Orchestration of perspectives in televised climate change debates

Abstract

Previous research has tied the journalistic norm of ‘balance’ to an overarching tendency to polarize the climate debate between realists and contrarians. This study uses conversation analysis to advance our knowledge about how climate changes are debated verbally in practice. It builds upon a corpus of current televised climate change panel debates in Denmark. The corpus confirms a documented turn from debating if global warming is a fact to debating what we should do to reduce emissions. Analyses detail two methods, which the interviewer invokes to administer turn-taking: (a) stand-alone next speaker reference and (b) prefatory address term + interrogatives that implicitly project disagreement. These methods help interviewers sustain their formal neutrality. But the study also finds that perspectives are orchestrated to (re)produce multiple polarizations between representatives of different interests and ideologies, for example activists versus business representatives, which might not be helpful in solving the climate crisis.

Keywords

climate change communication conversation analysis formal neutrality media talk panel debate polarization turn-taking

Climate changes are beyond question unprecedented and occasioned primarily by human behavior. Yet, governments, communities, industries, and individuals at large across the world seem reluctant to act accordingly and ensure the necessary sustainable conversion. It is therefore a crucial task for social science to uncover why this is the case and what we can do about it.

The former question (i.e. the why) has mostly been taken into consideration by psychologists within the last decade (e.g. Clayton et al., 2015; Nielsen et al., 2021). For example, psychological studies elucidate how political values may determine inherent climate skepticism (Whitmarsh, 2011); and how traits may determine individuals’ climate change perceptions (Beattie et al., 2017). The latter question (i.e. the what) is no less complex, especially given the overwhelmingly shared premise that democratic processes and individuals’ rights to make free choices need to be respected (Fiorino, 2018). This makes communication and dialogue essential factors, that is, knowledge about climate change must be shared, understood, and discussed in public, and common solutions regarding acute and enduring reduction of our reduced carbon footprints need to be reached on the basis of- and as an outcome of communicative processes (e.g. Eubanks, 2017; Goldberg et al., 2019; Lamb et al., 2020; Markowitz and Guckian, 2018).

This brings this paper’s overall interest: how are climate change implications debated in practice? The study concentrates upon a distinct, yet arguably important (see below), arena for such political talk, namely panel interviews that are broadcast in Danish public service national television. The main public service scope of these panel interviews is to facilitate democratic processes by having representatives of opposing ideological positions debate political issues. It is the interviewer’s central task to administer turn-taking to ensure that different views are voiced and that only one party speaks at the time. More specifically, therefore, the study examines how turn-taking is administered in the debate, which offers detailed insight into which perspectives are given public attention and how.

Background

In doing so, the paper contributes to media research on climate change communication. For sure, it is no easy task for journalists, news editors, anchor-persons etc. to cover climate changes in balanced ways (Fahy, 2017). Several studies have pointed to the paradox that whereas the scientific community overwhelmingly agrees that humans are causing the global warming (Cook et al., 2017), mass media representations draw a less concordant picture (e.g. Boykoff, 2008a, 2013; Brüggemann and Engesser, 2017). One of the reasons why is the journalistic norm of objectivity: each ‘side’ to a story should be given equal attention (Timm et al., 2020). Consequently, the public may be misinformed and less inclined to act. These media practices are well documented in various ways/settings: in quantitative studies that compare different angles to news stories (Boykoff, 2008b); in qualitative studies that inspect printed stories (Bailey et al., 2014); in experimental studies that test individuals’ responses (Kortenkamp and Basten, 2015); in survey studies interviewing key actors (Timm et al., 2020). But, surprisingly, how different perspectives on climate change are mediated and debated in verbal interaction remains entirely unexamined. To shed light on this matter, the study will use the conversation analytic method and revisit a classic study that provides still relevant insights on the interactional dynamics of panel interview organization (i.e. Greatbatch, 1992).

Conversation analysis (CA) is probably very familiar to the discourse analytic community and completely unknown to, for instance, environmental psychologists. Since the early 1970s, CA has been used to investigate interactional organization to elucidate how participants accomplish shared understanding in mundane and institutional situations. From its original focus almost exclusively upon talk-in-interaction (e.g. Sacks et al., 1974), mainstream CA has experienced an ‘embodied turn’, which incorporates analyses of bodily actions as an integral part of the communication. Traditionally, CA-scholars adhere to the bottom-up principle of ‘unmotivated looking’, which stands in contrast to, for example, critical discourse analysts that typically favor top-down approaches (Schegloff, 1997). To readers acquainted with this principle, CA may seem an odd choice for the present purpose. However, I would argue that CA represents exactly the right tool to elucidate how actors exploit – and are limited by – institutionalized conversational practices to debate climate changes, and I would also argue that the threatening issue of global warming more than warrants a relaxation of the ‘unmotivated looking’ principle.

Since the 1980s, CA has been used extensively to detail different types of broadcast interviews (e.g. Hutchby, 2006). Most attention has been paid to news interviews as question-answer driven interaction in which, grossly, interviewers (IRs) are licensed to ask questions but must defer from personal opinions, and interviewees (IEs) are obliged to answer, but frequently seek to evade critical aspects using a variety of conversational resources. This basic question-answer driven format is also largely constitutive of televised panel debates (Emmertsen, 2007). But, as Greatbatch (1992) originally found, with significant differences – most importantly the fact that several IEs are invited to participate simultaneous and represent different views, which are voiced as IRs allocate IEs’ turns and have them respond to each other to provoke a debate. Some of the benefits are:

“By concerning themselves primarily with the task of getting the IEs to display and debate their differences, IRs can thus, on the one hand, generate vigorous interaction while, on the other, guarding against accusations of bias” (Greatbatch, 1992: 272)

Greatbatch finds that IEs typically express disagreement following or prior to a response to an IR’s question (pp. 280–282). This resonates subsequent observation that IEs largely await being given the floor before speaking, which may require self-restraint in allowing ‘continuous assertions by other panellists to stand unchallenged’ (p. 311). However, Greatbatch also observes that IEs occasionally express disagreement on their own initiative following a co-IE’s turn, or sometimes even whilst a co-IE has the floor. Such actions escalate the disagreement and lead to extended disagreement sequences, which may require that IRs exercising their institutionalized rights as questioners to exit the topic.

Overall, these studies show that turn-taking management is an essential factor in panel debates. This makes CA the appropriate framework with which to examine how exactly perspectives on climate change implications are voiced in these situations.

Data

Denmark has two public service television stations. The largest is called DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation). For years, the network’s flagship panel debate has been Debatten (i.e. The Debate), which airs weekly on Thursdays in prime time at 20 pm. on DR2, the supplementary Channel to DR1. It is hosted by Clement Kjersgaard. Each week the show picks up a current political topic (e.g. finances, health, education, or the climate). The show has pioneered audience participation, allowing viewers to interact with each other on social media (Bruun, 2014), but this dimension is beyond the scope of the present study.

The show’s spatial design has remained largely the same for the past decade: six-eight lecterns for IEs are placed perpendicular to each other (i.e. two times three-four lecterns form a right angle), and an additional, central lectern is placed from which the host can orchestrate the debate. IEs are constituted by a wide array of individuals: politicians, scholars, stakeholders, various representatives (e.g. representing interest organizations, unions, policy institutes, particular businesses etc.). The debate is organized in trajectories where IEs change according to subtopics: when it is time to introduce a new subtopic, the host excuses some of the current participants and summons others from adjoining seats in the studio. A constant element, however, is that the producers of the show place panel participants with values, which are typically associated with left wing ideologies (e.g. socialist politicians or activists), on the left axis, whilst occupants on the right axis are participants with values that typically associate with right wing ideologies (e.g. neoliberal or conservative politicians, or business representatives). This spatial organization embodies differences of opinion that, as mentioned, by-and-large drives panel debates. But how the orchestration is administered in practice is an empirical question that requires closer scrutiny to answer.

The present study examines sequences from six episodes of Debatten (a total of 384 minutes), aired between 2018 and 2021. Climate change communication research has found that debates about climate change tend to reveal disagreements about implications rather than facts themselves (Markowitz and Guckian, 2018: 36). The six episodes from Debatten confirm this overall finding.

For example, IEs debate questions such as: Is tourism justifiable? How should we produce energy in the future? Can we continue to have livestock in large scale? The excerpts are transcribed with the CA-notation technique (see Appendix): English translations are placed in italics below the original Danish lines.

Analysis

The following sections will detail two indicative ways in which IR allocates turns among IEs and enable different perspectives on the climate to be voiced. For the sake of comparability, all examples involve allocating the floor from an IE on the right axis to a participant on the left axis. Selecting the next speaker, and quite often cutting-off the current speaker in doing so, is the driving force of panel debates, and the two ways chosen for scrutiny are: (1) stand-alone next speaker reference in which IR hands the floor from one IE to another without comments, instructions, or accompanying questions, but simply by uttering the next speaker’s name; (2) prefatory address term (i.e. uttering the next speaker’s name) followed by a question that implicitly projects disagreement, for example, ‘X, what do you make of this argument’. As we shall see, these two methods confirm Greatbatch’s aforementioned observation that IRs seek to ‘generate vigorous interaction while, on the other, guarding against accusations of bias’ (Greatbatch, 1992: 272).

Stand-alone next speaker reference

The first method is verbally minimalistic: IR recurrently appoints the next speaker simply by calling her/his name in a stand-alone reference. Such a stand-alone next speaker reference minimizes integral sequential features such as agenda setting, embodiment of presuppositions, and incorporation of preferences that constitute IRs’ questions during news interviews, though typically used in ways that ensure IRs’ formal neutrality (Clayman and Heritage, 2002: 192). Arguably, stand-alone next speaker reference embodies the ‘marginalization of the interviewer’s substantive journalistic role’, which Clayman (2002: 1399) suggests is a consequence of the rise of the panel interview format. Stand-alone next speaker reference, thus, formally maximizes panel participants’ relative freedom to express what they find relevant. This section shows that the open-ended turn-allocation of the IR contributes to facilitate a space in which IEs produce utterances that are rhetorically argumentative and contribute to adversarial relations between the participants.

Excerpt 1 provides an illustration. It is from a trajectory in which only two participants debate, that is, one person occupies each axis. The dyadic format makes IR’s current job less a matter of allocating who speaks next and more a matter of administering when. But this type of trajectory also clearly shows the significance of journalistically deciding who is to occupy the axes: which positions are treated representative? The example is from September 2019 where the participants debate a law proposal (that was subsequently passed) in which Denmark commits to a 70% emission reduction by 2030. The participants in the excerpt are Pernille Vermund (PV), the leader of Nye Borgerlige, a populist right-wing party who singlehandedly opposed the proposal, and Mickey Gjerris (MG), a scholar in bioethics and climate activist. As we enter the debate, PV explains why she is against the proposal, arguing that such an intrusive reduction is ‘irrational’. In line 03, IR allocates the floor to MG who explains that he is in full favor of the proposal, but subsequently (not in transcript) conveys worry that the goal might be difficult to reach in practice.

Ex 1: Green transition. 5:15-5:21.

01. PV: * (…) man spiller på folks fø:lelser i stedet for at forholde sig you exploit people’s emotions instead of dealing with this *IR withholds his arm towards PV 02. #1ratio⌈nelt °til dette #2*her°. rationally 03. IR: ⌊Gjerris*. *IR turns to face MG *IR points at MG; MG gazes at IR 04. *(.5). *IR lowers his arm, turns around, moves backwards 05. MG: Altså jeg synes jo det er et strålende ideal (…) Well I think it’s an excellent ideal

#1 #2

IR calls out the next speaker using only his last name in line 03. This stand-alone next speaker reference overlaps with PV’s mid-turn talk and prompts her to complete. He initially withholds his arm toward her (see picture #1), signaling that she still has the floor but should prepare to round up. As IR names MG in line 03, he turns his gaze and arm toward him and points to convey that the floor is his. This creates a speaker-change transition space in which PV completes with a somewhat incremental preposition phrase expressed sotto voce (line 02), and IR turns around and moves backwards, showing MG that he may expect to hold the floor for some time (line 05). MG begins with a positive assessment of the proposal as an ‘excellent ideal’. This initial assessment ties to PV’s previous assertion, conveying that he fundamentally disagrees with her position. Thus, we witness that IR uses a next speaker reference to make the current speaker to complete and give the floor to another IE. As a stand-alone item, the reference defers entirely from agenda setting. But, like MG in line 05, next speakers tend to position themselves in relation to the topic in question and the previous IE’s last assertion (cf., the preference for contiguity in conversation, see Sacks, 1987). Recurrently offering the floor to someone from the other axis may therefore serve to orchestrate disagreement and, in this respect, generate debate.

The following two excerpts are from trajectories in which more panelists participate as these allow us to inspect how stand-alone next speaker reference also implies selecting among the participants who currently occupy the axis, and how such selection may serve voice to opposing points of views. The next example shows an IE expanded trajectory where opposing members of the political spectrum and representatives of very different interest groups debate oil production. Since 1972, Denmark has licensed contractors to extract oil from the North Sea. In the slipstream of the latest tender round for further production of oil in 2018 various individuals, decision-maker and organizations (e.g. The Danish Council on Climate Change) began to question whether renewed contracts to produce more oil could be justified. Such questions were discussed in an episode of Debatten from June 2020. As picture #3–4 below depict, four IEs are present in the current trajectory: on the left axis, Morten Østergaard, then political leader of a center-left party, and Helene Hagel (HH), who is head of climate and environmental policy at Greenpeace in Denmark; on the right axis, Morten Messerschmidt, a prominent member of a nationalistic right-wing party, and Martin Næsby (MN), who is managing director in the trade association Oil Gas Denmark. In line 01, he argues that if Denmark abstains from oil production neighboring countries might extract it in less sustainable ways.

Ex 2. Airline industry and oil production. 31:56-32:21

01. MN: (…) landene om Nordsøen de øh ønsker at producere the countries around the North Sea they wish to produce 02. de ressourcer der er .h det skal gøre forsvarligt the resources there are it has to be done responsibly 03. på en måde som belaster klimaet #3 ↑mindst muligt. in a way that burdens the climate the least possible. 04. IR: *Hagel.#4 *IR looks and points at HH 05. HH: *Altså ø:hm (.6) det her med at belaste klimaet mindst muligt Well erhh the issue with burdening the climate the least possible *All participants gaze at HH 06. det er jo sådan et argument vi ofte hører både fra politikere og fra that’s the kind of argument we often hear both from politicians and from 07. industrien selv .h at grunden til at Danmark skal blive ved at industry itself that the reason why Denmark should keep 08. producere og udvide vores produktion det er fordi vi gør det på en producing and expand our production it’s because we do it in a relative 09. relativ grøn måde ⌈.h problemet er bare at det ikke er selve green way the problem is just that it’s not 10. IR: ⌊Mm. 11. HH: produktionen der har den største klimabelastning det er jo når vi the production itself that burdens the climate the most it’s when we 12. afbrænder olien (…) burn the oil

#3 #4

Following MN’s turn completion in line 02, IR selects HH as the next speaker using a verbal stand-alone reference in conjunction with a pointing gesture and directing his gaze toward her (see picture #4). Again, the format defers from setting an agenda for the participant’s subsequent turn, but HH nonetheless, on her own initiative, orients toward contiguity by initially refuting MN’s prior argument in lines 05–12. Taking a closer look at the refutation she reuses MN’s specific choice of words (i.e. ‘burdening the climate the least possible’), as conversationalists often do in conflicts (e.g. Goodwin, 2017: 34), highlights the reuse by placing it grammatically in left-dislocated position, and frames it as a general ‘issue’. This dismissal of MN’s reasoning makes it relevant for HH to subsequently convey her own and ‘better’ take on the matter by continuing with a recommendation to stop producing oil altogether (not in transcript). Thus, line 05 provides a detailed illustration of how panel participants may enact contiguity in the service of subsequent opposition in which HH counterargues that it is the use of oil, which burdens the climate the most, not its production.

In this section’s final example, IR invokes a stand-alone next-speaker reference to influence not just who speaks next during a trajectory with many IEs, ensuring contrasting points of views. IR also invokes the stand-alone next-speaker reference to actively prompt the current speaker to complete. In other words, the example represents a combination of features we have witnessed in the two first excerpts. The program is from autumn 2019. It evolves around consumer culture and its climate consequences. Participants debate the phenomenon ‘Black Friday’. Four panelists take part in the current trajectory (see pictures #5–7 below): on the left axis, Kasper Aamand Petersen represents a sustainable fashion shop, and Lars Køhler (LK) represents The Counsel for Green Transition; on the right axis, Peder Stendal is CEO of a large chain store, and Alex Vanopslagh (AV) is the leader of a neoliberal political party. AV has defended free market forces and questioned whether anybody ever overconsumes. In lines 01–04, he lashes out to critics of Black Friday suggesting that they stigmatize individuals who rely upon sales to purchase necessary items.

Ex 3. Black Friday. 10:02-10:26

01. AV: (…) men vi skal passe på i den debat at vi ikke ender med But we should be careful in this debate that we don’t end out 02. at udskamme halvdelen af befolkingen fordi de ikke #5 har de p:- øh shaming half of the population because they don’t have the 03. priv*ilegier #6 som nogle af de mest velstillede i samfundet privilegies that some of the most well-off in society *IR raises his arm 04. ha⌈r og det risikerer vi ⌈med dette her. have and that’s a risk here. 05. IR: ⌊*Køhler.#7 *IR turns towards LK; points at him 06: LK: ⌊Det sidste er jeg fuldstændig enig i vi=vi The latter I completely agree with we we 07. bliver nødt til at balancere denne her omstilling øh og vi ka- vi har have to balance this transition and we 08. simpelthen ikke tid til at tabe folk på på gulvet .h så den sidste del simply don’t have time to loose anyone so the latter part 09. er jeg meget enig i men=men hvad var det du sagde? Det er simpelthen I agree with very much but but what did you say? It’s plain 10. forkert (.) Alex .h vores <forbrug udgør over en tredjedel> .h af vores wrong Alex our consumption forms more than a third of our 11. samlede klimapåvirkning, .h Det er en (.) kæmpe del af det .h (…) total climate impact It’s a huge part of it

#5 #6 #7

IEs are generally allowed to express themselves in multi-unit turns in Debatten. Following a lengthy turn, IR produces a stand-alone next speaker reference to allocate the floor from AV to LK in line 05. The reference itself is produced in overlap with AV. IR appears to orient toward the overlap as recognitial, that is, AV may not himself convey that he is done with his turn, but ‘that which is being said within and through it has been made perfectly available’ (Jefferson, 1984: 12). Consequently, AV ‘rounds up’ in line 05. The stand-alone next speaker reference is once again prepared bodily. Picture #5 illustrates how IR extends his arm toward AV to convey that he has the floor, but not for much longer. In line 03, IR raises his arm further (see picture #6) to prepare the forceful pointing gesture toward LK – almost as if throwing a ball in his direction – that accompanies IR’s turn to the left, gaze at LK, and the verbal next speaker reference. Looking at LK’s turn in lines 06–11, we find another example of contiguity orientation in that LK explicitly begins with declaring himself in agreement with ‘the latter’ part of AV’s multi-unit turn. This declaration is grammatically highlighted with the use of inversion. Following the elaboration of why he agrees (lines 07–08) he reiterates the declaration of agreement (‘so the latter part I agree with very much’), which he uses as point of departure to convey a contrast with the conjunction ‘men’ (‘but’) that leads to overt disagreement, that is, another series of turn-construction units in which LK – similar to what has been described as third position repairs (Schegloff, 1992) – corrects AV’s prior assertions about consumption.

Summing up, stand-alone next speaker reference is a verbally minimalistic way for IR to allocate the floor to another IE: IR reduces his role to mostly deciding who should speak next. Despite its simplicity the format is quite potent in the sense that it enables IR to make designated IEs position themselves in contrast to each other, that is, orchestrating the climate debate as a display of opposing perspectives. Furthermore, the format is used to make current speakers terminate their turns and – because of the preference for contiguity in conversation – have next speakers comment upon the specific perspective, which was voiced in the previous speaker’s last assertion.

Prefatory address term + interrogative that implicitly projects disagreement

The second overall method for allocating turns between panel participants is verbally more expansive: IR appoints next speakers with a reference to their name followed by a question. Technically, this makes the next speaker reference a prefatory address term, that is, a turn-initial explicit reference to the recipient, which conversationalists generally invoke for a number of reasons (see Clayman, 2013). Much has been said about journalists’ complex use of questions during news interviews to act critical yet sustain formal neutrality. Clayman (2002): 1386) argues that neutrality becomes further complicated in panel debates where IR’s ‘conduct toward, and treatment of, successive interviewees can be compared, contrasted, and scrutinized for evidence of partiality or favoritism’. But IR can accountably avoid accusations of loaded inquiries that (poorly) mask personal opinions by posing questions that primarily seek to have participants comment upon each other’s positions. Different kinds of question designs can elicit such comments. This section will focus upon a particular format: interrogatives that implicitly project disagreement, which the designated next speaker is invited to elaborate.

Implicit projection of disagreement is accomplished in several ways. One of them is, perhaps slightly counter-intuitive, to design the question so that it seemingly anticipates agreement. This design occasions explanation slots when next speakers disagree, that is, make it relevant for them to explain why they answer the way they do (Antaki, 1994: 84–86). Consider excerpt 4. IEs debate the pace in which society should transition. In line 01, Carsten Bach (CB), a liberalistic politician, has argued against a forced green transition with reference to lack of popular support. IR then interrupts CB with a question to Maria Gjerding (MG), chair of The Danish society for Nature Conservation.

Ex 4. The climate battle. 12:07-12:19

01. CB: *(…) hvor ↑alle partier i Folke⌈tinget- Where all parties in Parliament *IR has his arm extended towards CB 02. IR: ⌊Maria Gjerding *(.)#8 Maria Gjerding *IR turns his gaze and arm towards Maria Gjerding on the lext axis 03. er det ikke fuldstændig rigtigt har Carsten Bach ikke en pointe isn’t it completely correct doesn’t Carsten Bach make a point 04. her hvis man skal gennemføre dette her så må man have here that if you are to carry this out you need ((two lines omitted)) 05. befolkningen med .h man er nødt til at sikre at vi the support of the population you need to ensure that we 06. ↑stadigvæk kan tjene penge=at vi stadigvæk kan gå på arbejde og still can make money that we still can go to work and 07. at vi stadigvæk kan forbruge .h ellers så står vælgerne (.) ↓af, that we still can consume or else that voters will pass. 08. MG: Jeg tror #9 faktisk at meget store dele af befolkningen er helt I belive actually that very large parts of the population entirely 09. med på at dette her der skal ske nu det er drastisk (…) appriciate that what’s about to happen is drastic

#8 #9

There is a lot to observe in IR’s turn in lines 02–07. The first time IR utters ‘Maria Gjerding’ in line 02 he still gazes at the current speaker, CB, and has his arm extended toward him to prepare imminent completion (like excerpts 1 and 3). This makes CB halt abruptly. As IR then utters ‘Maria Gjerding’ once again, he begins to turn his gaze and arm toward her. In other words, the first prefatory address term orients toward making the current speaker stop, and the second toward establishing Maria Gjerding as the recipient of the subsequent question and identifying her as the next speaker. IR then produces two consecutive questions in line 03 that formally encourages Maria Gjerding to agree with his subsequent sum-up of CB’s position in lines 04–07 in which he invokes a three-part list, money, work, and consumption, as part of a conditional clause. The two polar questions propose as their candidate answers that CB is ‘completely correct’ and ‘makes a point’, and they are designed as negative interrogatives that grammatically favor ‘yes’ replies (see Heinemann, 2010). Yet, Maria Gjerding does not agree, let alone reply type-conformingly to the polar questions. She refutes CB’s reasoning, as summed up by IR, arguing that the population at large appreciates the need for a massive green transition, using among others the adverb ‘faktisk’ that, like its English counterpart ‘actually’, may orient toward doing a dispreferred action (Clift, 2001). Thus, we witness how an IE is implicitly encouraged to explain why she disagrees with the previous speaker’s last assertion.

Excerpt 5 represents another illustration. The program is from 2020 where the airline industry was largely shutdown because of COVID-19. The discussion goes: should the airline industry receive financial support that enables a return to normal business after the pandemic, or should airline traffic radically downscale because of its huge CO2 imprint? Four IEs take part in the current trajectory, two of them actively in excerpt 4: to the right in pictures 10–11, Thilde Waast (TW) who is chair in the interest organization Flight Personnel Union, and to the left Nynne Juul (NJ) who is spokesperson for the activist group Extinction Rebellion. Here, TW completes a lengthy turn in which she praises the Danish airline industry for its green ambitions and argues that the industry should, therefore, be supported financially rather than being forced to shut down.

Ex 5. Airline industry and oil production. 10:17-10:28

01. TW: (…) .h men det kræver at vi tør satse but it requires that we have the courage to progress 02. den vej i stedet for øh at lukke #10 den ned. this way instead of erhm shutting it down. 03. IR: *Nynne (.2) *køber du #11 den? Nynne are you buying it? *IR gazes at NJ *Panel participants gaze at NJ 04. (.3) 05. NJ: ø:h ↓Nej (.) det gør jeg ikke,=.h altså hvis man ↑har en ↑sygdom (…) Erh No I don’t well if you have a disease

#10 #11

Awaiting TW’s possible completion in line 02, IR allocates the turn to NJ using a prefatory address term and an accompanying gaze shift, which both call attention to NJ, followed by the concise question: ‘are you buying it’? It is a polar question. On the one hand, this question might, at least on the surface, formally look like a candidate answer question that simply prefers a confirmation, which NJ’s initial hesitations when disconfirming could suggest (Pomerantz, 1988). On the other hand, the phrasing ‘køber du den’ (‘are you buying it’) construes a sense of naivety on behalf of the person who answers ‘yes’, which means that it implicitly projects disagreement.¹ In line 05, we see how NJ treats the question as an occasion to distinctively disagree and elaborate at great length why she disagrees with TW’s reasoning, comparing the climate crisis to a health crisis such as the pandemic that requires immediate and resolute action (line 05 an onward).

Rather than preferring ‘yes’ or ‘no’ like polar interrogatives, WH-questions embody different kinds/various degrees of presuppositions, which news interviewers commonly exploit to ask critical yet neutralistic questions (Clayman and Heritage, 2002: 203 ff.). WH-question sometimes serve similar purposes in Debatten. For instance, IR may challenge IEs’ assertions with WH-questions that ask for substantiation. But IR’s WH-questions can also solicit opposing IE perspectives on questions that relate to climate change implications: WH-questions may invite next speakers to elaborate why they disagree with the previous speaker’s position. The final excerpt is from the same trajectory as excerpt 3. Here, Peder Stendal (PS), CEO of a large chain store, defends the Black Friday concept by arguing that it enables regular households to replace dated appliances with more efficient products. In line 04–05, IR passes the floor to Køhler (LK), climate advisor at The Counsel for Green Transition.

Ex 6. Black Friday 16:25-16:38

01. PS: hvis man køber et rigtig godt køleskab ja men så kan man som n- øh en if you buy a really good refrigerator well then as a 02. almindelig husholdning sparre fem=seks=syv tusind kroner om ↑å:ret regular household you can save fem six seven thousand crowns a year 03. ved at have det rigtige køleskab, #12 ⌈.h by having the right refrigerator 04. IR: ⌊Køhler hvad er der galt med den Køhler what’s wrong with that 05. #13logik? logic? 06. LK: Nej men det=det ↓uh det er en øh (.) det er en frygtlig kompleks No but it it uh it’s a erh it’s a terribly complex 07. beregning #14 (…) calculation

#12 #13 #14

As PS pauses to take an inbreath in line 03, IR calls upon Køhler from the left axis and asks him to comment upon PS’ assertion with the question: ‘what’s wrong with that logic’? Formally, it presupposes that there is something wrong the assertion, which LK is encouraged to unfold. But it could also be perceived as a rhetorical wh-question, a class that in everyday usage often acts like negative assertions (see Koshik, 2003: 52). In this case, the question would then suggest quite the opposite, that is, that there is nothing wrong with PS’ logic: he makes a point. It is futile to try to validate either interpretation analytically, fixating on one option or the other. Rather, we may observe that even though this ambiguity is inherent in the question, the communicative outcome is the same, that is, LK is either explicitly or implicitly encouraged to disagree – as he does in line 06 and onward. He initially expresses reservations contesting the logic in line 06 with a turn-initial negation, restarts and hesitation markers, and beginning his subsequent reasoning by acknowledging the calculation as ‘terribly complex’.

This section has detailed how IR expands the structure we witnessed in the previous section: he calls upon an IE from the opposite axis and asks this participant a question. What makes these questions special is that they (a) distinctively ask next speakers to position themselves in relation to the previous speaker’s last assertion and (b) implicitly project disagreement. These features enable IR to, on the one hand, avoid ‘footing’ issues and accusations of favoritism that may come with asking questions on one’s own behalf, and, on the other hand, generate lively debates that paints clear contrasts to public viewers.

Concluding remarks

As human-caused greenhouse gas emissions continue to break climate records, making the planet increasingly warmer and the threat of irreversible tipping points ever more likely, we need more action and less talk. In this light it might seem peculiar to propose CA as a novel social scientific part of the solution. But, of course, talk is not just part of the problem, it is also a big part of the solution. As pointed out by environmental psychologists, being exposed to- and taking active part in climate change conversation is essential in mobilizing motivation to act:

“(. . .) conversations can expose individuals to information about climate change, prompt reflection about the topic, and potentially facilitate a heightened awareness of the importance of the topic and the seriousness of the risk”. (Swim et al., 2018: 67)

Selected as a significant and exposed arena for climate change conversation, the study has examined how perspectives are orchestrated through management of turn-taking in Debatten. The Analysis confirmed prior CA research that the panel debate is a tightly structured format in which IRs play a central role as turn-taking administrators, which they exploit to solicit disagreement amongst IEs (Greatbatch, 1992). Furthermore, the analysis confirmed that the format may involve downscaling IR’s ‘substantive journalistic role’ (Clayman, 2002: 1399): instead of asking critical ‘watchdog’ questions, IR makes IEs comment upon each other’s’ assertions and place themselves in opposition.

Two of the ways in which IR advances this interactional pattern are: (1) with the use of stand-alone next speaker reference (integrated with bodily action such as gaze and gesture) and (2) using prefatory address term followed by an interrogative that implicitly projects disagreement. There is no need to repeat the analytic findings here. Suffice it to say that using these methods IR goes to great length to avoid favoritism, yet ensure contiguity, progressivity, IE disagreement, and clear contrasts between IEs’ positions as also embodied by the two axes. This takes us back to the point of departure. Much media research has examined journalistic representation of climate perspectives and found that journalists often seek to achieve balance and objectivity by covering each side to the story equally. The flipside to this democratic ideal is that contrarians are provided opportunity to question anthropogenic climate change in public, which polarizes the debate and breeds further skepticism. The present study has documented a somewhat similar tendency in televised climates debates. The studio is spatially organized to embody visible contrasts, and IEs are invited to represent clear differences in opinion, which IR’s turn-taking management enacts. As mentioned, Debatten rarely concerns if humans are responsible for global warming, but rather what we should do to reduce it – perhaps consume less, fly less, end oil production, set ambitious political goals etc. Consequently, it is not so much a matter of reproducing an overarching polarization between climate realists and contrarians as a question whether the debate produces multiple polarizations between representatives of different interests and ideologies, notably activists that demand immediate action versus ‘delayers’, for example, business representatives that counterargue against immediate action with reference to economic interests and free-market prerogatives etc.

It is beyond the scope of this study to comment upon the implications of the turn from an overall to a range of polarizations. For instance, what do public viewers make of it? Does the turn reflect a societal acceptance of the need to find necessary solutions to reduce emissions? Does the debate help? Or does the vast representation of business and political right-wing perspectives feed the ‘dragons of inaction’ (Gifford, 2011)? Further social science research using other methods must tell.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Søren Beck Nielsen, PhD, is an associate professor in psychology of language at University of Copenhagen. He uses conversation analysis to examine talk-in-interaction in socially significant situations. He has previously published several studies on medical encounters in primary and secondary care. Currently, he investigates how actors talk about climate change in institutional and private settings.

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