9.3 Participation

speaker has the ability to change focal addressee and thus to reorder her recipients within a single utterance” (1981: 152). Kendon (1992) started from Goffman’s (1974) notion of different attentional tracks in interactions to stress the importance of the spatial-orientational organization of focused encounters.

Participants in focused encounters typically enter into and maintain a distinct spatial and orientational arrangement. By doing so, it seems, participants can provide one another with evidence that they are prepared to sustain a common orientational perspective.

(Kendon 1992: 329)

This “common orientational perspective” is crucially achieved, according to Kendon, by the coordinated use of body postures and body movements. Such features of interaction produce specific types of participation frameworks, including culture-specific patterns of authorship and recipientship (see section 9.4 and 9.5).

9.3.3Participant frameworks

In her study of boys’ and girls’ talk in a Philadelphia neighborhood, Marjorie H. Goodwin (1990: 10) introduces the notion of participant (as opposed to participation) framework. Although related to Goffman’s, this notion also builds on the relevance of the sequential organization of talk in the constitution of a speech activity:22

I use [participant framework] to encompass two slightly different types of phenomena. First, activities align participants toward each other in specific ways (for example, the activity of constructing a turn at talk differentiates participants into speaker and hearer[s]), and this process is central to the way in which activities provide resources for constituting social organization within face-to-face interaction. ... Second, in addition to being positioned vis-à-vis each other by the activity, relevant parties are frequently characterized or depicted in some fashion, for example, animated (Goffman 1974, 1981) as figures or characters within talk.

Goodwin’s work starts from the assumption made within conversation analysis that the way in which conversation is structured is itself a type of social organization (see chapter 8). She uses this assumption to study the consequences that certain types of conversational organization, including participants’ voices and alignments, have for the participants themselves. By focusing on the differences

22To maintain the analytical difference between Goffman’s and Goodwin’s notions, when I felt it appropriate, I substituted Goodwin’s (1990) occasional uses of participation framework with participant framework.

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between boys’ and girls’ verbal strategies, Goodwin shows that taking participation as a unit of analysis gives us new and empirically more sound ways of studying a wide range of phenomena, including how the organization of a story can be used to structure the relationship among people and the social organization of an emerging argument (Goodwin 1990: ch. 10).

One of the participant frameworks for a dispute discussed by Goodwin is what she calls paired counters. These are two turn sequences in which something that the first speaker said is countered, opposed by another speaker. Here are some examples:

(6)(Chopper moves up the steps to where Tony is seated)

TONY: Get off my steps.

CHOPPER: No. You get on my steps. I get on yours.

(Goodwin 1990: 104)

(7)MALCOM: Get out of here Tony.

TONY: I’m not gettin’ out of nowhere.

(Goodwin 1990: 105)

(8)TONY: Gimme the things.

CHOPPER: You sh:ut up you big lips. (Y’all been

CHOPPER: Ah you better sh:up up with your little- di:ngy sneaks. (1.4)

TONY: I’m a dingy your hea:d.=How would you like that. (Goodwin 1990: 295)

As shown by the last example where Tony and Chopper keep responding to the last turn with a new turn, one of the consequences of reciprocal counters is that they restrict participation in the sequence to a small set of parties, typically two speakers (Goodwin 1990: 241). The organization of reciprocal counters (ABAB...) also raises the question (for the participants themselves) of how to end such a sequence. In contrast, the telling of a story presents a participant framework where more than two people can be involved and the party that was the exclusive ratified participant of the reciprocal counters becomes just one of the ratified participants. This last feature is indexically realized by the switching of pronominal usage: the same party who used to be a you becomes a he. While telling a story, a speaker can expand the participant framework of a dispute by getting parties not

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initially involved in the argument to align themselves with particular positions presented in the story. Here is an example of the beginning of a story that started at the end of the last example. Chopper stops in the middle of a counter (No you won’t you little-) to tell a story about Tony’s cowardly behavior:

(9)TONY: I’m a dingy your hea:d.=How would you like that.

(0.4)

CHOPPER: No you won’t you little- *h guess what.

CHOPPER: Lemme~tell~ya.=Guess what. (0.8)

We was comin’ home from practice, (0.4) and, three boys came up there (.) and

asked~us~for~money~and~Tony~did~like~this. (0.6) *hh ((raising hands up))

“I AINT GOT n(h)(hh)[o ˚m(h)oney”

In this sequence, Chopper starts his story with a typical story preface (Guess what?) which announces to everyone present that he is about to tell a story and therefore will be occupying the floor for more than one turn. Without waiting for his recipient(s) to provide a warrant for the telling, Chopper launches into his story about Tony. This move has several consequences, one of which is that “since the utterance containing Chopper’s counter is not brought to completion, Tony is not given the opportunity to respond to it. The return and exchange sequence has in effect ended” (Goodwin 1990: 244). Everyone present and not just Tony is the ratified recipient of the story. Furthermore, once a story is told, different kinds of actions are possible, including the public evaluation of the events in the story. This will give Chopper the opportunity to elicit support from other parties present and hence restructure the social organization of the argument.

Another domain of study for which the participant framework approach is particularly powerful is gender. In comparing boys’ and girls’ verbally enacted disputes, Goodwin shows that although the boys’ and girls’ verbal disputes share several features – including (1) the principal topic is offences of another, and (2) one of the characters in the story is a present participant –, they differ in that “[a]mong girls, ... offenses concern reported deeds of absent parties” (p. 278). Here is an example of a “He-said-she-said” sequence in which a speaker (Bea) tells how another girl (Kerry) willfully excluded the primary recipient of the story (Julia) from a particular group:

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(10)BEA: She said, She said that um, (0.6)

that (0.8) if that girl wasn’t there=

You know that girl that always makes those funny jokes, *h Sh’aid if that girl wasn’t there you wouldn’t be actin’, (0.4) a:ll stupid like that.

((several lines skipped)) (p. 265)

BEA: I s’d- I s’d “How: co:me you ain’t put Julia name down here.” *h So she said, she said ((whiny, defensive tone))

“That other girl called ‘er so, she no:t wi:th u:s, so,”

That’s what she said too. (0.2)

So I said, s- so I snatched the paper wi’her.

I said whwhen we were playin’ wi’that paper?

((a few lines skipped))

BEA: But she ain’t even put your name down there.

I just put it down there.

Me and Martha put it down.=An’ I said, and she said “Gimme-that-paper.=I don’t wannt have her name down here.”

I s- I s- I s- I said “She woulda allowed you name.” (Goodwin 1990: 263)

The absence of the reportedly offending party has consequences. Whereas boys who are the offended parties can directly confront the storyteller-offender, the girls who are offended must direct their counterattacks to absent parties. At the same time, “the talk of the moment creates a field of relevance that implicates those present to it in a variety of different ways” (Goodwin 1990: 270). This means that those in the audience who are not defined as the offended party and are not part of the story must design their contributions accordingly. One way is to provide general comments on the offender’s character. This is what Barbara does in the following examples:

(11)BARBARA: Kerry~always~mad~at somebody.

°I’on’ care.

(from Goodwin 1990: 270)

(12)BARBARA: Kerry always say somp’m.=

When you jump in her face she gonna deny it.

(Ibid.)

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These contributions create a context for the offended party to test the amount of support she has from her peers and receive expressions of solidarity or suggestions about future actions. The organization of talk as defined by the particular type of participant framework established in interaction is thus shown to be a powerful instrument in the construction of social units, relationships, and identities.

More recent work on gender differences in verbal interaction has continued in this tradition of examining the specific contributions of male and female speakers within particular types of participant frameworks. Ochs and Taylor (1992), for instance, discuss how family narrative practices recreate what they call the “Father-knows-best” dynamic through a particular configuration of introducers of a story, protagonist(s), and primary recipient:

Within this dynamic, the father is typically set up – through his own and others’ recurrent narrative practices – as primary audience, judge, and critic of family members’ actions, thoughts, feelings, and conditions either as a narrative protagonist (acting in the past) or as a co-narrator (acting in the present).

(Ochs and Taylor 1992: 447)

Ochs and Taylor show that, contrary to current beliefs about the impact of the feminist movement, this patriarchical ideology is still in place in the narratives of mainstream Anglo-American families. In examining a vast corpus of dinnertime narratives collected from seven Anglo-American families in the Los Angeles area, Ochs and Taylor found that (i) children are more likely to be protagonist in dinner narratives; (ii) parents are more likely to introduce such narratives; (iii) parents are also the privileged primary recipients of narratives; and (iv) fathers outrank mothers as primary recipients. These data show that there is a “fundamental asymmetry in family narrative activity whereby children’s lives are told to parents but by and large parents do not address their lives to their children” (1992: 453). Furthermore, analysis of the participant frameworks established during the narrative activities shows that fathers are primary recipients not just because they take on such a role but because mothers, at least in some families, regularly select their husbands as primary recipients through a number of rhetorical strategies, including the famous “You wanna tell Daddy what happened to you today?” and the tendency to initiate a story by orienting their own telling toward their husbands. The organization of participation in the activity of telling stories at the dinner table has a number of important consequences, including the setting up of the father as the judge23 and problematizer.

23Citing Foucault (1979), Ochs and Taylor evoke here Bentham’s panopticon as a metaphor that well illustrates the “all-seeing eye” or monitoring gaze of the father in dinner-table narrative activity. See also Foucault (1980a: ch. 8 “The eye of power”).

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Units of participation

Although mothers and children also problematize, fathers assume this role 50 percent as often as mothers and 3.5 times as often as children. Problematization is carried out by treating something that has just been said as untrue, incredible, or doubtful, as in (13):

(13)MOTHER: ((to Jodie))=oh:: you know what? You wanna tell

Daddy what happened to you today?=

FATHER: ((looking up and off))=Tell me everything that

(0.4) ((father begins shaking head no))

FATHER: couldn’t be

JODIE: (yeah) ((with upward nod toward Father))

[

OREN: (a) TV test? – TV test? Mommy?

MOTHER: ((nods yes)) -mhm

JODIE: and a sho:t

FATHER: ((to Jodie)) (what did you go to the ih::) ((to Mother)) Did you

go to the ?animal hospital?

MOTHER: .hh – no:?

FATHER: (where/what)

JODIE: I just went to the doctor and I got a shot

FATHER: ((shaking head no)) I don’t believe it

JODIE: ri:lly::

(Ochs and Taylor 1992: 449)

Other times problematization is done by emphasizing negative ramifications or implications of an event, as in (14), where the father reacts to his wife’s story about a broken chair by pointing out that it might just be a sign of the fact that she needs to lose weight:

(14)(The mother has just scooted Ronnie’s [4;11] chair in to the table)

MOTHER: (Oh) this chair? broke - today

FATHER: I? know

((mother heads back toward kitchen, stops by Josh’s

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chair, Josh [7;10] begins looking at mother’s chair and

MOTHER: Oh you knew that it was split?

FATHER: yeah?,

MOTHER: The whole wood(’s) split?

FATHER: yeah,

MOTHER: Oh did you do it?

(0.4)

FATHER: I don’t know if I did? it but I saw that it wa:?s=

MOTHER: yeah I sat down? in it and the whole thing split so I –

((bending over as if to indicate where on chair)) I tie:d

(a) rea:l si:gn? that you need to go on a di:?et.

MOTHER: hh ((grinning as she rises from stooped position next to Josh’s chair))

(Ochs and Taylor 1992: 450)

This research shows that the notion of participation is an important tool for the empirical investigation of how family and gender roles are constituted through speech. It also shows that to speak of participation means to speak of differentiation. It is through the different ways in which different individuals (in families, workplaces, service encounters) are allowed to be part of certain kinds of activities that social identities (including gender identities) are created and reproduced. It is through specific and reproduceable participant frameworks that authority, hierarchy, and subordination are constituted. Whether or not someone’s voice will be expressed, someone’s accusation accepted or rejected, someone’s point of view recognized depends in part on the interactional arrangements that are possible and the choices that are favored by such arrangements – see for instance the above discussion of byplay. The deconstruction of the pair speaker-hearer and its substitution with different kinds of participant statuses and frameworks

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