Article published in:
Thematic issue: New perspectives on conflict
[Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 9:2] 2021
► pp. 297–323

“The people watching at home”

An analysis of political disagreement in a public inquiry event

| University of Warwick , UK
| University of Warwick , UK
This paper explores disagreement practice in political discourse, specifically in the under explored public inquiry communicative event and more specifically in the select-committee hearing. We revisit earlier work on theorising disagreement to expand our understanding of its contextual nature, particularly in relation to the making of ideology.Public inquiries combine the characteristics of professional meetings with characteristics of political discourse. They are typified by hybridised and ambiguous role expectations which participants negotiate in and through (potentially competing) practices in doing the ideological work demanded by the policy process. In this context, disagreement emerges as key to the performance of the interactants’ situated and explicit/semi-permanent roles as professional politicians.By applying Critical Interactional Sociolinguistic analysis within a wider frame of audience design, we demonstrate the importance of the ideological role of disagreement to the policy process. We argue that further attention needs to be given to the policy talk in meso-level political events, such as the public inquiry, which connect the ideological (macro) political domains of human activity with the (micro) here and now of talk. We close the paper with directions for further research.
Keywords: disagreement, ideology, Critical Interactional Sociolinguistics, audience, policy process, meso-space, political discourse
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The UK Parliament select committee hearing
  • 3.Critical Interactional Sociolinguistics and policy analysis
    • 3.1Critical Interactional Sociolinguistics (CIS)
    • 3.2Application to policy events
    • 3.3Disagreement
      • 3.3.1A CIS approach to disagreement
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Data analysis
    • 5.1Excerpt A: “I don’t think you can um get away with that minister”
    • 5.2Excerpt B: “You’re quite right you know”
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 05 July 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00068.und
References
Angouri, Jo
2012 “Managing Disagreement in Problem Solving Meeting Talk.” Journal of Pragmatics 441: 1565–1579. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 Culture, Discourse and the Workplace. Oxon: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Angouri, Jo, and Miriam A. Locher
2012 “Theorising Disagreement.” Journal of Pragmatics 441: 1549–1553. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Angouri, Jo, and Ruth Wodak
2014 “ ‘They became big in the shadow of the crisis’: The Greek Success Story and the Rise of the Far Right.” Discourse & Society 25 (4): 540–565. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bargiela-Chiappini, Francesca, and Sandra Harris
1997 Managing Language: The Discourse of Corporate Meetings. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Allan
1984 “Language Style as Audience Design.” Language in Society 13 (2): 145–204. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2001 “Back in Style: Reworking Audience Design.” In Style and Sociolinguistic Variation, edited by Penelope Eckert and John R. Rickford, 139–169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
1983 “The Dynamics of Political Interviews.” Text 3 (2): 131–153.Google Scholar
Bousfield, Derek
2014 “Stylistics, Speech Acts and Im/politeness Theory.” In The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics, edited by Michael Burke, 118–135. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Buttny, Richard
2015 “Contesting Hydrofracking during an Inter-governmental Hearing: Accounting by Reworking or Challenging the Question.” Discourse & Communication 9 (4): 423–440. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Demasi, Mirko A.
2016 “Debating the European Union: Dynamics of Argumentation in Political Debates.” Loughborough University. https://​repository​.lboro​.ac​.uk​/articles​/thesis​/Debating​_the​_European​_Union​_dynamics​_of​_argumentation​_in​_political​_debates​/9480254
Ehrlich, Susan, and Alice F. Freed
2010 “The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse: An Introduction.” In Why do you Ask? : The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, edited by Alice F. Freed and Susan Ehrlich, 3–19. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ekström, Mats
2001 “Politicians Interviewed on Television News.” Discourse and Society 12 (5): 563–584. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman
2013 “Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Policy Studies.” Critical Policy Studies 7 (2): 177–197. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra
2012 “ ‘A Simple Disagreement? A row? Or a Massive Fall out?’: On the Challenges of an Analytical Task.” Journal of Pragmatics 441: 1623–1625. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John Joseph, and Jenny Cook-Gumperz
2008 “Studying Language, Culture, and Society: Sociolinguistics or Linguistic Anthropology?” Journal of Sociolinguistics 12 (4): 532–545. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haggith, Mandy
1993 “Disagreement in Creative Problem Solving.” AAAI Technical Report SS-93-01.Google Scholar
Hajer, Maarten A.
1995 The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hanks, William F.
1990 Referential Practice: Language and Lived Space among the Maya. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael
2007 “The Discursive Challenge to Politeness Research: An Interactional Alternative.” Journal of Politeness Research 31: 295–317. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hutchby, Ian
2005 “Conversation Analysis and the Study of Broadcast Talk.” In Handbook of Language and Social Interaction, edited by Kristine L. Fitch and Robert E. Sanders, 437–460. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Institute for Government
2018 Public Inquiries 21 May. Accessed June 2020. https://​www​.instituteforgovernment​.org​.uk​/explainers​/public​-inquiries
2020 Select Committees 19 May. Accessed June 2020. https://​www​.instituteforgovernment​.org​.uk​/explainers​/select​-committees
Kreis, Ramona
2017 “The 'Tweet Politics' of President Trump.” Journal of Language and Politics 16 (4): 607–618. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe
1985 Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London, New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Laville, Sandra
2019 “Six UK Fashion Retailers Fail to Cotton on to Sustainability.” The Guardian. Accessed 2019 https://​www​.theguardian​.com​/fashion​/2019​/jan​/31​/six​-uk​-fashion​-retailers​-fail​-to​-cotton​-on​-to​-sustainability​-environment
Levinson, Stephen C.
1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Livesey, Sharon M.
2002 “The Discourse of the Middle Ground: Citizen Shell Commits to Sustainable Development.” Management Communication Quarterly 15 (3): 313–349. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Marra, Meredith
2012 “Disagreeing without being Disagreeable: Negotiating Workplace Communities as an Outsider.” Journal of Pragmatics 44 (12): 1580–1590. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, Martin
2007 The Discourse of Broadcast News: A Linguistic Approach. Oxon: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, James
2019 The Discursive Construction of Blame: The Language of Public Inquiries. London: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Myers, Greg
1998 “Displaying Opinions: Topics and Disagreement in Focus Groups.” Language in Society 271: 85–111. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rampton, Ben
2016 “Foucault, Gumperz and Governmentality: Interaction, Power and Subjectivity in the Twenty-first Century.” In Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates, edited by Nikolas Coupland, 303–328. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rydin, Yvonne
1999 “Can we Talk Ourselves into Sustainability? The Role of Discourse in the Environmental Policy Process.” Environmental Values 8 (4): 467–484. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey
1973/1987 “On the Preference for Agreement and Contiguity in Sequences in Conversation.” In Talk and Social Organisation, edited by Graham Button and John R. E. Lee, 54–69. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Schattschneider, Elmer Eric
1960 The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America. Hinsdale: Dryden.Google Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah
1984 “Jewish Argument as Sociability.” Language in Society 131: 311–335. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, Maria
2012 “Disagreements, Face and Politeness.” Journal of Pragmatics 441: 1554–1564. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Sophie
2018 “MPs Launch Inquiry into Fashion Industry’s Environmental Impact.” The Telegraph. Accessed 2019 https://​www​.telegraph​.co​.uk​/business​/2018​/06​/22​/mps​-launch​-inquiry​-fashion​-industrys​-environmental​-impact/
Smithers, Rebecca
2018 “MPs to Examine Environmental Footprint of UK Fashion Industry.” The Guardian. Accessed 2019 https://​www​.theguardian​.com​/fashion​/2018​/jun​/22​/mps​-to​-examine​-environmental​-footprint​-of​-uk​-fashion​-industry
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson
1986 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah, and Christina Kakavá
1992 “Power and Solidarity in Modern Greek Conversation: Disagreeing to Agree.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 10 (1): 11–34. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
UK Government
n.d. How Government Works. Accessed June 2020. https://​www​.gov​.uk​/government​/how​-government​-works
2018 parliamentlive.tv: Environmental Audit Committee. 18 December. https://​parliamentlive​.tv​/Event​/Index​/ccea76b1​-55ee​-4cff​-94a8​-146852285d1e
n.d. www.parliament.uk. Accessed June 2020. https://​www​.parliament​.uk​/about​/how/
Wodak, Ruth
2009 The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar