Showing papers in "Discourse & Society in 2010"
TL;DR: This article examined the way male suspects deny accusations of assaulting women in interrogations by police officers and identified how such denials routinely follow police officers' direct questions about violent behaviour, and how they become embedded in extended narratives that are not directly describing violence.
Abstract: This article examines the way male suspects deny accusations of assaulting women in interrogations by police officers. It draws on a large corpus of British police interrogation materials, and uses conversation analysis to shed light on the location and design of, and responses to, suspects’ ‘category-based denials’ that they are not ‘the kind of men who hit women’. Two sections of analysis identify how, first, such denials routinely follow police officers’ direct questions about violent behaviour, and, second, how they become embedded in extended narratives that are not directly describing violence. In contrast to other discourse-analytic studies of men’s accounts of violence towards women, the article unpacks the component features that comprise what others might label grossly as the ‘discourse of gendered violence’. Rather than see how such ‘discourses’ operate in interview contexts, it shows how suspects construct, in a high-stakes setting for a particular purpose, different categories of men, claiming membership in one (who do not hit women) by recruiting the notion of the other (who do). Thus, in addition to its contribution to the study of gender and violence, the article takes new steps in the ongoing development of membership categorization and conversation analysis, showcasing a type of systematic sequential analysis that can be done with membership categories.
143 citations
TL;DR: This article used corpus methodology as a research tool to investigate how social actors are classified in the public discourse of the media, with lexis as our point of entry. But their main focus is the nature of the labels which provide categorization, especially of gender relations.
Abstract: This article, an expanded version of an oral presentation in 1999, uses corpus methodology as a research tool to investigate how social actors are classified in the public discourse of the media, with lexis as our point of entry. Our main focus is the nature of the labels which provide categorization, especially of gender relations. Our main claim is that uses of premodification associated with the two types of newspapers in Britain and their lexical choices produce differential judgmental stances that have social effects. In the first of two complementary studies, we discuss the adjective lexicon of the tabloid press in comparison with quality newspapers, with curvy, hunky and kinky as exemplars with respect to sexualization and the construction of gender. In our second study, we discuss adjectival premodification of man, woman, girl and boy in tabloids and broadsheets: our findings show that the media categorizes people through very specific points of view and values not always apparent to a non-critica...
121 citations
TL;DR: Augoustinos and Every as mentioned in this paper present new discursive work on the delicate discursive and argumentative management of accusations of racism and their accompanying denials in contemporary race talk, which is a closely related but largely ignored phenomenon associated with the denial of prejudice is a political climate that creates what is tantamount to a social taboo against making racism in the first place.
Abstract: As Van Dijk (1992) has documented, one of the pervasive features of contemporary race discourse is the denial of prejudice. During the last 50 years, social norms against openly expressing racist sentiments has led to the development of ways of talking that present negative views of out-groups as reasonable and justified, while at the same time protecting speakers from charges of racism and prejudice. It goes without saying that a ‘prejudiced’ or ‘racist’ identity is no longer a valued identity. Negative representations and evaluations of minorities are commonly preceded by ubiquitous disclaimers such as ‘I’m not racist but . . . ’ or ‘I have nothing against migrants but ... ’. Contemporary race talk, therefore, is strategically organized to deny racism. A closely related but largely ignored phenomenon associated with the denial of prejudice is a political climate that creates what is tantamount to a social taboo against making accusations of racism in the first place (Augoustinos and Every, 2007). Such charges and accusations are invariably met with not only strong denials, but also moral outrage and are often treated as more extreme than racism itself. This Special Edition publishes new discursive work on the delicate discursive and argumentative management of accusations of racism and their accompanying denials.
112 citations
TL;DR: This article conducted a discourse analysis on the parts of a corpus of data collected from focus groups with undergraduate students talking about asylum seeking in which they were asked if it is racist to oppose asylum.
Abstract: In this article, we explore how speakers discuss whether or not it is racist to oppose asylum seekers. A discourse analysis is conducted on the parts of a corpus of data collected from focus groups with undergraduate students talking about asylum seeking in which they were asked if it is racist to oppose asylum. It is shown that speakers use the word ‘just’ as part of a contrast structure which is used to present a topic as self-evidently unreasonable. While some participants orient to the taboo against prejudice, it is shown that there is also an orientation to the idea that accusations of racism are unreasonable and that opposition to asylum is usually based on practical and economic reasons rather than racism. These findings are discussed in light of the growing literature surrounding the changing nature of race talk and new taboos on accusations of racism.
104 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated how two Belgian television stations have covered the international outbreak of SARS and found that news coverage of international crises such as SARS constructs and maintains the socio-cultural difference between 'us' and 'them' as well as articulating global power hierarchies and a division of the world in zones of poverty and prosperit...
Abstract: News carries a unique signifying power, a power to represent events in particular ways (Fairclough, 1995). Applying Critical Discourse Analysis and Chouliaraki’s theory on the mediation of suffering (2006), this article explores the news representation of the 2003 global SARS outbreak. Following a case-based methodology, we investigate how two Belgian television stations have covered the international outbreak of SARS. By looking into the mediation of four selected discursive moments, underlying discourses of power, hierarchy and compassion were unraveled. The analysis further identified the key role of proximity in international news reporting and supports the claim that Western news media mainly reproduce a Euro-American centered world order. This article argues that news coverage of international crises such as SARS constructs and maintains the socio-cultural difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as well as articulating global power hierarchies and a division of the world in zones of poverty and prosperit...
103 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss audience denial in response to information about human rights abuses, paying attention to both content and strategies used in accounts of denial, i.e. what these accounts say and by which they effectively neutralize appeals for action.
Abstract: Whilst many hypotheses have been formulated on why audiences remain passive in response to
distant suffering, very little empirical research has been carried out to verify these hypotheses.
This article discusses audience denial in response to information about human rights abuses1,
paying attention to both content and strategies used in accounts of denial, i.e. what these accounts
say and by which means they effectively neutralize appeals for action.
Three repertoires are identified as specific targets for neutralization: (1) The message itself (‘the
medium is the message’); (2) Campaigners and, in particular, Amnesty International (’shoot the
messenger’); (3) The action recommended in the appeal (‘babies and bathwater’). These repertoires
are analysed in terms of the discursive techniques – e.g. argumentation, rhetorical and semantic
moves and speech acts – used to neutralize the moral claims made by Amnesty International’s appeals.
The article suggests that audience denial is an operation of power and production of knowledge
in so far as it plays a role in sustaining and colluding with more systemic and official operations
of passivity and denial. The normative implication of audiences’ justifications for their passivity is
illustrated in their banal, everyday contribution to a morality of unresponsiveness.
The discussion aims to contribute to current debates on the ‘Politics of Pity’, social responsibility
and distant suffering. It also contributes to psychological work on pro-social behaviour and, in
particular, to research on audiences’ responses to humanitarian appeals and mediation in general.
76 citations
TL;DR: This article examined how national and immigrant identities are discursively constructed through the use of oral histories, using a corpus of 15 oral-history interviews (25 hours of transcribed talk) collected from members of the Irish Association of Manitoba.
Abstract: This article examines how national and immigrant identities are discursively constructed through the use of oral histories, using a corpus of 15 oral-history interviews (25 hours of transcribed talk) collected from members of the Irish Association of Manitoba. Using a simplified discourse-historical approach, the analysis focuses on content, constructive strategies of assimilation and dissimilation, and the linguistic means by which those strategies are achieved, using Wodak et al.’s (1999) framework from an in-depth study of Austrian discourse and identity. While analysis of participants’ discourse about identity echoed much of the current theoretical knowledge available about identity — that it is a discursive construction revealed in narratives, that it is provisional and negotiated with others — the analysis also showed that for specific subgroups such as immigrants, identity construction is context-dependent, particularly for diasporic groups.
62 citations
TL;DR: The words of political elites have the potential to play a significant role in the constitution and proliferation of racist discourse, especially when this discourse has the nuanced linguistic char... as discussed by the authors, 2015].
Abstract: The words of political elites have the potential to play a significant role in the constitution and proliferation of racist discourse, especially when this discourse has the nuanced linguistic char...
62 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a corpus linguistic technique of automated semantic tagging with a discourse-historical Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework was applied to a three-million-word corpus built from a pro-independence internet discussion forum.
Abstract: To date, studies of social attitudes towards Scottish independence tend to have been of the structured survey or interview variety. This study seeks to support and build upon the findings of recent social attitude surveys on Scottish independence using what is, as far as the author is aware, a novel methodology. This involves combining the corpus linguistic technique of automated semantic tagging with a discourse-historical Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework.Applying this to a three-million-word corpus built from a pro-independence internet discussion forum, the analysis shows, firstly, a view that independence will strengthen, consolidate or transform Scottish identity in a positive way and, secondly, a distinct lack of strategies that seek to dismantle British identity or refer to historical disputes. Thus, an evaluation of this methodology suggests that it successfully manages to produce findings that support previous research, challenge existing stereotypes, and allow new insight into Scottish nationalist ideology.
55 citations
TL;DR: This article propose a double opportunity space for the co-construction of children's social world and peer culture, while at the same time affording opportunities for the development of discursive learning.
Abstract: We propose a theoretical view of peer talk as a ‘double opportunity space’, functioning concurrently on the plane of meaning making within childhood culture, as a locus for the co-construction of children’s social world and peer culture, while at the same time affording opportunities for the development of discursive learning (Blum-Kulka, 2005; Blum-Kulka et al., 2004: 308). In the present article, we provide further evidence for this twofold concept by analyzing peer talk in preschoolers’ genre of argumentation in natural interactions. We show that argumentative events, identified in peer talk, indeed display affordances on both planes. On the plane of childhood culture, we pinpoint the ways argumentative events maintain and/or transform the social order and display features of children’s culture. On the developmental plane, we show how children’s argumentative moves and discursive strategies incorporate innovative child-unique strategies, as well as strategies which echo discursive conventions from the ...
54 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of teacher identity and micro-level interaction in the construction of power relations in the critical classroom is investigated and the findings suggest that applied critical theories are often too simplistic, assuming that power can be straightforwardly transferred from the "powerful" to the "powerless" and that power was not effectively redistributed as intended.
Abstract: The role of teacher identity and micro-level interaction in the construction of power relations in the critical classroom is investigated. This study took place in an American university in an English composition program that had implemented ‘critical pedagogy’, an applied critical theory that has the goal of changing the traditional power relations between teachers and students. Analysis of the institutional context and the discursive construction of teachers’ identities revealed contradictions between this goal and some of the teaching practices and suggested that power was not effectively redistributed as intended. The findings suggest that applied critical theories are often too simplistic, assuming that power can be straightforwardly transferred from the ‘powerful’ to the ‘powerless’. It is argued that proponents of such theories have under-theorized the notion of power, overlooking the paradox of ideology, which points to the role of micro-level interaction in the construction of power relations.
TL;DR: In this paper, a special purpose corpus, compiled from Web feeds containing so-called lexical ‘carbon compounds, such as, for example, carbon credit, carbon diet, carbon sinner, is studied with corpus linguistic tools to explore the online dimension of the interpretative struggle around the issue of climate change mitigation.
Abstract: The potential of the Web for applied linguistic research is being increasingly recognized. As the internet is a particularly valuable source of data on recent changes in meaning, Mautner (2005b) made a plea for more discourse analysts to work with Web-based texts in order to study important social developments. Taking up this suggestion, this article introduces an approach based on the analysis of recent updates to Web-based sources. A special purpose corpus, compiled from Web feeds containing so-called lexical ‘carbon compounds’, such as, for example, carbon credit, carbon diet, carbon sinner, is studied with corpus linguistic tools to explore the online dimension of the interpretative struggle around the issue of climate change mitigation. The analysis reveals semantic associations surrounding the compounds and highlights connotational differences that signal both support and criticism of the climate mitigation initiatives proposed by policy makers and environmentalists.
TL;DR: The 2007 UK series of Celebrity Big Brother drew considerable attention to Britain as a result of the alleged racist bullying of Bollywood film star Shilpa Shetty by four British celebrity housemates as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The 2007 UK series of Celebrity Big Brother drew considerable attention to Britain as a result of the alleged racist bullying of Bollywood film star Shilpa Shetty by four British celebrity housemates. At stake in these allegations was any perception that Britain as a country promotes inclusivity and discourages racism. In this article, we examine, through an analysis of the exit interviews conducted with the four housemates in question, how accusations of racism were made by the host of Big Brother, and how racism was almost made to disappear in the interviews. Specifically, we elaborate on how racism was constructed not simply as an individual aberration, but more precisely as a matter of perception. We then explore how the host of the interviews avoided making accusations of racism herself by implying that it was others who perceived the behaviours of the housemates as racist, and by using other words (such as ‘bullying’) rather than explicitly referring to racism. We conclude by outlining the implicati...
TL;DR: The authors examined reports about massacres in eight Israeli secondary school history books, published between 1998 and 2009, and showed that massacres or their outcome are legitimated in these books through a complex rhetoric that involves both verbal and visual means.
Abstract: This article examines reports about massacres in eight Israeli secondary school history books, published between 1998 and 2009. It aims to show that massacres, or rather their outcome, are legitimated in these books through a complex rhetoric that involves both verbal and visual means. The article uses theories and analytical tools of Critical Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics and Multimodal Analysis to examine the linguistic, discursive, generic and multimodal strategies of legitimation employed in these school books. The analysis is based primarily on the works of Van Dijk (1997), Martin Rojo and Van Dijk (1997),Van Leeuwen (2000, 2007, 2008), Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999), Hodge and Kress (1993) and Coffin (1997, 2006). The article argues that Israeli mainstream school books implicitly legitimate the killing of Palestinians as an effective tool to preserve a secure Jewish state with a Jewish majority, and suggests that this legitimation prepares Israeli youth to be good soldiers and to carry on the practices of occupation in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.
TL;DR: Shared memories play a central role in everyday communications as discussed by the authors and are usually based on interpersonal and cultural knowledge of a shared past among group members (e.g. family, friends, partners, etc.).
Abstract: Shared memories play a central role in everyday communications. They are usually based on interpersonal and cultural knowledge of a shared past among group members (e.g. family, friends, partners, etc.). These memories are verbally conveyed in everyday conversations in real-world settings. Shared memories are also utilized to create a feeling of connection and maintain a consistent feeling of identity among group members. In family conversations, shared memories function to structure and synchronize the shareable life story of the family as a group. Family members are strategically engaged in processes of remembering and forgetting, which are modelled according to the specific goals of a particular interaction. In these cases, family members construct a sociocognitive system shaped by the physical and social environment in which they are located. This system operates by connecting autobiographical knowledge, which is distributed among family members, but forms part of shared past experiences. By interrela...
TL;DR: This article found that even the most "traditional" racists employ a complex pattern of voicing to indirectly index a "neo-traditional" racist identity, indicating that within these communities, there is not only a sense of whiteness, but also a set of practices delineating "good" and "bad" white identity.
Abstract: In the academy and society at large, there remains an area of discourse largely deemed too marginal to analyze at any length: openly racist speech. It remains unexamined, in part, because much attention has been given to ‘covert’ racism. Recently, technology has allowed openly racist groups to shift strategies for creating and maintaining their own identity. Conventional wisdom would assume that these groups use referential or direct means of indexing identity. Using theories of discourse, this analysis demonstrates that even the most ‘traditional’ racists employ a complex pattern of voicing to indirectly index a ‘neo-traditional’ racist identity. These findings illustrate that within these communities, there is not only a sense of whiteness, but also a set of practices delineating ‘good’ and ‘bad’ white identity. Implications of these findings are discussed in the light of political and identity practices.
TL;DR: This paper presented a qualitative and quantitative corpus study based on a collection of new Labour texts (1994 to 2007), as an analysis of the party's discourse on globalization. But they focused on the single topic of globalization, and not on the broader context.
Abstract: This article presents a qualitative and quantitative corpus study based on a collection of new Labour texts (1994 to 2007), as an analysis of the party’s discourse on globalization. In addition to providing a detailed description of the multi-faceted concept of globalization, I show that new Labour discourse on globalization is an instance of globalist discourse with a twist. An analysis of the conceptual metaphors related to globalization confirms that it is understood as an inevitable phenomenon, whose causes are unknown and which is almost impossible to predict or stop. However, the link between globalization and progress is more complex: the promise of progress often includes a threat which aims at rendering unpopular policies palatable. I relate this argumentative technique to the emergence of Mouffe’s (1998) ‘politics without adversary’, and argue that it is a characteristic of new Labour discourse beyond the single topic of globalization.
TL;DR: In this article, a Cultural approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CCDA) of political peace discourses is used to analyze the use of the term "culture of peace" in the Israeli political peace discourse.
Abstract: Combining peace studies, cultural studies and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study demonstrates a Cultural approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CCDA) of political peace discourses. Inspired by the UNESCO definition for the ‘culture of peace’, the study offers two peace discourse models: a supportive peace discourse versus an oppressive one. From a theoretical perspective, CCDA enables a culturally comparative study of ‘peace’, its conceptual boundaries and semantic margins. From a practical perspective, application of such an approach within ‘local’ discourses may remove unique obstacles and cultural barriers to the realization of peace processes. Application of the CCDA to Israel’s political peace discourse revealed that use of the term in this discourse served two purposes: first, the construction of the Israeli speaker’s positive self-image as a peace-seeker together with delegitimation of rivals; and second, the facilitation of public acceptance of strategically problematic actions, primarily use of military violence, by their presentation as part of the peace discourse.
TL;DR: This paper examined how EU leaders position themselves with respect to a European identity through the use of pronouns and revealed three identities constructed through pronoun use: neutral, non-European, and European.
Abstract: This article is part of a larger project on language politics in the European Union (EU), with an empirical focus on questions concerning identity. Using Wortham’s (1996) deictic mapping technique, I examine how EU leaders position themselves with respect to a European identity through the use of pronouns. Using this discourse analytic framework, I show how, in a panel featuring leaders from current and prospective EU member states, a participant from Turkey juxtaposes his various identity positions with those of other panel members. The analysis focuses on short discourse fragments featuring discussions about European identity. The analysis reveals three identities constructed through pronoun use: neutral, non-European, and European. While leaders from current member states emphasize their Europeanness through pronoun use, the Turkish panelist portrays an identity in opposition to this European identity, thus exhibiting how the repetition of pronoun use patterns helps to create, recreate, and make visibl...
TL;DR: This paper examined the discursive procedures in which accusations and refutations are made in public discou..., drawing on discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis and conversation analysis, they examined the refutation procedure in a public discursive discourse.
Abstract: Drawing on discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis and conversation analysis, this study examines the discursive procedures in which accusations and refutations are made in public discou...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the different gendered discourses British and Spanish female teenagers live out when they narrate their current and former romantic relationships and find that these female teenagers' self-concepts, floating free of corporeal experience, derive from a struggle between their social relational ident...
Abstract: At present, cyberspace tends to occupy a growing part of the social realities of most teenagers. The present study suggests that personal weblogs collectively can be said to comprise a social institution which serves to foster and maintain a cult of femininity. In promoting a cult of femininity, these personal weblogs are not merely reflecting the female role in society; they are also supplying one source of definitions of, and socialization into, that role. The main business of this study is to engage with a fairly large amount of data and try to answer some basic questions about how personal weblogs open up a new context for female teenage identity construction. More precisely, this article analyses the different gendered discourses British and Spanish female teenagers live out when they narrate their current and former romantic relationships. The study suggests that these female teenagers’ self-concepts, floating free of corporeal experience, derive from a struggle between their social relational ident...
TL;DR: The authors examines ethnic solidarity as a phenomenon contingent on how ethnicity is formulated as a category of experience and deployed as an interpretation in interaction, and analyzes the role of ethnicity in ethnic solidarity.
Abstract: This article examines ethnic solidarity as a phenomenon contingent on how ethnicity is formulated as a category of experience and deployed as a category of interpretation in interaction. Analysis o...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify three main uses of metaphors as discursive strategies: avoidance of the use of vocabulary from the primary domain, repetition of the metaphor and immediate use of metaphor when it collapses into the primary domains, which are the only possible articulations of their painful situations.
Abstract: Children born of war rapes continue to be a marginalized political, media and academic topic in Bosnian and other post-war societies. The goal of this article is to contribute to the research that deals with the life situations of children born of war rape, and to show the usefulness of an analysis of metaphors when a specific topic is emotionally difficult to talk about. The metaphor analysis of life stories of 19 adolescents — all Bosniak girls — born of war rapes in Bosnia and Herzegovina shows that metaphorical language provides abused girls with the only way to express their painful situations. The authors identify three main uses of metaphors as discursive strategies. These are the only possible articulations of their painful situations: the avoidance of the use of vocabulary from the primary domain, the repetition of the metaphor and the immediate use of the metaphor when it collapses into the primary domain. There were three major metaphorical frames that dominated the self-presentation of the gir...
TL;DR: This paper explored the construction of national identity in the coverage of policy issues during the first two general elections after devolution, in Scottish and in English/UK daily morning new, in the UK.
Abstract: This article explores the construction of national identity in the coverage of policy issues during the first two general elections after devolution, in Scottish and in English/UK daily morning new
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used data derived from the questioning the Australian police conducted with Dr Mohamed Haneef -a terrorist accomplice suspect -to show how the norms of interaction are established through protocols and codes of conduct.
Abstract: The interaction that takes place in a police interrogation room follows certain conventions which are not evident in other settings like the school or home domains. This study which uses data derived from the questioning the Australian police conducted with Dr Mohamed Haneef - a terrorist accomplice suspect - aims to show how the norms of interaction in the Australian police interrogation room are established through protocols and codes of conduct. Another aspect of norms of interaction analysed in this article is the way power relations are created and maintained by looking at recurring discourse markers like the use of address and referent terms, interruptions, topic switching and latching. By identifying these linguistic devices, we are able to see the patterns of interaction conducted by the Australian police with persons of interest.
TL;DR: This paper used Positioning Theory as a heuristic tool to examine how the beggars shape the formulation of the relations between self and others while recounting their specific experiences, and found that the participants took advantage of narrative as a powerful cultural discourse through which they denied their identity while assuming and negotiating different positions.
Abstract: Beggars are a group of people for whom making a successful speech is of paramount importance. Therefore, social and linguistic analysis of their speech seems to be a new and much needed line of inquiry that has not yet been elucidated. To this end, relying on Labov’s model of personal narrative, the present article is an attempt to examine linguistically how some beggars manage to publicly beg in mosques in Iran. Five stories told by different needy male speakers were transcribed and translated into English. Using Positioning Theory as a heuristic tool, the study also lends insights into how the beggars shape the formulation of the relations between self and others while recounting their specific experiences. In fact, the study indicated that the participants took advantage of narrative as a powerful cultural discourse through which they denied their identity while assuming and negotiating different positions.
TL;DR: In this article, the role of personal life narrative as a self-shaping transformative process in the day-to-day family lives of 17 US children diagnosed with autism was explored.
Abstract: This article explores the role of personal life narrative as a self-shaping transformative process in the day-to-day family lives of 17 US children diagnosed with autism. Employing ethnographic vid...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the transformative effects of the positioning of feminine identities of tennis players within the adversarial framework of the genre of a post-match press conference.
Abstract: The major focus of this article is on the transformative effects of the positioning of feminine identities of tennis players within the adversarial framework of the genre of a post-match press conference. What is investigated is how female tennis players discursively construct their identities through continual face work and a multitude of persuasive strategies of self-presentation. Furthermore, articulations of a variety of discourses are foregrounded as contributing to the construction of players’ communicative styles. Preponderant emphasis in the characterization of players’ identities is on the dimension of power. The article draws upon the tools of pragmatic analysis coupled with critical discourse analysis. The major strategies of positive self-presentation are discursively realized in a variety of ways which encompass semantic, formal and interactional structures (Van Dijk, 2000), each comprising multifarious analytical categories pertinent for the present study.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the social construction of the notion of defectiveness in broadcast evangelical discourse and explore how and what actions people perform with their talk in these environments, when doing interactional work and presenting specific versions of arguments, stories etc.
Abstract: This article explores the social construction of the notion of defectiveness in broadcast evangelical discourse. The data come from the God TV (USA) and the flagship TV channel God Channel (UK). The analysis focuses on the action-orientated and rhetorical business (Potter, 1996) accomplished by employing descriptions and displays of defectiveness. Specifically, this article investigates how notions of a general ‘human’ and direct ‘personal’ defectiveness are negotiated, and for what reasons, in this particular Christian talk. The focus here is on how and what actions people perform with their talk in these environments, when doing interactional work and presenting specific versions of arguments, stories etc. (Edwards, 2005).