Cambridge University Press 0521793122 - Matters of Opinion: Talking about Public Issues Greg Myers Frontmatter More information Matters of Opinion When a government announces that it will ‘listen to the public’, we are reminded that public opinion, and not just voting, underpins democ- racy. Matters of Opinion offers an interesting new insight into ‘public opinion’ as reported in the media, asking where these opinions actually come from, and how they have their effects. Drawing on the analysis of conversations from focus groups, phone-ins, and broadcast inter- views with members of the public, Greg Myers argues that we must go back to these encounters, asking questions such as what members of the public thought they were being asked, whom they were talking as, and whom they were talking to. He suggests that people don’t carry a store of opinions, ready to tell strangers; they use opinions in order to get along with other people, and how they say things is as important as what they say. Engaging and informative, this book illuminates cur- rent debates on research methods, the public sphere, and deliberative democracy, on broadcast talk, and on what it means to participate in public life. greg myers is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, University of Lancaster, where he has taught a variety of courses on text analysis and the language of the media since 1989. His previous books include Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge (1990), Words in Ads (1994), and Ad Worlds: Brands, Media, Audiences (1999), and he has published in a wide variety of journals. From 1998–2002 he was Honorary Secretary of the British Association of Applied Linguistics. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521793122 - Matters of Opinion: Talking about Public Issues Greg Myers Frontmatter More information Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics editors Paul Drew, Marjorie Harness Goodwin, John J. Gumperz, Deborah Schiffrin 1. Discourse strategies John J. Gumperz 2. Language and social identity John J. Gumperz 3. The social construction of literacy edited by Jenny Cook-Gumperz 4. Politeness: some universals in language usage Penelope Brown and Stephen C Levinson 5. Discourse markers Deborah Schiffrin 6. Talking voices: repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational Discourse Deborah Tannen 7. Conducting interaction: patterns of behaviour in focused encounters Adam Kendon 8. Talk at work: interaction in institutional settings Paul Drew and John Heritage 9. Grammar in interaction: adverbial clauses in American English conversations Cecilia E. Ford 10. Crosstalk and culture in Sino-American communication Linda W. L. Young and John J. Gumperz 11. AIDS counselling: institutional interaction and clinical practice Anssi Perakyl¨ a¨ 12. Prosody in conversation: interactional studies Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and Margret Selting 13. Interaction and grammar Elinor Ochs, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Sandra A. Thompson 14. Credibility in court: communicative practices in the Camorra Trials Marco Jacquemet 15. Interaction and the development of mind A. J. Wootton 16. The news interview: journalists and public figures on the air Steven Clayman and John Heritage 17. Gender and politeness Sara Mills 18. Laughter in interaction Philip Glenn 19. Matters of opinion: talking about public issues Greg Myers © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521793122 - Matters of Opinion: Talking about Public Issues Greg Myers Frontmatter More information Matters of Opinion Talking about Public Issues GREG MYERS © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521793122 - Matters of Opinion: Talking about Public Issues Greg Myers Frontmatter More information published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011– 4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon´ 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Greg Myers 2004 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2004 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Sabon 10/13 pt. System LATEX2ε [tb] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Myers, Greg, 1954– Matters of Opinion: Talking About Public Issues / Greg Myers. p. cm. – (Studies in interactional sociolinguistics; 19) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-79312-2 (hb) 1. Mass media and public opinion. I. Title. II. Series. P96.P83M94 2004 302.23 – dc22 2004047296 ISBN 0 521 79312 2 hardback The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521793122 - Matters of Opinion: Talking about Public Issues Greg Myers Frontmatter More information For Nan Myers, Scott Myers, and Mark Myers © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521793122 - Matters of Opinion: Talking about Public Issues Greg Myers Frontmatter More information Contents Acknowledgments page x Transcription conventions xiii Focus-group data xv 1 Paradoxes of opinion 1 2 A tool kit for analysing group discussions 22 3 Forums for opinion: ‘What is it that’s going on here?’ 47 4 Institutions of opinion: voice of the people? 67 5 Topics in interaction: ‘Why that now?’ 89 6 Agreeing and disagreeing: maintaining sociable argument 112 7 Representing speech: other voices, other places 134 8 Questioning expertise: Who says? 157 9 Radio phone-ins: mediated sociable arguments 179 10 Vox pop television interviews: constructing the public 203 11 Opinions as talk 223 References 235 Index 255 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521793122 - Matters of Opinion: Talking about Public Issues Greg Myers Frontmatter More information Acknowledgments This book is about the ways people express opinions in groups and in broadcast media. With such a topic, I am lucky to be working at a university with a lively interdisciplinary social science research community, especially in the Centre for the Study of Environmen- tal Change and the Institute for Cultural Research. I owe thanks to the colleagues with whom I worked on research projects that provided much of the data for this book: Phil Macnaghten, Peter Simmons, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Mark Toogood, John Urry, and Brian Wynne. They tried patiently, if not always successfully, to get me to look at broader issues and applications. I am also grateful to colleagues on the courses I teach, who have shaped my thinking more than they probably know: Anne Cronin, Rob Shields, John Soyland, and the late Dede Boden in Culture Media and Communication, and Jonathan Culpeper, Roz Ivanic, Norman Fairclough and Jane Sunderland in Linguistics. I have also benefitted from comments of PhDstudents on the Faculty of Social Sciences courses on qualitative methods, and from exam- ining some relevant PhDdissertations, especially Philip Mitchell on reported speech (Cardiff) and Claudia Puchta on focus groups (Loughborough). I have learned a great deal from comments on papers by audi- ences at the British Association for Applied Linguistics (Manchester, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Reading, Leeds), the American Associa- tion for Applied Linguistics (Seattle, Arlington), the Sociolinguis- tics Symposium (London, Bristol, Ghent), the BAAL/CUP seminar on Analysing Conversation (Open University), and seminars held by Linguistics and by CSEC at Lancaster University, the English Department at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, the © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521793122 - Matters of Opinion: Talking about Public Issues Greg Myers Frontmatter More information Acknowledgments xi Centre for Language and Communication at Cardiff University, the English Department at Gothenberg University, Science Studies at the University of Basel, Applied Linguistics at Reading University, English Language at the University of Tampere, and the Discourse and Social Interaction group at King’s College London. My thanks to the organizers and participants at these events. I am especially grateful to the Broadcast Talk Seminar, held each September at Ross Priory, which provided the occasion for early versions of Chapters 9 and 10, and also showed me a model of com- mitted scholarship and fierce, wide-ranging debate that carries over, I hope, to some of the other chapters. My thanks to Andrew Tolson for first inviting me, to Stephanie Marriott and Joanna Thornborrow for keeping it going year after year, and to Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Ian Hutchby, Tamar Liebes, Ulrike Meinhof, Kay Richardson, Paddy Scannell, Theo van Leeuwen, and all the others who kept up such entertaining arguments while we watched clouds