From difference to divergence

This paper considers the tension which develops among participants present at a health planning meeting, and describes the ‘ymbolic violence’ Bourdieu 1991) committed by two speakers on another. The focus will be on the contradiction that arises between bureaucratic discourse which is oriented towards ‘ue process’ and the interpersonalising trend of the talk towards conflict. The paper presents an analysis of around ninety turns of talk, with the purpose of showing two things. First, because the talk is enacted in a formal context and through the bureaucratic register,it is constrained in terms of the ways in which the interpersonal politics can be acted out. Second, the divergence between the speakers’ interactive styles is shown to gradually exacerbate. To be able to bring out this interactive dynamic, the paper provides a ‘ogogenetic’ analysis of the interaction, maintaining an analytical dialectic among levels of language and context. Logogenesis here refers to an analytical perspective which regards the unfolding of meaning in both a systemic (meanings mobilising specific domains of language and not others) and a text-historicising way (meanings ‘evolve’ rom one another in the course of interaction and reinforce or stand in tension with one another).