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Language, Crime and Human Agency Sociology 2611 Fall term 2014 Reading guide 7: CONVERSATION ANALYSIS: TOWARDS A RIGOROUS ALTERNATIVE TO THE POSITIVIST MODEL RECAP -We have recently seen that the EM school insists that social scientists take language seriously (-whereas SI studies often read like good journalism) -EM wants to provide a much more systematic and formal analysis of social life -So instead of taking language for granted (as do symbolic interactionists – and journalists)

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-EM scholars argue that we must study language, rather than simply taking it for granted. -More specifically, we must study people’s ‘common sense reasoning’ to see how they, ordinarily and routinely, make some sense of this issue of the ‘indexicality’ of language -So the ethnomethodologist acts like an anthropologist in his/her own society (ie the anthropologist studies exotic cultures to discover how these peoples make sense of their social world) -the ethnomethodologist must ‘suspend’ his/her own interpretation of what is going on around him/her -and instead treat his/her own society as if it was a foreign one. -and the ethnomethodologist asks HOW are these people (that I am studying)

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making sense of what is going on around them -For example, this led ethnomethodologists like Sudnow, into studying HOW public defenders ‘make sense’ of crime in their everyday work lives -and public defenders do this by learning the shared common sense reasoning of the public defender’s office -and once novice public defenders become competent in this ‘common sense reasoning’, they constantly use it to routinely accomplish the practical ‘social reality’ of the court (and the ‘social reality’ that they mundanely produce is one in which the vast majority of cases are plea bargained) -And crucially, this common sense reasoning is much more relevant for these

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lawyers’ daily mundane activities, than their formal knowledge of the ‘criminal code’ -So, the primary task of the novice lawyer is to become ‘culturally competent’ in this common sense reasoning -to learn how the PD’s office ‘really works’ CONVERSATION ANALYSIS Conversation analysis (CA) grew out of EM, but wants to go in a more rigorous direction. -whereas Ethnomethodologists wanted to copy the way Anthropologists carried out their research -Conversation analysts want to ‘copy’ the way Linguists carry out their research.

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For the conversation analysts, their major question is the following: - IF WE ARE SERIOUS ABOUT STUDYING LANGUAGE (AS SOCIAL LIFE IS ALWAYS CONVEYED THROUGH LANGUAGE) SHOULDN’T WE BE STUDYING SOCIAL LIFE AS SYSTEMATICALLY AND AS RIGOROUSLY AS THE SCIENCE OF LINGUISTICS STUDIES LANGUAGE FROM EM TO CA -Ethnomethodology’s radical breakthrough was not only in realizing the ‘indexicality’ of language -but that we needed to study language very seriously -And this meant that it started going in a quite different direction than most previous social science

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-this is because most social science models don’t take language seriously -Instead they typically start with a certain axiomatic assumption about “Man”(sic) and develop their science from there Eg Economics starts from a fundamental axiom about “Man’- the rational actor Politics starts from a fundamental axiom about “Man” – the actor concerned with power (or with rights) Psychology starts from a fundamental axiom about “Man” – the biological actor Psychoanalysis starts from a fundamental axiom about “Man” – the sexually repressed actor

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-In contrast to these types of models, Conversation analysis comes up with a quite different way of studying social life; -and does this by starting with LANGUAGE, not “Man” CONVERSATION ANALYSIS: -CA develops a more formal and rigorous analysis of ‘social interaction’ than Ethnomethodology -CA fully realises that social life is structured like a language (that it has a ‘grammar’) -And as a result, CA is able to maintain a strong notion of AGENCY within its analysis - That is, by studying language, one can ensure that ‘agency’ is kept central in the analysis, while at the same time undertaking the analysis of an ‘objective’ structure

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LANGUAGE’S DUAL STRUCTURE 1. We can try and express our subjective

AGENCY freely (when we talk we often feel as if we are expressing ourselves, our inner thoughts, our subjective feelings etc.). We feel AGENTIVE.

2. But this is only possible if we we follow the flexible patterned structures that our language provides us with (and these patterned structures are OBJECTIVE and shared by all who live within this culture) It is this dual structure of language which suggests to the Conversation analysts a radically new way of formally and scientifically studying social life And this scientific approach tries to do with social life, what linguistics does with language.

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That is, to study the ‘basic building blocks’ (either of a language or of a culture) LINGUISTICS: THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE -A major aim in linguistics is to show the underlying patterned structure of a language, as understood by and used by its ‘native speakers’ -the science of linguistics does not try to ‘correct’ people’s everyday language (this is in contrast to old-fashioned ‘grammarians’ who tried to tell people how to speak their language) -rather (the science of) linguistics tries to show the patterns of language which people are (unconsciously, for the most part) using to communicate with each other; yet which are totally taken for granted

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-for example, the ‘science of linguistics’ has come up with the following structure, which is constitutive of English i.- SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT structure – this is a basic feature of English (although other languages have different structures) And this ‘structured pattern’ of English helps us to make sense of what is being said. That is, as HEARERS, tacitly knowing this pattern to our language helps us to make sense of what someone is saying to us. Eg The man bit the dog The dog bit the man BUT NOT *The the dog man bit At the same time,

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It also gives us (very flexible) rules for communicating to other people That is, as SPEAKERS, knowing this pattern to our language helps us to communicate with other people, and in a very flexible way -That is, in order to express my ‘subjective thoughts’ (my own ‘agency’), I have a lot of freedom in the ways I can accomplish this task.

- I enjoy a big mac - I could die for a big mac - I’m ready for a big mac - I love big macs - BUT NEVER - Macs big love I

In other words, I can (very flexibly) use the patterned structure of English (Subject-verb- object) to express my self (but there are definite limits!!)

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YET On the other hand, most of us believe that when we speak, we are simply speaking our mind -that when we speak, we are simply expressing our own AGENCY -so this dual nature of language (an OBJECTIVE structure allowing for SUBJECTIVE action) proves to be very appealing to the conversation analysts CONVERSATION ANALYSIS – SOME METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS -no statistical analysis is needed -the ‘native speaker’ is the expert, not the researcher

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-you do not need ‘samples’ (any native speaker is capable of recognizing well- formed sentences in their language) -You show the native speaker the data (to get his/her confirmation that this ‘data’ makes sense in his/her culture), then the analysis proceeds to demonstrate its underlying grammar; its underlying structural pattern. (which the native speaker can recognize, but cannot formally, and scientifically, articulate) eg family meal church sermon university lecture school lesson paying for an item in a store police interrogation court of law

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CONVERSATION ANALYSIS AND ITS POTENTIAL FOR UNDERSTANDING ‘CRIME’ -As we have seen already, the positivist approach typically deals with the ‘incarcerated criminal’ (the one who has been formally pronounced ‘guilty’ -and sentenced) -but as this course (2611) has already shown, there is an entire SOCIAL PROCESS which goes on before someone gets ‘incarcerated’. We have looked at a number of these social situations Marijuana user- novice Interaction Police - youth interaction Media –youth interaction Police-youth-family-probation officer interaction Public defender – client interaction

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However, one other context in which someone may find him/herself, before an ‘official label’ (of guilt or innocence) gets placed on him/her, is the court of law And here we will see that conversation analysis is able to produce some powerful insights into how ‘guilt’ (or at least ‘blame’) is produced, via language. -The court of law is pre-eminently a place of ‘talk’ -and it is here where questions regarding a person’s ‘agency’ are of primary concern. As we know, in the western criminal justice system, for a crime to be committed we have to have The actus reus (the act) And The mens rea (the guilty mind)

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And the criminal court is that social institution specifically reserved for the determination of the above two factors (although, as we have also seen, in practice, many lawyers try to avoid the criminal court) Nevertheless, what is crucial to realize is that the court of law determines ‘agency’, via the TALK carried out in the courtroom. And that the determination of The actus reus (the ‘act’) and the mens rea (the intention) both get decided through talk. -we have already seen that a ‘criminal’ ‘act’ is actually produced through ‘talk’ (Eg Cicourel’s analysis of Donald) Now, we will briefly show how one’s ‘intentions’ also get decided through talk. Drew’s conversation analysis of court cross-examinations

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-Drew’s work nicely shows how court lawyers actually go about trying to show someone’s ‘intentions’ (regarding their actions or inactions) -and most crucially, this gets accomplished through the LANGUAGE that the lawyer uses -she doesn’t peer inside someone’s brain to discover ‘intentionality’ or not -and she doesn’t show ‘intentionality’ by simply relying on the ‘criminal code’ -instead, she uses mundane conversational methods (available to all of us) to try and show ‘intentionality’ -in the data from the court case that Drew uses, we see the lawyer (QC – Queen’s Counsel) attempting to prove that the witness (a chief of police) was biased

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towards Protestants (and against Catholics in Belfast, N. Ireland) -that is, the QC wants to argue that the police chief was not doing his job of keeping law and order the QC wants to argue that the police chief was doing nothing to stop a protestant mob INTENDING to invade a catholic area

-And thus, the QC wants to ACCUSE the chief of police of INTENTIONALLY permitting this invasion to occur -And the QC attempts this by his use of local ‘common sense’ knowledge, rather than through any intimate knowledge of legal precedents and statutes To see this at work we need to first examine one basic concept in CA. THE MEMBERSHIP CATEGORIZATION DEVICE

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Take the following two sentences. a. The baby cried. The mommy picked it up b. The baby cried. The electrical engineer picked it up In our culture, most people would routinely hear utterance a. as typical, conventional and relatively straightforward to understand. In contrast, sentence b. is somewhat atypical. It seems strange on the ear. Its meaning is not at all obvious -it strikes us as odd (and might make us ask further questions about its meaning. It requires more ‘work’ to understand its meaning) -So why is it that sentence a is so much easier to understand?

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-It is because in our culture, we routinely hear ‘mommy’ as being the mother of the baby (although the sentences do not explicitly tell us this). - in our culture, these two terms are seen as ‘naturally going together’ And according to Sacks (1974), this is because of the existence of Membership categorization devices (MCD’s) -The MCD is a formal conceptualization of socially shared, common-sense knowledge of social structures that we all carry around with us in our heads. eg the membership categorization device ‘family’ contains (common sense) categories which, in our culture, are seen as naturally going together eg mommy, daddy, baby, sister, brother, etc. (even though not all actual ‘families’ contain all of these categories)

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So that when we hear the above utterance, the MCD ‘family’ allows us to easily make sense of it (at least ‘for practical purposes’) -That is, it allows us to tie ‘mommy’ and ‘baby’ together so as to make sense of these two words as ‘naturally going together’, because together they form the mcd of ‘family’ And this tacit knowledge of the MCD ‘family’ explains why utterance a above seems to make sense ‘naturally’, whereas sentence b (below) seems rather odd, or discrepant. b. The baby cried. The electrical engineer picked it up. -Even though it may well be the case that the engineer being referred to here, is also the mother (the mommy) of the baby. -In other words, even though the above utterance may be a completely

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‘accurate’ description of what happened (it may very ‘truthfully’ describe this person), in our culture, people common sensically do not talk in this way. -Instead, they organize the way they talk rather differently. -they organize their talk so as to take into consideration the person or persons they are talking to. So how is this one concept of CA relevant to our understanding of how lawyers try and prove someone’s INTENTIONS? DREW Drew examines the data from the courtroom cross-examination, and he notices that

a. The QC does not ‘accuse’ the witness, with an explicit accusation (I accuse you of being biased against Catholics)

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b. Instead, the QC first gets the witness to agree to certain ‘factual descriptions’ of what happened.

c. And then the (implicit) ‘accusation’ follows

But what Drew nicely shows is that ‘getting the facts’ of what happened is not so much carried out with a concern for ‘accuracy’; but rather it gets carried out with a concern for morality (ie who is ‘blameworthy’ in this situation). -And for the QC to be able to accomplish this successfully, she has to become ‘culturally competent’ in ‘local common sense reasoning’, rather than the law. For example, Drew draws special attention to the point that when the QC tries to ‘get the facts’; she routinely uses place names to describe crowds

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-Notice the frequent use of Street names to describe crowds in this data -Now presumably, these crowds could be described differently (just as we saw earlier the person picking up the baby can be described in several different ways) other ‘possible’ descriptions (not typically selected) -These crowds could be described (and are described in other places in the inquiry) in terms of i.Their activity (the crowd at the barricade were doing most of the throwing and all of the petrol bombing) ii Their age and/sex (they were all male and aged, I would say, probably between 16 and 24)

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iii Their size (a group which was at least equal in number I think according to the way I understand your evidence) iv Their mood (this aggressive crowd was halted) -But Drew claims that even though all these other ways of ‘describing’ are literally as accurate, as the method preferred by the QC, the choice of ‘describing via ‘street names’ does significant ADDITIONAL conversational work; because the QC is directing her talk to the judge, the jury and the people in the audience, not just the person she is questioning. -That is to say, by using ‘place names’, this also allows hearers (the jury, the judge, the audience etc) to also make inferences about the likely ‘intentions’ of a crowd.

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This is because Belfast is divided up ‘common-sensically’ by local people into protestant areas (who live on certain roads) and Catholic areas (who live on other roads) -and everyone who lives in Belfast knows this common sense ‘religious geography’ -so just as the Membership Categorisation Device of ‘family’ allows people to make sense of activities they see around them; (tall person picking up tiny person); the MCD of ‘religious geography’ allows local people in Belfast to make sense of which groups of people (protestants or catholics) live in which roads (shankhill road, Donegal street, etc) -As a result, if a crowd from one street is heard as being close to a quite different location (and one which is typically inhabited by people from a different religion), then one can start making inferences about what was this first crowd doing in this area?

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-Were they looking to cause trouble? Were they being hostile? Were they invading? Etc, etc., -And this type of ‘inference’ is very useful to the QC, who is trying to construct an ‘accusation’, because that way s/he can tacitly imply what their ‘intentions’ were; simply through the use of ‘street names’ -Equally importantly, it allows listeners to start thinking about the intentions of the police chief as well (why wasn’t he stopping this ‘invasion’ by Protestants into Catholic areas)? In other words, by paying close attention to the minute details of how talk gets organised, Drew not only shows the ‘mundane’ ways in which people ‘construct’ social reality through their talk, but that what at first appears to be the QC simply trying to get at the ‘facts’ is also doing SIGNIFICANT other conversational work (ie allowing

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blame to be inferred on one group, because they were ‘invading’ another group’s territory) -Equally importantly, it also allows listeners to start thinking about the ‘intentions’ of the police chief (for not preventing this type of behavior from occurring). Revised 20th October 2014