Discourse & Society

This article is concerned with the production of argumentative talk. Attention is focused on a particular device for `being argumentative', in which a turn is constructed using the marker `Oh' followed by a hearably ironical proposition. Analysis uncovers the structural aspects that contribute to that device's hearability as argumentative, and goes on to consider how an utterance deploying the device comes to be produced in terms of its surrounding, unfolding sequential context. The article thus addresses some distinctive resources available to disputants to construct their positions in the light of previous moves in the argument; and explores the way in which the sequential patterns of disputes themselves play a role in the making of arguments.

This article applies argumentative discourse theory to `letters to the editor', specifically letters written into and subsequently printed in the British broadsheet press. The sampled letters were all written in response to prior newspaper articles and reporting, in which Islam and/or Muslims were cited as actors. The pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation is applied as a model for explaining and understanding argument, emphasizing the functional, contextual and interactive features of argumentative discourse. The theory rejects the traditionally strict bifurcation of dialectic and rhetorical dimensions of argumentation, uniting them in the model. The article is informed by the presupposition that the power relationships represented in the broadsheet press are both generative and transposable, modifying power relations in other fields (Bourdieu, 1991), and concludes by suggesting that the letters represent an example of a discourse of `spatial management' - the `national space' being the space in question, and the `managers' being the dominant élites, as represented by the broadsheet newspaper readership.

This article examines how speech representation in Japanese journalistic discourse reflects and reproduces the social structure in Japan and the identity of the Imperial Family. Japanese newspapers tend strongly to quote the Imperial Family verbatim, which supports the thesis `the higher the status of the speaker, the more direct the presentation' (Glasgow University Media Group, 1980; Davis, 1985). On the other hand, Japanese newspapers also tend to quote those who address the Imperial Family verbatim, which suggests that not only the more elite the speaker, but also the more elite the addressee, the more verbatim the presentation. I argue that this practice mirrors the Japanese media's ideology that the Imperial Family belongs to a noble class. However, there has been a sign of change in the quoting practice since the Crown Prince got married in June 1993. This change may contribute to constructing new power relations and identities in Japanese society.

This article draws on a conceptualization of the link between science and politics based on discourse analysis. The public objects of science are theorized as discursive creatures. This political concept encapsulates the predetermination of politics by scientific discourse. This framework has been used to study the legitimation of in vitro fertilization in the UK. Through different linguistic and textual mechanisms the discourse of reproductive biology constructed IVF as a technology acceptable to actors of various persuasions. The article focuses on one such mechanism, namely, narration. The first successful fertilization of human eggs in vitro was immediately reported in a popular scientific article. This article is analysed by means of sequential theory and narrative semiotics. The story is then put in relation with parliamentary discourse on IVF.

In this article, we critically evaluate a conversation analytic approach to the study of the links between gender and language from a feminist perspective. In so doing, we engage in the recent series of exchanges about conversation analysis (CA) and other strands of discourse analysis that have been published in Discourse & Society. We consider talk from two sets of discourse data, focusing on participants' orientation to gender categories as they crop up in the interactions. We suggest that a CA approach produces a rich understanding of the links between discourse and gender. However, we are critical of several, often unexamined aspects and conundrums of conversation analytic methodology. First, we consider the extent to which the `analytic stances' of feminism and conversation analysis are compatible. Second, we question whether, as Schegloff (1997) suggests, it is fruitful to rely on descriptions of and orientations to gender solely in participants' terms, as well as problematizing the notion of `orienting to gender' itself. Finally, while we propose CA is a useful tool for making claims about the relevance of gender in conversational interaction, and that such claims are grounded in speakers' orientations, we suggest that culture and common-sense knowledge, of both members and analysts, are largely unacknowledged and unexplicated resources in CA.