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.