Participation

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Participation
Author(s):	Burak S. Tekin (Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Turkey) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9206-7506)
To cite:	Tekin, Burak S. (2023). Participation. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: []

Participation as an analytic concept was first introduced by Goffman (1981) in his work on footing. Goffman was critical of the traditional models representing the categorical participant roles as only speakers and hearers. By considering various forms of subordinate communication such as byplay, crossplay and sideplay, he showed the inadequacy of the dyadic speaker-hearer role structure and decomposed both speaker and hearer into a range of different kinds of participant roles. Hearers are divided into overhearers, bystanders, eavesdroppers, addressed and unaddressed hearers. Speakers are decomposed into some sub-categories, including animator (the producer of the talk), author (the originator of the words in the talk), principal (the responsible party in the talk), and figure (the character mentioned in the talk). The collection of these speaker roles is referred to as the “production format” of an utterance (Goffman 1981).

Goffman’s model of participation was then revisited by Charles and Marjorie Harness Goodwin. They present an understanding of human interaction in which speakers and hearers, as coparticipants, build actions by taking one another into consideration (C. Goodwin 1979, 1981, 2007; M. H. Goodwin 1980, 2006, 2007). This view treats participants as active persons producing specifically tailored actions in the accomplishment of their situated activities (C. Goodwin & M. H. Goodwin 2004). They also demonstrate that persons may deploy embodied actions (such as gazing, nodding and gesturing) to display their coordinated engagements in the ongoing situated activities (see also Hayashi 2005; Heath 1984; Mondada 2012). In doing so, they specify participating as a particular action lodged in the conduct of persons (C. Goodwin & M. H. Goodwin 2004).

In a more contemporary understanding of the term, participation refers to the forms of organization of social interaction made possible through talk and embodied action, which becomes particularly noticeable and observable within specific activities. One such activity is the telling of a story. Storytellings have a particular participation structure in which story tellers produce extended turns-at-talk and all other participants recognize and align with these activities as storytellings (Sacks 1992). In this interactional environment, story recipients follow the details of the stories and participate in their specific parts by means of continuers and assessments (C. Goodwin 1984). Coparticipants continuously monitor one another and adjust their conduct accordingly within the evolving storytellings.

Multi-party interactions present specific opportunities and affordances for participation. Focusing on political public meetings, Atkinson (1984) shows that orators design their speeches in particular ways, such as deploying problem solution patterns or three-part lists, that establish the relevance for audience members to participate. Examining participatory democracy meetings, Mondada et al. (2017) demonstrate that the allocation of citizens to the tables presents opportunities for them to express opinions and build alliances, thereby facilitating their participation. These studies show that audience members actively participate in public debates, contributing to their interactional accomplishment.

Activities mediated or made possible by technologies or technological devices have specific properties and characteristics enabling or constraining participation (Heath & Luff 2000). Licoppe (2017) examines the sequential organization of video calls and observes that parties establish a joint interactional frame in which they are visible to one another in the opening phases of their calls. Proper visual appearances of persons are treated as both noticeable and accountable. This occasions multiple greetings, which orient to successive forms of various appearances. Focusing on computer mediated video phone communication among the deaf, Keating and Mirus (2003) demonstrate that signers specifically design their signs for their intelligibility and recognizability. They produce their signs in a more restricted space and with a slower pace. Concentrating on video games, Tekin (2021) describes a particular form of participating that those watching play (i.e., spectators) perform (see also Tekin & Reeves 2017). By way of closely examining the emergent trajectories of players’ game relevant bodily movements, spectators produce quasi-instructions, through which they exhibit co-presence with the players in sequentially and temporally coordinated ways.

Additional Related Entries:

• Footing
• Participation framework

Cited References:

Atkinson, J. M. (1984). Public speaking and audience responses: Some techniques for inviting applause. In J. M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (Eds), Structures of Social Action (pp. 370-409). Cambridge University Press.

Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Goodwin, C. (1979). The interactive construction of a sentence in natural conversation. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 97-121). Irvington.

Goodwin, C. (1981). Conversational Organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. Academic Press.

Goodwin, C. (1984). Notes on story structure and the organization of participation. In J. M. Maxwell and J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 225-246). Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, C. (2007). Interactive footing. In E. Holt and R. Clift (Eds.), Reporting Talk (pp. 16-46). Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M. H. (2004). Participation. In A. Duranti (Ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, (pp. 222-244). Blackwell.

Goodwin, M. H. (1980). Processes of mutual monitoring implicated in the production of description sequences. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 303-317.

Goodwin, M. H. (2006). Participation, affect, and trajectory in family directive/response sequences. Text & Talk, 26(4/5), 515-543.

Goodwin, M. H. (2007). Participation and embodied action in preadolescent girls’ assessment activity. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 40(4), 353-375.

Hayashi, M. (2005). Joint turn construction through language and the body: Notes on embodiment in coordinated participation in situated activities. Semiotica, 156(1), 21-53.

Heath, C. (1984). Participation in the medical consultation: The co-ordination of verbal and nonverbal behavior between the doctor and patient. Sociology of Health & Illness, 6(3), 311-338.

Heath, C., & Luff, P. (2000). Technology in Action. Cambridge University Press.

Keating, E., & Mirus, G. (2003). American Sign Language in virtual space: Interactions between dead users of computer-mediated video communication and the impact of technology on language practices. Language in Society, 32, 693-714.

Licoppe, C. (2017). Skype appearances, multiple greetings and ‘coucou’: The sequential organization of video-mediated conversation openings. Pragmatics, 27(3), 351-386.

Mondada, L. (2012). The dynamics of embodied participation and language choice in multilingual meetings. Language in Society, 41, 213-235.

Mondada, L., Svensson H., & van Schepen, N. (2017). A table-based turn-taking system and its political consequences. Journal of Language and Politics, 16(1), 83-109.

Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on Conversation. Blackwell Publishing.

Tekin, B. S. (2021). Quasi-instructions: Orienting to the projectable trajectories of imminent bodily movements with instruction-like utterances. Journal of Pragmatics, 186, 341-357.

Tekin, B. S., & Reeves, S. (2017). Ways of spectating: Unravelling spectator participation in Kinect play. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (pp. 1558-1570). Association for Computing Machinery.

Additional References:

Hindmarsh, J. (2010). Peripherality, participation and communities of practice: Examining the patient in dental training. In N. Llewellyn and J. Hindmarsh (Eds.) Organization, Interaction and Practice (pp. 218-240). Cambridge University Press.

Lerner, G. H. (1993). Collectivities in action: Establishing the relevance of conjoined participation in conversation. Text, 13(2), 213-245.

Levinson, S. (1988). Putting linguistics on a proper footing: Explorations in Goffman’s concepts of participation. In P. Drew and A. Wootton (Eds.) Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order (pp. 161-227). Northeastern University Press.

Sidnell, J. (2009). Participation. In S. D’hondt, J-O. Östman and J. Verschueren (Eds.) Pragmatics of Interaction (pp. 125-156). John Benjamins.