Seminar 8
In today’s seminar, our discussion will focus on:
Structure of police interviews
Language (eg word choice) matters
Language as action in courtrooms
Interview as key professional skill for journalism
Pursuit of responses
Implications for knowledge
Talk-in-interaction is context-dependent and context renewing.
Heritage, J. (1984) Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
This is why we focus our research on real rather than role-play interaction.
Stokoe, E. (2013). The (in)authenticity of simulated talk: comparing role-played and actual interaction and the implications for communication training. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 46(2),165–185.
Language in courtrooms
Facts of the case and rule of law.
Legal realism: the “breakfast theory of justice”.
Evidence of interactional practices influencing outcomes.
Heritage, J. & Clayman,S.E. (2010), Talk in action: Interactions, identities, and institutions. Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell.
About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?
About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?
Did you see the broken taillight?
Did you see a broken taillight?
Question and answer adjacency pairs
Atkinson, M.J. & Drew, P. (1979), Order in court: the organisation of verbal interaction in judicial settings, London, Macmillan.
Drew, P. (1992), "Contested evidence in courtroom cross-examination: The case of a trial for rape", In Talk at work: interaction in institutional settings (P. Drew, J. Heritage, eds.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 470-520.
Trial of police officers who assaulted Rodney King, Los Angeles, 1992
Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96, 606-633.
John F. Manzo, (1996). Taking turns and taking sides: Opening scenes from two jury deliberations. Social Psychology Quarterly, 59(2), 107-125.
Insights from CA research:
The institutional setting governs who talks;
Real interactions provide better insights than role play for professional training;
Questions and answers as proxy for facts;
Word choice matters;
Sequential organisation of talk matters;
Relative knowledge is talked into being.
Objectivity and adversarialness in journalism
Leigh Sales (7.30 Report) and Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt, May 2021.
“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. (p.57)
”
Pursuing an answer
Probes: questions that seek supportive details regarding some aspect of the IE’s response;
Counters: questions that are heard as challenging or undermining the IE’s response in some way; and
Pursuits: questions that topicalize an IE’s (c)overt refusal to answer the IR’s prior question and make that the focus of the IE’s next turn.
Greatbatch, D (1986). Some standard uses of supplementary questions in news interviews. In J. Wilson & B. Crow (Eds.) Belfast Working Papers in Language and Linguistics (Vol. 8, 86-123). Jordanstown: University of Ulster.
Romaniuk, T. (2013) Pursuing answers to questions in broadcast journalism, Research on Language and Social Interaction, 46(2), 144-164.
Key points
Interview as key professional skill for journalists
Pursuit of responses (accountability for relevance of the second pair part being 'properly done')
Implications for knowledge
and in relation to analysing data..
"A detailed description of what the participants say and do in an interaction is not the same as an analysis of a practice that participants will use to accomplish an action. One model of an analysis of a practice is that it should enable someone to competently use that practice to perform an action. This involves moving away from discussing what particular people did on the occasion, to considering what people need to know and do in order to appropriately perform the action in any new situations they encounter." (Pomerantz and Fehr, 2011)
