Heritage and Drew propose 3 features of institutional talk:
1. Institutional interaction normally involves the participants in specific goal orientations which
are tied to their institution relevant identities: doctor and patient, teacher and pupil, and so on.
2. Institutional interaction involves special constraints on what will be treated as allowable contribution to the business at hand
3. Institutional talk is associated with inferential frameworks and procedures that are particular to specific institutional contexts.
6 areas to probe institutional
talk(Heritage) [168-169]:
1.
Turn-taking organization.
·
Special turn-taking organizations in court sessions,
news interviews, and classrooms
·
Formal character
·
Large number of potential participants
·
Overhearing audience
·
Specific settings have specific system i.e.
therapeutic or mediation hearings
2.
Overall structural organization of interaction.
·
Pursuit of a specific, joint, co-constructed
sub-goal
·
Over all “map” of the interaction in terms of
“phases” or “sections”
·
Boundaries between sections reveal whether parties
agree on the task and its parts, task orientations, and how they are
constructed.
·
Not a fixed framework to fit data into but an
evolving structure
3.
Sequence organization
·
“In analyzing sequences, we essentially look at how
particular courses of action are initiated and progressed and, as part of this,
how particular action opportunities are opened up and activated or withheld
from and occluded” [Heritage, 1997: 169]
4.
Turn design.
·
2 distinct selections that a person’s speech
embodies: 1 the action that the talk is designed to perform and 2 the means
that are selected to perform the action
·
In agent/client interaction routines develop with
agent repeating similar actions to bring about smooth quick interaction. Development of these routines = turn
design.
5.
Lexical choice.
·
Choice of descriptive terms (jargon), self reference
(the organizational “we”), and institutional euphemisms which “minimize the
expressed reproachability or painfulness of the situation or the actions under
discussion (i.e. “food technician” for “lunch lady”)
6.
Epistemological and other forms of asymmetry.
a)
Asymmetries of participation
·
When doctor questions patient, doctor controls
direction of questioning
b)
Asymmetries of interactional and institutional
“know-how”
·
Unequal involvement in “case” (activity)
·
Client doesn’t know what agent is up to (i.e.
psychiatrist session)
·
Situations unique for client but not for agent
c)
Epistemological caution and asymmetries of knowledge
·
Agent doesn’t take professional stand on issues
under discussion (disassociation as an objective “omniscient” player)
·
Co-produced roles of professional and lay person
often well developed, sometimes over developed
d)
Rights of access to knowledge
·
Agent has “right to know” whereas the lay person
doesn’t
·
Client often hides information or opinions they have
because they don’t feel they have a right to know i.e. a client doesn’t tell a
lawyer a very important piece of information because they think they should
only answer directed questions as they are just a lay person while the agent
really knows.
·
When clients to point something out they usually
cite their sources or say, “well I read somewhere…”