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Thinking out loud: A discourse analysis of ‘thinking’ during talk radio interactions

  • Ava D. Horowitz EMAIL logo and Laura Kilby
From the journal Text & Talk

Abstract

Early work in discursive psychology highlighted the rhetorical strength of devices that serve to establish matters as objective facts. More recently, there has been increasing interest within this discipline concerning mental state invocations (e.g. imagining; knowing; intending), which typically convey speaker subjectivity. Elsewhere, linguists have examined the social business enabled by speakers’ deployment of cognitive verbs, a prime example of which deals with overt references to thinking. The current article sets out to extend the work on thinking by synthesizing research from discursive psychology, linguistics, and conversation analysis in order to undertake an integrated analysis of thinking. In our examination of a UK talk radio corpus, comprising data from 11 talk radio shows, we demonstrate three discursive functions of deploying a thinking device: setting an intersubjective agenda; doing opinion; and managing ‘facts’. An integrated approach allows us to examine the rhetorical strength of these subjectivizing maneuvers, and contribute to the existing body of work concerning the discursive deployment of thinking and mental state terms.

Appendix: Transcript conventions

Based on the Jefferson (2004b) transcription system.

(0.6)Numbers in brackets indicate elapsed time in seconds
(.)A dot in brackets indicates a hearable pause of under 0.2 seconds
canUnderlining indicates stressed intonation
[Opening square bracket indicates the onset of overlapping talk
]Closing square bracket indicates the end of overlapping talk, where discernable
°real°Degree signs indicate speech volume that is markedly quiet
I- I-Dash indicates abrupt cut-off of sound or word
↑I ↓doUp and down arrows indicate high or low pitch
:Colons indicate extensions of the sound immediately before
.A full-stop indicates a completing inflection, irrespective of sentence completion
.hhDot-prefixed h pairs indicate an audible in-breath
hhh pairs indicate an audible out-breath
>be<Greater and lesser than symbols encompass talk at a discernibly faster speech rate
((words))Transcriber description is provided in double brackets

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Published Online: 2019-08-30
Published in Print: 2019-11-26

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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