Resumen El 30 de agosto de 2010 la Policía Federal mexicana detuvo a uno de los capos del narcotráfico más buscados del momento, Édgar Valdez Villarreal, “La Barbie”. Durante los primeros días de septiembre la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública difundió en los medios de comunicación masiva fragmentos de una entrevista al detenido realizada el 31 de agosto, que seguía un formato en apariencia oficial e institucional. El objetivo de este artículo es describir la entrevista a modo de protocolo en términos (...) del mecanismo de la interacción verbal entre el entrevistador y el entrevistado y reflexionar acerca de dicho formato según el modelo jurídico de la entrevista policiaca, así como de la configuración de la identidad del entrevistado por parte de la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública. Se caracteriza esta entrevista policiaca desde tres perspectivas: una jurídica, en materia penal, una pragmática, de acuerdo con los parámetros conversacionales propios de cualquier interacción verbal y de los conceptos de fachada, identidad y estigma en la presentación de la persona, y una gramatical, respecto de las formas de las preguntas en las entrevistas semi-estructuradas. Se reflexiona acerca de la difusión de este material en los medios de comunicación como estrategia de propaganda política. (shrink)

This paper contributes to empirical knowledge of citizen participation as a communicative event, by analyzing discursive tensions in interviews between civil servants and citizen-parents, that are part of a participatory process on how to mitigate violence in a suburban area in Sweden. Citizen participation events are increasingly initiated by public institutions in Western societies. Research, however, shows that goals of participatory processes often conflict with formal decision-making structures and institutional boundaries. Yet, how such tensions play out on the level of (...) interaction is little researched. This study therefore analyzes discursive practices deployed by civil servants and how these construct characteristic tensions for the interviews. Three practices are identified: pursuing the initial question, cueing an institutional frame, and epistemic positioning of the parents. These practices, being guided by an institutional agenda, create tensions both to the parents’ lifeworld and for the ideals of the participatory method itself. (shrink)

In this article we study the work and communication practices of two highly connected organizations, the members of which have all access to instant messaging on a professional basis. We document the development of a communicational genre, that of ‘quick questions’, and analyze the sequence organization of such IM conversation threads. We show how ‘quick questions’ enable the collaborative accomplishment of complex, knowledge-intensive tasks by recruiting colleagues constituted as experts capable of quickly answering information requests related to ongoing tasks. ‘Quick (...) questions’ articulate communicative practices, ‘strong’ distribution of tasks and ‘organizing’ in highly connected organizations. We argue that they enact a distinctive cognitive and moral economy based on minimal forms of interaction and exchanges, constituting a more general phenomenon. (shrink)

An inter-governmental hearing on hydrofracking for natural gas is examined. The Department of Environmental Conservation recently released an Environmental Impact Statement and takes questions from the New York State Assembly. Assembly members pose concerns with the EIS. The DEC’s responses at times appear to not address the question, but rather to challenge or rework the question in a way that can be answered from the DEC perspective. Assembly members assess seeming evasive answers in critical ways. This interactional pattern is examined (...) from a discursive analysis perspective as problem–accounts–assessments sequences. Especially notable are the discursive practices of reported speech and metadiscourse in these accounting sequences. The conflicting assessments are not based on ‘the facts’, but on which facts are relevant. The DEC can be heard as advocating for their draft of the EIS despite the concerns raised by the Assembly. At certain junctures, Assembly members accuse the DEC of being biased or evasive, which does not make for the trust needed to reach consensus. At stake in this hearing is the construction of environmental or public health risk and whether or not to permit hydrofracking. (shrink)