (e.g., what the doctors told you, or passing on what someone told you that the doctors told them, etc.). Research on conversations in the midst of cancer predicaments was under way prior to
PHONE OPENINGS
579
Robert's diagnosis,7 a project Robert has been aware of from its inception because (and perhaps not coincidentally) the phone call materials comprising this corpus were collected by a student we both mentored. Representing the first natural history of a family conversing about a loved one's (wife/mother/sister/daughter-in-law, etc.) cancer, from diagnosis until death, the corpus consists of 57 calls over a 13-month period, between six family members and over a dozen additional interactional participants. Analysis is presently focusing on a subcollection of over 100 "news delivery sequences" (see Beach, 2001; Maynard, 1997; Maynard, in press), often delicately produced moments wherein family members initiate, deliver, and assimilate news (see Beach, in press).8 Aside from determining the interactional organization of these specific moments, attention is also being given to how news gets updated over time, longitudinally, throughout the course and progression of cancer, as the family tracks Mom's condition. For example, determining how (or if) the family moves from treating the diagnosis as a highly technical and extraordinary set of events, to an accepted and taken-for-granted feature of their dilemma, is of particular interest. Similarly, other key activites emerge as an upshot of members' preoccupations with them, such as the interactional achievement of "lay diagnoses," "uncertainty," "social support," "hope," and "grieving." Taken together, findings revealing the distinct ways these activities are treated as potentially "dreaded issues" (Perakyla, 1995), including their relevance to acclimatization and prognosis as routine family matters, are only beginning to emerge. One brief instance must suffice (but see chap. 10). In the opening moments of the first phone call in the corpus, and prior to the first delivery and receipt of diagnostic news, Dad (D) and Son (S) coenact an extended phone opening revealing hesitancy to move directly to "the news," for whom D was the "bearer" and S the "recipient" (Jefferson, 1984a, 1984b). Though clues were provided by D that the as yet unarticulated news was bad, his premonitorings (Jefferson, 1980) of forthcoming trouble did not lead him to announce the news without S's assistance. And although S did not outrightly "guess" what the news 7
The inception of this research project was motivated not by personal experience, but by the uniqueness and richness of the interactions remaining to be examined. However, since beginning work on these materials my mother was diagnosed and died from cancer, and including Robert, numerous friends and family members have undergone cancer treatment. This raises a host of important issues, not the least of which are ways the intersection of personal and research involvements find their ways into scientific inquiry (and/or are noticeably absent from them), including both positive and potentially negative consequences. 8 The continuation of this research has been made possible through generous support provided by the American Cancer Society (Grant #ROG-98-172-01).
580
CHAPTER 37
might be, a common feature of conjecturing in the midst of bad news (see Schegloff, 1988), he was coimplicated (see Maynard, 1992) to ask about "it" in Line 19 below: (4) 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
SDCL:Malignancy#l:l-2 -» S: D:
S: D:
-»
S: D: -> S:
What's up. (0.6) pt(hh) They ca:me ba:ck with the::: hh needle biopsy results, or at least: in part: . °Mm hm:° .hh The turn:or:: that is the:: uh adrenal gla:nd tumor tests positive.=It is: malignant. O:kay? = = .hhh a::hh(m)= = That's the one above her kidney?
Much can be said about the differential knowledge S brings to bear on this sensitive news environment. In Line 19, the emergent and bearably serious tone of S's "What's up.", one instance of an "itemized news inquiry" (Button & Casey, 1995) soliciting information about specific rather than general news, reveals S's foreknowledge that indeed "something was up". And it requires another discussion altogether (Beach, in press a, b) to address the sources of S's displayed knowledge, namely, the immediately prior phone opening with D and/or his ongoing monitoring of Mom's experience of ongoing health problems including impending "biopsy" tests. Similarly, many details inherent to Lines 20-24 are extremely important to address that cannot be adequately raised here, including how D hears S's "What's up.." as asking for a diagnostic update, and his recognizably "biomedical" (e.g., technical, jargon-filled) orientation to the news delivery. What might be observed, however, is that S's "O:kay?" plus "That's the one above her kidney?" (Lines 27 & 29) are frequently commented upon by those inspecting Malignancy #1 for the first time as (more or less) a somewhat strange, oddly "stoic" reaction (see Maynard, in press) for a son to having just heard that his mom was diagnosed with a malignant tumor. For whatever reasons, people have described to me an inherent expectation that an immediate "Oh my God!" or "Oh no!" is "normal." And so it would seem, at least until analysis makes clear that D's disinclination to move directly to the news achieves other noteworthy actions: displaying himself as a central character impacted by the news, yet constraining the impulse for stronger reaction (e.g., crying and/or anger; see Jefferson, 1988; Maynard, in press); orienting S as recipient of the news to the need for tracking the likely and soon-to-be reported trouble, yet providing for negotiable and collaborative possibilities in determining whether or not the trouble will even be addressed, and if so, just "whose trouble it is and, thus, how it will be talked about" (Jefferson, 1980, p. 166).
PHONE OPENINGS
581
By recruiting "O:kay?" as a resource for momentarily placing D's elaborated news delivery on hold (see Beach, 1993b; 1996), S's move to "That's the one above her kidney?" displays his prior knowledge about Mom's condition but also his willingness to clarity his understandings of the news in relation to D's delivery of it. Here S's actions coauthor and thus shape both how the news gets initially delivered and that he shares knowledge and concerns, even though he is not the bearer of the updated news. It is from these kinds of moments that "family" can (in part) be understood as practical achievements, especially in the ways news is not simply initiated and delivered, but also altered in its course as recipients rely on their knowledge of an incident to shape just what "the news" eventually amounts to.
FUNDAMENTAL SCHOLARLY COMMITMENTS What follows is an overview of Robert Hopper's fundamental scholarly commitments and a characterization of his distinct spirit of inquiry, signatures or fingerprints exceeding yet complimenting his theoretical and methodological priorities, distinguishing features through which his work continues to touch and positively influence so many persons' lives and careers. There are, of course, other distinguishing features of Robert's work extending well beyond the interactional materials summarized earlier—varied and important contributions Robert made within the communication academy, and beyond, uniquely qualifying him as a founding member of language and social interaction divisions and as a role model to emulate—scholarship encompassing a diverse range of critical topics from speech errors and selfrepairs to cultural universals, acknowledgment tokens to possibilities for quantification, hedging disclaimers in Cancer Information Service phone calls to displays of relationship history (or lack thereof) in telephone openings, ethnography to conversation analysis, and a pioneering concern with performance studies and "poetics" (see Beach, 1993a, Hopper, 1992a; Jefferson, 1996)—only one of many instances where Robert sought connections rather than artificial dichotomies, community rather than pockets of isolated priorities, deconstructions of scholarly "cocoons" otherwise preventing the exchange of ideas and worldviews. In short, Robert has consistently offered a reasoned voice on debatable and current issues throughout this critical evolution of the field and emergence of LSI studies, several clear themes of which appear as follows: • A distinct preoccupation with theory, persistently working with and through the assumption that theories should be designed to enhance insight, not
582
CHAPTER 37
replace it. These wideranging discussions were centered around two recurrent themes: (a) a debunking of theory/method bipolarization, and (b) an avoidance of premature/armchair theorizing promoting underspecification of phenomena. • The inseparability of "micro/macro" concerns when situating theoretical concerns within conversation anlaytic priorities, such that any concerns with culture, power, status, role, or gender, for example, might ultimately be grounded in participants' concerted actions indigenous to rather than separated from the occasions in which they gather (e.g., as with speech act "theory"). • An early and seemingly constant preoccupation with methods as related to theory, addressing issues and approaches germane to "social psychology," "speech act theory," various modes of "discourse analysis," and "background/extrasituational knowledge" as clues in our search for reasonable and empirically warrantable solutions—in shifting from "methods" as tools researchers possess to "methods" as resources participants in interaction use and rely on to systematically and altogether contingently organize social occasions (see, e.g., Hopper, 1988, 1989a, 1991). Consider also the following two examples, positions that may be obvious in our current research practices but, I can assure you, were formidable hurdles to overcome during the last two decades and remain currently problematic: • Moves away from early and ongoing utilizations of ungrounded "coding schemes"—replete with a priori, exhaustive "categories" and indexical decision rules—toward a "reflexivity of coding" more closely aligned with recordings, transcriptions, and unmotivated listening sessions (see, e.g., Beach, 1990; Hopper, 1988, 1989a). • Moves away from "individuals" as units of analysis, designed to articulate the usefulness yet inevitable limitations of self-reported and exclusively ethnographic field data. Understanding "communication" as a pooled collectivity of individual perceptions overlooks coauthored social actions, and there appear to be marked differences between reporting about versus engaging in real-time, collaborative involvements of choice and action. The alternatives included a superb collection of audio- and video-recorded interactional materials, and carefully produced transcriptions of these events, made available to a wide variety of scholars representing diverse interests and backgrounds (e.g., the University of Texas conversation library).
PHONE OPENINGS
583
ON SPIRIT OF INQUIRY: AND THE JOURNEY CONTINUES . . . Extending well beyond Robert's productivity was a spirit of inquiry he brought to his work and play, perhaps ethereal and difficult to articulate, but nevertheless an enacted demeanor through which countless persons continue to be swayed and inspired through his example. Only a handful of identifying features are summarized as follows: • A poetic interest in all topics, marked by a twinkle-of-the eye, elflike curiosity, supportive and open, that is uniquely and embryonically Robert's own craft and handiwork. • A stubborn and demanding commitment to conversation analytic and ethnomethodological concerns, to the study of everyday life activities and actions on their own merits, and to the warrantability of claims regarding naturally occurring interactions. • A well-spring of energy, directed not just to self-advancement but unselfishly to the common good, where work and play not only coexist but often cannot be discerned one from the other. • A brainstorming partner par excellence: a champion of what might be characterized as "omnipresent and omnirelevant dialectics." • An amazing ability to get things done on time.9 In approximately 300 A.D., it was reported that St. Augustine heard a voice in Latin, and in the imperative mode, "tolle lege, tolle lege"—"pick it up and read it, pick it up and read it." As a recommendation for Robert's work, I can only echo this proclamation. As this chapter is brought to a close, however, I would be remiss not to mention that Robert was an individual with whom I shared many mountaintop experiences, all well worth the climb, where views were expansive and spirits soared. Whether walking through dense urban terrain, or during hikes and multiple skiing adventures, it is clear that these and similar occasions were 9
In fact, I've even wondered whether or not "procrastination" was ever really a burr in Robert's side! One project he was not able to complete, however, was a special issue of Text he was asked to edit on "something medical" (as his illness progressed he became, not surprisingly, increasingly interested in the close examination of a variety of medical/health interactions). Two months prior to his death, Robert asked if I would take on the responsibility of moving the project forward, which I have, resulting in a special issue (published 2001) focusing on "lay diagnosis" in both medical interviewing and family communication contexts.
584
CHAPTER 3 7
indispensable for giving birth to ideas and creating forums for their dissemination. All such gatherings transformed "work" into playful but no less substantive excursions: • Across conferences throughout the 1970s, the 1981 summer conference at the University of Nebraska, specialty conferences such as those at Temple, Michigan State, Santa Barbara, and far too many Speech Communication Association (now, National Communication Association), International Communication Association, and Western Communication conferences to remember. • Equally important are the literally hundreds of informal data sessions, far more than can possibly be recounted here, gatherings that have gradually moved from hotel rooms to events such as the now decade-long Open Data/Listening Sessions (which Robert and I coorganized from the outset for the Western Communication Association, and which were celebrated in February of 2000 at the Sacramento conference), and the Conversation Analysis Master Class for the National Communication Association (which Jenny Mandelbaum organized). To this day Robert remains a joyful and courageous presence. Even in the midst of his own suffering he embraced a deep and abiding faith, rooted in a clear-cut recognition that our "crucial business" reveals, more often than not, "the folly of human wisdom": a constant and critical reminder not to take ourselves too seriously, to fully utilize the many gifts we have been blessed with, and to appreciate journeys traveled together as boundless opportunities for fellowship.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This chapter is an edited version of a presentation made during a Language and Social Interaction (LSI) panel, devoted to honoring Robert Hopper's scholarship and diverse contributions, at the 1996 International Communication Association conference in Chicago. Additional panel participants included John Heritage, Jenny Mandelbaum, Bud Morris, and Manny Schegloff.
REFERENCES Baider, L., Cooper, C. L., & De-Nour, A. K. (Eds.). (1996). Cancer and the family. New York: Wiley.
PHONE OPENINGS
585
Beach, W. A., & Dunning, D. G. (1982). Pre-indexing and conversational organization. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 68, 170-185. Beach, W. A. (1990). Orienting to the phenomenon. In J. Anderson (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 13 (pp. 216-244). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Beach, W. A. (1993a). The delicacy of preoccupation. Text and Performance Quarterly 13,299-312. Beach, W. A. (1993b). Transitional regularities for 'casual' "Okay" usages. Journal of Pragmatics, 19, 325-352. Beach, W. A. (1996). Conversations about illness: Family preoccupations with bulimia. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Beach, W. A. (2000). Inviting collaborations in stories about a woman. Language in Society, 29, 379—407. Beach, W. A. (2001). Stability and ambiguity: Managing uncertain moments when updating news about Mom's cancer. Text, 21, 221-250. Beach, W. A. (in press a). Between Dad and Son: Initiating, delivering, and assimilating bad cancer news. Health Communication. Button, G., & Casey, N. (1985). Topic nomination and pursuit. Human Studies, 8, 3-55. Glenn, P. J. (1989). Initiating shared laughter in multi-party conversations. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 127-149. Haylock, P. J. (1998). Introduction & cancer metastasis: An update. Oncological Nursing, 14, 171-177. Hopper, R. (1988). Speech, for instance. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 7, 47-63. Hopper, R. (1989a). Conversation analysis and social psychology as descriptions of interpersonal communication. In D. Roger & P. Bull (Eds.), Conversation (pp. 48—66). Avon, England: Multilingual Matters. Hopper, R. (1989b). Sequential ambiguity in telephone openings: "What are you doin." Communication Monographs, 56, 240-252. Hopper, R. (1989c). Speech in telephone openings: Emergent interactions v. routines. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53, 178-194. Hopper, R. (Ed.) (1991). Ethnography and conversation analysis after Talking culture. Special section in Research on Language and Social Interaction, 25. Hopper, R. (1992a). Speech errors and the poetics of conversation. Text and Performance Quarterly, 12, 113-124. Hopper, R. (1992b). Telephone conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hopper, R. (2001). Gendering talk. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
586
CHAPTER 37
Hopper, R., & Drummond, K. (1992). Accomplishing interpersonal relationship: The telephone openings of strangers and intimates. Western Journal of Communication, 56, 185-200. Jefferson, G. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance/declination. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 79-96). New York: Irvington. Jefferson, G. (1980). On "trouble-premonitory" response to inquiry. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 153-185. Jefferson, G. (1984a). On the organization of laughter in talk about troubles. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 346-369). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, G. (1984b). On stepwise transition from talk about a trouble to inappropriately next-positioned matters. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 191-222). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, G. (1985). An exercise in the transcription and analysis of laughter. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis: Vol.3: Discourse and dialogue (pp. 25-34). London: Academic Press. Jefferson, G. (1988). On the sequential organization of troubles talk in ordinary conversation. Social Problems, 35, 418-441. Jefferson, G. (1996). On the poetics of everyday talk. Text and Performance Quarterly, 16, 1-61. Jefferson, G., Sacks, H., & Schegloff, E. (1987). On laughter in the pursuit of intimacy. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organization (pp. 152-205). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters. Kristjanson, L J. & Ashcroft, T. (1994). The family's cancer journey: A literature review. Cancer Nursing, 17(1), 1-17. Landis, S. H., Murray, T., & Bolden, S. (1998). Cancer statistics, 1998. California Cancer Journal for Clinicians. 48, 6-29. Lemer, G. (1996, November). Turn sharing: The choral co-production of talk in interaction. Paper presented at the November meeting of the Speech Communication Association, San Diego. Maynard, D. W. (1992). On co-implicating recipients in the delivery of diagnostic news. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.) Talk at work: Interactions in institutional settings (pp. 331-358). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Maynard, D. W. (1997). The news delivery sequence: Bad news and good news in conversational interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 30, 93-130.
PHONE OPENINGS
587
Maynard, D. W. (in press). Good news, bad news: A benign order in conversations, clinics, and everyday life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Perakyla, A. (1995). AIDS counseling: Institutional interaction and clinical practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1992a). Lectures on conversation Vol. I (G. Jefferson, Ed.). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Sacks, H. (1992b). Lectures on conversation Vol. II (G. Jefferson, Ed.). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Schegloff, E. A. (1968). Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist, 70, 1075-1095. Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Identification and recognition in telephone conversation openings. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language (pp.23-78). New York: Irvington. Schegloff, E. A. (1980). Preliminaries to preliminaries: "Can I ask you a question?" Sociological Inquiry, 50, 104-152. Schegloff, E .A. (1986). The routine as achievement. Human Studies, 9, 111151. Schegloff, E. A. (1988). On an actual virtual servo-mechanism for guessing bad news: A single case conjecture. Social Problems, 35, 442-457.
This page intentionally left blank
38 Nothing Promised1 James J. Bradac University of California, Santa Barbara Rising again, I fall again, and turning to the sun, I face shadows. Is there something here? Or is this the place where dusty dogs found nothing? I know there are bees near, for I hear them swarming by the desiccated oaks. Perhaps this is the place that angered angels, once in a year without lilacs, again in a year without rain. Cherry-Blossom Savior, drain what little remains of my knowledge of things and my social inclination and my memory of warm and wet and windy springs. I'm tacked to a board like a butterfly. Or perhaps I should say: Preserved in amber like a flea. Or perhaps I should say what I cannot say but I cannot say it because words get stuck in my throat like blood-clots Robert: I hope you think this interesting or at least laughable. -Jim Bradac
589
590
CHAPTER 38
or bugs and my tongue has turned to stone. No matter, we are both alone; so, words are essentially crickets in the night, rasping by porch-light in reflexive pursuit of a vanishing chance of contact. I retract everything I have said. Or I retract nothing, which is more or less the same. Can we play a game? I'll start: Tack yourself to a board And watch for spiders on the floor. That's it: there's nothing more forever. Oh, there may be small battles with juice flows and small victories of continence, but little else. Things will happen to you and there won't be much that you can do. But responses are overrated, don't you think? It's the desire that counts. Endure in silence As desire mounts and remember: You wouldn't say much if you could. Liquid the greens of the newly fleshed buds, liquid the scents of gravel and earth, liquid the molding air, all melting on dog-sniffing dogs groveling for fungi by the roots of rainbows. Mustard and thunder on a checkered cloth on a red bench echo whiskey shouts and grass-stained thighs, strangling dolor in a second's shower. Small skyballs of ice and sun throw Laughing Larry beneath branches that sing-ling life-songs for the wind. Greening drying fronds, wet gusts ring chimes by an open window. With wine in plastic cups, the bearded boys pose for a picture. This all this and this all this, Purple thistles and asparagus, meet the moon at noon in a wine-drenched kiss.
39 The Last Word Robert Hopper Editor's note: the following text was Robert Hopper's acceptance speech (presented by his daughter Christine) for the National Communication Association (NCA) mentorship award, November 1998. Dear Friends and Colleagues at NCA, I regret that I cannot be there to share the event in person. It is an honor that touches me to receive such recognition, and to give thanks: • For patriotic services Rod Hart has rendered to NCA in recent years, including the inauguration of this NCA mentor's program. I hope and believe that this program opens a new era in development work for this organization and this profession. Please contact Rod to learn more about this program and how you can get involved in this program. • For the students who've walked into my office and got me involved in their hopes, dreams, and research designs. • For the blessings of family, church, and research communities. All these are mentors too. Look around the room tonight and make eye contact: with the people who have assisted you, with those who have come to you for assistance, and for friends who have been around during the gestation of ideas. Speak to those people tonight, say thanks. Ask others tonight to tell you a tale of mentoring. Gossip, if you will, to identify those who should be recognized in future events like this one. Let us continue to observe communication pattern, and to refine those observations into communication skills: so we all can be mentors for those who never heard of NCA—that we can upgrade from HumanBeing 1.2, to HumanBeing 2.0. Let us be mentor to the poor, the needy, the codependent person, the violent person. In HumanBeing 2.0 you may change contexts gracefully, console others effectively. Let us be mentors to the world. 591
This page intentionally left blank
Appendix Transcription Symbols1 1. Temporal and sequential relationships A. Overlapping or simultaneous talk is indicated in a variety of ways. [ [
Separate left square brackets, one above the other on two successive lines with utterances by different speakers, indicates a point of overlap onset, whether at the start of an utterance or later.
] ]
Separate right square brackets, one above the other on two successive lines with utterances by different speakers indicates a point at which two overlapping utterances both end, where one ends while the other continues or simultaneous moments in overlaps which continue. So, in the following , Bee's "Uh really?" overlaps Ava's talk starting at "a" and ending at the "t" of "tough." Ava: Bee:
I
' av
[a lotta t]ough cou:rses. [Uh really?]
*****
(0.5)
B. Numbers in parentheses indicate silence, represented in tenths of a second; what is given here in the left margin indicates 5/10 seconds of silence. Silences may be marked either within an utterance or between utterances. *****
(.)
C. A dot in parentheses indicates a "micropause," bearable but not readily measurable without instrumentation; ordinarily less than 2/10 of a second.
1 From Ochs, Schegloff, and Thompson (1996). Copyright 1996 by Cambridge University Press. Adapted by permission.
593
APPENDIX
594
*****
2. Aspects of speech delivery, including aspects of intonation A. The punctuation marks are not used grammatically, but to indicate intonation. The period indicates a falling, or final, intonation contour, not necessarily the end of a sentence. ? Similarly, a question mark indicates rising intonation, not necessarily a question, , and a comma indicates "continuing" intonation, not necessarily a clause boundary. I The inverted question mark (i) is used to indicate a rise stronger than a comma but weaker than a question mark. *****
B. Colons are used to indicate the prolongation or stretching of the sound just preceding them. The more colons, the longer the stretching. On the other hand, graphically stretching a word on the page by inserting blank spaces between the letters or words does not necessarily indicate how it was pronounced; it is used to allow alignment with overlapping talk. Thus, Bee:
Ava: Bee: Ava: Bee:
Tch! (M'n)/(En ) they can't delay much lo:nguh they [ j u s 1 wannid] u h - ' h h h = [Oh : . ] =yihknow have anothuh consultation, Ri::ght. En then deci::de.
The word "ri::ght" in Ava's second turn, or "deci::de" in Bee's third are more stretched than "oh:" in Ava's first turn, even though "oh:" appears to occupy more space. But "oh" has only one colon, and the others have two; "oh:" has been spaced out so that its brackets will align with the talk in Bee's ("jus1 wannid") turn with which it is in overlap. *****
C. A hyphen after a word or part of a word indicates a cut-off or selfinterruption, often done with a glottal or dental stop.
APPENDIX
595
*****
word word WOrd
D. Underlining is used to indicate some form of stress or emphasis, either by increased loudness or higher pitch. The more underlining, the greater the emphasis. Therefore, underlining sometimes is placed under the first letter or two of a word, rather than under the letters that are actually raised in pitch or volume. Especially loud talk may be indicated by upper case; again, the louder, the more letters in upper case. And in extreme cases, upper case may be underlined. *****
>< <>
E. The combination of "more than" and "less than" symbols indicates that the talk between them is compressed or rushed. Used in the reverse order, they can indicate that a stretch of talk is markedly slowed or drawn out. *****
3. Other markings (( )) A. Double parentheses are used to mark transcriber's descriptions of events, rather than representations of them. Thus ((cough)), ((sniff)), ((telephone rings)), ((footsteps)), ((whispered)), ((pause)), and the like. *****
(word) B. When all or part of an utterance is in parentheses, or the speaker identification is, this indicates uncertainty on the transcriber's part, but represents a likely possibility. ( ) Empty parentheses indicate that something is being said, but no hearing (or, in some cases, speaker identification) can be achieved. *****
(try I)/ C. In some transcript excerpts, two parentheses may be printed, separated by a single oblique or slash; these represent (try 2) alternative hearings of the same strip of talk.
596
APPENDIX Bee:
°(Bu::t.)=/°(GoO:d.)=
Here, the degree marks show that the utterance is very soft. The transcript remains indeterminate between "Bu::t." and "Goo:d." Each is in parentheses and they are separated by a slash.
Contributors Wayne A. Beach (Ph.D., University of Utah) is Professor in the School of Communication at San Diego State University, and an Associate Member of the Cancer Center in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Recent studies focus on various aspects of medical interviewing, how families talk through cancer diagnosis and treatment, and genetic counseling. He may be contacted at: School of Communication, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, 92182-4561; (phone) 619-594-4948; (e-mail) <[email protected]>. James J. Bradac is Professor of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His major research areas are interpersonal communication, language and social psychology, and message effects, and his work in these areas has been published in journals in communication, psychology, and linguistics. His e-mail address is . Mary Helen Brown is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Auburn University. Her research interests include: narrative, organizational socialization, and presbycusis. She can be contacted at: 217 Tichenor Hall, Department of Communication, Auburn University, AL 36849 or . Kurt A. Bruder (Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin, 1994, Communication Studies; M.Ed., Texas Tech University, 1998, Counselor Education) is the Graduate Program Director for Health Communication at Emerson College and Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, MA. He is interested in the interrelationship between the specific communicative practices employed in various discourse communities and the psychological experience of their members—particularly the formation, maintenance and transformation of the human sense of self. Dr. Bruder may be contacted at 1 2 0 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116; (617) 824-8748, 824-8912 (fax); email: . Robert T. Craig, a professor of Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is a communication theorist whose research has addressed various aspects of communication as a practical discipline. A current line of research is exploring empirical and conceptual links between communication theory and ordinary metadiscursive vocabularies used to manage practical interaction, 597
598
CONTRIBUTORS
especially in the classroom. He can be reached by mail (Department of Communication, University of Colorado, 270 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309) or email at . Susan Corbin (PhD, University of Texas, 1998) is currently the undergraduate Academic Advisor for the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests focus on how talk is used by interactants to maintain relationships. She can be contacted at the Department of Communication Studies, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712 or at <[email protected]>. Suzanne Daughton is Associate Professor of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Her primary research interests are in the close analysis of rhetorical texts from political and popular culture sources; she has published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Women's Studies in Communication, Critical Studies in Mass Communication and Communication Quarterly. She is the editor in Women's Studies in Communication. She may be contacted at the Department of Speech Communication, MC 6605, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901-6605 USA; or by e-mail: . Paul Drew lectures in Sociology at the University of York, UK. His research in conversation analysis includes ordinary conversation, as well as institutional interactions: he has published widely in both these areas, including Order in Court, with Max Atkinson (1979) and Talk at Work, with John Heritage (1992), and a range of papers on such matters as figurative expressions, teasing, repair and complaints. He can be contacted at the Department of Sociology, University of York, York YO1 5DD, UK <e-mail: <[email protected]>. Kent Drummond obtained degrees from Stanford and Northwestern and, later, earned his doctorate degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1990. His dissertation, "Back Channels Revisited," was written under the supervision of Robert Hopper, with whom he wrote several articles. His current research interest addresses the intersection of aesthetics and popular culture. He can be contacted at . Kristine Fitch is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. She studies persuasion and personal relationships in cultural contexts from an ethnographic/discourse analytic perspective, and is currently conducting a cross-cultural study of friendship and marriage in Colombia, Spain, England, and Texas. She has published in Communication Monographs, Communication Theory, and Research on Language and Social Interaction, and is the author of a book on interpersonal
CONTRIBUTORS
communication in Colombia. .
599
She
can
be
reached
at
Richard M. Frankel Ph.D., is Vice President for Program Evaluation at the Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is also Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. Dr. Frankel has conducted research on a number of face to face contexts including phyisicians and patients, airline crews, and families with developmentally delayed children. He can be contacted via email at or via the Fetzer Institute, 9292 KL Ave, Kalamazoo, MI 49009. Howard Giles is Professor of Communication and Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests revolve around many different arenas in intergroup communication, such as the one explored herein. He can be contacted at . Phillip Glenn (Ph. D., University of Texas at Austin, 1987) is Associate Professor and Chair of Communication at Emerson College. His research includes the study of both casual and institutional interaction, with particular interests in processes of laughing, playing, theory-building, and arguing. He can be reached via e-mail at or via the Department of Communication, Emerson College, Boston, MA, 02116. Maria Cristina Gonzalez, Ph.D., D. Min., is Associate Professor of Communication in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University, where she holds a position as a Southwest Borderlands Scholar. She is also adjunct faculty of the University of Creation Spirituality. Her work includes long-term immersion ethnographies of Mexican, Native American and Chicano culture and two Fulbrights in Mexico. She is presently beginning work on the cultural communication of converse Sephardim. She may be reached at . Charles Goodwin is Professor of Applied Linguistics at UCLA. His research interests include video analysis of talk-in-interaction, grammar in context, gesture, gaze and embodiment as interactively organized social practices, aphasia in discourse, language in the workplace and professions, and the ethnography of science. He can be reached at Applied Linguistics, 3300 Rolfe Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles CA 90095-1531 or . John Heritage is Professor of Sociology at UCLA. His publications include Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology, Structure of Social Action (with Max
600
CONTRIBUTORS
Atkinson), Talk at Work (with Paul Drew), The News Interview (with Steven dayman), and Practicing Medicine (with Douglas Maynard). His research focuses on social interaction in broadcast news and in a wide range of medical contexts. Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra is an Associate Professor at the Department of Dutch Language and Culture, Utrecht Institute of Linguistics. Her research interests include: CA research on standardized interviews, help desk calls, and telephone conversation in general. Dr. Houtkoop-Steenstra is the author of Interaction and the Standardized Survey Interview. The Living Questionnaire (2000, Cambridge University Press). She can be reached at . Leslie Jarmon is a member of the faculty of the Graduate Studies Intellectual Entrepreneurship Program (GSIEP) at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research centers on embodied actions in the ecology of face-to-face interaction and on contrastive rhetorical practices in multicultural academic contexts. Correspondence can be directed to her at the GSIEP, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 or . Gail Jefferson (Ph.D., University of California, Irvine) is an independent scholar in the Netherlands. She publishes widely on the organization of naturally occuring conversation. She can be reached at Juckemawei 29, 9015 KA Rinsumageest, The Netherlands. Charlotte M. Jones (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is Associate Professor at Carroll College. Research interests include physician-patient interaction, therapist-client interaction, the communication of social support, and everyday interaction. Send correspondence to Department of Communication Studies, Carroll College, Helena, MT 59625 (e-mail: ). Timothy Koschmann is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Education at Southern Illinois University. He does research on interaction in settings of collaboration and learning. Much of this work has focused on problem-based learning tutorial groups in medical education. Koschmann was the editor of CSCL: Theory and Practice of an Emerging Paradigm (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996) and is co-editor (together with Naomi Miyake and Rogers Hall) of CSCL2: Carrying forward the conversation (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002). Samuel Lawrence is Assistant Professor in the Nicholson School of Communication at the University of Central Florida. His interests in
CONTRIBUTORS
601
conversation analysis include methods for achieving mutual understanding in talk-in-interaction. He has published articles in Communication Theory and Research on Language and Social Interaction. He can be reached at . Curtis D. LeBaron is an Assistant Professor in the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. He studies language and social interaction within business and organizational settings, using micro-analytic methods and digital technologies to examine video and audio recordings of naturally occurring behavior. His e-mail address is or send correspondence to Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy, TNRB 590, BYU, Provo, UT 84602. Gene Lerner is Associate Professor of Sociology and Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Much of his research centers on the place of grammatical practice in the social-sequential organization of talk-ininteraction. Correspondence should be directed to the Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 or . Jenny Mandelbaum (Ph.D., University of Texas, 1987) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Rutgers University. Her research interests include conversational storytelling, relationships, self and identity, with an emphasis on how each of these is accomplished in interaction. She can be reached at the Department of Communication, 4 Huntington St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901, or by e-mail at <[email protected]>. Doug Maynard is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is co-editor (with Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra, Nora Cate Schaeffer, and Hans van der Zouwen) of Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Interview (Wiley, 2002), and co-editor (with John Heritage) of Practicing Medicine: Talk and Action in Primary Care Encounters (Cambridge University Press, in press). He also has completed a monograph related to this chapter: Good News, Bad News: A Benign Order in Everyday Life, Clinics, and Other Social Settings (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). Address: Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI 53706. Email: <[email protected]>. Daniel P. Modaff is Associate Professor in the School of Interpersonal Communication at Ohio University. He has published several articles and chapters in language and social interaction and instructional pedagogy and is the co-author of a textbook on organizational communication. Correspondence
602
CONTRIBUTORS
should be directed to; Daniel P. Modaff, Lasher Hall, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701; <[email protected]>. John Vincent Modaff is Professor of Speech Communication at Morehead State University. His research interests include expanding the appreciable object within analytic criticism of speech communication, advancements in communication pedagogy, and the creative treatment of heated interpersonal conflict. John can be reached at the Department of Communication, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY 40351, (606) 783-2399, or <j [email protected]>. Jennifer L. Molloy is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on stigma in intergroup communication. Email: <[email protected]>. G. H. (Bud) Morris (Ph.D., University of Texas, 1980) is Professor and Chair of Communication at California State University San Marcos. He is a student of how problems are formulated, how accounts and other aligning actions are given, and how problematic situations can be resolved constructively. Contact him at the College of Arts and Sciences, California State University San Marcos, San Marcos, CA 92096-0001. Anita Pomerantz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Albany, SUNY. Using conversation analytic and ethnographic methods, she has conducted research on information seeking strategies, negotiating responsibility, and giving feedback in interpersonal, medical, and legal settings. She may be contacted at Communication Department, BA 119, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York 12222 or at . Sandra L. Ragan (Ph.D. Texas, 1981) is Professor and Graduate Liaison in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma. In the last decade, she has focused her work in language and social interaction in the context of health communication, notably women's health interactions. She did the initial editing for Robert Hopper's last book, Gendering Talk, to be published by Michigan State University Press later this year. Robert E. Sanders is Professor of Communication, University at Albany, SUNY. His research centers on the expressive resources that persons utilize to influence what the ongoing interaction or text includes, and/or how it concludes. Correspondence can be addressed to Robert E. Sanders, Department of
CONTRIBUTORS
603
Communication (BA 119), University at Albany, SUNY, Albany NY 12222; or e-mail can be addressed to . Alena L. Sanusi is a doctoral student in Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is interested applying linguistic and communication theory and the microethnographic study of interaction to explore the cultural worlds of children. She can be reached by e-mail at <[email protected]>. Emanuel A. Schegloff teaches at UCLA in Sociology, Communication Studies and Applied Linguistics. He has published over 70 papers and chapters on a variety of topics concerning conversation and other forms of talk-in-interaction as the primordial site of human sociality. He can be reached at the Department of Sociology, Box 951551, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551, or by e-mail at <[email protected]>. Jiirgen Streeck is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. Using a variety of qualitative research methods (e.g., microethnography, context analysis, conversation analysis, linguistic and anthropological field methods) he examines universal and cultural aspects of human interaction, symbolization, and language. His e-mail address is <[email protected]> and written correspondence should be sent to the Department of Communication Studies, The University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712-1089. Nathan Stucky is Associate Professor of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Among his publications on conversation analysis and performance studies are articles in The Journal of Pragmatics, Text and Performance Quarterly, Literature in Performance, and Communication Education; he is the former editor of Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies. He may be contacted at the Department of Speech Communication, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL 62901-6605 USA; or by e-mail: <nstucky @siu. edu>. E. Duff Wrobbel is an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech Communication, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. His interests include Conversation Analytic methodology, therapeutic interaction, and social construction. He can be reached at box 1772, SIUE, Edwardsville, IL 62025 or <[email protected]>.
604
CONTRIBUTORS
Don H. Zimmerman is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He works in the area of conversation analysis, with a focus on talk in institutional settings. His current interest is the emergence of sociality in the interactions of very young children.
Author Index A Abe, I. speech melody, 461 Adler, J. phone openings, 278 Albert, Ethel ethnographic method, 4 Alibali, M. on gestures, 121 Anderson, Walter postmodern world, 499 system of value and belief, 495 Anisfeld, M. message judgments, 46 Antaki, C. institutional discourse, 18 institutional formation, 13 Arcuri, A. police image, 333 Arliss, L. account analysis, 384 commentary analysis, 384 interaction analysis, 384 Arnold, C.C. history of communication field, 4 Atkinson, J. M. grammar, 26 institutional formation, 13 institutional interaction, 413 political speech behavior, 13 "structures of social action," 545 transcript notation, 312 work with Richard Hopper, 545 Attlee, Clement BBC interview, 59-60, 87 Auer, P. contextualization of talk, 427 Austin, J. philosophy of ordinary language, 6 speech as action, 545
B Barker, L. history of communication field, 4 Barrows, H. "knowledge display segment," 122f problem-based learning exercise, 121 Basso, K. gaps and discontinuations, 316 Bateson, Gregory communicative frames, 91 influence on Robert Hopper, 545 photographs, 19 on self as concept, 503 Baudrillard, J. communication ecstasy, 500, 501 postmodern communication, 500 Bavelas, J. on gestures, 128 grammar, 26 laboratory data, 14 politicians and equivocal statements, 13 therapeutic discourse, 8 Baxter, L. limitations of transmission model, 7 relationship and interaction, 207, 208 Bayley, D. crime prevention myth, 329 Beach, Wayne acknowledgment tokens, 12 on diversity of methods, 11 doctors and patients, 14 ethnomethodological conversation analysis, 6 evidence for conclusions, 15 family interaction, 13 hopefulness, 178-179 identity switch, 189 institutional interaction, 413 managing optimism, 175-192 naturalistic methods, 4 605
606 naturally occurring communication, 12 news delivery sequences, 579 pre-sequencing, 574 relational expression, 185 on Robert Hopper's contribution to LSI, 582-583 on Robert Hopper's scholarship, 573-584 social construction of illness, 9 "state-of-readiness," 414 therapy talk, 343 tokens, 12, 115 University of Nebraska conference, 5 valence, 186 Beavin, J. messages and relationship, 208 Becker, S. factor analysis of messages, 49 Beckman, H. meaning negotiation, 353 Bell, Catherine knowledge through interaction, 510 TaoTeChing, 508, 510 Bell, R. disclaimers, 345 Benson, T. history of communication field, 4 Bitzer, L. history of communication field, 4 Black, E. history of communication field, 4 politicians and equivocal statements, 13 Blenky, M. gender and knowledge, 503 Blum-Kulka, S. dinner-table conversation, 92 Bochner, A. autoethnography, 22 narrative, 511 storytelling, 511 Boff, Leonardo spirituality, 494, 496-497 Bogen, D. cognition, 120
AUTHOR INDEX Iran-Contra hearings, 13 Boggs, C. social competition, 332 Bohm, David postmodern science, 501 Bokan, Dragoslav Paxman interview, 67-68 Bolinger, D. "A contour," 467 communication of emotion, 461 hat pattern, 467 speech melody, 459, 460, 461 "theme and rheme," 466—467 Bowers, J. history of communication field, 4 Boyd, E. medical interviews, 62f Bradac, J. J. coherence and intentionality, 49 Elaboration Likelihood Model, 49 "fundamental attribution error," 48 message judgments, 45-54 "Nothing Promised," 589-590 perceptual contrast effects, 46 power of messages, 50-51 speaker effectiveness paradigm, 544 "symbolicity" of messages, 49 use of preceding research, 20 verbal scales, 45 Brady, R. M. communication context, 45 Brown, Mary Helen narrative, 507-515 TaoTeChing, 507-516 Brown, P. indirectness in interviews, 60 modality and facework, 114 power and solidarity, 48 Brown, Richard H. narrative examination, 508 Bruder, K. selfing, 377 therapeutic discourse, 363-379 Bunston, T. cancer patients, 189-190 Burgoon, J. K. features of messages, 53
AUTHOR INDEX stimulation value judgment, 51 Burke, K. "unending conversation" metaphor, 10 Burkman, R. uncertainty and anxiety, 407 Busch, J. Elaboration Likelihood Model, 49 Bush, George Dan Rather interview, 13, 84-85, 86f Buttny, R. alignment, 349 blaming and accounting, 349 therapeutic discourse, 8, 365 Button, G. delicate tellings, 199 employment interview, 22, 22f itemized news inquiry, 580 "making of arrangements," 403 topic initial elicitor, 140, 197 C Cacioppo, J. judgments of messengers, 46 persuasive messages, 52 Carbaugh, D. Donahue television show, 13 social identity, 8 Cargile, A. communication context, 45 social competition, 332 Casey, N. delicate tellings, 199 itemized news inquiry, 580 topic initial elicitor, 140, 197 Charmaz, K. uncertainty and anxiety, 407 Chen, C. H. phone openings, 277 relationship states, 207-208 Chen, H. talk-in-interaction, 151,294 Chenail, R. institutional formation, 13 therapeutic discourse, 8, 365
607
Chovil, N. politicians and equivocal statements, 13 Church, R. B. on gestures, 121 Clark, H. H. assessments and cultural knowledge, 158 dayman, S. address terms, 74f agenda-setting questions, 65, 66, 70 Bush-Rather interview, 86f indirectness in interviews, 60-61 interviewer neutrality, 58 news interviews, 57 prefaced questions, 62-63, 78 questions renewal, 68 Clift, R. correction marker, 246f Clinton, William J. speech evaluated, 53 Coates, J. modality and hedging, 107, 114 think talk, 107 Cody, M. J. alignment, 348, 349 Conlee, M. conversation analysis, 120 Conquergood, D. critical ethnography, 18 Corbin, Susan D. asker expectations, 163-173 "did you" questions, 163-173 Corey, G. therapeutic discourse, 367 Coulter, J. cognition, 120 Coulthard, M. coherence and cohesion, 6 Couper-Kuhlen, E. lexical tokens, 307 Coupland, N. code-switching, 328-329 language differences and evaluation, 47 Courtright, J. A. perceptual contrast effects, 46
608 Coutu, L. induction, 20 Craig, Robert T. continuity markers, 104 critical thinking terminology, 104 discourse markers, 104 on diversity of research methodology, 11 issue co-construction, 104 Temple University conference, 5 Crocker, J. stigma, 334 Crow, B. performance using natural interaction, 10 talk shows, 266 Crowder, E. "explaining in the moment," 122 Curley, C. grammar, 26 Cushman, D. crystallization, 343 Czarniawska, B. narrative knowledge, 508 D Daly, M. on metaphor, 493, 495 Darman, Richard interview with Sam Donaldson, 58, 75-76 Daughton, Suzanne M. everyday life performance, 479-491 Davies, R. A. perceptual contrast effects, 46 Davis, K. conversation formulation, 300 De la Zerda, N. communication context, 45 listener's evaluation of speech, 6 Derrida, Jacques deconstruction, 483 "Plato's Pharmacy," 485^86 Dillard, J. P. influence messages, 50 Dixson, C. N. doctors and patients, 14
AUTHOR INDEX Doany, N. communication and daily activities, 6 phone openings, 277, 277f Dole, Robert NBC interview, 70, 83-84 Donaldson, Sam Bush interview, 13, 84-85, 86f Darman interview, 58 Donohue, William Michigan State University conference, 5 Douglas-Klotz, Neil on prayer, 497 Drew, Paul asymmetry, 200 context, 21 idioms and complaint sequences, 97, 186f institutional discourse, 18 institutional formation, 12 institutional settings, 293-308 inviting, 209 talk-in-interaction, 293-308 tease responses, 271-272 teases, 198, 215, 216, 217, 449 turns, 198 work with Robert Hopper, 545 Dreyfus, H. L. "equipment," 433 on Heidegger, 432 meaningful social practices, 433 mind-body question, 428 Drummond, Kent G. acknowledgment tokens, 317 "back channels," 549 communication and daily activities, 6 conversational enslavement, 521528 "interactional enslavement," 15, 521-528 phone openings, 277 quantification, 550 relationship construction, 9 taken-for-granted, 523-524 talk-in-interaction, 294
609
AUTHOR INDEX The Truman Show, 15, 521-528 use of corollary data, 21 work with Robert Hopper, 547-548, 549-550 Duck, S. evaluation of speakers and messages, 53 E Edwards, D. talk-in-interaction, 120 Ellis, C. autoethnography, 22 narrative, 511 storytelling, 511 Ellis, Don discourse analysis, 6 on diversity of research methodology, 11 Michigan State University conference, 5 Emerson, R. M. ethnographic methodology, 497 Ende, J. demonstration teaching, 382 interns and patients, 382 Erickson, F. body movement, 413 transition, 413 F Fallowfield, L. uncertainty and anxiety, 407 Fehr, B. J. demonstration teaching, 382 evidence for conclusions, 15 interns and patients, 382 relationships and interaction, 208 unmotivated looking, 8 Feltovich, P. "knowledge display segment," 122f problem-based learning exercise, 121 Fillenbaum, S. message judgments, 46 Fisher, W. R. narrative fidelity, 513
narrative probability, 510-511 Fitch, Kristine culture and conduct, 8 culture and interaction, 91-101 ethnographic choices, 20 ethnographic evaluation, 16-17 intercultural communication, 91101 linguistic anthropology, 6 taken-for-granted, 91-101 Fox, M. on academic work, 505 on learning, 503 Fox, R. uncertainty and anxiety, 407 Fox, S. sociability judgment, 52 social competition, 332 Frankel, Richard indeterminacy, 393-408 meaning negotiation, 353 medical communication, 393-408 patients and physicians, 406 therapeutic discourse, 365 transitions, 421 Freeman, S. therapeutic discourse, 365 Friedson, Eliot professional authority, 406—407 Frost, David Edward Heath interview, 66-67 G
Galasinski, D. display of cooperativeness, 111 modality and hedging, 107, 114 think talk, 107 Gale, J. therapy talk, 343-344, 365 Gardner, R. C. message judgments, 46 Garfmkel, H. on "accountable," 121f breaching, 202 "did you" questions, 172 entitlement of intelligibility, 200 ethnomethodology, 21
610 formulations, 295-296 omnirelevance of gender, 265 Geertz, C. appraisal of behaviors, 15, 16 ethnographic methodology, 497 Gergen, Kenneth multiphrenia, 499, 501 Gibbons, P. Elaboration Likelihood Model, 49 features of messages, 53 use of preceding research, 20 Gibson, J. "affordances," 433 "haptic system," 431 "visual system," 430 Giles, Howard code-switching, 328-329 communication accommodation theory, 328-329, 337 communication context, 45 intergroup communication, 327337 language differences and evaluation, 47 law enforcement communication, 327-337 listener's evaluation of speech, 6 sociability judgment, 52 social competition, 332 status and attractiveness in speakers, 48 Gilman, A. power and solidarity, 48 Glenn, Phillip J. communication in everyday activities, 6 conversation analysis, 120 everyday life performance, 480f everyday talk, 6, 551 laughter, 12,318,407,577 laughter and gender, 264-265 laughter in interaction, 263-272 play, 551 repetition, 269 talk-in-interaction, 151 tokens of laughter, 407 work with Robert Hopper, 551
AUTHOR INDEX Godard, D. phone openings, 277 Goffman, E. communicative frames, 91 injury response, 341 relational expression, 185 relationship and interaction, 208 stigma, 334, 335 "tie-signs," 208-209, 210, 215 unsolicited account, 346 Goldin-Meadows, S. on gestures, 121 Goldsmith, D. limitations of transmission model, 7 relationship and interaction, 207, 208 Gonzalez, Maria C. epistemological obstacles, 497 epistemology, 495 ethnography, 493-505 on spirit, 495-496 spiritual practice, 493-505 taken-for-granted, 493-505 Good, B. "hope work," 408 Good, M. D. "hope work," 408 Goodwin, Charles assessable names, 151-160 assessment-containing talk, 152, 153,159 assessments and cultural knowledge, 159-160 body movements, 27, 427 contingency of social conditions, 21 eye movements, 26, 427, 430 on gesture, 128,433 grammar, 26 induction, 20 restarts, 137-138 storytelling, 22, 251f, 511 turn beginnings, 146 verbal and nonverbal communication, 9 vocal restarts and hesitations, 12
AUTHOR INDEX Goodwin, Marjorie H. assessment-containing talk, 152, 153,159 assessments and cultural knowledge, 159-160 on gesture, 128, 154 grammar, 26 relationship and interaction, 208 verbal and nonverbal communication, 9 Gouran, D. S. history of communication field, 4 Gray, J. gender-speech, 264 performance studies, 10 Greatbatch, D. "neutralistic" stance of interviewers, 58 prefaced questions, 62 Greene, J. R. community-oriented policing, 328 Grice, H. P. maxim on indirect utterances, 100 maxims of conversation, 473 Grinc, R. M. community-oriented policing, 330, 331 Guarino-Ghezzi, S. community-oriented policing, 328 Gubrium, J. family query and interaction, 191 Gumperz, J. prosodic cues, 459 speech melody, 459 theme, 466 Gumperz, J. J. speech melody, 466 Gundersen, D. F. audience responses, 5 police/citizen relations, 327 uniforms, 335 Gutting, G. epistemological obstacle, 494 H Hadding, K. melodic intonations, 459-460
611
speech melody, 459-460 Harre, R. therapeutic discourse, 365-366 Harris, S. embedded presuppositions, 71 encoded attitudes, 58-59 Harwood, J. social competition, 332 Hawes, L. C. analysis of naturally occurring speech, 4 hermeneutic phenomenology, 4 He, A. ethnic identity, 21 Heath, C. diagnostic news, 394 medical consultation, 411 nonvocal activity, 413, 414-415 restarts, 137 speech and body movement, 26, 394,411,413 transition, 413,414-415 Heath, Edward David Frost interview, 66—67 Heidegger, Martin on knowledge, 432 Heritage, John acknowledgment tokens, 12 Bush-Rather interview, 86f context, 21, 135 conversation analysis, 119 declined invitations, 342 formulations, 296 indirectness in interviews, 60-61 institutional discourse, 18 institutional formation, 13 institutional settings, 294f intersubjectivity, 195 interviewer neutrality, 58 laughter, 135 meaningfulness of messages, 22 medical interviews, 62, 399-400, 407 news interviews, 57-87, 301-302 online commentary, 399-400 prefaced questions, 62-63 preferred responses, 74-75
612
reformulation, 357 relationships and interaction, 208, 209 second position actions, 65, 74 "Structures of Social Action," 545 tokens, 115,216 transcript notation, 312 work with Robert Hopper, 545 Herschel, Abraham on awe, 504 on ineffability, 493 Heseltine, Michael BBC interview, 69-70, 81-82 Hewitt, J. P. alignment, 341, 545 disclaimers, 345 Hewstone, M. police-citizen relations, 332 Hodgson, R. message judgments, 46 Hoffman, E. laughter, 264-265 Holmes, J. categorization of think talk, 114 modal and affective meaning, 114 Holstein, J. A. family query and interaction, 191 Holt, E. J. death and dying, 176f, 180, 405 idioms and complaint sequences, 97, 186f Holtgraves, T. Elaboration Likelihood Model, 49 power of messages, 50-51 Hopper, Robert acknowledgment tokens, 317 alignment talk, 6, 341, 343, 545 audience responses, 6 awards received, 552 cancer journey, 578 cancer-related talk, 578-579 children's language development, 544 coherence as interactive, 5 conferences, 584 conferences on LSI, 5, 543-544, 547, 552
AUTHOR INDEX constitutive view of communication, 8 context, 21, 45 conversation analysis, 5, 16, 119, 543-550, 569 conversation formulation, 298 corollary data use, 21 data sessions, 545, 584 dedication to learning, 564 dialogue and monologue, 565 disclaimers, 345, 346 discourse analysis, 6, 546 dissertations directed, 561-562 ethics and inquiry, 568 ethnography, 6, 550 everyday life performance, 10, 480, 481,491,547,551 everyday talk, 6, 546 gender and speech, 270, 565-566, 575-578, 576, 577 gender as socially relevant, 9 gender differences, 565 "gendering talk," 563, 564, 565-566 "genderlects," 546 graduate students, 552 the Great Poem, 570 history of LSI, 23,27, 101,581582 injury response, 341 institutional settings, 293, 294, 372 intellectual history, 543-552 interactive emergence, 393, 407 interpretation, 544 language attitudes, 544 laughter, 264-265 linguistic anthropology, 6 linguistic turn, 543 "linguistic underdogs," 563 listener's evaluation of speech, 6 managing optimism, 175f, 192 matched guise technique, 548-549 "message-intrinsic view," 25 moral values of, 563-566, 568 National Communication Association, 547 "naturalistic" discussed, 14 NCA award speech text, 591
AUTHOR INDEX at Oxford, 545 perception versus evaluation, 50 and Phaedrus, 567-568 phone openings, 277, 277f, 278, 285, 573 and Plato, 567 poetics in communication, 10, 16— 17, 550-552, 569-570 proposition and refutation, 528 quantification and conversation analysis, 549-550 relational history, 573 relationship construction, 8 relationship states, 207-208 repetition, 269 restarts, 138 scholarship of, 543-562, 581-583 science of speech, 544 social psychology, 549 social roles, 22 social scientism of, 563 speaker effectiveness paradigm, 544 speech and social interactions, 423 speech as action, 545 Speech Communication Association, 547 Speech Evaluation Instrument, 47 "speech for instance," 548-549 speech-in-interaction, 6, 151 "symbolicity" of messages, 49 "taken-for-granted," 4, 91, 521, 523 Tao Te Ching, 507-508 teaching methods of, 567-570 telephone conversation, 563-564, 570 telephone talk, 546, 563-564 therapeutic discourse, 8 theses directed, 561-562 "underdogs" and "favorites," 544545, 563 valence, 186 works of, 556-560 Horkheimer, M. fixed distinctions, 502 on knowledge, 503 unconventional thinking, 502
613
Horn, L. negative polarity items, 76-77 Houtkoop-Steenstra, Hanneke gender and telephone conversations, 275-285 institutional discourse, 18 institutional formation, 13 phone openings, 276-277, 281 Hughes, E. crisis versus routine, 395 Hulme, T. performers, 484-485 poetry, 479-480 Romanticism and Classicism, 479 Hurst, M. H. evaluation of speakers and messages, 53 Huspek, M. markers in working-class speech, 116 study of markers, 116 Hutchby, I. controversy construction, 300 conversation analysis, 120 Hymes, Dell deduction used, 20 ethnographic method, 4 speech communities, 98 I Iltis, R. use of preceding research, 21 Isaacs, E. A. assessments and cultural knowledge, 158 J Jackson, D. messages and relationship, 208 Jackson, Sally natural language and rhetoric, 4 University of Nebraska conference, 5 Jacobs, J. uncertainty and anxiety, 407 Jacobs, Scott conversation analysis, 120
614
natural language and rhetoric, 4 University of Nebraska conference, 5 Jacoby, S. contingency of social conditions, 21 data presentation, 17 Jarmon, Leslie conversation analysis, 569 embodied actions, 17-18 the Great Poem, 567-570 performance and research, 23 on Robert Hopper, 567-570 Jefferson, Gail acknowledgment token, 317, 550 ambiguity, 221-240 conversation analysis, 17 death and dying, 176f, 178f, 180, 186, 191, 577 "did you" questions, 170 error avoidance format, 399 "interactional asymmetry," 449 intersubjectivity, 195 laughter, 12, 199, 264, 272, 318, 407, 577 premonitoring, 574, 580 puns, 531-532 reconstruction, 245f repair, 216, 268, 349 reply turn, 317 reservation, 224f sound-row, 534, 574 storytelling, 511 suppressed items, 261 "suppression-release," 242f "telepathic pun," 532 "topic" as term, 66 topic transition, stepwise, 147 transcription techniques, 480 "troubles talk," 227-229, 234 turn beginnings, 138, 147 turn-taking model, 17 understanding, 354 valence, 186 Johnson, M. conceptual knowing, 433 on language, 439
AUTHOR INDEX Jones, Charlotte M. telephone conversation, 137-148 therapy talk, 343 utterance restarts, 137-148 Jones, D. cancer patients, 189-190 Jones, E. stigma, 334-335 Jurick, D. M. discourse analysis, 4 K Katriel, T. Israeli communication study, 25-26 Katz, J. uncertainty and anxiety, 407 Keeley-Dyreson, M. P. stimulation value judgment, 51 Keenan, E. L. pragmatic presuppositions, 166167, 168 Kellerman, K. coherence judgments, 51 informativeness judgment, 51 Kelson, A. "knowledge display segment," 122f problem-based learning exercise, 121 Kendon, A. context analysis, 6, 121 embodied interaction, 19 on gestures, 128, 438 grammar, 26 interactional axes, 427 Kibler, R. J. history of communication field, 4 Kidd, V. community-oriented policing, 329 Kidwell, M. children, 443 peer encounters, 443 Kinney, T. A. influence messages, 50 Klockars, C. B. police power, 329 Kluger, J. gender and speech, 264
AUTHOR INDEX laughter, 264 Knapp, M. L. children, 443 on gestures, 427 teasing, 443 and Temple University conference, 5 verbal and nonverbal communication, 9, 26 Koch, S. conversation analysis, 5, 119 Koschmann, T. conversation analysis, 120 "knowledge display segment," 122f problem-based learning exercise, 121 Kubler-Ross, E. death and dying, 176f hope and coping, 176 stages of grieving, 191 Ku-Ying, C. wu-wei, 514 L Ladefoged, P. speech melody, 461 Lambert, W. E. message judgments, 46 Langer, Suzanne on metaphor, 493—494 Lannaman, J. W. therapeutic discourse, 365 Lasky, B. Elaboration Likelihood Model, 49 power of messages, 50-51 Lawrence, S. gender as socially relevant, 9 performance method, 9 LeBaron, Curtis D. bodily communication, 433 constitutive view of communication, 8 conversation analysis, 120 digitized data, 19 gender as socially relevant, 9 gender speech, 270 gesture and understanding, 119-129
615
grammar, 26-27 police interrogation, 22 speech-in-interaction, 6, 151 therapeutic discourse, 8 Leder, Drew "absence," 483 incorporation, 488, 489 mind-body dualism, 490-491 phenomenology, 482 Lee, J. R. E. institutional interaction, 413 "troubles talk," 227-229, 234 Lentz, L. phone openings, 279-280 Lerner, Gene H. action, 441-456 apparent action, 441—456 children, 441-456 delayed completion, 269 peer encounters, 443 proactive listening, 249 Levinson, S. C. conversation analysis, 120 indirectness in interviews, 60 modality and facework, 114 presuppositions, 166, 167 Liberman, K. detail in research descriptions, 24 Lim, T. informativeness judgment, 51 Lindstrom, A. phone openings, 278, 284 Litton-Hawes, E. M. ethnomethodology, 4 Longxi, Z. author as text, 514 Lundell, T. L. "gender-linked language effect," 47 Lurigio, A. J. community-oriented policing, 330, 331 Lynch, M. cognition, 120 Iran-Contra hearings, 13
616 M Mackie, A. cancer patients, 189-190 Macy, J. on Bateson, 503 on spirituality, 503 Mair, V. H. Tao Te Ching, 509, 514 Malmberg, B. speech melody, 460, 461 Mandelbaum, Jenny beginning relationships, 545 complaints, 210 conversation analysis, 5, 119 message-intrinsic view, 25 novels and plays, 545 relational expression, 185 relationship and interaction, 207217 relationship construction, 9 relationships and conversation analysis, 208 restarts, 146 Robert Hopper intellectual history, 543-552 social identity, 8 storytelling, 22, 210 turns, 210 Martin, J. narratives, 510 May, W. evaluation factor, 47 Maynard, Douglas W. death and dying, 176f, 178f diagnostic news, 394, 405, 581 disembedded presuppositions, 75f evidence citing, 399, 404 forecasting, 400 good news exit, 405 hopefulness, 179 indeterminacy, 393-408 inferential form, 399 medical communication, 393-408 news delivery sequences, 579 non-assertion, 399 online commentary, 400 patients and physicians, 406, 407
AUTHOR INDEX relating tragic news, 180 McCroskey, J. C. factor analytic research, 47 McElroy, J. community-oriented policing, 330 McHoul, A. classroom communication, 8 McLaughlin, M. L. alignment, 342, 348, 349 "preventatives," 342 storytelling, 511 McNeill, D. on gestures, 121 Mead, G. on gestures, 366 photographs, 19 self-identification, 377 Mehrley, R. S. factor analytic research, 47 Metzger, T. R. institutional formation, 13 Meyer, J. C. ambiguity, 512 stories as behavior models, 513 Mings, D. cancer patients, 189-190 Miron, M. evaluation factor, 47 Modaff, Daniel accuracy in research, 23 body movement, 411-422 doctor-patient interviews, 411-422 Modaff, John Vincent accuracy in research, 23 Paul Harvey "speech melody," 13, 459-476 rhetorical style, 459-476 Moerman, M. conversation analysis and ethnography, 550 method blending, 11, 23 verbal and nonverbal behavior, 26 Molloy, Jennifer L. intergroup communication, 327337 law enforcement communication, 327-337
AUTHOR INDEX Morris, G. H. advisory, 344 alignment, 6, 341, 343, 348, 545 "alignment talk," 6, 545 declined invitations, 342 institutional formation, 13 social interaction, 341-349 therapeutic discourse, 8, 365 use of preceding research, 21 Morrison, J. "tracking questions," 210 Mulac, A. "gender-linked language effect," 47 power of messages, 50-51 Speech Dialect attitudinal scale, 47 use of preceding research, 20 Muller, H. L. academic discourse study, 24-25 argument construction, 104 discourse analysis methodology, 20 Mullett, J. politicians and equivocal statements, 13 N Naremore, Rita work with Robert Hopper, 544 Naughton, J. "did you" questions, 164-165, 173 Nevin, B. quandary questions, 73 Newton, D. A. stimulation-value judgment, 51 Nisbett, R. E. "fundamental attribution error," 48 Nofsinger, R. E. Bush-Rather interview, 13 conversation analysis, 4 "the demand ticket," 4 O Ochs, E. contingency of social conditions, 21 data presentation, 17 dinner-table conversation, 92 Ohala, J. speech melody, 461
617
O'Hanlon, W. therapeutic discourse, 367 O'Neill, J. M. communication as separate discipline, 3 Osgood, C. evaluation factor, 47 Owens, C. on representations, 500 P Packo, J. E. interaction regarding illness, 192 Paxman, Jeremy Bokan interview, 67-68 Pearce, W. B. naturalistic approach to communication research, 4 Perakyla, A. death and dying, 176f, 178f diagnostic news, 394, 399, 400f, 408 "dreaded issues," 190, 579 hope and coping, 176, 176f indeterminacy, 399, 400f therapeutic discourse, 8 Perlmutter, D. police/citizen relations, 327, 333 Petty, R. judgments of messengers, 46 persuasive messages, 52 Philipsen, G. cultural codes, 91, 92 ethnography, 4, 6 gendered patterns of speech, 4 inductive method use, 20 linguistic anthropology, 6 speaking and fighting, 9 Teamsterville culture, 9 Phillips, N. fictional narrative, 510 narrative examination, 508 Pike, K. emic and etic, 24 Piston, W. half-cadence, 472 speech melody, 472
618 Plato Phaedrus, 567 used by Robert Hopper, 567 Pollner, M. radical reflexivity, 22 understanding, 353 Pomerantz, Anita alignment, 348 blaming, 209 conversation analysis, 17, 120 delicate tellings, 199 "did you" questions, 172 disagreement, 359 dispreferred seconds, 145 dispreferred shaped response, 164, 167 elicited account, 348 evidence for conclusions, 15 extreme case formulations, 182 interns and patients, 382 modeling and clinical training, 381391 necessity expressed, 184 phone openings, 281-282 preferred responses, 74-75 preferred turn shapes, 108 relationships and interaction, 208, 209 second assessments, 230 unmotivated looking, 8 work with Robert Hopper, 545 Potter, J. talk-in-interaction, 120 therapeutic discourse, 366 Powesland, P. communication context, 45 listener's evaluation of speech, 6 Pratt, S. Osage nation public speaking, 14 Psathas, G. conversation analysis, 120 R Ragan, Sandra "alignment talk," 6, 341 moral values of Robert Hopper, 563-566
AUTHOR INDEX Ragan, Sandra L. work with Robert Hopper, 545 Randall, Deleasa on imperfections in talk, 487 Rappaport, J. stories as behavior models, 513 Rather, Dan Bush interview, 13, 84-85, 86f Raymond, G. topical agenda questions, 66, 67 Reagan, Ronald speech event interaction, 13 Richardson, L. narrative examination, 508 Ricoeur, Paul plurality of culture, 501 Rogers, C. R. therapy discourse, 365 Rorty, R. linguistic turn, 543 Rosenbaum, D. P. community-oriented policing, 330, 331 Ross, J. I. police power, 330 Ross, L. "fundamental attribution error," 48 Roth, A. correctness presupposition, 74 news interview questions, 61 prefaced questions, 62 Rush, J. speech melody, 459 vocule, 463 Rutt, D. evaluations of speakers and messages, 53 Ryan, E. B. social competition, 332 status and attractiveness in speakers, 48 Ryle, G. understanding as mental predicate, 120
AUTHOR INDEX
s Sacks, Harvey "adjacency pair," 442f ambiguity, 240 analytic induction, 20 assessments and alternative knowledge, 158 category-bound activities, 270 children, 446 conversation analysis, 16, 19, 275 conversation formulation, 295-296 "did you" questions, 170 on gestures, 121 intersubjectivity, 195 invitation, 198 laughter, 199, 407, 577 multiple turns, 147 mundane communication, 12, 133 nonrecognitional reference, 214 observability of actions, 446 observability of thoughts, 201, 203 preferred responses, 74-75 proactive listening, 249 relationships and interaction, 210 repair, 216, 268, 349 reply turn, 317 sound-rows, 574 story closure, 184 subjective understanding, 240 talk in everyday life, 133 teasing, 446 timeliness in interviews, 85-86 "topic" as term, 66 troubling matters, 178f, 180 turn beginnings, 138 turn-taking model, 17 "unmentioned mentionables," 168 unmotivated looking, 8, 18-19 valence, 186 Sadd, S. community-oriented policing, 330 Sanders, E. telephone openings, 278f Sanders, Robert E. diversity of research methods, 11 induction, 20 interview as research method, 25
619
laughter, 309-325 marine radio, 309-325 Sanusi, A. L. continuity markers, 104 discourse markers, 104 think talk, 103-116 transitioning, 104 Saxton, K. L. modality and facework, 114 modality and hedging, 107 think talk, 107 Schaefer, E. F. assessments and cultural knowledge, 158 Schegloff, Emanuel "adjacency pair," 442f analytic induction, 20 answer marking, 244 assessments and cultural knowledge, 158 context, 265 continuers, 354 conversation analysis, 19 "did you" questions, 170 ESP puns, 531-539 on gestures, 128, 427 grammar, 26-27 intersubjectivity, 195 laughter, 199, 202, 407, 577 misunderstandings, 196, 202 nonrecognitional reference, 214 pre-delicate, 142 preferred responses, 74-75 puns, 531-539 reciprocal pair, 259 relationship and interaction, 209 repair, 141, 195-196, 216, 244, 268, 349 reply turn, 317 restarts, 137-138, 147 sequence relationships, 451f social roles, 20 story closure, 184 storytelling, 251f "summoning" in interviews, 74 suppressed items, 261
620
telephone openings, 275-276, 278, 279, 282, 573 topical agenda questions, 65 turn beginnings, 138, 139, 146, 147 turn-taking model, 17 "unmentioned mentionables," 169 word selection, 539 Schiffrin, D. absence of marking, 114 discourse markers, 104 "I think" not discourse marker, 114 meaning making, 114 narrative and relationships, 510 narrative examination, 508 "think" as meta-talk, 113 Scollon, R. gaps and discontinuations, 312 Scollon, S. B. gaps and discontinuations, 312 Searle, J. situated language, 26 speech as action, 545 Sefi, S. relationships and interaction, 208, 209 Selting, M. lexical tokens, 307 Sequeira, D. terms of address, 23 Shannon, C. transmission model of communication, 7, 21 Sheldon, A. gender, 21 Sias, P. M. embedded disclaimer, 346 Sifianou, M. telephone openings, 277 Sigman, S. diversity in research methodology, 11 induction, 20 interview as research method, 25 Sleight, C. coherence judgments, 51 Smith, E. sociability judgment, 52
AUTHOR INDEX Smith, R. dinner-table conversation, 92 Spiegelberg, F. TaoTe Ching, 511 Stewart, J. constitutive view of communication, 21 Stivers, T. online commentary, 399—400 Stokes, R. alignment talk, 545 Streeck, Jurgen bodily actions, 433 body and communication, 427—439 conversation analysis, 120 dualism, 427-439 on gestures, 26, 128 grammar, 26-27 police interrogation, 22 symbolic nature of objects, 22 turns-at-talk, 427 verbal and nonverbal communication, 9, 26 Street, R. L. communication context, 45 perception versus evaluation, 50 Strejc, H. evaluation of speakers and messages, 53 Stringer, J. everyday life performance, 10 Stucky, Nathan P. everyday life performance, 479491, 551-552 gender as socially relevant, 9 natural performance, 481 performance and naturally occurring interactions, 10 performance of conversation, 480f performers, 488 rehearsal process, 481, 482 scripts, 482 stage performance, 481 work with Robert Hopper, 551-552 Sudnow, D. death and dying, 176f
AUTHOR INDEX Sykes, R. E. police intervention, 328 T Tajfel, H. high intergroup contact, 332 social identity theory, 327, 332 Tannen, D. gender and feedback, 263 gender and speech, 264 Taylor, C. dinner-table conversation, 92 Taylor, R. B. community-oriented policing, 328 Templeton, A. narrative examination, 508 ten Have, P. inductive method use, 20 phone openings, 276 Thatcher, Margaret BBC interview, 69-70 speech event interaction, 13 Thomason, W. R. communication in everyday activities, 6 embedded disclaimer, 346 Thompson, G. J. police/citizen communication, 328 Tracy, Karen academic discourse study, 24-25 context, 21, 265 "did you" questions, 164-165, 173 discourse analysis methodology, 20 diversity of methods, 11 institutional discourse, 18 institutional formation, 13 quantification and conversation analysis, 549 representative and constitutive views, 23 social identity, 8 Temple University conference, 5 work with Robert Hopper, 549 Triandis, H. C. collectivist culture, 98 individualist culture, 98
621
Tumbull, W. modality and facework, 114 modality and hedging, 107 think talk, 107 Tusing, K. J. influence messages, 50 V Van Den Bulck, J. police in mass media, 333 Van Dijk, T. A. critical discourse analyses, 18 format in discourse analysis, 25 Van Oosting, J. performance studies, 10 Vessey, Gen. John PBS interview, 68-69 W Waitzkin, H. therapeutic discourse, 365 Walker, E. conversation formulations, 303 industrial negotiations, 303 Ward, J. A. communication in everyday activities, 6 embedded disclaimer, 346 Watson, D. R. conversation formulation, 296 reformulation, 357 Watts, A. therapeutic discourse, 367 Watzlawick, P. alignment, 349 invented realities, 499 messages and relationship, 208 Weaver, W. transmission model of communication, 7, 21 Weick, Karl E. narrative, 511 stories, 514 West, C. gender differences in speech, 263 White, C. H. use of preceding research, 21
622
Whitehead, Alfred N. "personal unity," 438 Wieder, L. diversity of LSI research methods, 11 Osage nation public speaking, 14 quantification and conversation analysis, 549 Wiemann, J. M. speaker effectiveness paradigm, 544 "symbolicity" of messages, 49 Wilber, Ken on knowledge, 504 Wilkes-Gibbs, D. assessments and cultural knowledge, 158 Wilson, S. R. influence messages, 50 Wittgenstein, L. "family resemblance," 10 language games, 545 philosophy of ordinary language, 6 representation, 432 on "understanding," 120 Wodak, R. gender and communication, 265 Womack, M. M. police officers and communication, 328 Wood, J. T. "conversational maintenance," 263 gender and listening, 263 Wooffitt, R. conversation analysis, 120 Wrobbel, E. D. "aha" moment, 353-361 self-revelation, 353-361 summary sequence, 359 Y Yates, D. L. community-oriented policing, 328 Yeni-Komshian, G. message judgments, 46
AUTHOR INDEX Z Zahn, C. disclaimers, 345 listener's evaluation of speech, 6 speech evaluation instrument, 47 Zimmerman, Don H. action, 441-456 apparent action, 441-456 children, 441-456 peer encounters, 443 Znaniecki, F. analytic induction, 20
Subject Index A acknowledgment tokens, 12 address terms, 23 alignment, alignment talk, 6, 209, 244-245, 290, 341 ambiguity, 221-240 analytic induction, 20 assessments, assessing, assessables, 151-160, 229, 230, 269 B body movement, 413-422, 427-440, 441-456 C cancer, talk about, 175-192, 575576 cognition, thinking, 2, 8, 103-116, 119-129 coherence, cohesion, 5, 6 constitutive view of communication, 21 -23 context, 20, 168, 173, 265, 272 continuers, 354, 547-548 conversation analysis, analysts, 25, 8, 11, 16, 19-23, 41-42, 91, 119, 120, 208-210, 296, 325, 543-543, 545 critical discourse analysis, 18 critical ethnography, 18 culture, 8, 9, 11, 15, 16, 20, 21, 24, 26,42,91-101, 158-160, 279 D death, dying, 176, 180 delicates, delicate matters, 142-148, 250 demand ticket, 4 discourse analysis, analysts, 2, 4-6, 11, 20, 22, 24-25, 41-42, 290 discourse markers, 10, 11
E emic, etic perspectives, 11, 24-25 enthymemes, 4, 91 ethnography, ethnographers, ethnographic, 2-4, 6, 8-9, 11, 13, 14, 16-20, 22-25, 41-42, 91, 160, 176, 291, 491-504 ethnomethodology, 2, 4, 6, 21, 22, 24, 120 ethology, 6 everyday life performance (ELP), 10, 548-549 extreme case formulation, 182 eye gaze, 26, 43, 122, 137, 138, 157,413-416,430 F formulations, 41, 182, 289, 295307, 347-348 footing, 42 G gaps, 313-317 gender 4, 9, 21, 41, 47, 263-272, 275-286, 312, 332, 543, 562-563, 572-575 gender-linked language effect, 47 gesture, 2, 26, 43, 119-29, 423-424, 427-440, 448 grammar, 26, 460 Grice's maxims, 100 H hedging 107, 113, 114 hermeneutic phenomenology, 3, 4 I identity, 327-337 idiomatic expressions, 185 indexicality, 166-170 induction, inductive research, 20 institutional interaction, 12-14, 289, 293-307,412-413 623
SUBJECT INDEX
624
intergroup communication, 327337 interpersonal communication, 2 interviews, 14, 22, 41-42, 57-87, 301-302, 305-307 L language and social interaction (LSI), 1-29, 41-43, 119, 540 laughter, 12, 263-272, 289, 317323,406,417 M matched guise technique, 545-546 medical interaction, 13-14, 175192, 291, 293, 299-300, 305, 381391, 393-410, 411-422 meta-talk, 113 microethnography, 2, 11, 41, 43, 121, 128 modality, 107, 113, 114 N names, 151-160 narrative, 425, 505-506 naturalistic, naturally-occurring interaction, 4, 12-15, 208 neutralistic stance (for journalists), 58-59, 86-87 news delivery, 394-410, 576-578 news interviews, 293, 301-302 newsworthiness, 197 nonverbal, 9, 26, 423, 427
poetics, 9-10, 16-17, 476, 547, 550-552 pragmatics, 11, 113, 460 pre-announcements, 180 preference, 75-81 presequences, 4 presuppositions, 62, 71-75, 86, 166-170, 173 problem-based learning (PBL), 121 prosody, 459-477 puns, 528-538
Q
questions, questioning, 57-87, 163173 R recognition, 151, 158 recycled turn beginnings, 137, 138 relationships, 207-217 reluctance, 142-148 repair, 197, 207, 213-217, 244, 268, 269 representative view of communication, 21-23 restarts utterance, 12, 26, 127, 137-148 conversation, 180 rhetoric, 4, 5, 7, 424, 460, 475-476
O online commentary, 399-400 openings, telephone conversation, 275-286 optimism, 175-192 ordinary language philosophy, 6, 120 overlap, 137-138
S self, identity, 7, 8, 14 sequence, 442-445, 454 sociolinguistics, 2, 6, 9, 11, 20, 22, 41-42, 424 speech acts, speech act theory, 5, 42, 542, 545 speech evaluation, 9, 41, 45-54, 545-546 spirituality, 491-504 stigma, 334-336 stories, storytelling, 22, 251 symbolic interaction, 6
P performance, performance studies, 6, 9, 10, 23, 478-490
T taken for granted (TFG), 4, 15, 91101, 425, 519, 520, 540-549
SUBJECT INDEX teaching, 381-391, 564-568 tease, 446-551 telecommunications, 7 telephone talk, 543, 561, 570-572 therapeutic interaction, 290, 291, 299-300, 305-307, 350-362, 363380 thick description, 15, 19, 42 tie signs, 208 "tit-for-tat", 207, 210-213 topic, topic shift 66, 139-142, 146148, 169, 180 topic initial elicitor, 197 transcription, 10, 15, 17, 23, 589592 transmission model of communication, 7-8, 21 troubles talk, 191, 221, 227, 234 U
understanding, 195-204, 239353379 W word selection, 536
625
