From Clark and Pinch, 1988: 121. ‘A1’, ‘A2’ etc. are members of

9.4 From Clark and Pinch, 1988: 128

P: now ’oo can use . all the four of ’em, 0.7 fer the purposes of the advertisement, 0.9 theh’ve got tuh be cleared cheaply an’ quickly. 0.3 ’oo can use all the four of ’em, 0.5 twenty three pounds w’th, 0.4 at less than three fifty raise an ’arm [Many audience members raise hands.] 0.8 P: Anyone else? 0.5 now as- 0.3 Now listen Rick ][To PC] 0.5 P: the first eighteen people wi’ their ’and in the air, 0. will yuh please step forward. … now look 0.6 P: give every one o’these people wi’ ] their ’ands up in the air a ][To PC] carrier ] 0.4 P: Ah’m givin’ out eighteen carriers an’ that’s it Note that after soliciting expression of interest the pitcher asks his assistant to hand out a carrier to each person with a raised hand. Obviously the implica- tion is that these carriers will be used to hold the goods being sold; acceptance of the carrier thus establishes a strong obligation to see through the sale and make a purchase. But to minimise the likelihood of anyone rejecting the car- rier, the pitcher simply instructs his assistant to hand them out. The audience is not offered a choice as to whether they want a carrier or not. This minimises the likelihood of anyone rejecting a carrier, which would constitute a weak- ening of the obligation eventually to make a purchase. The pitcher’s sales strategy is premised on the assumption that goods do not sell themselves; some discursive intervention is necessary. Clark and Pinch’s research shows that the verbal strategies of the market pitchers seem remarkably success- ful in ensuring that audience members buy the goods on offer. But this is not to say that the audience members are being duped, or that they are acting foolishly. People would not buy the goods unless they were convinced that they were getting value for their money. They can always walk away, and at any moment. Indeed, as Clark and Pinch show, although the audience members may not be as familiar with the practices of market selling as the traders, they are nonetheless active participants in this sales encounter. But the traders do have important resources by which to manage the audience’s interpretations of the value of the goods contrasting the actual price with an alleged value; and to encourage purchase-implicative actions asking interested parties to raise their hands; and to engender purchase-obligative orientations handing out bags; and to anticipate and defuse potential hostility from disgruntled customers the use of humour. These and other interactional resources allow pitchers some control over the purchasing decisions of their audience, and the outcome of their sales patter. 192 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS In this sense, Clark and Pinch claim that they have demonstrated a power relationship between the market pitcher and their audience which is the out- come of interactional practices: the ability of one participant to influence the course of action of another through the use of language by invoking and draw- ing upon normative conventions associated with sales exchanges more gener- ally. This has important implications for those attempts to understand these kinds of economic exchanges and perhaps other kinds too which draw upon macro-sociological variables or theories. It is not any external attributes for example class, gender or age which the pitcher or audience members may or may not share, nor their subject posi- tion pitcher as ‘seller’ versus audience member as ‘buyer’, nor indeed aspects ‘inherent’ in the goods themselves for example, their quality or their selling price which preordains, guarantees or determines that sales success. Rather, we would claim, that it is the manner in which economic exchange can be managed by the pitcher which is the central feature of how this interactional project can be effected, social control accomplished, and how this type of power relation can be constituted. Clark and Pinch, 1988: 138 Summary • Clark and Pinch draw from conversation analysis to investigate selling as an interactional achievement, rather than an economic act based on the value or personal need of goods for sale. • They show market pitchers’ communicative skills by which they are able to manage the expectations, obligations and potential hostile responses of the audience. • They are thus able to explore how the ‘economic power’ of the pitchers is interactionally generated, collaboratively produced and normatively organised. Turn-taking and power in institutional settings In his work on interaction between presenters and callers to radio ‘phone in’ talk programmes, Ian Hutchby has focused explicitly on the relationship between conversation analysis, control and power Hutchby, 1992, 1996a, 1996b, 1999. He has argued that CA studies of talk in institutional or work- related settings already offer analyses of features of interaction that lend them- selves to interpretation in terms of interpersonal power relations. He notes, for example, that in Drew and Heritage’s introduction to their seminal collection of studies of talk at work, institutional interaction is characterised by CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND POWER 193 … role structured, institutionalised, and omnirelevant asymmetries between participants in terms of such matters as differential distribution of knowledge, rights to knowledge, access to conversational resources, and to participation in the interaction. Drew and Heritage, 1992b: 49 Hutchby focuses on the use of the word ‘asymmetry’ in this passage and won- ders if its neutral connotations adequately capture the differentials in social power suggested by phrases such as ‘rights to act in certain ways’ and ‘access to conversational resources’ Hutchby, 1999: 89. He goes on to argue that con- versation analysts should not be reluctant to consider the extent to which their work captures power relations in the analysis of the organisation of interaction. This is not to say that Hutchby rejects CA’s strong methodological princi- ples: he supports Schegloff’s argument that it is risky to assume the operation of power prior to empirical analysis because it invites the analyst to ‘discover’ power relations in talk wherever she may look. Nor does he assume that social interaction is merely a screen on which are reflected pre-existing power rela- tionships. He argues that ‘the sequential structures out of which the differen- tial distributions of resources emerge are not a natural but an oriented-to feature of the interaction’ Hutchby, 1999: 90; original italics. We can illus- trate his argument by looking at some of his analytic work on interaction on talk radio shows. In talk radio shows members of the public are invited to ring the studio and talk to the presenter live on air to offer their opinions on the topics of that day’s programme. To make the show more interesting to its audience, the hosts may adopt a position of professional scepticism with regard to the caller’s opinions, for example, taking an oppositional stance regardless of their own personal views. Hosts thus try to engender some element of confrontation. Who has the power in these confrontations? Initially, it might seem that the balance of power rests with the callers. Talk radio shows are explicitly advertised as vehicles in which the members of the public can express their views and have them broadcast nationally, or to more local communities. Moreover, the caller knows what they are going to say. The presenter may have some idea of the kind of point a next caller might make callers may have to outline the purpose of the call to an assistant prior to being con- nected to the host, and the programme may be concerned with a limited range of topics. But the host does not know exactly what the caller is going to say. In this sense, the host would seem to be at a disadvantage. Finally, it is a routine feature of talk radio shows that callers get the first chance to offer an opinion. The following extracts come from Hutchby’s study of a nationally broadcast talk radio show in the United Kingdom. Note that the host’s turn announces the next caller, where they are calling from, and offers a greeting. The callers return the greeting, and then immediately begin to talk about the point they wish to make. The following discussion draws from Hutchby’s extended 1996a account. 194 CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS