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Article published In:
Pragmatics and Society
Vol. 12:4 (2021) ► pp.669–695

Withholding consent

How citizens resist expert responses by positioning themselves as ‘the ones to be convinced’

| Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
| Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
This paper examines public meetings in the Netherlands where experts and officials interact with local residents on the human health effects of livestock farming. Using Conversation Analysis, we reveal a ‘weapon of the weak’: a practice by which the residents resist experts’ head start in information meetings. It is shown how residents draw on the given question-answer format to challenge experts and pursue an admission of, for example, methodological shortcomings. We show how the residents’ first question functions as a ‘foot-in-the-door’, providing them with a strong basis for skepticism. By systematically challenging the expert responses, the residents exploit the interaction’s sequential organization, with the effect that the goal becomes them being convinced rather than being informed. Consequently, the withholding of consent becomes the residents’ ‘weapon’. Finally, we argue that in an age where expertise is increasingly contested, it is crucial to understand how, and to what end, this contestation may occur.
Keywords: public meetings, challenging questions, contested expertise, withholding consent, conversation analysis, ‘weapon of the weak’ practice
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Questions as challenges
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1“Foot-in-the-door”: Setting up skepticism
    • 4.2In further pursuit of an admission
    • 4.3Retroactively positioning oneself as already knowing the answer to the question(s)
  • 5.Concluding comments
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.20032.bur
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van Burgsteden, Lotte, Hedwig te Molder & Geoffrey Raymond
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