trilogue orecchioni

Introducing polylogue

Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni

Groupe de Recherches sur les Interactions Communicatives§,

CNRS-Universite Lumiere Lyon 2, 5 av. Pierre Mendes France,

69676 Bron, France

Received 26 February 2002

Abstract

The introduction to this special issue begins by defining the notion of ‘polylogue’. Then,after having summarized the results of our previous work on ‘trilogues’, I propose a survey of

the general perspective adopted by the authors, and of the main analytical tools they use.Finally, the articles gathered in the volume are introduced in more detail in relation to theparticular situations and data they deal with.# 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Dilogue/trilogue/polylogue; Plurilevel analysis; Typology of polylogues; Participation framework

1. Criticism of dyadic communication models

Dyadic communication is widely thought to be the communicative situation parexcellence—not only by linguists, semioticians, psychologists, and communicationtheoreticians, but also by ‘the man on the street’, as witnessed, for example, by thefact that the word dialogue, despite its etymological origins,1 is generally understoodto mean ‘conversation between two people’. This can, of course, be explained by theconfusion between the two paronymous prefixes di- and dia-, but is doubtless also

Journal of Pragmatics 36 (2004) 1–24

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

0378-2166/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/S0378-2166(03)00034-1

§ All the authors of the articles composing this issue belong or are associated to this research team,

working in Lyon (France). The different texts which are collected here must in fact be considered the

result of a collective research project. Some of the articles were originally written in French, some others

directly in English. All the data we analyse was originally produced in French. The whole text was trans-

lated or edited by Louise Nicollet, whose thoroughness we are sincerely grateful for. Many thanks also to

Dick Janney for his encouragement, his patience, and his perfectionism in the revision process.

E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Kerbrat-Orecchioni).1 Since the Greek prefix ‘dia-’ means not ‘two’, but ‘through’. In order to avoid ambiguity, we prefer to

speak of ‘dilogue’ when referring to exchanges between two people.

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mailto:[email protected]

due to the deep-rooted tendency to associate interaction with interaction betweentwo people, considered as the prototype of all forms of interaction.For some time now, this ‘privilege’ in favour of dyadic communication has been

severely criticized by numerous researchers such as Hymes, Goffman, Levinson, andspecialists in the field of Conversation Analysis (henceforth, CA), e.g.:

The common dyadic model of speaker-hearer specifies sometimes too many,sometimes too few, sometimes the wrong participants. (Hymes, 1974: 54)

Traditional analysis of saying and what gets said seems tacitly committed to thefollowing paradigm: two and only two individuals are engaged together in it,[. . .] the two-person arrangement being the one that informs the underlyingimagery we have about face-to-face interaction. (Goffman, 1981: 129)

In the study of verbal interaction, there has been undoubtedly some biastowards the study of dyadic interaction. (Levinson, 1988: 222–223)

Levinson even speaks in this connection of a ‘straightjacket’, and he shows that‘dyadic triumph’ has been achieved at the price of greatly limiting, first, the situa-tions which are examined (in any society, dyadic exchanges tend, in fact, to be in theminority), second, the cultures under consideration (many societies accord an evenmore important role than Occidental societies do to ‘multi-party gatherings’2 and toall sorts of relayed or ‘mediatized’ communication). So Levinson regards this dyadicdiktat as ethnocentristic.As for CA, in their seminal article on the turn system, Sacks et al. (1974/1978)

claim that their ‘simplest systematics’ of turn-taking is applicable to all conversa-tions, no matter how many participants are involved. But at the same time, theyrecognize that ‘‘numbers are significant for talk-in-interaction’’, as the title of a morerecent article by Schegloff (1995) recalls. The conversational data used by CA spe-cialists is in fact diversified in this respect.3 However, it cannot be said that analysesin this field have exhaustively covered the topic in which we are interested, that is,the description of all the phenomena which characterize the functioning of poly-logues. First, the situations looked at by CA correspond to focused interactionswhose participation formats and consequent functioning are relatively simple (inany case much simpler than those of the interactions which will be examined here).In addition, CA concerns itself mainly with local phenomena such as the turn-system,

2 Also see Aronsson (1996), who asserts that in many non-Occidental cultures, basic communication

situations are of ‘polylogal’ type (e.g. in traditional African societies, the mother–child dialogue generally

takes place in the presence of siblings or other members of the family).3 In his Lectures on Conversation, Sacks already bases his observations mainly on a set of data com-

posed of a therapy session bringing together an adult therapist and a group of teenagers. Concerning

SSJ’s article on turn system, O’Connell et al. (1990) note, however, that 71% of the 35 examples men-

tioned only involve two speakers; and that the large majority of empirical studies carried out in this per-

spective (exactly 82% out of a corpus of 22 publications—the sample is therefore limited, and stops in

1990) is based on ‘dilogal’ data.

2 C. Kerbrat-Orecchioni / Journal of Pragmatics 36 (2004) 1–24

whereas many other aspects can be taken into account that are affected even more bythe number of participants. Finally, and above all, for proponents of CA, turn-takingoperates not between speakers but between ‘parties’, with speakers considered only asbeing ‘incumbents’ of these parties. Schegloff (1995: 32–33),4 for example, claims that‘‘the turn-taking system as described in SSJ organizes the distribution of talk not inthe first instance among persons, but among parties.’’ This can involve:

their relative alignment in current activities, such as the co-telling of a story orsiding together in a disagreement, or their several attributes relative to amomentarily current interactional contingency, for example, whether they arehost or guest, whether—as a new increment is being added to a number ofinteractional participants—they are the newly arrived or pre-present.

Thanks to this notion of party, it is possible ‘‘to introduce order into this potentiallychaotic circumstance’’ constituted by the large number of participants. (1995: 40)For us, on the contrary, turn-taking operates per se between speakers. Even if

mechanisms of alignment based on statuses, roles, speakers’ objectives, etc. play animportant role in conversation, the succession of turns is first and foremost a phe-nomenon which takes place between individuals. The notion of ‘party’ (which, in pointof fact, covers diverse phenomena) belongs to another level of analysis, as we will see.

2. The notion of polylogue

For the reasons discussed above, in designating the topic dealt with in this pub-lication we will not speak of ‘multi-party conversations’ but of multi-participantconversations, or rather multi-participant interactions (conversation, in the ordinarysense, being only one particular type of talk-in-interaction). We will also speak ofpolylogues.5 This term is etymologically appropriate, it fits into a coherent paradigm(‘dilogue’, ‘trilogue’, ‘tetralogue’ etc.), and it is easy to handle, allowing, for example,the derived adjective. Thus, we will refer to as polylogal all communicative situationswhich gather together several participants, that is, real live individuals. Thus defined,the notion of polylogue, although seemingly trivial, already poses some problemsowing to the difficulty of clearly defining the category of ‘participants’. I will comeback to this point, but for the moment, let me say that the situations analysed in thisissue involve variable numbers of participants, ranging from four (e.g. the interac-tions involving a divorced couple and their respective notaries studied by Bruxelles

4 And before him, Sacks (Lectures vol. I, 523–524): ‘‘two parties does not necessarily mean two persons’’.5 In a completely different sense from the meaning attributed to this term by Julia Kristeva (in Poly-

logue, Paris: Seuil, 1977). Picking up on Maurice Blanchot’s idea of ‘parole plurielle’, Kristeva’s approach

is related to what is commonly known as ‘polyphony’, or ‘dialogism’. To use the terminological distinc-

tion (introduced by Eddy Roulet) between dialogal discourse (which brings together several distinct

speakers) and dialogic discourse (which refers to a plurality of enunciative voices, more abstract entities

which can be embodied by one and the same speaker), we will say that Kristeva’s perspective is ‘dialogic’,

whereas our perspective in this issue is rather ‘dialogal’.

C. Kerbrat-Orecchioni / Journal of Pragmatics 36 (2004) 1–24 3

and Kerbrat-Orecchioni) through various intermediate situations (e.g. the hospitalshift-change briefing sessions studied by Grosjean) all the way to a theoreticallyinfinite number of participants (e.g. the Internet newsgroups studied by Marcoccia).‘Trilogues’, the minimal form taken by polylogues, were eliminated from this studybecause our research team has previously carried out work on these configurations;here, I will just briefly outline the objective and the results of that earlier work.6

3. Trilogues

The objective of our earlier studies was to bring to light the specific features oftrilogues that distinguish them from dilogues. Trilogues were studied at every levelof their functioning, through a large range of data (everyday conversations,exchanges in the media, and talk in different institutional contexts).

3.1. The hearers’ roles

We were particularly interested in studying the distinction between an ‘addressedrecipient’ and a ‘non-addressed recipient’, and the related question of addressingcues, which are most often fuzzy. Given the continuity between these two categories,it is preferable to talk of main addressee vs. secondary addressee. In our studies, weconstantly observe fluctuations in address. Goodwin (1981) shows very clearly that,along with the change in addressee, the pragmatic value of an utterance can bemodified in the course of the exchange (an initially informative segment being, forexample, reconverted into a demand for confirmation, or vice versa).An utterance can also simultaneously convey different pragmatic values for its differ-

ent hearers. This idea was already put forward by Sacks (Lectures, vol. I: 530–534 andvol. II: 99–101), who stated that an utterance addressed to B can very well ‘‘do some-thing’’ to C that is different from what it does to B (if, for example, A flirts with B, ‘‘thenshe may be teasing C’’). A similar idea is elaborated by Clark and Carlson (1982: 333),who note that ‘‘speakers perform illocutionary acts not only toward addressees, butalso toward certain other hearers’’ (an order, for example, can have the value of aninformative act for ‘lateral’ hearers, and possibly even some additional values).

3.2. The organization of turn-taking

Turn-taking7 in trilogues is generally characterized by variability in alternationpatterns. This variability is in part a result of lack of balance in floor-holding,violations of speaker-selection rules, and interruptions and simultaneous talk.

6 Results which led to a publication (Kerbrat-Orecchioni and Plantin, 1995); for a synthesis of this

research project, see Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1997).7 See Sacks et al. (1978: 23), for the particular case of three-party conversations. For more or less

radical (and more or less justified) critiques of this approach, particularly applied to complex participation

formats, see Edelsky (1981), Raffler-Engel (1983), Power and Dal Martello (1986), O’Connell et al. (1990),

Ford et al. (1996).


3.2.1. General lack of balance in floor-holdingIn dilogues, only unequal lengths of turns make for disproportionate amounts of

participation in the interaction. In trilogues, on the other hand, unequal participa-tion is first based on the number of turns, and it is always possible for a participantto be left out, or to temporarily eliminate him- or herself from the exchange, fordifferent reasons and with varying effects. This possibility increases where the parti-cipants are more numerous.8

3.2.2. Violations of speaker-selection rulesIn the selection of the next speaker, trilogues often feature violations of con-

versational rules that are unknown in dilogues. Intrusions (which happen when theparticipant who takes the floor is not the one who has been selected by the currentspeaker) are frequent, for example, in interviews of couples (Marcoccia, 1995) and insituations involving professionals (doctors, judges) and children accompanied bytheir parents. It should be noted that such intrusions do not always constitute realconversational offenses. According to Dausenschon-Gay and Krafft (1991: 148–149),they sometimes follow an ‘efficiency rule’ which overrides Sacks et al. selection rule:

If for example I ask A what time it is, I will be completely satisfied if it is B whoanswers me. Or to stay with the example of ‘Le masque et la plume’ [‘The Maskand the Quill’]:9 there are times when Bastide [the moderator] mistakenly asks fora commentary or explanation from one of the critics who has nothing whatso-ever to say on that subject. As is quite normal, another critic answers and no oneeven entertains the thought of taking offense.’’ (translated from the French)

3.2.3. Interruptions and simultaneous talkThe frequency of interruptions and simultaneous talk, as well as the variety of

ways in which these are carried out, increases in trilogues, and a fortiori in multi-participant interactions. In Muller’s (1995) study of discussions among eight Frenchstudents, for example, there are constant overlaps of three or even four voicessuperimposed over each other. The first impression created by the overlaps is one ofunbearable cacophony, but deeper analysis reveals the concerted organization ofthese interruptions, which more often than not have a collaborative function.To summarize, multi-participant conversations are both more conflictual (there

are more opportunities for a struggle for the floor, and for violations or failures inthe functioning of the turn-system) and more open to mediation and conciliation

8 The potentially destabilizing presence of a silent participant is superbly illustrated by Nathalie Sar-

raute’s play Le Silence (1967), based on the following situation (Paris: Folio, 1998, Abstract p. 93; trans-

lated from the French): ‘‘Six people—or rather six voices—find themselves unable to pursue a ‘normal’

dialogue due to the silence of a seventh person. [. . .] Why does Jean-Pierre remain so obstinately silent?

Why doesn’t he answer when someone asks him a question? What is he thinking? Does he pass judgment

on his more talkative partners? Is he hostile? indifferent?’’—all these puzzling and unanswered questions

will end up, as the play shows, undermining the conversation.9 A discussion on a French radio program, analysed by these authors.


than dilogues. They also place fewer constraints on participants, since the obligationto cooperate—being in a way ‘diluted’ by the larger group—is not as strong for eachindividual speaker.

3.3. The structuring of dialogue

The structuring of interaction into hierarchically organized units (monologal‘moves’, dialogal ‘exchanges’, etc.) in trilogues is also different from that of dilogues:

� Within one and the same exchange, the initiating move, like the reactingmove, can be composed of several contributions produced by differentspeakers.

� The question of the completeness/incompleteness of exchanges is posed indifferent terms, and the phenomenon of ‘truncation’ takes different forms.

� The structural organization of trilogues is clearly more complex than that ofdilogues (intertwining of exchanges, conflicts over structuring, etc.).

The complexity is obviously even greater in configurations with more participants.Delamotte-Legrand (1995), for example, studied the division of exchanges in dis-cussions within groups of nine pre-adolescent children, and found that exchanges(defined as a succession of moves dependent on a single initial move) with 3–5speakers and 4–8 moves were dominant. These represented more than half theexchanges in the data studied. Delamotte-Legrand’s findings suggest that, when weare dealing with configurations as complex as these, it is necessary to re-think the‘canonic’ structure of the exchange as well as the notion of ‘truncation’.

3.4. The level of interpersonal relationships

With regard in particular to the relation of dominance among the participants, thetrilogue allows certain members of the triad to form coalitions, a notion developedby Theodor Caplow which will be investigated later (see Bruxelles and Kerbrat-Orecchioni, this issue).

In conclusion, for the analyst, the functioning of trilogues is in all regards morecomplicated to describe than that of dilogues. For the participants themselves, themore numerous they are, the more delicate conversational activities become.Speakers must take all their recipients into account to some degree, and the recipientsthemselves are intrinsically heterogeneous due to differences in status, knowledge,expectations, objectives, etc. This situation can lead to apparently contradictoryutterances, as Muller (1997: 386) points out in his comment on Lonardi and Viaro’s(1990) work on interviews between therapists and their patients:

In contradictory situations of this kind, members respond by contradictingthemselves, responding in a confused manner, pretending to have forgotten. Ana-lyzing in detail such a contradictory response, LV suggest that these contradictions


can be read as cases of ‘multiple recipient design’, i.e. the speaker attempts totell, within one and the same turn, a proposition A to the therapist, but non-Ato his co-present wife.

When a triad is conversing, the moments of ‘genuine’ trilogue (in which allthree members are actively engaged) never last long; instead, they alternate withphases which seem rather dilogal in character, involving two active speakers anda third participant who can adopt various attitudes and show extremely variableinvolvement in the interaction in progress. Describing the interaction thereforerequires above all observing gradual shifting from dilogal structures to trilogalones and vice versa—observing, that is, the mechanisms of ‘connecting’ and ‘dis-connecting’ the third participant. In any case, these moments of ‘dilogues withintrilogues’ must not be dealt with as real dilogue, since they take place in thepresence of a third party; this fact is always relevant and should be taken intoaccount.10

The main characteristics of trilogues, in comparison with dilogues, are theirflexibility, instability, and unpredictability, which are identifiable at all levels oftheir functioning: this is the major conclusion to which our observation of trilogueshas led. Flexibility is, of course, even greater in interactions involving morenumerous participants. Beginning with four participants, a new possibility appears:‘splitting-off’, that is, the forming of distinct conversational groups which continueparallel exchanges (see Traverso, this issue). Beyond four participants, the pro-blems of describing the interaction increase dramatically (especially in case ofinformal non-focusing interactions). The first impression created by an audiorecording of such an interaction is one of such confusion and anarchy as to dis-courage any attempt at analysis. . . But then, via immersion in the data, islands oforganization and regularity begin to emerge, as we will try to show in the followinganalyses.

4. Principles of analysis

Our study of polylogues is based on the same principles which we developed fordescribing trilogues.

4.1. Levels of analysis

We distinguish among several levels of analysis, and several types of units. Forexample, we consider ‘turns’ and ‘moves’ to be two different kinds of monologalunits.

10 For example, as pointed out by Brown and Levinson (1987: 12), the seriousness of a FTA (Face

Threatening Act) increases in the presence of third parties; and Paddy Austin goes so far as to state (1987:

20): ‘‘An individual’s face is vulnerable in direct proportion to the number of people to whom she presents

that face in any given interaction.’’


*Turns (as well as Turn-Constructional Units) are ‘‘epiphenomena’’ (Selting, 2000:511), that is, ‘‘surface units’’, cf. Roulet (1992: 92–93):

In fact, a turn is a unity which pertains to the surface structure of conversation,since it is uniquely marked by a change of speaker and does not necessarily coincidewith the speech activities (like questions, answers, requests, etc.) of the speakers.

A turn is produced by only one speaker, but it can have several successive recipientsand hence it can be divided up into different utterance-events (Levinson, 1988).11

These segments are sometimes very short, as shown by Goodwin’s (1981) example ‘‘Igave up smoking cigarettes one week ago today, actually’’, which is composed of threesuccessive ‘utterance-events’ (sections according to Goodwin’s terminology).

*Moves, on the other hand, correspond to activities that participants intend toaccomplish via turns. They pertain to another level of analysis, constituted bypragmatic units that belong to different ‘ranks’:12

4.1.1. Upper rank: conversation, or, more generally, interactionConversation is traditionally assumed to be, as in Goffman’s definition (1981: 130):

a substantive, naturally bounded stretch of interaction comprising all that rele-vantly goes on from the moment two (or more) individuals open such dealingsbetween themselves and continuing until they finally close this activity out. Theopening will typically be marked by the participants turning from their severaldisjointed orientations, moving together and bodily addressing one another; theclosing by their departing in some physical way from the prior immediacy ofcopresence. Typically, ritual brackets will also be found, such as greetings andfarewells, these establishing and terminating open, official, joint engagement,that is, ratified participation. In summary, a ‘social encounter’.

But Goffman adds that this definition is in some cases totally contradicted, par-ticularly in discontinuous situations characterized by an ‘open state of talk’, or inmulti-focus settings where different encounters are closely intertwined with eachother. Although in many cases the largest unit is clear-cut, in others, it is not, andthe investigator is wise to drop the idea of even attempting to describe a globalinteraction, and instead be content with taking a more modest approach and exam-ining only certain ‘moments of talk’. At any rate, it is at this ‘macro’ level that thenotion of script comes into play. Schank and Abelson define a script as ‘‘a structurethat describes appropriate sequences of events in a particular context’’, that is ‘‘apredetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions that defines a well-known situation’’

11 An ‘‘utterance-event’’ is for Levinson (1988: 168) ‘‘that stretch of a turn at talk over which there is a

constant set of participant roles mapped into the same set of individuals’’.12 The principle of rank-analysis was developed by various discourse analysts, such as Sinclair and

Coulthard (1975), Edmondson (1981), or Roulet (1981).


(1977: 42–43). They add that ‘‘a script must be written from a particular role’spoint of view’’; for example, what we commonly call the ‘Restaurant Script’ is, infact, a script of waiter–customer interaction as seen from the customer’s point ofview.

4.1.2. Intermediate rank: episodes, phases, sequencesThese terms designate blocks of exchanges which possess a high degree of thematic

or pragmatic cohesiveness, and whose configurations vary according to the type ofinteraction.

4.1.3. Lower ranks: exchanges and movesExchanges are defined as the smallest pragmatic units to be produced by at least

two different speakers. Moves correspond to the contribution a given speaker makesto a given exchange.13

4.2. Descriptive tools

Since the same tools are not appropriate to describing the different levels andcomponents of interaction, it is necessary to call upon various descriptive traditions.Thus, our analyses will occasionally make reference to Searle’s or Grice’s prag-matics, Hymes’s ethnography of speaking, Gumperz’s sociolinguistics, social psy-chology, cognitive approaches, etc. But our basic kit of tools is supplied morespecifically by:

� Goffman’s theory of the participation framework, and his description of theinterpersonal relationship level, in particular, face-work phenomena;14

� Discourse Analysis (‘Birmingham school’ or ‘Geneva school’) for an inter-action’s internal organization, seen in relation to its different ranks; and

� Conversation Analysis, for all aspects regarding local arrangements.

We believe that there is no incompatibility among these different theoreticalapproaches, as they do not compete on the same turf.15

13 In this perspective, exchanges (such as the adjacency pair ‘question-answer’) are in fact combinations

of moves and not of turns. A turn can be composed of several moves, and therefore be part of several

exchanges. Inversely, one and the same move can (more exceptionally) be distributed over several turns,

for example in case of co-enonciation (Jeanneret, 1991, 1995, 1999).14 These phenomena are described more precisely by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987), whose theory

of politeness is of great use to interaction analysis, for example in order to describe the mechanisms of

preference organization (Lerner, 1996).15 This ‘eclecticism’ characterizes most of the French research work in analysis of interactions, but it is

also claimed by some Anglo-Americain researchers, like Aston (1998: 13): ‘‘Since our primary objective

was not that of testing a specific discourse theory, however, our approach to the description of the data

has been substantially eclectic; the different theoretical backgrounds of the various members of the group,

and the nature of our aims, have entailed that rather than opting for a single descriptive model a priori, a

series of models have been examined, with a consensus as to requirements gradually emerging.’’


5. Problems of typology

Polylogues can be of very diverse nature. Among the classification criteria on whicha typology can be established, there is first of all the number of participants, whichcan be extremely variable. However, as Grosjean and Traverso state (1998: 51):

The question of number is not in itself fundamentally the main question.Although they bring together the same number of people, the following situa-tions have hardly any aspects in common: eight people in a waiting room, eightfriends sharing a meal, eight individuals who work in the same office. (trans-lated from the French)

In this same article, Grosjean and Traverso bring other relevant axes to light, oneof these being the focused or unfocused nature of the interaction being observed. Onthis topic, they introduce a number of useful distinctions which sharpen that ofGoffman between simple ‘gatherings’ and veritable ‘encounters’, where the groupforms around a common focus of attention.

5.1. Shared focus encounters

In shared focus encounters, the different participants are oriented towards one andthe same activity, verbal or non-verbal. These interactions can take place in a formalor informal frame, formality being a gradual phenomenon (Drew and Heritage,1992a: 27; see also Grosjean’s and Traverso’s analyses of ‘semi-formal’ situations, thisissue). The less formal the situation is, the more phenomena of ‘splitting-off’ can beobserved. Their highest level of frequency is to be found in everyday conversationsamong friends.

5..2. Unfocused gatherings

The classic example of an unfocused gathering is the waiting room, where non-involvement is the rule, but copresence in an enclosed space brings about a situationof ‘latent communication’.16

5.3. Multi-focus gatherings

Multi-focus gatherings are situations in offices, workshops, etc. where the differentparticipants or groups of participants go about different activities in the same place:

Under these conditions, an ‘open state of talk’ can develop, participants havingthe right but not the obligation to initiate a little flurry of talk, then relapse

16 A situation which is managed in very diverse ways depending on the culture: unlike the way things

work in France, in some societies, copresence in the same place almost automatically leads to beginning

conversation.


back into silence, all this with no apparent ritual marking, as though adding butanother interchange to a chronic conversation in progress. (Goffman, 1981:134–135)

In professional settings, multi-focusing is ‘structural’. In more informal situa-tions, where participants are pulled to and fro between different foci of attention, itcan be said to be ‘emergent’, as in the double-focus and even triple-focus interac-tions in the home described by Vincent (1995) and Grosjean and Traverso (1998:62–63). For each of the situations earlier, there is a corresponding participationframework.

6. Erving Goffman’s notion of participation framework

Goffman (1981: Chapter 3) contributes the three following important notions:*Production format: the speaker can take on the roles of ‘animator’, ‘author’, or‘principal’.17 In addition to this, he or she can adopt variable footing; for example,Clayman (1992) shows that in news-interview discourse, the interviewer shiftsfrom ‘neutral’ footing (consisting of producing purely factual utterances) to an‘evaluative’ or even ‘controversial’ attitude.*Participation framework:

When a word is spoken, all those who happen to be in perceptual range of theevent will have some of participation status relative to it. The codification of thesevarious positions and the normative specification of appropriate conduct withineach provide an essential background for interaction analysis. (Goffman, 1981: 3)

The participation framework corresponds to the ensemble of ‘participation statuses’.*Participation status: Goffman distinguishes between ‘ratified participants’(‘addressed’ and ‘unaddressed recipients’) and ‘non-ratified participants’(‘bystanders’: ‘overhearers’ and ‘eavesdroppers’). Curiously enough, he does notrefer in this connection to a ‘reception format’. In our approach, in order torestore symmetry, we differentiate within the participation framework between theproduction format and the reception format.

These very useful distinctions nevertheless bring up a number of difficulties.

6.1. Problems

6.1.1. ParticipationParticipants are defined by Goffman as being ‘‘in perceptual range of the event’’.

But the criterion of perceptual access (visual and/or auditory) is too limited, because

17 See Marcoccia (this issue).


it excludes situations such as written discourse, relayed talk, etc. It is also too broad,in the viewpoint of some researchers. In fact, for Goffman, every person present onthe site of the interaction, whether officially ratified or non-ratified as a participant,has ipso facto a certain ‘participation status’, insofar as this copresence cannot fail tohave some impact on the behaviour of the people who are in contact with each other.Levinson (1988), however, in opposition to Goffman, defines only those who are‘ratified’ and ‘attentive’ as ‘participants’. And Goodwin (1981: 107 ff), noting a con-tinuum between evident engagement and total disengagement (and vice versa), adoptsa kind of intermediate position, suggesting that even those who are ‘momentarilydisengaged’ should be included in the category of participants. It seems thereforeadvisable to recognize the existence of different degrees of participation, according tothe scheme proposed by Bell (1984):

addressee: known, ratified, addressed (maximal degree);auditor:18 known, ratified, unaddressed;overhearer: known, unratified, unaddressed; andeavesdropper: unknown, unratified, unaddressed (minimal degree).

6.1.2. RatificationRatified participants are, according to Goffman, officially a part of the conversa-

tion group, as witnessed by the way the members of the group are physically posi-tioned (proxemics, postures, eye-contact network). Yet there is a great deal ofdisagreement among theoreticians regarding this issue as well. For Drew (1992), forexample, jurors in courtrooms are considered ‘overhearers’ since they are forbiddento speak; Heritage (1985) has the same attitude regarding the ‘audiences’ of newsinterviews; and McCawley (1984: 263) contributes a very slight nuance to this view,claiming that ‘‘the jury are only very loosely speaking ratified recipients [. . .]. Thespectators are not, even in a loose sense, ratified recipients, though they in manycases are intended recipients.’’ Nevertheless, if seems difficult not to admit that jur-ors and even spectators of a trial in a courtroom are ratified to a certain extent,given the legitimacy of their presence on the site, their displayed interest in the pro-ceedings, and the fact that the discourse produced is also (sometimes even mainly)intended for them. Indeed, it seems preferable to recognize that there are different:

*degrees of ratification: We can agree with McCawley that the jurors are ‘moreratified’ than the spectators, who are nevertheless still ratified;*modes of ratification: Complete ratification (in both the production and receptionformats) can be opposed to ratification as a listener only (ratification in thereception format). The latter is the case of all kinds of ‘audience’, such as thespectators attending a court trial, a town council meeting, or a TV talk show,19

18 Indeed, this is the way Bell designates Goffman’s category of ratified non-addressed recipients.19 In the last case, there are two categories of spectators, those who are present in the television studio

and those who are watching the program on their TV screens. In a sense, both are ratified as listeners.


whose permissible reactions are limited to a few non-verbal manifestations such aslaughter or applause;*levels of ratification: On a global level, ratification is based on the script, whichdefines official roles; however, some types of ratification (and non-ratification) areonly determined at a local level, in relation to a particular episode or task (seeBruxelles and Kerbrat-Orecchioni’s analysis (this issue) of a radio discussion inwhich, on a global level, all the participants are ratified, but, depending on thesequence, one participant or another will be officially ratified by the moderator);and*ratification devices: Various devices can be used by the ratifier, or by theparticipant seeking ratification (indicators, mainly kinesic, of attentivenessand involvement). These techniques vary depending on the interactionsituations.20 Ratification may of course give rise to negotiating among theparticipants.

6.1.3. AddressWithin the category of ratified participants, Goffman distinguishes between

addressed recipients (to whom the speaker officially addresses his or her utterance)and non-addressed recipients (‘side participants’ for Clark, ‘auditors’ for Bell). Thedetermination of addressee(s), however, poses the problem of address markers. Asexplicit signals (principally terms of address) are rather seldom present, we mostoften have to deal with subtle and gradual cues such as the content of the utterance(which more specifically ‘concerns’ a particular listener), or paralinguistic and kine-sic indications (vocal intensity, intonations, eye and body orientation, head move-ments). Goffman insists in particular on ‘visual cues’,21 and defines the addressee as‘‘the one to whom the speaker addresses his visual attention’’ (1981: 133). But suchmarkers are often ambiguous, and they may even be contradictory with each other(examples of a clash between verbal and non-verbal markers: a sweeping glanceaccompanying an utterance in the second person singular or just the opposite).22 So,instead of referring to a discrete opposition between ‘addressees’ and ‘non-addres-sees’, it seems preferable to assume that address cues often establish a gradualranking of main addressee(s) and secondary addressee(s). This continuum can havetwo forms.

6.1.3.1. Continuum at a moment t1. At any given t1 moment of the interaction, arecipient can have a status that is intermediate, i.e. between that of an addressed anda non-addressed recipient. Cases of this would be:

20 In the example of the town council meeting (Witko, 2000), the roll-call procedure constitutes the

main ratification technique.21 Inaccessible to the analyst who does not have access to a video recording. . . We note here that the

problem is posed in completely different terms when the data being studied is written: see in this issue

Marcoccia’s study on a case of communication via the Internet.22 For an example during a corporate work session, see Lacoste (1989: 266–267).


*Semi-self talk: This is the case when it is not certain whether the speaker is talking tohim- or herself or to someone else.23 Well-known examples are interjections, excla-mations, ‘response cries’ (cf.Goffman, 1981:Chapter 2), and ‘out-louds’ (cf.Levinson,1988: 206 ff). There are also cases in which someone thinks aloud in someone else’spresence, as in private comments by a customer in a cafeteria line, or by an officeemployee working in front of a computer; and in domestic situations where eachparticipant goes about his own activities, producing brief apparent soliloquies, whichare not in fact authentic ‘self talk’, since the presence of other people exercises a certaindegree of control over the vocal productions of all the participants (seeVincent, 1995).*Collective address: This is the case when a speaker is talking before a largeaudience, as in a classroom setting, for example, where the teacher’s sweepingglance over the audience is perforce unequal, ‘favouring’ some members (becausethey perhaps produce more back-channel signals), although still not exactlyleaving the other members of the audience ‘unaddressed’.

6.1.3.2. Continuum between t1 and t2. Between t1 and t2 (two consecutive momentsin time), a gradual shift can occur from one addressee to another. For example, themain addressee can be changed in mid-sentence by shifts of gaze, subtle vocal var-iations, etc. This can even be done more brusquely by using the pronominal marker,as in the following two examples (one of which is excerpted from a television debateand the other from an informal conversation):

(1) He doesn’t want to be reduced to one of the two aspects of your personality.[co-reference between ‘‘he’’ and ‘‘your’’, in relation to a change in the orientationof the speaker’s glance](2) Since you stopped teaching the class, she doesn’t know how to talk!

6.1.4. Non-ratified recipients (or bystanders)Non-ratified recipients, or ‘adventitious participants’, as Goffman notes, are pre-

sent in most communication situations (‘‘Their presence should be considered therule’’). Unlike ratified recipients, they must theoretically (pretend to) be disinterested inwhat is going on within the conversation group. However, this is not always what reallyhappens. Goffman distinguishes between two sub-classes within the category ofbystanders: overhearers and eavesdroppers. This distinction is, in fact, based on twodifferent criteria which do not necessarily converge: the speaker’s awareness/unaware-ness of the bystander, and the intentionality/unintentionality of the bystander’s hearing.The criterion most often applied to distinguishing between overhearers and

eavesdroppers is whether the speaker is aware or unaware of the presence of the

23 ‘‘She said something in a muffled voice, in a murmur, but it was difficult to know whether she was

saying that for his benefit or to herself.’’ (Milan Kundera, Risibles amours, Paris: Gallimard, 1974: 180;

translated from the French). The ‘semi-self talk’, or ‘half-aside’ (semi-aparte) is a frequent theatrical

device, particularly in Moliere’s comedies.


bystander within the perceptual space. On the basis of this criterion, examples ofoverhearers would be: factory workers doing repair work in an office where a meetingis being held, or staff in charge of handling technical problems during a conference.Such participants are only exceptionally promoted to the status of ‘addressees’.Examples of eavesdropping, on the other hand, would be hearing a private conversa-tion through a half-open door—or listening to a recording of a conversation whichjust happens to have fallen into your hands as a conversation analyst. . .In addition to this speaker-linked criterion, Goffman’s definition brings in another

criterion, connected to the attitudes or motives of hearers themselves. Overhearers,according to Goffman, follow the talk temporarily, unintentionally, and inadvertently,enacting shows of disinterest and minimizing their actual access to the talk. Eaves-droppers, on the other hand, are indiscreet listeners who do everything they can tointercept discourse which is in no way intended for their ears; in Goffman’s words,‘‘they may surreptitiously exploit the accessibility they find they have.’’ (1981: 132).

6.2. Proposals

6.2.1. Main distinctionsWithin the participation framework (ensemble of participation statuses), we will

base our study of polylogue on the following distinctions:

� Production format vs. reception format;� Ratified participants vs. non-ratified participants (with, as we have seen, dif-

ferent degrees and modes of ratification);� Main addressees vs. secondary (or side) addressees (among ratified recipients);� Bystanders (either overhearersor eavesdroppers) (amongnon-ratified recipients).

And we will add another category to those of Goffman:

� Target (Levinson, 1988: 210 ff) or intended recipient (McCawley, 1984), i.e.the person for whom the utterance is really intended.

The target does not always coincide with the addressee. When there is a dis-crepancy between these two types of recipients, we speak of a ‘communicationaltrope’ (trope communicationnel)24—a phenomenon which is described masterfully byMarcel Proust in various passages of A la recherche du temps perdu (translated fromthe French):

24 See Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1990: 92 ff) on the different forms of this phenomenon (also see Mizzau

(1994) on triangolazione communicativa). I introduced the term ‘trope communicationnel’ in L’implicite

(Paris: Colin, 1986), where I propose an ‘extended theory of the trope’. I then studied this mechanism on

several occasions, in particular as it operates in drama: theatrical discourse can indeed be considered an

immense communicational trope, since the audience is an ‘eavesdropper’ for the characters, but a target

for the author and the actors. Interviews and various types of talk on the media operate to a certain extent

in the same way—cf. Greatbatch (1992: 269–270), who considers the audience as the ‘primary address’ in

news interviews (the term ‘primary’ actually meaning here ‘intended’).


‘Ah!’ he said, speaking to no one in particular, so as to be heard at the same time byMadame de Saint-Euverte to whom he was speaking and Madame de Laumes forwhom he was speaking [. . .] (Du cote de chez Swann, Paris: folio, 334; italics added)

‘The duchy of Aumale was in our family for a long time before becoming a part ofthe Maison de France’, explained Monsieur de Charlus to Monsieur de Cam-bremer, in front of an astounded Morel to whom, to tell the truth, the entire dis-sertation was, if not addressed, then at least intended. (Sodome et Gomorrhe II: 212)

I afforded myself the pleasure of informing her, but did it by addressing theinformation to her mother-in-law, as when playing billiards, in order to hit a ballone plays against the edge of the billiard-table, that Chopin, far from being outof fashion, was Debussy’s favorite musician. (ibid.: 212)

This indirect strategy of address is applied with varying degrees of ‘audacity’,depending on the situation. For example, the strategy is more audacious when the realtarget is an overhearer than when he or she is a secondary addressee. Additionally, thecommunicational trope can be accompanied by a ‘syllepsis’ (or double meaning). It isobviously compatible with the phenomenon mentioned in Section 3.1, of multi-plication of the illocutionary values of the utterance depending on its differentaddressees. For example, an interview usually begins as follows:

Mr. X, you were born in Paris in 1940. After brilliantly pursuing studies inphilology at the Sorbonne, you were obliged to leave in order to go into mili-tary service in Algeria [. . .].

This opening sequence is apparently addressed to the interviewee, here a ‘knowingparticipant’, for whom its value is at most a request for confirmation. But its maintarget is clearly the listener, in relation to whom it has a stronger value, i.e. that ofan informative statement.

6.2.2. Different types of rolesParticipation statuses can be called interlocutive roles, but the functioning of an

interaction also involves other types of roles as well: for example, interactional roles,which are based on the script; examples: moderator, interviewer vs. interviewee,teacher vs. student, salesperson vs. buyer (these roles being, in part, determined bysocial and institutional statuses, such as those of a journalist, a professor, a trade-sperson); and discursive roles, which are based on tasks which are carried out (givingthe floor, answering questions, etc.).

6.2.3. The recipient design principleCicero has already said of the orator:

The eloquent man should demonstrate the wisdom which will allow him toadapt to circumstances and to people. I do indeed think that one should talk


neither all the time, nor against everyone, nor for everyone, nor to everyone inthe same way. Thus, the man who is capable of adapting his language to what isappropriate to each case will be said to be eloquent. (Ciceron, l’Orateur:XXXV–XXXVI, 123; translated from the French)

Conversation analysts express the same idea in their own terms. Following Sackset al. (1974: 727), the Recipient Design Principle is ‘‘the most general principle par-ticularizing conversational interaction.’’ It is valid for all types of listeners and notonly for the addressee: ‘‘audience design informs all levels of a speaker’s linguisticchoice’’ (Bell, 1984: 161). In the same way, Clark (1989, 1992) also notes that whenwe speak, we ‘design’ our utterance with all our potential listeners in mind, but wedo not deal with them all in the same way. Special attention should be paid toone’s addressee, whereas towards overhearers, ‘‘speakers can legitimately chooseamong a range of attitudes’’, such as indifference, disclosure, concealment, ordisguisement (1992: 255–256). Paralleling this, the listeners’ responsibilities arenot the same, nor are their abilities and handicaps. This principle has beenillustrated for all types of participants, that is, side participants (Clark andCarlson, 1982), audiences (Drew, 1992), and overhearers (Schober and Clark, 1989;Johnson and Roen, 1992).

6.2.4. Fuzziness and graduality of categoriesAttribution of a given status to a participant can pose problems for the analyst,

as it can for the people who are themselves involved in the interaction. The fuzzi-ness of the markers also brings about the possibility of misunderstandings, invo-luntary or voluntary. Finally, it can also occur that participants’ statuses can beseen differently from each other’s points of view. For example, people in dis-advantaged positions (children, patients, the elderly) may consider themselves to beratified participants, but be treated as unratified participants by their partners ininteraction.All the categories which go to make up the participation framework are gradual,

denoting different degrees of participation, of ratification, of address, etc. In addi-tion, constant changes in format and in footing can be observed throughout inter-action. One ‘slides’ from one conversation to the other in gatherings, and evenwithin the same conversation, interlocutive configurations are frequently movedaround, resulting in what Goffman (1981: 135) calls ‘‘structural instability’’. Thesecontinual fluctuations in the framing can take place by means of either gradualshifting or abrupt changes. Change is complete in cases of ‘splitting-off’, or partialwhen ‘subordinate communication’ arises parallel to the ‘dominating communi-cation’. According to Goffman, there are three cases of partial change: byplay,which arises among ratified participants,25 crossplay, which takes place between

25 On byplay also see the analysis proposed by M.H. Goodwin (1991) of playful commentaries made in

the course of a narrative episode during family table talk in an American home. Goodwin shows that the

framework is at the same time both undermined and upheld—generally, the main purpose of byplay is not

to disrupt the dominant interaction. The intrusion can be negotiated by the participants by means of

different procedures, described in detail by Goodwin.


ratified participants and bystanders, and sideplay, which consists of ‘‘hushed wordsexchanged entirely among bystanders’’ (1981: 133–134).It is up to the speaker to attribute a particular participation status to each

member of the reception format, and first of all, to choose one or several mainaddressee(s). Such choices are made on the basis of various principles.26 But theyare also highly adaptable, and, above all, negotiable. Goodwin (1981), for example,shows that when it seems that the targeted addressee is not listening, the speakerwill fall back on another addressee who seems better disposed to listening, but this‘sliding’ from one addressee to another will sometimes have to be accompanied bythe speaker’s reshaping and redesigning the utterance. Still another case is when aspeaker favours one member of the audience to an excessive extent in a situationwhere the address is supposedly collective, and the person who is ‘too often lookedat’ tries to remedy this embarrassing situation by refusing eye-contact with thespeaker; such a strategy is aimed at getting the speaker to distribute address signalsmore equitably.The point of the preceding remarks is that an addressed participant can behave in

such a way as to display a relative lack of involvement, and an unaddressed parti-cipant can, in contrast, behave in such a way as to display a wish to be treated as anaddressee—and can even manage to get this to happen. Building the participationformat is a fundamentally collaborative process.

6.3. An example

As a conclusion, to illustrate these principles of analysis, and especially the gra-duality of the categories, let us take the example, studied by Traverso (1997), ofwhat goes on in a French post office, and, more specifically, of the reception formatconfiguration at t1, a moment in time when A, an employee, addresses B, a custo-mer. At t1: B is ratified and is the main addressee.The other customers who are standing in line at the same counter, without being

really ratified in relation to the interaction in progress, are at the same time more‘legitimate’ listeners than, for example, a person sitting near us on a bus (i.e. a veri-table overhearer, who must hide whatever interest he or she may have in our con-versation). It is in no way prohibited for a person who is standing directly behind Bin the line at the post office to follow the exchange between A and B, if only to verifywhether his/her turn at the counter is coming up.The customers in the waiting-line have hierarchical ranking in terms of ratifica-

tion. The first in line is ‘more ratified’ than the last, and can use his or her ‘quasi-legitimacy’ in order to speed up a transaction which is dragging on too long, forexample, by moving in closer, by leaning on the counter, etc.27 Likewise, the people

26 Such as ‘Preference for the best source’ and ‘Preference in selecting a spokesperson’, in Leonardi and

Viaro’s study (1990) of encounters between doctors and their patients.27 This behaviour would be impossible now in most French post offices, where a line on the floor marks

off a physical boundary for the exchange taking place at the counter, in order to safeguard the con-

fidentiality of the interaction in progress (since many French residents also do their banking at the post

office).


standing in the same line as B are more ratified than those who are standing in linesat the other counters (although the people in the other lines may nonetheless betaking an interest in the goings-on in front of another counter, if only to changelines in case their own line stops moving).The other postal employees behind counters are more ratified than the waiting

customers. They are part of the staff and can, if necessary, be ‘called to the rescue’.They are therefore legitimate listeners. Among them, C, an on-the-job trainee, hasbeen given a particular status, close to that of a secondary addressee (as he is moreor less supposed to observe everything that goes on). Other postal workers whohappen to be present in the post office are also legitimate listeners, but they becomeratified participants less easily than the employees actually behind the counters whoare specifically in charge of customer contact.This post office participation framework constantly changes, not only because

the main addressee at t1 moment in time becomes the current speaker at t2moment in time, but also owing to perpetual movements within the reception for-mat, such as ‘broadening’, ‘reduction’, ‘restratification’, and ‘reorientation’ (cf.Traverso, 1997).So this is a complex polylogal situation. Observed as it unfolds, it is, in fact,

like a ‘crossroads of interactions’, where interactions between A and varioussuccessive customers, and interactions between A and other postal employeesclosely intertwine—and this description is valid only if analysis is limited towhat takes place among the people who are present within the four walls ofthe post office. . . But this notion of an ‘interaction behind closed doors’ isreally an artifice, as Latour (1994: 590) reminds us, for, in fact, all interactionsare infinitely open ‘‘to other elements, to other times, to other places, to otherparticipants’’:

It is said, without looking too closely, that we are interacting with each otherface-to-face. To be sure, but the garment we are wearing comes from some-where else; the words we are using were not designed for the situation; thewalls we are leaning against were designed by an architect for a client andbuilt by construction workers, all absent now, although their actions con-tinue to make themselves felt. Even the person whom we are addressingcomes from a background which goes far beyond the framework of ourrelationship. [. . .] If we wanted to draw a spatio-temporal ‘map’ of all that isto be found in an interaction, and if we wanted to make a list of all thosewho are participating in one way or another, we would not see a clearly-outlined frame, but instead a very disheveled intertwining network implyingan untold number of extremely diverse dates, places and people. (1994: 590;translated from the French)

This is a salutary reminder of the over-simplistic nature of the classical perspectiveon interaction, as well as of our present inability to simultaneously integrate microapproaches (concerning the interaction itself) and macro approaches (concerningbackground and social aspects).


7. The studies in this publication

This special issue investigates different types of polylogal situations. MicheleGrosjean’s article examines the participation framework in a particular type of talk-at-work produced within the hospital context. The article focuses on shift-changebriefing sessions between teams going off duty and teams coming on duty in differenttypes of hospital wards, revealing gradual shifts in the basic participation structuresof these encounters from straight dilogues between departing and arriving parties togenuine polylogues, which emerge at certain specific points in time. She emphasizesthe fact that, in such hospital contexts, the functioning of the participation frame-work can only be described in relation to the professional statuses of the respectiveparticipants.Veronique Traverso’s study concerns a semi-formal meeting of researchers

belonging to the same research group. After having distinguished among global,local, and ‘macro-local’ levels, she takes an even closer look at the macro-local level,examining in detail two phenomena peculiar to the polylogue, the ‘crowding’ phe-nomenon and the ‘splitting-off’ phenomenon, which she describes in relation to thetopical lines followed by the participants.In the article by Sylvie Bruxelles and Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, the investi-

gation moves towards the interpersonal relationship level, focusing on still anothertype of phenomenon which characterizes polylogues: the possibility of establishingalliances or coalitions. After examining the various procedures which can be used toform a coalition, the authors make a distinction between two main categories ofcoalitions: those which are imposed by the frame of the interaction and ‘emerging’coalitions. These notions are illustrated by an analysis of two excerpts of data ofquite different types: a discussion among five participants within the setting of aFrench radio program, and ‘quadrilogal’ encounters in French notaries’ offices inthe context of divorce settlements.Finally, Michel Marcoccia’s study specifically analyses how polylogues function

‘on line’ in Internet newsgroups, via the written channel, while implicitly modelingthemselves on face-to-face speech. The newsgroup’s mode of communicationobviously has a great deal of influence on the structure of exchanges and the waythey work. However, at the same time, Marcoccia concludes that this mode ofcommunication only makes more salient certain problems which are characteristicof all polylogal exchanges, whose complexity presently defies all attempts of for-malization.Such is indeed the leitmotiv which runs through these studies: that of the extreme

complexity and flexibility of polylogal organizations—especially since, unlike dilo-gues (which are objects possessing a sort of fractal structure: on a different scale, theparts have the same structure as the whole), polylogues have an organization whichis so mobile and so changeable that observing them at a t1 point in time can neverprovide a representative picture of the whole.Such complexity would be enough to discourage any researcher. Yet, as early as 1967,

Sacks recommended that the functioning of multi-party conversations be ‘‘investigatedin its own terms, and not merely [. . .] as a variant off two-party conversation’’ (Lectures,


vol. I: 523), adding that if two-party conversations are ‘‘much blander’’, multi-partyconversations ‘‘could be much more interesting’’ (ibid.: 533). With such encourage-ment, how can one resist the urge to take on this challenge?28

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Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni is a Full Professor at Lumiere University (Lyon, France). She also holds the

‘‘Linguistics of Interaction’’ chair at the Institut Universitaire de France. She has been a Visiting Professor

in the French Departments of Columbia University (NYC) and the University of Geneva. Her main

interests are pragmatics, discourse analysis, and interaction. She is the author of several books: La Con-

notation, L’Enonciation, L’Implicite, Les Interactions verbales (3 vol.), La Conversation, and Les actes de

langage dans le discours.


Documents

trilogue orecchioni