Deontic rights

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Deontic rights
Author(s):	Melisa Stevanovic (Tampere University, Finland) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0429-1672)
To cite:	Stevanovic, Melisa. (2023). Deontic rights. 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: 10.17605/OSF.IO/WCHMY

Deontic rights refer to the authoritative potential that a participant in interaction has in a specific domain of action in relation to his co-participants (Stevanovic 2013b). The notion is closely related to that of deontic authority. However, while deontic authority denotes a binary relationship with an asymmetrical distribution of power to determine action, many real-life interactions involve a more nuanced power relationship between the participants (see, e.g., Lukes 2005: 65; Mann 1986: 7). The notion of deontic rights may therefore be used to describe more flexibly the variety of the ways in which power to determine action may be distributed among participants.

Participants’ deontic rights in different domains of action are part of the participants’ “common ground,” their shared knowledge about the world (Clark 1996; Tomasello 2008). In many cases, participants’ deontic rights may be seen to arise from their specific category memberships, which may be of more fleeting or permanent nature. In the following extract, drawn from Rossi and Stivers (2020), a mother declines a food offer made by a father to their four-year-old daughter, thus invoking the membership of a parent with superior deontic rights in the domain of raising this particular child.

(Rossi & Stivers 2020)

01  Chd:   Three more: (0.2) three more left.
02  Dad:   There is three left. That’s right. You want one?
03  Mom:   No.=She still- she’s
04         (0.6)
05  Chd:   I have=
06  Mom:   =she has food in her plate.

The father’s offering of food to the child (“You want one”, line 2) is immediately rejected by the mother (line 3), who observes that the child still “has food on her plate” (line 6). Even though the father’s offer is directed to the child, the mother nonetheless claims the right to respond to the offer, the deontic rights in the domain of what the child can eat and when arising from the her status as the child’s caretaker.

The deontic rights that a participant claims in and through an utterance or another type of interactional contribution may be placed on a gradient with stronger or weaker expressions of deontic stance. Conversation analytic studies have described a range of linguistic resources available for the participants to position themselves on the deontic gradient when designing directives and requests (Curl & Drew 2008; Ervin-Tripp 1976; Goodwin 1980; Heinemann 2006; West 1990). In an early study, Ervin-Tripp (1976) ordered directive forms according to the relative power relationship that they presuppose. In her view, “need statements” (e.g., “I need a match”) involve strong claims of deontic rights, while “question directives” (e.g., “Gotta match?”) presuppose a more symmetrical distribution of deontic rights between participants. Speakers’ entitlement to expect recipient compliance in response to their requests have also been shown to be managed through the choices between positive and negative interrogatives (Heinemann 2006) and between modal interrogatives or “I wonder if” prefaced declaratives (Curl & Drew 2008).

Claims of deontic rights (henceforth, deontic claims) may be of two different types: (1) distal deontic claims are about people’s rights to control and decide about future action (as is the case with directives and requests) and (2) proximal deontic claims are about people’s rights to initiate, maintain, or close local sequences of joint action (Stevanovic 2015). These two types of deontic claims are often intertwined, as is the case, for example, in joint decision making, where a proposal involves both a claim of the right to have a say in some future action and a claim of the right to impose the task of deciding about a particular matter on the co-participants in the here and now of the encounter (Stevanovic et al., 2020). Proposal recipients have been shown to be able to differentiate between these two types of deontic claims and sometimes validate only one while rejecting or circumventing the other (Bolden, et al. 2020; Stephenson 2020; Stevanovic 2015, 2021).

Given the parallel existence of deontic rights in both the distal and proximal domains of action, an entirely symmetrical distribution of deontic rights between the participants in interaction can seldom be achieved. While a proposal speaker may mitigate their distal deontic claims, for example, by presenting the realization of their ideas as contingent on recipient approval, in so doing they are still likely to make strong proximal deontic claims with reference to a need for the participants to engage in joint decision making. Achieving symmetry (also) in the proximal deontic rights between the participants may however be facilitated by the mitigation of “response pressure” (Stivers & Rossano 2010) associated with first actions in a sequence or by designing the first actions in ways that provide the recipients freedom to steer the interaction to several directions without becoming accountable for the choice (Stevanovic 2013a). Thus, while various joint decision making contexts are characterized by participants’ continuous attempts to establish and maintain “deontic symmetry” (Magnusson 2021; Stevanovic 2013a; Thompson, et al. 2021), the analysis of the precise ways of achieving such symmetry requires consideration of the complex interplay between the distal and proximal deontic rights.

Additional Related Entries:

• Deontics
• Deontic stance
• Deontic status
• Deontic authority
• Epistemics

Cited References:

Bolden, G. B., Hepburn, A., & Angell, B. (2020). Engaging with Clients’ Requests for Medication Changes in Psychiatry. In C. Lindholm, M. Stevanovic, & E. Weiste (Eds.), Joint Decision Making in Mental Health: An Interactional Approach (pp. 165–186). Palgrave Macmillan.

Clark, H. H. (1996). Using Language. Cambridge University Press.

Curl, T. S. & Drew, P. (2008). Contingency and action: A comparison of two forms of requesting. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41(2), 129–153.

Ervin-Tripp, S. (1976). Is Sybil there? The structure of some American English directives. Language in Society, 5(1), 25–66.

Goodwin, M. H. (1980). Directive-response speech sequences in girls' and boys' task activities. In S. McConnell-Ginet, R. Borker, & N. Furman (Eds.), Women and Language in Literature and Society (pp. 157–173). Praeger.

Heinemann, T. (2006). ‘Will you or can’t you?’: Displaying entitlement in interrogative requests. Journal of Pragmatics, 38(7), 1081–1104.

Hester, S., & Eglin, P. (1997). Membership categorization analysis: An introduction. In S. Hester & P. Eglin (Eds.), Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis (pp. 1–23). University Press of America.

Keevallik, L. (2017). Negotiating deontic rights in second position. In M.-L. Sorjonen, L. Raevaara, & E. Couper-Kuhlen (Eds.), Imperative Turns at Talk: The Design of Directives in Action (pp. 271-295). John Benjamins.

Landmark, A. M. D., Gulbrandsen, P., & Svennevig, J. (2015). Whose decision? Negotiating epistemic and deontic rights in medical treatment decisions. Journal of Pragmatics, 78, 54–69.

Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A Radical View (2nd edition). Palgrave Macmillan.

Magnusson, S. (2020). Constructing young citizens’ deontic authority in participatory democracy meetings. Discourse & Communication, 14(6), 600–618.

Magnusson, S. (2021). Establishing jointness in proximal multiparty decision-making: The case of collaborative writing. Journal of Pragmatics, 181, 32–48.

Mann, M. (1986). The Sources of Social Power (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.

Rossi, G., & Stivers, T. (2020). Category-sensitive actions in interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 84(1), 49-74.

Stevanovic, M. (2013a). Constructing a proposal as a thought: A way to manage problems in the initiation of joint decision-making in Finnish workplace interaction. Pragmatics, 23(3), 519–544.

Stevanovic, M. (2013b). Deontic Rights in Interaction: A Conversation Analytic Study on Authority and Cooperation. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Helsinki.

Stevanovic, M. (2015). Displays of uncertainty and proximal deontic claims: The case of proposal sequences. Journal of Pragmatics, 78, 84–97.

Stevanovic, M. (2021). Deontic authority and the maintenance of lay and expert identities during joint decision making: Balancing resistance and compliance. Discourse Studies 23(5), 670–689.

Stevanovic, M., Lindholm, C., Valkeapää, T., Valkia, K., & Weiste, E. (2020). Taking a proposal seriously: Orientations to agenda and agency in support workers’ responses to client proposals. In C. Lindholm, M. Stevanovic, & E. Weiste (Eds.), Joint Decision Making in Mental Health: An Interactional Approach (pp. 141–164). Palgrave Macmillan.

Stephenson, M. (2020). Setting the group agenda: Negotiating deontic rights through directives in a task-based, oral, L2, group assessment. Classroom Discourse, 11(4), 337–365.

Stivers, T. & Rossano, F. (2010). Mobilising response. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(1), 3–31.

Thompson, S. A., Fox, B. A., & Raymond, C. W. (2021). The grammar of proposals for joint activities. Interactional Linguistics, 1(1), 123–151.

Tomasello, M. (2008). Origins of Human Communication. MIT Press.

West, C. (1990). Not just “doctors’ orders:” Directive-response sequences in patients’ visits to women and men physicians. Discourse & Society, 1(1): 85–112.

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