Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation describes people s orientations to "deontic rights" -that is, their rights to determine actions. Through analyses of video-recorded church workplace meetings between pastors and cantors as data, and conversation analysis as a theoretical and methodological framework, the study examines how participants in interaction may establish their own and each other s deontic rights in the turn-by-turn sequential unfolding of interaction. The dissertation consists of six original articles and an introduction, which introduces the central concepts of the study, provides an overview of its results, and discusses the ways in which the study contributes to the existing knowledge of social interaction. The study considers deontic rights from two different angles. First, it describes how participants in interaction may claim or mitigate their claims of deontic rights by virtue of their overt interactional conduct: Article 1 discusses the participants ways of dealing with those claims of deontic rights that arise from their participation in an encounter, and Articles 2 4 consider how participants in joint decision making may establish and maintain the symmetrical distribution of deontic rights at different sequential loci. Second, the study describes the ways in which participants may deploy their deontic rights as interactional resources, as they design their communicative actions so as to be recognizable as such. The central argument presented in Articles 5 and 6 is that, instead of always needing to claim their deontic rights (deontic stance), participants may also trust in their co-participants being aware of, and taking into account, these rights (deontic status). It is thus the complementarity and relative weight of deontic stances and deontic statuses that constitutes a fundamental mechanism by which people may engage in tough power negotiations without yet causing any overt face threats to their mutual solidarity. The study highlights the significance of face-to-face interaction as a locus of social order and seeks to enhance our understanding of the linkages between the local and wider aspects of social organization that pertain to people s interactional conduct.
Source: Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja
Author: Melisa Stevanovic
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1602548587