In Spoken discourse, Rodney Jones introduces an analytical framework focusing on the relationship between spoken discourse and the concrete actions performed with it, particularly on how ‘through… conversations we work together to interpret, negotiate and construct our social worlds' (17). Using very accessible language, he analyses a well-chosen set of examples ranging from ‘coming out’ videos on the YouTube channel of Airman Randy Phillips, to contexts such as graduation ceremonies, service encounters, WhatsApp conversations, political protests, and police traffic stops. He thereby strategically ‘zooms in’ on individual interactions and ‘zooms out’ to broader social contexts to illustrate his arguments. This allows him to iterate the importance of adjusting analytical circumferences to consider the broader ideological debates and power struggles individual interactions are linked to, or what James Gee (An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. New York: Routledge, 2011) has called ‘the big C conversation’.
Considering all conversations as mediated through physical and semiotic tools allows Jones to scrutinize the complex relationship between ‘small c’ and ‘big C’ conversations; these tools include the human voice, telephones, and computers, but also languages, genres, social identities (e.g. ‘gay’), social practices (e.g. ‘coming out’), and social groups, communities, or institutions (e.g. the US military). Collections of tools, social values associated with their use, and their interplay with other tools in larger ‘toolkits’ characterize these communicative resources as ‘technologies of talk’ (chapter 3). Drawing on the work of Lev Vygotsky and Mikhail Bakhtin, particularly the notions of dialogism and heteroglossia, Jones considers how individual conversations are connected ‘in a web of discourse to people, places and practices that extend far beyond the present conversation’ (181) through such ‘technologies of talk’, encompassing a historical dimension and influencing future interactions. Using (mediated) action as the unit of analysis for his framework, and sites of engagement as its focus, he shows how these tools function to make some kinds of social actions possible in certain situations, while constraining other kinds (chapter 4). The strategies by which social actors engage with the technologies of talk that are available to them to perform social actions include negotiating and constructing in interaction: relationships and participation (chapter 5), identities (chapter 6), and communities (chapter 7), as well as entextualization and contextualization, and engaging in metadiscourse (chapter 8). Finally, Jones argues that every social action is deep down an ethical act, following Bakhtin's notion of answerability: through engaging in conversation we become answerable for what we say and do, to people we interact with, to those implicated in conversations, and for the way in which we contribute to larger ‘big C’ conversations. Technologies of talk, he argues, provide resources for both social actors and analysts to incorporate and address ethical dimensions of conversations in order account for their wider social and political implications.
Overall, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in spoken discourse: it provides new insights and innovative analytical tools to students and scholars working with authentic discourse, as well as a comprehensive introduction to those new to the field.
