From Wetherell, 1998: 408 discourse analysis a comparative and critical introduction by robin wooffitt

3 things creep through the shell 4 and then you become really aware 5 of how awful you feel. I never 6 ever felt my age or looked my age 7 I was always older – people took me 8 for older. And when I was at college 9 I think I looked a matronly fifty. 10 And I was completely alone one weekend 11 and I got to this stage where I 12 almost jumped in the river. 13 I just felt life wasn’t worth it any 14 more – it hadn’t anything to offer 15 and if this was living 16 I’d had enough. 17 IR: You really were prepared to commit 18 suicide because you were 19 a big fatty 20 IE: Yes because I – I just didn’t 21 see anything in life that I had 22 to look forward to … . Heritage and Watson show that the interviewer’s phrase ‘a big fatty’ preserves the essential aspects of the interviewee’s prior utterances – her weight problem. But it also transforms that topic. The phrase ‘a big fatty’ trivialises the speaker’s obesity. This in turn establishes an inauspicious sequential context for the speaker. Either she can try to redress the trivialisation accomplished by ‘a big fatty’, and risk appearing pedantic or self-important, or she can expand upon her suicidal feelings knowing that they may be heard by the radio audience as an unwarranted response to what is now constituted as a trivial problem. And in this sense, the interviewer’s question and the speaker’s response are interac- tionally generated objects. The danger is this: analysing utterances with an eye to identifying the dis- courses or subject positions, or repertoires which they are said to embody invites the analyst to diasattend to the interactional circumstances in which – and for which – those utterances were originally produced. It is as if utterances were produced in an interactional vacuum, untainted by the contingencies of the turn-by-turn unfolding of talk out of which they were generated. Let us take a concrete example, and examine some of the data Wetherell used in her 1998 argument that CA needs to be supplemented by a concern with discourses and subject positions. In her analysis of data from an interview between Nigel Edley and the young men, reproduced earlier, Wetherell exam- ines the use of the phrase ‘out on the pull’. 125 PA: When you went out on that Friday . evening you were 126 out on the pull yeah? = She argues that this phrase is part of an accusation that Aaron, the person whose behaviour was so described, was intent on being promiscuous, and did METHODOLOGICAL DISPUTES 173 not care about the feelings of the young women with whom he might have sexual relations. She argues that this in turn establishes the relevance of a par- ticular subject position for Aaron which is troubling, in that it portrays him in a negative light. He rebuts this ascription by drawing on different subject posi- tions lucky, drunk, and so on. Wetherell argues that each of the subject posi- tions mobilised by, or in response to, ‘out on the pull’ draw from culturally available repertoires relevant to the morality of sexual activity Wetherell, 1998: 399. Analytically, then, in this post-structuralist account, much rests on the analyst’s assumption that ‘out on the pull’ has a certain meaning, or infer- ential force, largely independent of the context of its use, because of its embeddedness in wider cultural understandings about the morality of young people’s – especially young males’ – heterosexual activity. It is tempting to rely on intuitions about the broader cultural resonances of a phrase like ‘out on the pull’, especially if they derive from, and reaffirm, a pre- existing, theoretically driven, political or moral perspective. And, of course, it is easy to imagine occasions in which that phrase might be used euphemistically to characterise actions which are morally reprehensible, and thereby form part of an accusation. However, it is just as easy to imagine its use as a simple description of the intentions for an evening out; or as a form of tease, for example, as a way of imputing a mildly deviant ulterior motive for taking just a little too much effort over one’s appearance or dress when there is no expectation of meeting members of the opposite sex see Drew, 1987, for an analysis of the interactional organisa- tion of teasing. And there is good evidence that figures of speech like ‘out on the pull’ cluster in particular sequential positions, and perform specific interactional functions Drew and Holt, 1988, 1998, properties which could not be intuited from a decontextualised assessment of their wider cultural or ideological mean- ings. The point is that it is imperative to investigate the interactional context in which a phrase is used to get a sense of what it is doing. So what is the interactional context in which Paul uses the phrase ‘out on the pull’? Here is the relevant strip of talk. 116 N: Right: . okay 0.2 what do you think Paul? 117 0.3 118 PA: Did you = 119 PH: = Are you ap palled? 120 PA: When you hh no . s when you went out 121 N: Not appalled? 122 PA: I jus I’ll tell you in a minute when you went out 123 N: hh hhh 124 ? hhhh 125 PA: When you went out on that Friday . evening you were 126 out on the pull yeah? = Prior to this sequence, Aaron and Phil have been talking about the morality of Aaron’s sexual exploits. In the first turn in the extract, the interviewer asks 174 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 关 关 关 兴 兴 兴 another interviewee for his thoughts on the matter. As the current topic of the interview is the morality of Aaron’s actions, the question ‘what do you think Paul?’ is hearable as an invitation to address that topic. Paul’s response begins with ‘Did you’. Although we do not have the benefit of video evidence show- ing Paul turn to face Aaron, we can feel confident that this turn was addressed to him, and not Phil or the interviewer besides, some turns later, Paul even- tually launches a question to Aaron in which ‘did you’ is the turn initial com- ponent. In which case, this turn projects an interesting course of action: he is not answering the question, but in all likelihood building another question for Aaron. However, after Paul’s ‘Did you’ he in turn is asked another question by Phil, ‘Are you appalled’. Paul temporarily abandons his turn, and begins speaking again in overlap with Phil’s production of the word ‘appalled’. ‘Are you appalled’ is a turn designed with exquisite precision to discomfort Paul. Structurally it comes after Paul has started a turn which is legitimately his to take: the interviewer has issued a first part of a paired question–answer action sequence, and has identified its recipient by the use of a name. Phil’s utterance ‘Are you appalled’ does not come in the vicinity of a transition rel- evance place where turn-transfer may legitimately be initiated; it cuts right over Paul’s on-going turn. This is not to say that Phil is simply interrupting Paul in a random manner. Some features of this extract resemble what Jefferson has called interjacent overlap Jefferson, 1986: 159, which has orderly properties. But it is a clear display that Phil is explicitly not aligning with the trajectory of the utterance Paul is trying to build. The simple production of the first part of an adjacency pair does not necessarily legislate that the second part will follow immediately. Before the provision of the expected second part there may be insertion sequences Schegloff, 1972a, often composed of embedded and nested question–answer adjacency pairs, during which matters relevant to the first part are addressed before the second part is produced. Thus one obtains patterns which take the following form.

8.4 Taken from Sacks, 1992, Vol II: 546–7; start of telephone conversation

Gene: Is Maggie there. Q1 Lana: ·hh Uh who is calling, Q2 Gene: Uh, this’s Gene:. Novaki. A2 Lana: Uh just a mom’nt A1 Paul’s response is being built as a question; and it can be heard, therefore, not as an attempt to avoid answering the question, but as the first part of an insertion sequence designed to address matters prior to the production of an answer. Now look to see what Phil’s ‘Are you appalled’ does in this context. Phil’s utterance offers a candidate answer; and it is offered as soon as it becomes apparent that Paul is not in the first instance doing ‘answering’. Earlier it was noted that Phil’s METHODOLOGICAL DISPUTES 175 overlapping turn has the character of interjacent overlap. This is a method by which a speaker can initiate a turn the relevance of which may be jeopardised by the on-going talk Jefferson, 1986. What Phil’s intervention does, then, is to propose that right at that moment Paul should be offering an answer; and that if an answer is not offered right at that moment, the opportunity or likelihood of an answer is diminished. In this, Phil’s question to Paul subtly transforms the interactional landscape. Prior to ‘Are you appalled’, Paul’s ‘Did you’ was at least hearable as the onset of an insertion sequence as a preliminary to an answer; but Phil’s intervention proposes that an answer should be forthcoming, and in this sequential context Paul’s current turn is hearable as an evasion of an answer. Also, consider the inferential impact of ‘Are you appalled’ as a candidate answer. Phil could have selected any kind of response to attribute to Paul. His selection of ‘appalled’ indexes a moral response which has been topicalised earlier in the interview. Moreover, it offers an extreme moral response; this is not, for example, merely disapproval. Finally, given the range of candidate answers which Phil could have offered at that point, this selection is hearable as one fitted to what is known about Paul: that he is the kind of person likely to have taken an extremely negative view of Aaron’s conduct. However, up to this point in the interview, Aaron, Phil and the interviewer have handled the topic of Aaron’s sexual adventures in a fairly lighthearted and casual manner. Consequently, the question ‘Are you appalled’ establishes a discrepancy between the seriousness of the incidents under discussion and the extreme nature of Paul’s likely reaction. And this in turn transforms the inferential relevances in play, in that it raises the possibility that Paul’s response what- ever it transpires to be may be heard as unwarranted or exaggerated. Phil’s question thus establishes an inauspicious interactional and inferential environment for Paul and the turn he is trying to build. And there is evidence – intrinsic to the data – that Paul himself is sensitive to the inferential implica- tions of Phil’s question. Note that Phil’s ‘Are you’ is produced in the clear of any other talk. There is good reason to assume that Paul heard that Phil was embarking on a question. Paul begins to speak, re-starting his turn, this time with ‘When you’. However, ‘When you’ is produced in overlap with all but the first sounds of ‘appalled’. Having re-started his turn knowing that Phil was asking him a question, Paul subsequently abandons it at the first possible point after the word ‘appalled’ – the point at which it becomes clear what kind of question Phil was asking and the kind of action it was accomplishing. Paul immediately produces a minimal and unequivocal ‘no’ before trying again to launch his response to the interviewer’s question. The point is this: Wetherell argues that this particular use of the phrase ‘out on the pull’ has an accusatory orientation because of its claimed wider cul- tural, historical and ideological resonances. A CA re-analysis reveals that the turn which eventually ends with the phrase ‘out on the pull’ is sequentially implicated in and generated out of what is demonstrably a sceptical – perhaps even hostile – interactional context. Thus what Wetherell interprets to be a 176 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS