From debate to dialogue: A conversation analysis of public meetings on the health effects of livestock farming in the Netherlands

The polarization in contemporary societies gives the impression that we live in a “debate society” in which people are occupied with persuading others of their positions. While debate may be useful, the focus on defending one’s own positions while excluding those of others hinders people’s attempts to understand and overcome their differences. Contrary to debate, within “dialogue” interactants aim at better understanding and transcending their differences. Focusing on recorded Dutch public meetings on the health effects of livestock farming and using conversation analysis, this dissertation aims at redefining existing conceptions of “debate” and “dialogue”. It treats their establishment as existing in moments and focuses on what interactants themselves treat as “moments of debate” or “moments of dialogue”. These insights provide ideas on how people may transform their conversation from debate to dialogue. Chapter 2 addresses the ways residents in public information meetings use questioning as a “way in” to pursue an admission from experts, conveying that they have an issue with a research method, the risk surveillance, or risk-reducing technologies. By systematically challenging experts’ responses, residents exploit the interaction’s sequential organization such that the goal becomes being convinced rather than being informed. Chapter 3 addresses situations where citizens treat officials as “shelving” issues. This uptake is preceded by officials treating citizens as not understanding the scope of discussion. Citizens subsequently turn the tables on officials, treating them as not wanting to fulfill their democratic duties; implications which officials downplay immediately. The analyses in chapter 2 and 3 show participants’ orientations to debate and the “missed opportunities” for dialogue. Contrarily, chapter 4 and chapter 5 demonstrate participants’ orientations to dialogue. Chapter 4 reveals a template describing one way “dialogic moments” unfold within public meetings, starting with organizers’ queries which retroactively address citizens’ palpable troubles, upon which citizens elaborate their issue. The analysis shows how organizers’ subsequent demonstration of understanding can be consequential for citizens, who reveal that these displayed understandings result in some amelioration of the indicated trouble. Such displays enable parties to reach a more stable closure to the troublesome topic. Chapter 5 places the argument for a conversation-analytic approach to “dialogic moments” in a broader structural framework of normative accountability in interaction. Specifically, the framework of the various preferences that support or promote social solidarity and the preference for progressivity, which complicate engaging in dialogue as they promote the suppression of differences. This chapter shows that “dialogic moments” require participants to go against these structural and normative features of interaction. Within “dialogic moments” participants solicit detail on differences, to better understand and transcend them. Chapter 6 describes how the combination of two approaches, interaction analyses and interviews, allow us to explore how the “wicked problem” of livestock farming is addressed and experienced in real life. The interviews suggest moving from a top-down approach still prevalent in risk communication practice to a two-way communication, involving farmers and residents much more directly. The interaction analyses reveal the interactional trajectories towards what participants orient to as “dialogic moments.” Overall, the findings of this dissertation suggest that dialogue can be established in more instances or events than those organized or structured as (putatively generating) dialogue, but its establishment poses challenges as it requires participants’ endeavors to solicit detail on (potential) differences, and recipients need to ratify such moves. This dissertation shows and argues that addressing another’s turns as a problem worth dealing with may allow for the exploration of differences. Such moves may provide the steppingstone for what participants treat as the start of a “good conversation”, which holds promise for an increasingly divided society.