Comment?Power Is as Power Does

Abstract

I am in agreement with what I take to be Max Travers' (2006) central point: that various disciplines that comprise diffuse field of law and language studies should converge on third way of understanding issue of context (446). This third way, he hopes, will reconcile conversation analysis, which he views as methodologically powerful but theoretically limited, and ethnographically based research that seeks to relate what happens in talk to wider structures of inequality (454). I also find plausible his suggestion that a model for third way can be found in the sociological traditions of ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism (446), though I wish he had developed it more fully in this sometimes meandering article. The reservations I have are thus not about Travers' conclusions, but path he takes to reach them, in particular his treatment of existing research traditions. He writes in an argumentative, sometimes polemical style that he believes (personal communication) is necessary to make people reflect critically on their assumptions. I approve: article is lively and readable, and critique always seems well intentioned. But substance of his description of previous and current research sometimes strikes me as materially off mark. Indeed, characterization seems too often to lapse into caricature. At a minimum, this can distract reader from thread of what is a significant argument. At worst, it might undermine Travers' credibility in minds of very readers he is trying to persuade. Regrettably, problem is most serious with respect to fundamental question of extent to which third way is already being realized.