Cover not available
Article published In:
The micro-politics of sequential organization: Contributions from conversation analysis and ethnomethodology
Edited by Lorenza Mondada and Sara Keel
[Journal of Language and Politics 16:1] 2017
► pp. 83–109

A table-based turn-taking system and its political consequences

Managing participation, building opinion groups, and fostering consensus

| University of Basel
| University of Basel
| University of Basel

Turn-taking in political settings faces the problem of how to enable the participation of larger numbers of speakers in orderly ways; solutions have been described as offered by constrained formats like the turn-type pre-allocation system or the mediated turn-taking system. This paper describes another specific solution, a table-based turn-taking system.

The study describes how facilitators managing brainstorming sessions in a participatory project exploit the spatial distribution of the citizens around tables scattered in the meeting room. By organizing discussions table by table, rather than selecting next individual speakers, the facilitators select groups and attributes specific rights and obligations to talk to “tables”, which are then treated not as a mere spatial location but as a political entity. The table-based device does not just solve problems of turn-taking management but also fosters the expression of collective opinions of the “table” as a place for building consensus.

Keywords: Conversation analysis, turn-taking, grassroots democracy, meeting, participation, space
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Emergent spatial arrangements: Taking seats around tables
  • 3.Instructions: Formulating rules
  • 4.A first implementation of the instructions
  • 5.Turn-taking management: A table-based system
  • 6.Responding as a table/group
    • 6.1Exhibiting group consensus
    • 6.2Expressing dissensus
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
Published online: 25 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.16.1.05mon
References
Amerine, Ronald, and Jack Bilmes
1988 “Following Instructions.” Human Studies 111: 327–339. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Atkinson, John M.
1984 Our Masters’ Voices: The Language and Body Language of Politics. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul
1992 “Contested Evidence in Courtroom Cross-Examination: The Case of a Trial for Rape.” In Talk at Work, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 470–520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold
2002 Ethnomethodology’s Program. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1971 Relations in Public. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and Steven E. Clayman
2010 Talk in Action. Interactions, Identities and Institutions. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail
2004 “Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, ed. by Gene H. Lerner. 13–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Llewellyn, Nick
2005 “Audience Participation in Political Discourse: A Study of Public Meetings.” Sociology 391: 697–716. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McIlvenny, Paul
1996 “Heckling in Hyde Park: Verbal Audience Participation in Popular Public Discourse.” Language in Society 251: 27–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza
2005 “BEcomING COLLECTIVE: The Constitution of the Audience as an Interactional Process.” In Makings Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. by Bruno Latour, and Peter Weibel, 876–883. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
2013 “Embodied and Spatial Resources for Turn-Taking in Institutional Multi-Party Interactions: Participatory Democracy Debates.” Journal of Pragmatics 461: 39–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “The Facilitator’s Task of Formulating Citizens’ Proposals in Political Meetings: Orchestrating Multiple Embodied Orientations to Recipients.” 161: 1–62. [URL]
Sacks, Harvey
1972 “An Initial Investigation of the Usability of Conversational Materials for Doing Sociology.” In Studies in Social Interaction, ed. by David Sudnow, 31–74. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
1995 “Parties and Talking Together: Two Ways in Which Numbers are Significant for Talk-in-Interaction.” In Situated Order, ed. by Paul ten Have, and George Psathas, 31–42. Washington: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 7 other publications

Chen, Qi & Adam Brandt
2021. Speakership, recipiency and the interactional space: Cases of “Next-speaker self-selects” in multiparty university student meetings. Journal of Pragmatics 180 ► pp. 54 ff. DOI logo
Heath, Christian & Lorenza Mondada
2019. Transparency and Embodied Action: Turn Organization and Fairness in Complex Institutional Environments. Social Psychology Quarterly 82:3 ► pp. 274 ff. DOI logo
Hofstetter, Emily
2021. Achieving Preallocation: Turn Transition Practices in Board Games. Discourse Processes 58:2 ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Hofstetter, Emily & Leelo Keevallik
2020. Embodied interaction. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
Mondada, Lorenza
2017. Le défi de la multimodalité en interaction. Revue française de linguistique appliquée Vol. XXII:2 ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo
Svensson, Hanna
2024. Name(ing) norms: Mispronunciations and ethnic categories in political talk. Language in Society 53:1 ► pp. 99 ff. DOI logo
van Burgsteden, Lotte & Hedwig te Molder
2022. Shelving Issues: Patrolling the Boundaries of Democratic Discussion in Public Meetings. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 41:6 ► pp. 685 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.