Abstract
When people argue they routinely challenge the opinions, views, and attitudes of one another, they seek to cast the other as the aggressor or party at fault, and otherwise exert social control. This article illustrates how members work to hamper challenges, evade control or avoid being negatively characterized by systematically blocking access to a turn in the third position and stopping their opponent’s agenda. Examining 100 hours of public disputes (public transport, protestor interactions and radio call-ins) in varieties of English, I use membership categorization analysis and conversation analysis to unpack resistance as part of the structural organization of disputes. I identify two methods of resisting an agenda: (1) passively, whereby a responsive turn stalls the progressivity of the interaction, and (2) actively, whereby a responsive turn disaligns to outrightly suspend the progressivity of the interaction. I discuss how resistance sequentially unfolds across sequential positions, and as an interactional phenomenon which solves the trouble of a challenge. Overall, this article contributes to social interaction research on resistance, public disputes and how social order is constituted in and through talk-in-interaction.
Keywords
Introduction
Parties in disputes challenge the opinions, views and attitudes of one another in and through talk. Responding to challenges is a problem for members and so, this article investigates social interaction to unpack two forms of resistance as a members’ resource for responding to challenges. One way that a challenge may be brought off are through ‘enticing’ sequences which are manufactured in order to reverse the logic of the others argument (Reynolds, 2015). These sequences, as demonstrated in Reynolds (2015) example below, provide a momentary cessation (L03–L06) of the dispute and rely on an aligning move (L06) in the service of challenging some hypocrisy in the answer (L07).
01 T: [>but we’re talking about< <human beings.>] we’re not talking about 02 destro:ying anything. you’re ju:mping to conclu[sions. ] 03 C: [>let me a]sk you something. 04 =do you eat eggs.< 05 (2.0) 06 T: <yes.> 07 C: that’s a foe:tus. couldn’t it be¿ if there’s a blood thi:ng 08 [it’s->it’s a foetus.<] 09 T: [<we are talking > ] about <the pi:ll ki:lling wo:men.> (Adapted from Reynolds (2015: 301)).
Enticing is a members’ method for producing a seemingly unproblematic, straightforward and uncontroversial question or statement which, on the surface of the talk, does not openly oppose the target, but establishes a basis for some upcoming opposition (Reber, 2019; Reynolds, 2011, 2015). These questions, either explicitly or implicitly, are produced as ‘innocent’; yet ‘asking a question is not an innocent thing to do’ (Steensig and Drew, 2008: 7), and are thus inapposite to the local environment within which they occur. Questions which entice an answer get produced to manipulate knowledge or interactional resources to set up a normative framework designed to accomplish some action such as recruiting the target’s position against their own argument (Reynolds, 2011, 2015) and/or claiming power and (counter) accusing (Reber, 2019).
Following this overview, I discuss the constitution of a dispute and how people can exert social control over their opponent through enticing interrogatives. This builds on Reynolds (2015) and Reber’s (2019) work to specify resistive responses to the enticing interrogative sequences which they identified. I proceed to detail the data and methodology before producing an analysis of two members’ methods for achieving resistance: (1) passively, and (2) actively which undermine attempts at social control. Finally, I discuss this analysis to situate resistance as an interactional phenomenon that impedes, or outrightly suspends attempts at sequential, social, or moral control over the target.
Disputes
Disputes are systematically organized by participants whose conduct is produced as orderly for their local context (Coulter, 1990; Maynard, 1985; Reynolds, 2015). There are two tacks in disputes: challenging and resisting. Challenges do not have to convey disagreement or disaffiliation with the other speaker, but they are sequentially implicative (Schegloff, 1987) and may comprise a non-aligning response to the prior turn whilst also initiating a different trajectory. Comparatively, resistance is managed through turn design (Drew, 1987) whereby, challenges are done in ways to obstruct potential resistance. Enticers are an example of this – they seek to suspend a presupposition and trap the target into a line of argument before producing a challenge that is difficult to dismiss given the target’s earlier response.
These devices, according to Reynolds (2015), rarely achieve a ‘win’ in the dispute-talk, but instead accomplish a resetting of the dispute to halt the target’s line of argument and assert some control over the (new) direction of talk. They may be deployed to negotiate, claim power and/or accuse (Reber, 2019). The production of this type of challenge then, positions the target as responding to the course of action (and agenda) being done by the challenger. Consequently, these interrogatives push forward the challenger’s agenda, and although serving to cease the in-progress line of argument, they maintain the gestalt of the overall argument to afford new or reintroduced arguables.
The described use of an enticer is to bring off a challenge through in-the-moment compliance towards adversarial ends. Oppositionality between participants characterizes ‘disputative interactions’ in that participants are collaboratively engaged with the disputed topic and furnish the talk with adversarial features such as disagreement (Antaki, 1994; Coulter, 1990; Hutchby, 1996; Maynard, 1985). The sequences presented here are, at their core disaffiliative in that they furnish the talk with some antagonistic activity (i.e. disputing) that is achieved across multiple sequences (see Joyce & Walz, In press). On a moment-by-moment basis they may align with the prior turn, have a preferred turn shape, and may appear affiliative – yet their outcomes avail an adversarial stance by the challenger to the target. 1 These enticing interrogatives seek to make the target ‘ordinary’ – at least in the service of demonstrating some oppositional, or problematic views, or action of the target. This article then, examines resistive responses to these enticing interrogatives to advance our understanding of resistance in response to social control (see Gibson, 2019; Humă et al., 2019), and the structural organization of disputes. In the course of the analysis, I will empirically analyse the micro-features of interaction through which people produce, maintain and disrupt those social and moral orders.
Data and method
The data were collected as part of a larger project examining interactional and categorial features of public disputes. These audio and video recordings (N = 282 recordings at 100 hours) were collected from the public domain, particularly YouTube (confined to cases retaining their temporal and sequential properties) and regard three environments of public disputes: public transport, protestor interactions and radio call-ins, the data are in varieties of English. In accordance with the British Psychological Society’s ethics code (2018), recordings were not collected if: (1) the recording involved children, or (2) the participants were unaware of the recording and/or indicated an unwillingness to be recorded. For inclusion in this paper, I selected clips that featured enticing sequences which yielded 24 clips and 4.5 hours of interaction data. In 7 of these cases, which I investigate for this paper, they feature the practice of resisting an enticing question brought off through linguistic resources (see Couper-Kuhlen and Selting, 2018). All clips can be accessed via Joyce (2021). The remainder feature cases where the challenge gets reversed by the target (cf. Joyce, 2019). These are disputes in the sense that people cohere with the (1) disputed topic, and (2) the course of a challenge according with Heritage and Sorjonen’s (1994) description. Data were transcribed using the Jeffersonian transcription system (Atkinson and Heritage, 1984), and where relevant for how members make sense of the prior turn, the embodied conduct is transcribed using the Mondadian system (Mondada, 2016).
I primarily employ Conversation Analysis (Clift, 2016; Schegloff, 2007) supported by Membership Categorisation Analysis (Hester and Eglin, 1997) to systematically investigate social interaction in two ways. First and foremost, to illuminate the structural organization of public disputes and how interlocutors passively resist by stalling the progressivity of the interactional trajectory without suspending that trajectory, or actively resist by outrightly suspending that trajectory. I examine the sequential positions of turns at talk. These are, as Schegloff (1997) details: first (initial), second (responsive) and third (sequence closing) positions. I use Schegloff’s sequential positions to highlight how resistance to a first position challenge can work to obstruct access to a third position turn thereby forcing the challenger to either abandon, or pursue their challenge. Second, to reveal how members’ attend to who-they-are (their category), and how this is exploited to bring off category-bounded challenges in and through talk-in-interaction.
Analysis
I will now consider seven cases drawn from those three interactional contexts in which a dispute has arisen between two people. In each of these cases, a speaker has gained control over the direction of the talk and is pursuing their agenda (espousing their views, opinions, beliefs) to engineer a challenge – my focus will, as above, be on how the target of the challenge works to prevent that challenge being completed and evade social control. Specifically, the analysis will show passive and active resistance in responses to questions which are enticing an answer. This resistance serves to block access to a third position turn, that is, the turn subsequent to the target’s (enticed) response, normally occupied by the challenge (a description, or incongruity) based on the target’s response.
Resisting the grounds for a challenge
Extract 2–4 are part of the same sequence from a radio call-in show. It begins following Sam (the caller) responding to a previous caller discussing the recent burkini ban in France (August 2016); Sam has called to advocate for the burkini ban. The host disagrees with Sam and has unsuccessfully attempted to close the call, in response Sam calls the host a ‘pervert’ for disagreeing with the ban and arguing for women’s freedom to wear what they wish. Consequently, the host asks about Sam’s children.
[03:01-03:49]
L01–L10 indicates how the target sequence (L11 onwards) occurs. Sam has attained control over the direction of talk to produce a description of the host as a pervert (L01–L09). From L11, the host solicits some straightforward objective information about Sam’s children.
The host’s turn at L15 projects a closing with the summarising (‘well look after them’), but before the closing is complete, the host quickly asks a further question in L16. In the host’s turns he attends to Sam as a father and as a husband (belonging to a family category device) to partition (Butler, 2008; Joyce et al., 2021) so that the family device covers the relevance of the ‘radio’ device. The radio device remains operative through how the interaction is organized, but Sam is now being treated as a father (see Butler et al., 2009 on omnirelevance). Consequently, this generates a challenge that presupposes Sam’s espoused views (as a radio caller with ‘extreme’ views) are incongruent with his cover-category as a family member. This challenge occurs in L16 with a polar interrogative (‘do you hav- do they have an enlightened mother’, L16), which is a pre-challenge as it is produced abruptly and inappositely in terms of both sequence and design; moreover, the question foreshadows some action (the challenge) (Clayman, 2002) because of its seemingly innocent nature (Steensig and Drew, 2008) but position following a disagreement and the host’s summing up.
To see how this is incongruence is produced, consider L16 where there is a repair from the recognitional reference ‘you’ to the children’s perspective ‘they’ (as in, do the children have an enlightened mother?). The question presses for a yes response – with Sam being a co-member in family device he could be accountable for not favourably evaluating the mother 2 . Indeed, this sets up the basis for a challenge: it explicitly invokes the asymmetrical-relational pair ‘mother/child’, produces the host as not-knowing, and makes sense of the question through implying the symmetrical pair ‘mother/father’, which bounds Sam with rights to know.
Sam treats the question with a gap (L17) that is responsive to the inapposite nature of the question, following which Sam produces an upgraded, non-polar response in L18 (‘£of course they do.£’). This aligns with the question but does more than a yes response. As such, Sam treats the question literally and contests its askability (Stivers, 2011). In Dooley et al.’s (2019) terms, this can be considered as passive resistance as it pushes back against the trajectory but does not suspend that trajectory. In what follows we see how Sam actively resists the host who continues to progress the challenge by receipting Sam’s turn (‘they have right’) and producing the incongruity (‘so they are getting-’). Note that this is abandoned as Sam claims speakership to block the host access to a third position turn (where the challenge ought to occur). This resists against a possible incongruity by retrospectively casting ‘enlightened’ as someone who is modest and covers up (and therefore congruent with his espoused views). This actively resists by disaligning with the host and thus impedes the challenge’s trajectory. The sequence continues below as the host attempts to get the challenge back on track.
Blocking access to a third position turn
Following Sam actively resisting against the challenge project (to craft an incongruity between Sam’s espoused views and his membership to a family device), the host attempts to get the challenge back on track. In L24 the host initiates repair (‘when I say’) to deal with Sam’s resistance by treating it as a misunderstanding and providing an alternate description of the mother. Indeed, the repair operation asserts the host’s domain of knowledge and treats Sam’s description of ‘enlightened’ as erroneous and (re)launches the pre-challenge with ‘do they have a broadm
After the host’s repair and relaunch of the challenge trajectory with a reformulation of his prior ‘do they have an enlightened mother’, Sam responds by receipting the host (‘yeah’). The receipt is oblivious to the potential contrast being produced and instead treats it as a polar question (see Raymond, 2003). At this moment Sam ostensibly aligns with the host; however, Sam continues ‘she’s broadminded’ disaffiliates through supplying his own description of ‘broadminded’. In other words, this bolsters Sam’s stance against the unspoken alternative that the mother, as broadminded, is providing sufficient parenting given Sam’s controversial views.
Sam aligns at the level of action by providing a fitted response but is disaffiliated at the level of the activity by not going along with the host’s enticing challenge. Sam, like in the prior extract, retrospectively casts attributes to ‘broadminded’: ‘she doesn’t have low self-
The host deals with Sam’s obstruction to the third position by producing a meta-comment (‘°no- I’m try-° what am I trying to get across here’, L30). It responds in a way which does not speak directly to Sam, but Sam’s ‘misunderstandings’ as caused by the host’s own difficulty at getting his point across. Sam’s responsive turn (L08: ‘no that’s what’s I’m getting across’) privileges his right to put his point across and thus his own agenda.
To summarize, in this example a description gets occasioned by the host through the crafting of Sam as ‘father’, and not simply as a radio caller within the radio device. In doing this, Sam gets bound to the obligations of being a parent and thus his views are accountable on that basis. This parental category serves to reverse the logic of Sam’s argument (i.e. that one cannot have those views and be a good parent), which renders Sam in alignment with the ongoing project but susceptible to the contrastive challenge being generated by the host. To counter this, Sam blocks the host’s access to a third position turn and thus restrict his ability to complete the enticing sequence and bring off the challenge.
Resisting a forced ultimatum
This extract concludes the prior extracts: the host forces an ultimatum to furnish Sam with a description that is inapposite his role as father (i.e. at least his children have at least one good parent – their mother). Here the call ends, and the challenge is closed. Following Sam’s resistance by passively contesting if the question is askable, and actively blocking access to the host’s third position turn, the host makes another attempt to mobilize a polar response which the host can then challenge.
At L32, the host redoes the question (‘is she mo::re #ehh: r:e#lax
This suspends the enticing sequence and again, restricts access to that third position for the host by altering the interactional trajectory. Sam manages this by framing the host as a non-incumbent of his family device (‘none of your £busin’ss about my wife£’ L33), with the hedge ‘to be fair’ (line 05), plus an account (‘£we’re on radio yeah£’, L34) to highlight the inappositeness of the question. This counters the host’s agenda with a non-conforming response containing a built-in account that (1) invokes the overhearing audience, (2) rejects the host’s request for epistemic access to the relationship, (3) orients to the talk as inapposite and, (4) invites agreement with the new direction with the pre-positioned address and turn-final ‘yeah’. The host receipts Sam’s turn and moves to a closing (‘ahright okay look after the children’, L35) that is tied to his earlier attempt (‘°well look after them°’, Extract 2 L15). The closing marks his abandonment of the enticing sequence, but the host skilfully attaches a subject-side assessment (‘I’m pretty horrified by some of your views’, L37) to display his adversarial stance towards Sam and formulate the upshot of the call for his listeners.
Throughout extracts 2, 3 and 4 I exposed the host’s attempts to progress the enticing sequence and ultimately bring off a challenge that would strike at the adequacy of the parenting Sam’s children receive. In the phases of the enticing sequence the host never makes it to that third position where he is able to produce an answer on the basis of Sam’s answer. Indeed, Sam builds his resistance in response as passive to contest the host’s question (but aligned to the activity) and as active to disalign and suspend the enticing trajectory. Consequently, by continually blocking access to the third position, Sam outrightly resists the enticing sequence and does not allow that challenge to be brought off.
Pursuing a resisted challenge
The following extract further demonstrates a members’ orientation to the challenge sequence, and how their resistance within that sequence is produced. This extract is taken from a public dispute between two train passengers in the UK. Sue has asked Ann to turn her music down as the sound from Ann’s headphones was disturbing Sue’s reading. Immediately prior to this sequence, Sue has requested that Ann move away from her and has called Ann a ‘little school girl’. The proceeding analysis details the (1) attempted challenge, (2) active resistance to restrict the challenger’s (Sue) access to a third position turn, and (3) pursuit in response to that resistance.
URL: https://youtu.be/XFIwMTRj6J0 [00:02:46-00:03:18]
Similar to the prior extracts, the challenge sequence is initiated as an additional turn-construction unit with the challenger (Sue) claiming a first position turn: ‘no you are very rude and you have no manners’ (L04) to ‘do you have a job?’ (L05). This seizes control over the direction of the talk whilst also managing the contingency that Ann could refute her evaluation of her being rude with no manners.
Sue’s turn (‘do you have a job’, L05) does not (at this time) directly challenge Ann, but does indicate some upcoming challenge by establishing the grounds for a description which would challenge Ann. That is, (1) Ann is unemployed because she is rude, or (2) Ann is employed and this behaviour is incongruous with how she ought to behave as an employee. Ann responds by actively resisting the question in L06. She redoes Sue’s question ‘do you’ to turn the question back on Sue to contest the relevance of the question and display an adversarial disposition towards that question (Bolden, 2009). Indeed, Ann’s turn would suspend that direction of talk and block access to a third position challenge for Sue by producing a competing first position turn but Sue reformulates her question before this could happen.
The reformulated question ‘do you work’ (L07) pushes forward Sue’s trajectory of talk; however, Sue provides an answer ‘yes I do have a j’b<’ (L07) to Ann’s question thus affording Ann the third position turn to assess Sue’s answer sarcastically (‘that’s good for you’, L08). Sue’s challenge sequence is thus suspended by Ann. To deal with this, Sue sequentially deletes the prior talk to retry her initial turn ‘do you have a job?’ (L09), though this is again resisted by Ann with a disaligned response in L10. This continues with a further attempt at a first position turn (‘do you work’, L11) which is again actively resisted with a disaligned response: ‘O:h WO:w’ by Ann (L12). The pursuit of the challenge sequence by Sue is not in vain as it treats Ann’s responses as inadequate and obstructive to the progressivity of their interaction.
The final attempt by Sue ‘are you employed’ (L13) is again, actively resisted by Ann to obstruct the progress of her challenge ‘round of applause for the working lady’ (L14). In response, Sue changes tack and progresses the challenge sequence regardless. Sue’s challenge is designed in a way which provides a candidate answer for Ann ‘so what you’re unemploy:ed’ (L16), that builds on Ann’s resistance ‘so what’ and ascribes a reason for her disaligned responses with ‘you’re unemployed’. Moreover, Sue continues with the idiomatic ‘well I’ll tell you what’ (L16–17) to manage Sue’s upcoming description as a proposal and not necessarily grounded in evidence (that Ann could be employed). Sue then claims to be knowledgeable ‘I kno:w why’. (L17) to preface the upcoming description as a telling; the extended framing retains speakership to manage the contingency that Ann being unemployed is Sue’s claim and not occasioned by Ann’s responses. Finally, the challenge occurs ‘because you’re unemployable no employed will touch you’ (L17 and L19). This challenges Ann on the basis of Ann’s actions in this dispute as not just being locally situated to this interaction, but generalizes to her unemployable character to ‘build a picture of what kind of person the actor is’ (Edwards, 1997: 144). This turn is designed in a way that brings off a challenge without requiring access to the third position, thus circumventing possible resistance by Ann. Indeed, by retaining speakership with extensions to her turn in L19, and L22 (in overlap with Ann) it obstructs opportunities for Ann to claim speakership.
Consequently, Ann does take a turn in L21 ‘mate I wouldn’t wanna work for you::?’; she offers a revision to that challenge through particularization (Kitzinger, 2000), whereby the generality of Sue’s challenge (‘no employer will touch you’, L19) is contrasted with the applicability of this specific situation (‘I wouldn’t wanna work for you’, L21). Ann can thus reasonably resist without rejecting the grounds of Sue’s challenge (that Ann is unemployed), but on its relation to her as a particular person (with agency).
This extract reveals how access to a third position turn can be successfully obstructed by providing disaligned responses which stall the progressivity of the interaction. Unlike the first three extracts, in this case the challenger (Sue) manages the inaccessibility of the third position turn by producing a direct (but generalized) challenge that is not contingent on the target’s (Ann) responses; however, designing a turn in a generalized way is able to be resisted on its applicability to the specific individual or situation.
Removing the need for second-position acceptance
In this next extract, there is an ongoing anti-Trump (the sitting US president) protest (blocking a US highway), to which Ant belongs. In response to this demonstration, a small counter-protest (pro-Trump) has begun, to which Tru belongs. The two sides have clashed (separated by a highway barrier). Immediately prior this this extract, Ant’s anti-Trump side have been contesting whether illegal immigration is an actual issue. Ant has then initiated an interaction with Tru which is where this extract begins.
URL: https://youtu.be/xPOxX_8H2s4 [00:12:41-00:12:56]
Ant (anti-Trump) claims a turn by quickly delivering an interrogative (‘>d’you know what Donald Trump says’., L01), though he answers his own question (‘he says< (.) oh they’re [illegal immigrants] taking our jo:bs’, L02). This scaffolds the response to his following question: ‘d’you know what th’ illeg’ls do:?’ (L03) – as a telling, not as an interrogative to which Tru aligns with a not-so-straightforward go-ahead “what do they do:=“ (L04), despite the contrastive challenge (between what Trump says and reality) being produced.
The response by Ant continues his telling to set the groundwork of his upcoming challenge ‘=pick <stra:wberries cucumbers orang>es?’ (L05 and L07); there is already some attempt by Tru to stall the progressivity of Ant’s turn (‘Okay an-’, L06), though Ant continues. Ant then takes a first position turn tagged onto the end of his telling ‘are you gonna do that<?’ (L07). Ant’s tagged interrogative expects a no answer to afford him the third position to challenge the logic of his (reported) original statement ‘they’re taking our jobs’ (L02) (therefore ‘illeg’ls’ are not taking jobs, but doing work that Americans are unwilling to do). In the second position slot, Tru actively resists by providing a disaligned response ‘=they’re still illegal’ (L08), which pushes the interactional trajectory forward in a different direction to effectively obstruct access to a third position turn for Ant. Similar to the prior extract, Tru’s response treats the hypothetical by Ant (whether or not Tru will pick vegetables) as inapplicable to the specific (factual) situation.
With access to a third position turn blocked, Ant pursues his challenge project with a reinitiation: ‘you’re AMerican no-’ (L09). In the category device ‘American citizens’, there are thus ‘Americans’ and ‘non-Americans (“illegals”)’, and by forcing Tru to confirm that he is indeed an American, he can thus be heard as speaking on behalf of that category (Sacks, 1995). Therefore, the reinitiation sequentially deletes Tru’s obstructive turn (L08) by returning to the premise of the original challenge project in L07 (that as an American he is not going to pick vegetables). The first two of Tru’s repeated ‘yes’ (L10) can be heard as confirming his prior turn (L09), and the third as confirming Ant’s turn (L09). In any case, it is treated as a confirmation as Ant then calls Tru a liar.
Ant manufactures a presupposition whereby no Americans will pick vegetables (as it is an ‘illegals’ job), and that by confirming Tru is an American it means that he can be called a liar. The incongruity occurs with Tru being an American and picking vegetables, that is, without ‘illegals’ no vegetables will be picked. The challenge is emphatically produced ‘YAhh Ahh £you lie£’ (L11) with jumping and smiling. Like in the previous extract, Ant makes it difficult to hear Tru’s turn (‘maybe americans will do that’, L12) with his non-lexical vocalization ‘YAhh Ahh’ and embodied conduct. Tru reproduces his turn but it is too late – the challenge has been brought off and so Tru only offers a revision, rather than rejection.
Ant’s challenge is carefully designed to set up an incongruence, he entices Tru to go against the reported Trump assertion (taking our jobs); however, Tru disaligns and blocks access to the turn position where that incongruence would have been produced. Ant manages this obstruction by treating it as taken-for-granted (Americans won’t pick vegetables), and brings off the challenge on the basis that Tru is an American and would pick vegetables. Thus, by introducing a further presupposition it removes the need for a second position acceptance and allows the challenge to be brought off.
Stalling progressivity to debase a challenge
The final two extracts are also from a protestor dispute. In 2017, the US government proposed a change to the ‘Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals’ immigration policy, there were subsequently protests across the US. These extracts are taken from one of these protests. Art is a self-described right-wing, pro-Trump political commentator (on YouTube), he is counter-protesting (on his own) for the change to occur. He has a chest-mounted camera, a hand-held camera, and is accompanied by a videographer (from which the recording is taken). Mas, is described as a ‘Jewish liberal’, and confronts Art with a sign that reads ‘All Religions Believe in Justice’. In these extracts Mas challenges Art’s views, and his political affiliation by asserting that Art is not making the world a better place. Immediately before this extract they have been discussing a previous protest that Art was involved with, and Art has addressed the camera to call Mas a bigot.
[00:15:26– 00:16:01]
Art has had control over the direction of talk prior this sequence, marked in L01 and L02 where he asks about Mas’ sign. Mas claims a first position turn ‘so what’re you doing to make the world a better place tell me’ (L03–04) to initiate a new sequential trajectory, managed by the ‘so’ as implementing a sequence-initiating action (Bolden, 2009). Art answers the question with a three-part list ‘I’m educating others >I’ve reregistered voters< (.) I’VE Helped people in
Mas respecifies his interrogative: ‘Are you helping people who are s
In the previous extracts (5 and 6), I revealed how the challenger can provide a candidate answer in order to bring off a challenge without the need for the target to go along with the initial phases of the challenge project. Art succeeds in stalling the progressivity of Mas’ agenda in the first instance (L05–08) but he fails to completely obstruct access to a third position turn for Mas. Consequently, and unlike the previous extracts, Mas manages the passive resistance displayed by Art – his contestation of the question (L05) and the pursuit of his agenda and brings off a challenge in L16–19. In the final extract, Mas pursues his challenge project to further chastise Art for his political affiliation.
Successful evasion from a flawed challenge
Mas’ response to Art’s question (‘who’s taking who from what’, extract 7, L20-21) is well-prefaced to register his turn, not as an answer, but as a procedure for answering Art’s question (Schegloff and Lerner, 2009). Indeed, Mas’ response initiates an insert expansion to disrupt the trajectory of Art’s question but remain ostensibly relevant (Schegloff, 2007). The insert ‘you’re a big Trump supporter (.) correct?’ (L22–23) prefers a ‘yes’, with its design: the ‘you’re a’ carrying the presupposition of Ant being a big Trump supporter, and the ‘correct?’ soliciting confirmation of that presupposition. This serves to make explicit Art’s category of ‘pro-Trump’, and thus not just tacitly endorsing the removal of access to basic necessities (Extract 7, L19–20) but knowingly advocating for their removal.
Art’s response claims primary rights to assess (see Raymond and Heritage, 2006: 694) to passively resist. He does this by providing a structurally disaligned response: ‘and it’s awesome I’m proud of it’ (L24). This is a combination assessment where the initial ‘it’s awesome’ is an object-side assessment, followed by ‘I’m proud of it’ as a subject-side assessment (Edwards and Potter, 2017). This form displays epistemic independence from the prior action with an assertion of Art’s own epistemic rights and stalls the trajectory of Mas’ agenda. Indeed, his response is treated as disaligned by Mas who follows up (in overlap) with ‘correct? are you’ (L25).
Following the point at which Art is hearbly a big Trump supporter, Mas crafts the incongruity (‘so you would like to take away health care’, L26). This invites Art to either confirm that he is immoral for removing health care, or reject Mas’ interrogative and be cast as immoral for lying about it. Mas has set the trap, and whatever aligned response Art gives can be pounced on by Mas in third position to directly challenge Art’s character. However, Art disrupts Mas’ trajectory with an overlapping, markedly louder and meta-discursive turn ‘I HAVE A HAT ON MY HEAD ANd he asked me if >I’m a Trump supporter<’ (L27–28). This actively resists Mas’ question by outrightly disaligning. Indeed, it is delivered with loudness to disrupt Mas, and as a meta-comment it contests the askability of Mas’ question thereby suspending the progressivity of Mas’ challenge.
Art’s disruption successfully blocks access to the third position for Mas, who instead attempts a challenge ‘you’d like to take away health care’ (L29); but, without Art providing a fitted response to ‘you would like to take away health care’ (L26), Art is able to deflect by requesting evidence: ‘HOw am I taking health care from people’ (L31–32) and ‘HOW am I’ (L34). Mas is thus obliged to account for his assertion which he does with the generalization based on Art’s category ‘because you support the president’s agenda’ (L35). However, Art with having primary rights as a Trump supporter, reverses Mas’ challenge project by rejecting Mas’ claim (‘no it isn’t’, L37) and describing Mas as a liar (‘that’s a lie’, L39). The sequence is concluded with Art going meta ‘notice how they lie’ (L40) to speak to the overhearing audience (his YouTube audience) and thwart Mas’ challenge project.
Over the course of this sequence, Mas attempts to challenge Art on the basis of him being a Trump supporter and thus supporting the removal of health care. However, at each opportunity Art contests Mas’ prior turn to passively resist by not disrupting the agenda but stalling its progressivity. This stalling and obstructing access to a third position turn forces Mas to attempt an ungrounded challenge which can deflected by citing a lack of evidence. Consequently, Art’s evasion of Mas’ control (by not providing fitted responses) affords himself the space to reverse Mas’ challenge on that basis of it being unfounded.
Conclusion
In this article I have investigated two methods to resist a challenge during disputes in talk-in-interaction. The challenger, through invoking these enticing sequences, seeks control over the target and it is this evasion to social control that Reynolds (2015) mentions as an enticing sequence’s inherent weakness. It is during these disputative interactions that manufacturing challenges and thus controlling the direction of talk constitutes a local victory and is the reward for the successful production of an enticer – although the sequence does not usually result in a win or concession of the dispute (Reynolds, 2015). Resistance then, for members, is a solution to the problem of an interactional and/or categorial incongruity crafted by the challenge through the reversal of the logic or production of an inapposite category.
I found that resistance to an enticing sequence occurs in two ways: passively, whereby the target’s responsive turn stalls the progressivity of the interactional trajectory (but does not suspend the challenge’s trajectory); and, actively, whereby the target’s responsive turn outrightly suspends the progressivity of the interaction. Indeed, the latter form thwarts the challenge before it can reach its apex. The format, and delivery of resistance can take many forms that shape, and is shaped by the environment within which it occurs. Disputes are characterized by their (dis)orderliness, and resistance appears to coalesce with that characterization; however, members methodically work to block access to the third position turn forcing the challenger to restart, redo or abandon their agenda. Resistance is a members’ method for manipulating how sequences unfold, allowing people to evade social control and disrupt, or contest moral and social orders of everyday life. Given that Steensig and Drew (2008: 7) write ‘asking a question is not an innocent thing to do’, the degree to which an ‘enticer’ can ever be ‘straightforward’ is questionable. Considering resistance as a solution to a challenge will likely prove useful in understanding members’ orientations to ‘innocent questioning’. For that reason, a response to any question avails an opportunity for a divergent understanding and to push back against a possible understanding or inference.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Discourse and Rhetoric Group (DARG), the Conversation Analysis Reading and Data Sessions (CARDS) group, and attendees at the EMCA Doctoral Network in Edinburgh 2018 for help refining observations. I am especially thankful to Edward Reynolds, and my PhD supervisors, Jessica Robles and Carly Butler for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.