Framing the Discussion

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Analyzing Context: Framing the Discussion Karen Tracy

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To cite this Article Tracy, Karen(1998) 'Analyzing Context: Framing the Discussion', Research on Language & Social

Interaction, 31: 1, 1 — 28

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Analyzing Context: Framing the Discussion

Karen Tracy

Department of Communication University of Colorado

If I can just. I wanted to just jump on one distinction. and that is the intrinsic-extrinsic in the context book by Duranti and Goodwin. I think, well that's a common distinction in conversation anidysis. Cicourel uses a different distinction. And I think the language we use to describe the issue itself is one that ref ects values. So for instance, I would talk about narrow context and broad context. Now that begins to suggest a different valuing than intrinsic and extrinsic, which is somehow if it's intrinsic it's good, if it's extrinsic it's a little bit shaky. Whereas when we start to talk about narrow and broad I think it in general is good to be broad and not be narrow, so that we begin to load, if you will, our evaluations of what is valued just as we being to talk about them.]

This comment is one I made during an all-day symposium at the Sixth International C~nferen~ce on Language and Social I'sychology. The symposium, titled "Doing Discourse Analysis: Reflections About the Process," brought together established scholars to discus,^ the day-to-day dilemmas in doing discourse analytic work. Symposium participants represented different positions; they differed regarding whether they saw talk or written text as more iiteresting, how they transcribed and for what purpose, how much they foc;used on routine practices versus those that were problematic, and whether they also, or primarily, used quantitative Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Karen Tracy, Department of Communication, Campus Box 270, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309. E-mail: [email protected]


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Karen Tracy

or ethnographic methods. In addition, where some participants would describe themselves as discourse or conversation analysts, others saw discourse analysis as one of several tools they might use. In preparation for the symposium, participants had written position papers tackling one or more of a small set of issues about doing discourse analysis. Tn the hope of making the symposium a lively exchange for ourselves and the a~~dience, the group, on its anival at the conference, decided to stow written positions and do an unscripted discussion. Five key questions, each to receive about an hour's focus, were hammered out in an informal session in the day prior to the symposium. One of the questions concerned the use of context in the analysis: the meaning of the term and the kinds of context each researcher brought to his or her data (and why). %he positions that participants advanced, challenged, or both, during this segment of the symposium's discussion were the seeds of this special issue; their incubation resulted in the articles that follow. In this introduction, I overview conceptions of context and controversies about 11 and preview the articles. First, though, a preliminary comment. As will soon become apparent, the framing of this special issue was influenced by the conversation analytic (CA) position on context (e.g., Schegloff, 1992, 1997). Taking a clear stance that argues for a restricted use of context in analysis, the conversation analytic position became the one that authors positioned their views in relation to, either drawing out novel implications of a CA commitment or arguing why a CA perspective on context was problematic.

THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT(S) FOR A DISCUSSION OF CONTEXT

[Tjhe analysis of text is of only limited value unless it is placed in the context of what people are doing with it. This cannot simply be inferred from the text itself; it requires systematic observation and analysis of social behavior. (Abrams & Hogg, 1990, p. 219) [ a h e search for context properly begins with the talk or other immediate conduct being analyzed.. . . Curiously. then, it seems at least as appropriate, and perhaps more so, to speak of talk or other conduct invoking its contexts than it is to speak of context impacting on talk or other conduct. (Schegloff, 1992, p. 197)

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Every communicative act is a text that drives meaning from the context of expec1:ation.s and constraints in which it was experienced. At the same time, contexts are defined, invoked and altered by texts. (Branaham & Pearce, 1985, p. 19)

The authors of these excerpts each position conte-xt differently. For Abrarns and Hogg, context is the ground that makes the text understandable. For Schegloff, the relationship is reversed: talk is where analysts seek an identification of context. Finally, Branaham and Pearce put context into a recursive relationship with text, one that is, alternately the ground and then the figure. Admittedly. as writer of thi:; introduction I have taken each excerpt about context from a larger text and an argumentative context. In this endeavor, another scholar might accuse me of taking one or another author's words "out of context," failing to reflect the complexity of the author's position. Perhaps no meaning of context is more prevalent than this: that context, whether in the rzveryday or the academic world, is part of the formulaic phrase "out OF context'' through which we accuse a person of dealing unfairly with another, of "getting it wrong." That usage of the term is not our primary concern in this special issue, yet much as rrlinerals in a water source give a distinctive flavor to a community's cooking, so too does this meaning seep into this special issue's discussion.

What Is Context? The notion of context involves juxtaposing two things: a focal event and a sui~oundingfield-that is, its context. In van Dijk's (1997) words, context is what "we need to know about in order to properly understand the event, action or discourse" (p. 11). Stated more elaborately, context is constituted by all events that are functionally re1,ateti to the occurrence and qualities of a particular event. . . . And, the description of a particular event is ~ n l ymeaningful to the extent that it includes the conditions that contribute to its occurrence and its qualities. (Owen, 1997a. p. 35)

Context is not an easily defined term. As Goodwin and Duranti (1992) noted, ''The term means quite different things within alte.mative research paradigms, and indeed within particular traditions seems to be identified more by situated practice, by use of the concept to work with particular edited volanalytic problems, than by fbrmal definition" (p. 2). Se~~eral umes have appeared recentlj~that take up conceptual ,mtl analytic issues


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about context. The most influential is Duranti and Goodwin's (1992) Ret-hirking Context. a volume of essays devoted to doing what the title suggests. In the introduction, Goodwin and Duranti (1992) identified eight traditions shaping current work on the social analysis of context: (a) Malinowski and earIy ethnographies; (b) Wittgenstein, Austin, and other philosophical approaches; Ic) the Bakhtin circle and Vygotsky; (d) interaction studies, inchxding Bateson and Goffman; (e) ethnography of speaking, including Gurnperz; (f) etbnomethoddogy; (g) conversation analysis; and (h) Foucault. Essays in this volume, then, advance questions about context drawing primarily on one, or some combination of, these traditions. In contrast to the large picture view developed in Duranti and Goodwin's volume is Auer and DiLuzio'r (1992) edited book providing a detqiled picture of one segment of this scene-current traditions that trace their roots to Goffman, Bateson, and Garfinkel and the nonverbal scholars (e-g., Scheflen, Birdwhistel) doing "context analysis." Taking Gumperz's (1982) work on contextualization cues as the most immediate intellectual prechrsor, essays in the Auer and DiLuzio volume consider how bodily activities (i.e., gaze, gesture, posture. prosody) shape interpretation of utterances. Whereas essays in these 5rst two volumes adopt a linguistic frame ji-e., address arguments to a scholarly audience that take their object of study to be "language5'), a recent volume edited by Owen (1997b) does not. Owen's book, Context and Comm~micutionBehavior, in contrast, examines the treatment of context in a range of communication and psychological traditions. Some of the traditions are quite similar to those focal in the first two volumes (e-g., N~fsinger, 1997; Sanders, 1997); others are not. For instance, essays explore the conceptualization and role of context in symbolic interactionism (Alexander, 19971, the coordinated management of meaning (Shailor, 1997) and rhetoric (Czubaroff, 19973, to mention but a few traditions unnamed in the other volumes. Not surprisingly, then. narrating the intellecmai history of studies interested in context reflects scholars' disciplinary traditions. Scholars' disciplinary contexts also shape the way context gets divided. piscourse scholars who use context in their analyses typically specify what kinds of it there are. This specification process is itself interesting. When one scholar lumps into a single category what anotber divides into several, we can be pretty sure a contentious issue is lurking nearby. Contrast, for instance, Ochs's (1979) system, adopted in Goodwin and Duranti's overview (1992), with the one van Dijk (1997) proposed in his


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introduction to discourse analysis. Ochs distinguished among four levels of context: the surrounding language, the participants' bodies and behavior (behavioral environment), the social and physical setting, and the "extrasituational" context-a category similar to "other" in quantitative coding systems, a category that kncludes anything not specified in the other, pore particular categories. In contrast to Ochs's system, van Dijk (1997) had a lot to say about "extrasituational context." In fact, most of his kinds of context can be seen as distinguishing among types of t=xtrasituational cc~ntext.Van Dijk's first kind of context is the social-culhural features of participants, including their gender, age, social class, education, ethnicity, and professional roles. Other aspects of context inclu.de the setting (Where? When? With whom? In what role?), the props (e.g., gavels, microphones), and the particigtants7nonverbal actions. In addition, context includes social-cognitive features: people's goals, plans, and beliefs and higher levels of action, the purposes and frames of 1arg1:r social enterprises. In characterizing higher levels, van Dijk (1997) noted, There is of course no apriori limit to the scope and level of what counts as relevant context: a verdict is defined as part of a trial, which, however, in turn takes its legal and social meaning in a system of justice, and . . . even more broadly, within a democratic system. (p. 14)

Context, then, is not a self-evident, easy-to-define, and agreed-on thing. To complexify issues further, it is also the case that explicit discussions of context usually background the focal event that is being juxtaposed in relation to context.

Context and What? In academic discussions, context is routinely juxtaposed with another term and linked to it via a function word ("in," "and," "of," ''as''). Juxtaposed terms include larzguage (Auer & DiLuzio, 199:2), text (Watson & Seiler, 1992), talk (Drew & Heritage, 1992), discoz~~vse (Abrams & Hogg, 1990), speech (Dance, 19971, comrnunicatioiz (Owen, 1997), conversational processes (Nofsinger, 1997), activitjl (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992), symbolic object (message) (Sanders, 1997), or even culture (Hall, 1997). If we think of each selected term and the term context as occupying a figure-ground relationship (Goodwin & Duranti, 1992), then the terms differ as to where certain elements are implied to go. For instance, the


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Karen Tracy

terms talk or activiy draw our attention to people's prosody and gesture as being part of the figure, whereas Imgzcage implies these features are part of the contextual background. The terms differ in another way. Each carries intellectual baggage. Some terns cue distinct disciplines (e.g., language flags linguistic and message flags communication) and therein suggest who an author is taking to be his or her argumentative partners and who is being ignored. Other terms are multipurpose, having a lager user group. In this regard text is perhaps the broadest, sometimes used as a master category to reference talk or writing of ariy kind, sometimes used as a synonym for written forms, as we see in van Dijk's (19971 definition of discourse analysis as talk or text in context. and sornetilms used as a synonym for talk and a contrast term with language (not just sentences but interactive seq~~ences) as occurs among conversation analytic scholars (Watson & Seiler, 1992). The upshot is a complex situatiori. Nut only is context a term of multiple meanings. as ~ o a d w i nand Duranti's (1992) review so ably showed, but its ~nderstoodcontrast kna Is not easily fixed or defined. To complicate the issue even further, co~~sider scholars' own uses of the term context. That is, in their own talk and writing, what are the interactional purposes for which the term confe.ct is invoked?

Context in Context As noted earlier, one meaning of the term is as part of an accusation that somebody got something wrong ("out of context"). Although this meaning surfaces in language and social interaction studies, there are three more salient ones. The first meaning, evidenced in quantitative explanatory research, could be labeled conte-xt as a variable. When used in this way a researcher is concerned with how context, usually operationalized as a demographic variable (e-g., gender, social class, or national cultwe), affects a focal language or interaction pxocess. Studies that examine how a person's national culture affect the ways individuals formulate requests fe-g., Blum-KuEa, House, & Kasper, 1989) or whether gender affects a speaker's use of intensifiers (e.g., Bradac, Mulac. & Thompson, 1995) illustrate this meaning of the term. Within this intellectual tradition, context is something to be controlled so that its impact on a focal behavior or action can be examined. When context is conceived as a variable, the central issue becomes determining if and how a contextual factor affects its focal object. Within


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the traditions that use context in this manner, there are well-developed methodological procedures about stimulus material development, hypothetical situation construction, participant selection, and statistical analytic pirocedures to aid a researcher in determining whether context actually had its expected effect. Con,:ext,in this context, is not so much a focal term but is part of the research language used to distingnish certain kinds of variables from others. A researcher takes account of context by speciQlng the dimensions of it in which one is interested beforehand and then c,xefully controlling its infl~~ence. A second usage of context is a challenge and criticism of this first use. Many language and social interaction scholars use the phrase "in context7' to describe their own work and set themselves apart from colleagues. Rejecting the reasonableness of treating context as a variable, the term, in context, functions as an agenda-setting challenge to fell ow disciplinary researchers. Simply put, fellow communication researchers (psychologists, linguists, sociologists, etc.) are criticized for using questionnaire and laboratory studies to understand people's meaning-making processes. Edeaning-making, many (but not all) discourse scholars argue, requires study of naturally occurring clisc~urse.~ Not only is it essential to study talk in its everyday contexts. but to aggregate instances, as is necessary in quantitative analyses that szek to assess causal relationships, is to ignore what is key: meaning-making as a highly local process, dependent on the situation and the particular moves and countermoves of its people. Authors contributing to this special issue share this commitme:nt to doing "in context" work, but how each author understands what this means is shaped in distinctive ways by his or her disciplinary tradition. Irz context, then, functions as a rallying cry, am ambiguous symbol to knit together diverse scholars who share an intelllxtual vision, albeit not an entirely clear one, 'and who define themse1ve:s in opposition to some pitrt of their own tliscipline's mainstremi. A final site for the term context is in discussions among scholars committed to "in context" study of language and social interaction. Given i i commitment to looking at talk or text in context, end the fact that context is potentially anything and everything, what analytic principles should guide a researcher's appeal to context: How, at a practical level, I s context to be used in particular analyses? In this third usage, context is treated as a methodological problematic. The most. clearly defined position on how to use context in analysis of talk has been articulated by Schegloff (1992, 1997). lrt;s, Schegloff (1997) argued., there are many ways to characterize context, but

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Karen Tracy it is quite another to claim that they are all equally warranted, equdly legitimate. entitled to identical uptake and weight, But how should one discriminate? On what grounds should some characterization of any of those aspects of a sociocultural event be preferred to another? (p. 167)


Schegloff (1997) proceeded to answer in this way: For the events of human conduct, we are dealing with sentient beings who themselves orient to their context, under some formuIation or formulations: who grasp their own conduct and that of others under the jurisdictions of some relevancies and not others; who orient to some of the identities they separately and coHectively embody, and at any given moment, not others. And became it is the orientations, meanings, interpretations. understandings, etc. of the parficipants in some socio-cultural event on which the course of that event is predicated-and especially if it is constructed interactiondly over time, it is those characterizations which are privileged in the constitution of so&-iitteractional r e a l i ~and therefore have a prima facie claim to being privileged in efforts to understand it. (pp. 166-167)

Aspects of context should be invoked, then, according to Schegloff, only insofar as a researcher can display that the participants themselves in their talk, show that they have attended to or are being influenced by that . ~ view on the use of context, referred to in my feature of c ~ n t e x tThis opening excerpt as the " C A position, might more accurately be described as Schegloff's position, for there are differences among conversation analysts in how strongly they espouse this position. CA scholars who study institution& settings (e-g., Drew & Heritage, 1992) use context in a slightly more expanded form, using speakers' institutional roles (attorney, therapist) or technical information about the aims of a setting in analyses. Yet compared to other discourse analysts (e-g., Wodak, 19%; Tracy, 19971, all CA researchers can be said to give refatively little attention to context outside the talk ("exogenous" or "broad" context) and tg highlight (privilege?) the aspects of context that are reflected in the talk itself Ctallc-intrinsic" or "narrow" context). In the discussion that occurred at the conference (reproduced in the Appendix) as we1 as the articles that follow, the focal meaning of context varies +ring the discussion moment to moment and within and across each article. Arguments are directed both to disciplinary others who are interested in language and interaction btrt do not study these processes "in context" and to fellow scholars who do but who may define key terms differently and m y be pursuing not entirely obvious different aims. In this special issue we seek to enrieh the scholarly conversation about

Analyzing Context

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context: addressing those who think of context as a variable, those who use it as a rallying cry, and those who are struggling to figure out how to use it in analysis in the particular sites they care about:.


Preview Following the transcript of the conference discussion are six articles and a co~lcludingcommentary. In each article, a claim about context is advanced in the context of a particular kind of talk or text. Potter, Hopper arid LeBaron, and Fitch focus on instances of everyday conversation; Buttny, Pironsson, and Swales focus on analyses of institutional texts or talk. More salient than the inst:itutional or everyday difference, however, is each author's position in relationship to the CA stance, about the use of context i11 analysis. The special issue, in fact, is structured in terms of the position each author takes. In the first section, "Locating Context in Talk," authors show how adopting the CA position on context enables valuable new insights; in the second, "Situating Talk and Text in Context," authors show how, and argue why, the CA position is problematic given what they regard as important language and social interaction questions. Jonathan Potter's article begins Section 1. Drawing on Schegloff s claim that context should be treated as relevant only insofar as participants attend to it, Potter argues for the value of similar analytic constraints with and psychological processes). Cognition, regard to cognition (percept~~al Potter shows, has been treated as part of context or has been contrasted with it. When contrasted, context refers to demographic and social structural features of a scene, and cognition refers to "in-the-head" events. Eloth cognition and social features of context, Potter argues, should be appealed to only as they are evidenced in the participanlis' talk. In the second article, Richard Buttny argues for an elaborated conception of context in talk. After 1:stablishing why he regards it as important to rlzstrict contextual linkages to those to which participants show attention, Eiuttny identifies an overlooked kind of conversational move, that is, doing contexting work. When communicators quote others (or themselves), there are additionallayers of meaning. Adjacent to instances of reported speechboth before and after-are contextudizing comments whe~espeakers direct how listeners are to hear the reported speech fragments. Buttny's essay illuminates how speakers put prior talk into context. Hopper and LeBaronYsarticle. the final one in the first section, takes up a different issue. Gender, more than any other aspect of people's

Karen Tracy


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identities, is often seen as omni-reievant, a feature of context relevant in all social interaction. If a researcher accepts the need to invoke contextual features only as participants themseives show attention to them, then how, Hopper and LeBaron ask, does gender so often move from a backgrounded conversatioial concern to a focal one? Hopper and LeBaron propose a three-part noticing sequence that accounts fax the ubiquity of gender as a focus of conversation. Section 2, "Situating Talk and Text in Context," begins with an article by Karin Aronsson that, more than any of the others, argues in both directions. That is, Aronsson's article shows an alignment wi& and valuing of the CA position about context and at the same time speaks to why it is problematic. Introducing the notion of "choreography," Aronsson shows how interaction is a delicate dance of the given features of context (e.g.. institutional roles) and the interactional moves that each party makes that we interpreted and reinterpreted in light of each party's given interactional role. ]Next in Section 2 is Kristine Fitch's article, which argues as to why "text and context" is a problematic distinction for ethnographers of communication. Jpdgments about the appropriate use of context. or more accurately, accusations of misusing it. Fitch shows, are fundamental to two criticisms directed at ethnographic work. From a CA perspective, ethnographic work is often criticized for bringing in too much context from outside of the iixteraction. From a critical perspective, an opposite criticism is typically made: Traditional ethnographies, it is argued, are oblivjous to power, the most important aspect of context of all. The problem, Fitch suggests, is to be found in the starting conceptual terms, For a researcCherinterested in identifying meaningful patterns within speech communities, text and context create divisions among kinds of things better not s&ara~ed. In the final article, John Swales suggests the difficulties in the CA position for discourse researchers primarily interested in written texts. To understand written academic discourse, Swales argues, requires attention to the mltilayered contexts in which they were constructed. "Textography," a Cind of ethnography directed toward elucidating the form and the constructive practices that underlie rhe production of written texts, is a method to make visible these layers of meaning. Swales illustrates this new method in an analysis of the different voices of three floors of an academic bvilding, The discu~sionconcludes with a find commentary from Anita Pomerantz in which she develops a different frame for reflecting about the I

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articles than created in this introduction. What is each author's focal research agenda? How easily does each scholar's agenda intersect with issues about context? Pomerantz's concluding commentary analyzes each article in light of these questions. The six articles, she suggests, form three definable sets: two articles that draw on context as background in a straightforward manner, two that do considerable work to get the concept of context to behave, and two that in one way or another reverse what is focal in dominant definitions. By offering two frames to reflect about the articles as well as providing the initial conference conversation that stimulated this special issue, \37e seek to enliven and advance the next round of thought, talk, and writing about context.

NOTES 1 This excerpt from the discussion was edited to aid readability. A complete version of the discussion follows this introduction in the Appendix. Authors mentioned are Duranti and Goodwin (1992) and Cicourel (1992).

2 "Naturally occurring" discourse is itself a controversial term. Gumperz and CookGumperz (1982), for instance, argued that simulations such as job interviews, although not "naturally occurring," none:theless may have many features of everyday talk and are good sites to study hard-tma-access processes. Similarly, the ways in which researcher interviews are or are not places in which one can learn about language and social interaction processes is also a site of debate (see Sanders & Sigman, 1994; Tracy, 1994).

3 Schegloff privileged participar~ts' interpretations over researchers', holding out participants as the important and only defensible kind. 1agree that participants' interpretations are important and deserving of considerable attention. I would also agree with Schegloff's criticism that much past research has privileged researcher interpretations in problematic ways. However, to treat participants' interactionally visible interpretations as the only kind deserving attention is problematic for two reasons. First, social life routinely requires participants to keep hidden certain kinds of thoughts and judgments. That is, there are situations where participants find others boring or obnoxious and yet work hard to keep those judgments from leaking into the exchange. These judgments are interesting objects of study and can be recovered by attending to other aspects of context, although admittedly the case for these types of judgments must be more tentative than for participant-displayed interpreiations. Second, for researchers such as myself, cc~mmittedto developing ideas useful in the cultivation of communicative practices, mays of interpreting a situation (conversational actions) that may differ from what participants typically do are especially interesting. That is, describing the space between what participants routinely do and what they may be

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Karen Tracy able to do-wifllour a doubt a delicate and always contestable claim-is a researcher viewpoint, not ihat of most participants. This kind of researcher view is needed.


REF'ERENCES Abrams, D., & H o g . M. 4 . (1990). The context of discourse: Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Philosophical Psychology, 3, 219-225. Alexander, D. C. (1997). Contextualism and symbolic interactionism. In J. L. Owen (Ed.), Context and com~nunicatiozzb e h ~ v w r(pp. 181-191). Reno, NV: Context Press. Auer, P., & Dihzio, A. (Eds.). (1992). The confextualizationof language. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Blum-Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Investigating cross-cubural pragmatics: An introductory o v e ~ e w .In S. Blurn-Kulka, 3. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), CF-oss-cz~l~uralpragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 1-34). Nonvood, NJ: Ablex. Bradac, 3. J., Mulac, A., &Thompson, S. (1995). Men's and women's use of intensifiers and hedges in problem-solving interaction: Molar and molecular analyses. Research or2 Language and Social Interaction, 28, 93-1 16. Branaham, R. f., & Pearce. W. B. (1985). Between text and context: Toward a rhetoric of contextual reconstruction. Quarterly Jozimai of Speech, 71, 19-36. Cicourel, A. V. (1992). The interpretation of ccmmunicative contexts: Examples from medical encounters. In A. Duranti & C. Godwin (Eds.). Rethinking context: Lnitguage as an interactive phenomena f'p. 291-310). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Czubaroff, J, (1997). Rhetorical contexts and scholarly inquiry. In J. L. Owen (Ed.), Context and comrnultication behavior (pp. 389-405). Reno, NV: Context Press. Dance, F. E. X. (1997). Context's culture: Speech. In J. L. Owen (Ed.), Context and communication behmior (pp, 251-259). Reno, NV: Context Press. Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (Eds.). (1992). Talk a; work: Interaction in instit~~tioraai settings. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Duranti, A., & Goodwin, C. (Eds.). (1992). Rethinking context: Language as an interactive pheno~~dzon. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C., & Duranti, A. (1992). Rethinking conrexi: An introduction. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin {Eds.). Rethirzking context: h g u a g e as an interactive phenomena @p. 1-42). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C., t Goodwin, M. H. (1992). Context, activity and participation. In P. Auer & A. DiLuAo (Eds.), The contextualization of language (pp. 77-99). Philadelphia: John Renjamins. Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz. d. J., & Cook-Gumperz, J. (1982). Intro&action: Language and the communication of social identity. In J. J. Gumperz (Ed-), Language and social i d e n t i ~(pp. 1-21). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.


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IIall, B. J. (1997). Theories of culture, communication, and context. In J. L. Owen (Ed.), Contat and commz~nicationbehavior (pp. 111-132). Reno, NV: Context Press. Profsinger, R. E. (1997). Context and conversational processes. In J. L. Owen (Ed.), Context and communication behavior (pp. 355-367). Reno, NIT: Context Press. Ochs, E. (1979). Introduction: What child language can contribute to pragmatics. In E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.), Developmental pragmatics (pp. 1-17). New York: AcacIemic. Owen, J. t.(1997a). World views as context for communication studies. In J. L. Owen (Ed.), Context and communication behavior (pp. 17-39). Reno, NV: Context Press. Owen, J. L. (Ed.). (1997b). Context and comunication behavior. Reno, NV: Context Press. Sanders, R. E. (1997). An impersonal basis for shared interpretations of messages in context. In J. L. Owen (Ed ) , Context and commuitication behavior (pp. 229-250). Reno, NV: Context Press. Sanders, R. E., & Sigman, S. J. (I 994). An editorial caveat. Research on Language and Sock1 Interaction, 27, 419-421. Schegloff. E. A. (1992). In another context. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context: Lan ua e as an intemctive phenomena (pp. 191-227). Cambridge, England: .F: .g Cambridge Umversity Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1997). Whose text? Whose context? Discozrse and Socieg, 8, 165-187. ShaiIor, J. G. (1997). The meanin;; and use of "context" in the theory of the coordinated management of meaning. In .I. L. Owen (Ed.), Context and com~nunicationbehavior (pp. 97-110). Reno, NV: Context Press. Tracy, K. (1994). Boundary drawing in language and social interaclion study. Research on Language and Social Zntd?raction,27, 423-425. Tracy, K. (1997). Colloquium: Dilemmas of academic discourse. N~~rwood, NJ: Ablex. van Dijk, T. A. (1997). Discourse as interaction in society. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 1-37). London: Sage. Watson, G., & Seiler, R. M. (Eds.). (1992). Text in context: Contributions to ethnometJwdology. N e w b u ~Park, CA: Sage. Wodak, R. (1996). Disorders of ~liscourse.London: Longman.

APPENDIX: CQrNFERENCECONVERSATION ABOUT "TEXT AND CONTEXT" Setting the Stage

In May 1997, the Sixth International Conference on Language and Social Psychology met in Ottawa. The discussion that follows occurred among the participants of the daylong seminar Doing Discourse Analysis:


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Karen Tracv

Reflections About fhe Process in response to the questions "How do you think about text and context? and How do you use context in analysis (and why)?" The discussion occurred abo~tt2 fir into the day's symposium. Not surprisingly, there were moments in the discussion where the meanings of people's comments were dependent on features of the physical situation or an earlier paint that someone had made. Because the purpose in presenting this conversation is to highlight the content of participants' proposals and their challenges of eacb other-rather than looking at this discussion as an object of analysis in its own right-the discussion has been edited. 111 particular, most repairs, nonfluencies, and restarts have been eliminated and deictic and textual references whose meanings could not easily be inferred have been expanded. Participants in order of discrrssian entry included the moderator, Karen *rwy (Tracy); Richard Buttny {Buttny); Curt LeBaron (LeBar); Anita Pomerill~tz(Pomrtz); Kristi~eFitch (Fitch); audience members, several of whom spoke (AUD); John Swales (Swales); Karin Aronsson (Arons); Ute Radernacher (Radmchr); Linda Wood (Wood); and Jonathan Potter (Totter). At the beasinning of each dscussiun issue, four symposium panelists made short comments, at which point the discussion was opened to other participants and the audience, For the "text and context" issue, Richard Buttny-, Curl. LeBaron, Anita Pomerantz, and Kristine Fitch were the initial commentators.

THE DISCUSSION

Tracy:

Buttny:

Let me just pose the question first. And you have it on your handout. But posed very broadly, what type of context do you bring to your data? And so, you'll need to say something about the terms. text and context, as you begin to move into your comments. Okay, I mean I would say what I do is begin with a pragmatic methodological principle. If I can show that the contextual features are marked or displayed in the talk, that's g ~ i n gto make a stronger argument than if I just bring them in independent of the talk. So if I can do that, that's better than if I bring background knowledge in from my being there as an ethnographer. OT in some other way. I can't always do that. and sometimes I feel like I want to bring in feamres of the context. But, for


Analyzing Context

Tracy: LeBar:

15

example, in some of the work I did in therapeutic di.,.course you can see the therapist displaying being a therapist in the kinds of questions he displayed, or in a third-turn response to answers or trying to reformulate the client's probl~zms.So you could see the therapist doing "being a therapist" by the way he talked to the client. So it oxms to me that's a stronger argument, if you can marshal your data to show that. I felt uncomfortable as [ was doing this study on college students talking about race because when I initially started off I was nanlrally interested in, well how do African Americans axd Latinos and Whites, where do they stand? And so I had hesitance about wanting to i ~ v o k ethese categories, but that was a nalural thing that I started in hstening to the data. It was interesting, though, listening to that data I learned things that I didn't know about current states of race feelings and pzrceptions of problems and accusations and justifications. So not surprisingly, I didn't realize things were as divisive as they were on campus over race. Whites said things like African Americans exaggerate the problems; they don't see them. African A n e r i c m in turn almost said the opposite, that, you know, Whites deny racism or refuse to admit it. So turns out, though, those were things that I guess were fairly well known in the race research literature. What I ended up getting into more in that study was looking at reported speech. And I didn't see differences between how African Americans and 'Whites did reported speech. So I encled up really finding more interesting things in looking at this practice of talk and how we use others' words in order to make complaints or make accusations. So let me just leave it at that. Context is stronger if you can show it in the text. Curt? A distinction is often made between message-intrinsic approaches to discourse and message-extrinsic approaches. And I. favor the message intrinsic even though I have no idea how it can be defended strongly. The message-intrinsic approach is essentially that you do not assume anything about the context that is not somehow displayed through the interaction, through the interactant's communication. Or in other words, we should not go in and say, "Oh, look, here's a man and a woman talking; let's look at how they talk; oh, we can make these conclusions about gendered communication." But rather we should say, "Gender only becomes an issue when the participants themselves make it one and we can point to different things about that." But, I have never found myself saying, "Oh, tbis is 'doing being a therapist' " when I did not know in


16

Karen Tracy

Tracy: Pomrtz:

Tracy: Fitch:

the first case that it was a therapist being involved. And so, even though I like to make that kind of a move myself, I recogmze that it's a problem doing that. Where this really became a front-a+ad-center problem for me was when I was studying police interrogations and they were covertly videotaped Interrogaims. So the suspects did not know that they were being videotaped. The interrogators did know, and thal to me was a cmcial, crucial piece of infomarion. Yet it's something that by nature would never come out in the d k because it was something to be hidden from participants or the suspect and analyst alike. So I guess what I've tried to do is get a lot of mileage nut of my introductory paragraph in a paper where I provide all kinds of information and then focus on the text and Lry to be as message i~trinsicas possible. Anita. My viavs are quite similar ro the previous two. I'll add just a little bit. I know w e difference within the conversation analytic group is the folollowing: Some conversation analysts have taken the position that they do not want to know ethnographic details when they look at texts. They bink it is cleaner or purer to be able to come to make claims without knowing. And there's problems wirh this because if you listen lo the t a you ~ already know s o m e ~ n g sBut . at least it's a position they take. It's not my position. The ollier position is, "I want to know what I can know." Now the reason that I take that position is because I have some confidence that I can look at the materials and try to make a case for what I see operating. In other words. I think the people who are saying, "I don't want to know anything" seem to be afraid that if they know it son~ehowor other they're going to use it or misuse it. And I think there is a so'iution: which is ~f yet know what you're doing and you know that yo^ need to make claims and argue for them and substantiate them in certain ways then having-1 mean ideally I'd like to have available what the participants have available. Now obviously I can't. But I don't want to play the game of saying, '"Don't tell me that." Now that's just one angle into this business. Kristine? Since I was told one of the things we could do with these questions was argue them I would say that the way that the question is worded suggests that context and data are two separate things. And for me the context, or what's usually described as the context, is most often the data that I am most interested in exploring. So I would say I don't bring context to my data, I go look for a social world that is the backdrop for specific


Analyzing Context

AUD:

Fitch: AUD: Fitch: AUD: Fitch:

AUD:

17

instances of interaction. That often, but not exclusively, does involve looking at people's intentions and interpretations that come into play in specific instances. The question is, What does it mean to say that they come into play? And I would say they come into play when people invoke symbolic resources in conshucting meaning of utterances, of actions, of use of an address term, of whatever. When people invoke those kinds of resources. and when I can have a coliection of instances that suggest these: are shared resources and noL icliosyncratic to any person in the situation, I count them as coming in@ play. That suggests to me that there is something that the participants are working with to make sense of the talk as they engage in it. And because that's the assumptian that I :