Analysing Citizenship Talk: Social Positioning in Political And Legal Decision-Making Processes

378 Pages·2006·1.23 MB·English

by  Heiko Hausendorf (ed.)

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AnalysingCitizenshipTalk
DiscourseApproachestoPolitics,SocietyandCulture
Theseriesincludescontributionsthatinvestigatepolitical,socialandculturalprocesses
fromalinguistic/discourse-analyticpointofview.Theaimistopublishmonographs
and edited volumes which combine language-based approaches with disciplines
concernedessentiallywithhumaninteraction—disciplinessuchaspoliticalscience,
international relations, social psychology, social anthropology, sociology, economics,
andgenderstudies.
The book series complements the Journal of Language and Politics, edited by Ruth
WodakandPaulChilton.
Generaleditors
RuthWodakandGregMyers
UniversityofLancaster
Editorialaddress:RuthWodak
BowlandCollege,DepartmentofLinguisticsandModernEnglishLanguage
UniversityofLancaster,LancasterLA14YT,UK
[email protected]@lancaster.ac.uk
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IrèneBellier AndreasH.Jucker
MaisondesSciencesdel’Homme,Paris,France UniversityofZurich
MichaelBillig GeorgeLakoff
LoughboroughUniversity UniversityofCaliforniaatBerkeley
JanBlommaert J.R.Martin
UniversityofGhent UniversityofSydney
PaulChilton LuisaMartínRojo
UniversityofEastAnglia UniversidadAutonomadeMadrid
J.W.Downes JacobL.Mey
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TeunA.vanDijk ChristinaSchäffner
UniversitatPompeuFabra,Barcelona AstonUniversity
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Polis,Moscow
Volume19
AnalysingCitizenshipTalk:Socialpositioninginpoliticalandlegal
decision-makingprocesses
EditedbyHeikoHausendorfandAlfonsBora
Analysing Citizenship Talk
Social positioning in political
and legal decision-making processes
Editedby
Heiko Hausendorf
UniversityofBayreuth
Alfons Bora
UniversityofBielefeld
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCompany
Amsterdam(cid:1)/(cid:1)Philadelphia
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AnalysingCitizenshipTalk:Socialpositioninginpoliticalandlegal
decision-makingprocesses/editedbyHeikoHausendorfandAlfonsBora.
p. cm.(DiscourseApproachestoPolitics,SocietyandCulture,issn
1569-9463;v.19)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindexes.
1.Communicationinpolitics.2.Politicalparticipation.3.
Citizenship.4.Discourseanalysis.I.Hausendorf,H.(Heiko)II.Bora,
Alfons.III.Series.
JA85.A63 2006
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Contents v
Contents
Foreword vii
Introduction 1
Heiko Hausendorf and Alfons Bora
Part I. Communicating Citizenship as Research Subject
Communicating citizenship and social positioning:theoretical concepts 23
Alfons Bora and Heiko Hausendorf
Licensing plant GMOs – A brief overview over European regulatory
conditions for the deliberate release of genetically modified plants 50
Alfons Bora
Procedure and participation:A social theoretical assessment of GM
licensing procedures in Ireland and the UK 61
Patrick O’Mahony and Siobhan O’Sullivan
Part II. Communicating Citizenship as a Methodological Challenge
Reconstructing social positioning in discourse:Methodological basics
and their implementation from a conversation analysis perspective 85
Heiko Hausendorf and Alfons Bora
Critical Discourse Analysis and citizenship 98
Norman Fairclough, Simon Pardoe and Bronislaw Szerszynski
A critical comparison of the investigative gaze of three approaches
to text analysis 124
Tracey Skillington
vi Contents
Communicating citizenship in verbal interaction:Principles of a speech
act oriented discourse analysis 151
Marina Sbisà
Communicative involvement in public discourse: Considerations on
an ethnographic inventory and a proposal for the analysis of modes
of citizenship 181
Thomas Spranz-Fogasy
Part III. Communicating Citizenship in Discourse:Empirical Aspects
Opening up the public space: On the framing and re-framing
of a discussion meeting about GMO field trials 199
Ingrid Furchner and Peter Münte
Personal reference, social categorisation and the communicative
achievement of citizenship: Comments on a local public meeting
on GMO field trials 223
Zsuzsanna Iványi, András Kertész, Kornélia Marinecz and Nóra Máté
Quotations as a vehicle for social positioning 251
Jana Holsanova
On doing being personal:Citizen talk as an identity-suspending device
in public debates on GMOs 276
Henrike Padmos, Harrie Mazeland and Hedwig te Molder
Appendix
Data extracts from a local public meeting on GMO field trials 296
Index 000
Contents vii
Foreword
The contributions collected in this volume have in common a sociolinguistic
interest in forms of citizen participation in the context of modern biotechnology.
They deal with citizen participation with respect to the various communicative
processes in which it is manifested in discourse (‘communicating citizenship’) and
try to make clear the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications that
go along with such an approach. In doing so, they draw upon an interdisciplinary
European research project called “Paradys” which took up the case of Genetically
Modified Organisms (GMOs) and its administrative regulation through concrete
permitting procedures in order to provide an heuristically fruitful empirical
starting point for the analysis of communicated citizenship.1 The contributions
comprise most of the talks that were delivered at the first international project
conference which was held in order to clarify the theoretical concept of the project,
its methodological basics and which should anticipate in an exemplary fashion the
kind of findings to be expected.2 It took place at the Centre for Interdisciplinary
Research (ZiF) at the University of Bielefeld (Germany) in 2000.
We would like to express our gratitude to Prof. Dr. Gertrude Lübbe-Wolf as
the ZiF’s then acting-director and to Dr. Johannes Roggenhofer as its executive
secretary for supporting and organising this workshop.
We would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Paul Chilton and Prof. Dr. Ruth Wodak
for including this volume into their series Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society
and Culture (DAPSAC).
Alfons Bora and Heiko Hausendorf
Bielefeld / Bayreuth, March 2005
Notes
1. Paradys (Participation and the Dynamics of Social Positioning) was funded by the
European Commission (Contract No. HPSE-CT–2001-00050). The project consortium included
sociological and linguistic research teams from Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands,
Sweden, the UK and Germany and was co-ordinated by the editors.
2. In the meantime, the Paradys project has been finished. Readers interested in the details of
the empirical findings and results can be referred to the final report which is available on the
editors’ university websites (http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/iwt/paradys/English_start.html).
viii Contents
Introduction 1
Introduction
Heiko Hausendorf and Alfons Bora
The development of biotechnology is one of the most prominent social areas in
which demands for citizen participation have come to be heard in the last decade
of the 20th century. The debate on “unpredictable risks”, which is closely connected
with biotechnology and the new “life sciences”, has confronted politics and legis-
lation with an enormous need for regulation and control. As a result of this, as well
as due to the effect of increasing public interest in the topic, new forms of citizen
participation have emerged. Their purpose is to improve the transparency of the
decision-making processes connected with licensing procedures regarding geneti-
cally modified organisms (GMOs) and – to different extents in various European
countries – to establish new concepts of citizenship that allow participants, espe-
cially the parties locally concerned, to take part in the decision-making process.
It is this kind of effort, undertaken to allow and ensure citizens take part in
politically and socially contested decision-making processes, that we are inter-
ested in. GMOs and other applications of modern biotechnologies are but one
example among others (such as environmental policies or serious changes at
urban/region/national/transnational levels) where participatory discourse can be
expected to emerge – and where it can systematically be studied.
Independent from any particular issue, participatory discourse emerges when-
ever a political decision-making process in one way or another requires for the
‘public’ to be included. It typically aims at ‘citizenship’ as a mode of including people
in the political system that goes beyond the formal mechanisms of representative
democracy in favour of ‘good governance’. Participatory discourse comprises a
broad variety of communicative events. Amongst them can be mentioned:oral
arenas of debating between experts, politicians, and the public, written objec-
tions and/or letters from concerned citizens, frequently asked question pages on
governmental websites, face-to-face interaction or media communication, formal
as well as informal gatherings, singularly occurring local meetings or regularly
occurring gatherings of focus groups. The present book takes a first step towards
the sociolinguistic exploration of this field of discourse, including the analysis of
theoretical, methodological, and empirical aspects. As far as the empirical part
of this exploration is concerned, we will restrict ourselves to the study of a single
specific local public meeting between citizens, experts and applicants. In response