TALK IN INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS
Institutional talk is centrally and actively involved in the accomplishment of the 'institutional' nature of institutions themselves. CA has developed a distinctive means of locating participants' displayed orientations to the institutional contexts. This is done by adopting a broadly comparative perspective in which the turn-taking system for mundane conversation is treated as the benchmark against which other forms of talk-in-interaction can be distinguished.
Two basic types of institutions have been defined (cf. Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998). They are described as:
formal types - represented by courts of law, many kinds of interview, especially the broadcast news interviews, but also some job interviews, some traditional or teacher-led styles of classroom teaching, and most forms of ceremonial occasions.
non-formal types - include more loosely structured, but still task-oriented, lay/professional encounters, such as: counselling sessions, various kinds of social work encounters, business meetings, service encounters in places such as shops, radio phone-in conversations
I. FORMAL INSTITUTIONS AND QUESTION-ANSWER SEQUENCES
According to Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998:149), 'the distinctiveness of formal types of institutional settings is based on the close relationship between participants' social roles and the forms of talk in which they engage'. Studies of formal settings have focused on the ways in which participants orient to a strict turn-taking format called turn-type pre-allocation. It means that participants, on entering the setting, are constrained (by the existing norms of the institution) in the types of turns they may take according to their particular institutional roles. Typically, the format involves chains of question-answer sequences.
But the question-answer pre-allocation format is only a minimal characterisation of the speech exchange system. In other words, any range of actions may be done in a given turn, provided that they are done in the form of a question-answer.
Levinson (1992:66-100) gives the following example, taken from the transcript of a rape trial, in order to demonstrate how question/answer sequences are oriented to the type of activity that is going on:
A: You have had sexual intercourse on a previous
occasion, haven't you.
B: Yes.
A: On many previous occasions?
B: Not many.
A: Several?
B: Yes.
A: With several men?
B: No.
A: Just one?
B: Two.
A: Two. And you are seventeen and a half?
B: Yes.
As we see the defence attorney (A) and the alleged rape victim (B) restrict themselves to producing questions and answers, and by this restriction of turn-taking beahviour, we gain a powerful sense of context simply through the details of their talk.
However, according to Levinson's (1992, 100) interpretation, the questions are of a particular type. They are not 'real' questions (according to Searle), which are designed to inform the questioner about something which he/she does not know; neither 'exam' questions (Searle) which are designed to test the answerer's knowledge about something which the questioner already knows. Rather they are designed to get B to admit to something: namely, to having had sexual intercourse with 'several' men at the age of seventeen and a half. By these means the questions are designed to construct a certain social image of B: as a woman with 'loose morals'.
One of the most significant implication for the specifically 'institutional' character of actions in formal settings, of the pre-allocated format is the fact that powerful constraints operate to restrict the distribution of rights to express a personal opinion on the matter being discussed. In courtrooms and broadcast news, questioners are required to avoid stating their opinions overtly; rather their task is to elicit the stance, opinion, account of the one being questioned. This is because in both settings talk is intended to be heard principally by an audience: the jury in the trial court and the public in broadcast news.
Strategies which are currently used by questioners to undermine these constraints:
constructing a negative social image of the witness (as in the example above)
embedding critical or evaluative statements within questions (in broadcast news)
citing 'facts' so as to emphasize the questioners' contrastive relationship with an interviewee's statement
selectively 'formulating' the gist of the interviewee's remarks
The studies on formal institutional talk have illustrated that formal institutional interactions involve specific and significant narrowings of the range of options that are operative in conversational interactions.
II. NON-FORMAL INSTITUTIONS
According to Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998), more common are institutional settings where the interaction is less formally structured and talk appears more 'conversational' than courtroom or interview talk. Certainly, if we count the number of questions asked by professionals and by clients in such settings, we find that professionals ask by far the most, and often clients ask virtually no questions. But unlike in formal settings, there is no norm that says one person 'must' ask questions and the other must answer. So, there are other aspects of talk to be located in order to see where the orientations to context emerge.
Aspects of asymmetry:
In institutional discourse there is a direct relationship between status and role, on the one hand, and discursive rights and obligations, on the other. For instance, analysts of doctor-patient interactions have observed that doctors typically ask far more questions than their patients, and those questions tend to be more topic-directing than the few that the patients ask.. However, it seems that patients are often complicit in maintaining a situation in which the doctor is able not only to determine the topics that will be talked about, but also to define the upshots and outcomes of the discussions.
For example, Frankel (1984, cf. Huthby and Wooffitt, 1998:148) observes that while there is no institutionalized constraint against patients asking questions and initiating new topics, overwhelmingly these two activities are undertaken by doctors and not by patients. His analysis reveals that this asymmetry emerges from two tacitly negotiated features of the talk:
doctors tend to ask certain kinds of questions, usually information-seeking questions which require strictly factual responses. It means that they open up restricted options for patients to participate in the encounter. Patients are thus situated as the providers of information about their current physical state; and not, say, as individuals who can contextualise their physical state within a broader narrative of life events.
Patients themselves orient to and reproduce this asymmetry when they seek to offer additional information to the doctor. This information is offered almost exclusively in turns which are responses to doctor's questions.
Patients systematically withhold responses to doctor's announcements of a diagnosis. Given that the diagnosis represents a piece of 'expert' knowledge which the doctor passes on to the patient, then by withholding responses other than acknowledgment tokens such as 'yeh' or 'um', patients display their orientation to the expert status of the doctor.
Here is an example (taken from Fairclough, 1992:145-146) where this withholding is even done when the patient has an opportunity to respond through the doctor leaving a gap following the announcement of diagnosis:
(Physical examination)
Dr: Yeah.
Dr: That's shingles.
(1.2)
Dr: That's what it is:
(0.6)
Pt: Shingles.
Dr: Yes.
Notice that the diagnosis is produced over a series of turns alternating with pauses, in which there is no response from the patient other than a single-word repetition of the doctor's conclusion.
III. ASYMMETRY AND POWER
Many asymmetries in institutional discourse can be thought of in terms of the 'power' of institutional agents to establish the participation opportunities of laypersons (cf. Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998).
1) One kind of example can be found in Drew's (in Drew and Heritage, 1992) work on courtroom interrogation. He observes how the pre-allocated question-answer format of courtroom interaction gives attorneys a certain discursive power which is not available to witnesses: the power of summary.
As a questioner, the attorney has 'first rights' to pull together evidence and 'draw conclusions': in other words to define the meaning, the terms and the upshot of a particular set of answers.
This kind of power that is available to anyone, in whatever context, who asks a series of questions of a co-participant. The added significance in the courtroom is that the witness is systematically disabled from asking any questions of her/his own, or of taking issue with the attorney's final summary.
Another example is the going first and the going second in an argument. Thus, a basic structural feature of talk radio calls (in which callers introduce topics or issues on which they propose opinions) is linked to the differences in power between hosts and callers. The principal activity in these interactions is that of argument. Callers offer opinions on issues and hosts then debate those opinions, frequently taking up opposing stances in the process.
Arguing about opinions is a basically asymmetrical activity. In whatever context it occurs. There are significant differences between setting out an opinion (going first), and taking issue with that opinion (going second). Sacks proposed that those who go first are in a weaker position than those who get to go second, since the latter can argue with the former's position simply by taking it apart (merely by challenging the opponent to expand on, account for, his/her claims). Thus, while first position arguers are required to build a defence for their stance, those in second position do not need to do so.
On talk radio this asymmetry is 'built into' the overall structure of calls. Callers are expected, and may be constrained, to go first with their line, while the host systematically gets to go second. The fact that hosts systematically have the first opportunity for opposition within calls thus opens to them argumentative resources which are not available in the same way to callers. These resources are powerful, in the sense that they enable the host to constrain callers to do a particular kind of activity - to produce 'defensive' talk.
Examples of 'resources for power' are those which belong to a class of utterances including So? or What's that got to do with it?
E.g.: A caller complaining about the number of mailed requests for charitable donations she receives (Hutchby&Wooffitt1998:168)
Caller: I have got three appeals letters here this week. (0.4)
All askin' for
donations. (0.2). Two from those that I always contribute to anyway.
Host: Yes?
Caller: But I expect to get a lot more.
Host: So?
Caller: Now the point is there is a limit /to
/What's that
got to do what's that got to do with telethons though.
Caller: Because telethons (continues)
Here is Hutchby and Wooffitt's interpretation of the above example. As an argumentative move, the 'So' achieves two things. First it challenges the relevance of the caller's complaint within the terms of her own agenda (that charities represent a form of 'psychological' blackmail). Second, because it stands alone as a complete turn, it requires the caller to take the floor again and account for the relevance of her remark. The discursive power of the host emerges here (cf. Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998:168) not out of a pre-allocated question-answer format (because the turn-taking is much more 'conversational' than in courtroom, for instance), but as a result of the way calls are structured overall. (the callers must begin by taking up a position means that argumentative resources are distributed asymmetrically between host and caller).
The important thing to bear in mind is that one should not seek to treat power as a monolithic, one-way process. The exercise of powerful discursive resources can always be resisted by a recipient.
In Drew and Heritage (1992) you can find a collection of articles about institutional conduct and its underlying orientations, which offer insights into the ways the interaction is conducted within organizations. The contributors to the volume show kinds of possibilities that can emerge when CA techniques are applied to institutional settings.
IV. SUMMARY
Studies of formal settings have focused on the ways in which participants orient to a strict turn-taking format called turn-type pre-allocation. It means that participants, on entering the setting, are normatively constrained in the types of turns they may take according to their particular institutional roles. Typically, the format involves chains of question-answer sequences.
One of the most significant implication for the specifically 'institutional' character of actions in formal settings, of the pre-allocated format is the fact that powerful constraints operate to restrict the distribution of rights to express a personal opinion on the matter being discussed.
Many asymmetries in institutional discourse can be thought of in terms of the 'power' of institutional agents to establish the participation opportunities of laypersons (cf. Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998).
One kind of example can be found in Drew's work on courtroom interrogation. He observes how the pre-allocated question-answer format of courtroom interaction gives attorneys a certain discursive power: the power of summary.
Another example is the going first and the going second in an argument. There are significant differences between setting out an opinion (going first), and taking issue with that opinion (going second). Sacks proposed that those who go first are in a weaker position than those who get to go second, since the latter can argue with the former's position simply by taking it apart. Thus, while first position arguers are required to build a defence for their stance, those in second position do not need to do so.
V. TASKS:
1. Look at the following two extracts from two different medical interviews and see in what ways they are different.
I
Doctor: Hm hm.Now what do you mean by a sour stomach?
Patient: What's a sour stomach? A heartburn
Like a heartburn or some /thing
D: / Does it burn over here?
P: yeah
It - I think it like - If you take a needle
and stick / ya right there's a pain right here /
D: / hm / hm hm
P: and and then it goes from here on this side to this side.
D: Hm hm Does it /go into the back/
P: / it's all up here. No it's all right up here in front.
D: Yeah And when do you get that?
P: Well when I eat something wrong.
D: How - How
Soon after you eat?
P: Well, probably and hour.maybe /less.
D: / About an hour?
P: Maybe less.I've cheated and I've been drinking
which I shouldn't have done.
D: Does drinking make it worse?
P: Ho ho uh Yes.
Especially the carbonation and the alcohol.
D: Hm.hm.How much do you drink?
P: I don't know. Enough to make me
go to sleep at night.and that's quite a bit.
D: One or two drinks a day?
P: Oh no no no hump it's (more like) ten/..at night
D: / How
many drinks a night.
P: At night.
D: Whaddaya ..What type of drinks?
P: Oh vodka yeah, vodka and ginger ale.
D: How long have you been drinking that heavily?
P: .Since I've been married.
II
P: but she really has been very unfair to me. Got /no
D: / hm
P: respect for me /at all and I think. That's one of the reasons
D: /hm
P: why I drank so /much you /know and
D: / hm / hm are you
You back are you back on it have you started drinking /again
P: / no
D: oh you haven't (unclear)
P: no but em one thing that the
lady on the Tuesday said said to me was that. if my mother did turn me out of the /house which she thinks she
D: / yes hm
P: may do coz..she doesn't like the way I've been she
has turned me o/ before and em she said that
D: / hm
P: I could she thought that it might be possible for m
me to go to a council / flat
D: /right yes / yeah
P: /but she
Said it's a very she wasn't /pushing it because my
D: /hm
P: mother's got to sign a whole /lot of things and
D: / hm
P: she said it's difficult / and em there's no rush over
D: / hm
P: it. I I don't know whether. I mean one thing they say in AA is that you shouldn't change anything for a year.
D: hm yes I think that's wise. I think that's wise
(5 seconds pause) well look I'd like to keep you
know seeing you keep you know hearing how things are going from time to time if that's possible.
(from Fairclough, 1995:144-145)
2. Formulate a statement on a topic of interest and then decide, in pairs, who is for and who is against the statement. The person who is for the statement will go first in a debate, while the person against will go second
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