From Hutchby, 1996a: 47 discourse analysis a comparative and critical introduction by robin wooffitt

1977 does not assume that power resides with one group, who can then use it to influence other groups. Instead, he sees power as a set of ever-present possi- bilities which can be mobilised or resisted by social agents individuals, groups, and larger collectivities. Moreover, power is embedded in that set of relation- ships between social agents who may variably exercise or resist power. Foucault thus views power as a set of structured but variable potentials, not a static feature of unchanging relationships between well-defined social groups. This focus on the shifting and contestable relationship between agents in which power can be mobilised and contested chimes with Hutchby’s account of power as fluid and sequentially organised argumentative opportunities and resources. But Hutchby goes on to offer a more challenging argument: that conversa- tion analysis can offer an empirically grounded elaboration of some of Foucault’s ideas. For example, Foucault emphasises the role of discourses in power relations; and he argues that the operation of, and resistance to, power relations through discourses does not just occur on a macro-sociological scale across large social formations, but infuses mundane, everyday activities. But as we saw in the last chapter, there are problems with the concept of discourses, not the least of which is that it invites the analyst to disattend to the detail of social interaction – the very environment in which Foucault says power oper- ates. But conversation analysis is directly concerned to describe the subtlety and intricacy of everyday communicative processes. For Hutchby, then, CA offers a way to explore power in the very infrastructure of sociality: the rela- tionship between turns at talk-in-interaction. Summary • Hutchby studied the mobilisation of power in the allocation of turn types between the participants in calls to talk radio programmes. • He identified a number of practices and devices through which the host seeks to maintain an argumentative advantage over the caller. • His work stands as an illustration of his broader position that conversation analysts should not be reluctant to consider the extent to which their work captures power relations in the analysis of the organisation of interaction. Gender and sexuality: feminism, language and conversation analysis So far we have studied how particular researchers have used conversation analysis to explore power in the organisation of interaction in specific settings, such as the market, and the radio talk show. In this final section, however, we will be looking at debates about the use of CA amongst a community of scholars: feminist researchers interested in the relationship between language, gender and sexuality. CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND POWER 199 According to Kitzinger, ‘Feminism is a politics predicated on the belief that women are oppressed’ and it has an emancipatory agenda in that it is ‘a social movement dedicated to political change’ 2000b: 163. Feminist scholars have had a long-standing interest in the ways in which language reproduces or reflects women’s disadvantage. They argued that inequality is rife in various institutions and practices within society; and language is no different: the lan- guage we have reflects and enforces patriarchal, male power and ensures the subjugation of women as a disadvantaged and marginalised group within soci- ety Lakoff, 1975. Dale Spender’s famous book Man Made Language 1980, for example, explored the various ways in which the structure, vocabulary and conventional use of English enforced the patriarchal order and perpetuated gender inequalities. Similarly, Kramarae 1981 argued that English language effectively silences women, in that it predominantly reflects men’s experi- ences of and attitudes about the world. There is no vocabulary or conceptual framework through which women can express their distinctive perspectives and life experiences; therefore women become a muted group. Other approaches focused more on the way in which wider institutional and societal gender inequalities were reflected in differences in women’s and men’s speech patterns. Thus Fishman 1983 studied tape recordings of naturally occurring interactions in mixed-sex heterosexual couples. She wanted to explore how gendered conversational practices reinforced wider gender asymmetries in power and status. She found that women asked more questions than men, and were more likely to use ‘attention beginnings’ – phrases such as ‘this is interesting’ – to preface remarks. Fishman argued that questions and attention beginnings were designed to increase the possibility of a response; thus their predominance in women’s speech reflected women’s experience of not being treated as an equal conversational partner. Similarly, West and Zimmerman 1983 studied the inci- dence and organisation of interruptions between men and women, and found, on the whole, that males interrupted the females more than vice versa but see James and Clarke, 1993, whose overview of interruption research suggests a less clear-cut picture. These kinds of studies thus tried to identify how wider struc- tural gender inequalities were realised in mundane speech practices. A third perspective on the relationship between language and gender also focused on differences between women’s and men’s speech, but regarded each communicational style as equally valid. For example, Holmes 1995 exam- ined politeness behaviour: compliments, apologies, and so on. She was pri- marily interested in the different ways women and men performed these discursive actions. Similarly Tannen 1991 has explored how different con- versational styles of men and women can lead to misunderstanding and mis- communication. And West 1995 argued that conversation analysis could be used to expose women’s interactional competence, thus acting as a corrective to those perspectives which treated women’s communicative abilities as inferior to those of men, or which merely argued for the parity of women’s speech skills without actually being able to demonstrate them empirically. 200 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS