Deontic Authority in Interaction: The Right to Announce, Propose, and Decide

Abstract

Someone's “deontic authority” is their right to determine others' future actions. It can be acquiesced to or resisted. This article introduces, more systematically than before, the concept to close examination of talk-in-interaction. Drawing on video recordings of planning meetings as data and on conversation analysis as a method, we examine two classes of utterances: (a) first speakers' suggestions for future events and (b) second speakers' responses, which, besides acquiescing to or resisting these plans, also acquiesce to or resist the first speakers' rights to make them. Where the second speakers align with the deontic rights allocated to them by the first speakers, we call this “deontic congruence.” “Deontic incongruence,” on the other hand, is where the second speaker resists the suggested distribution of deontic rights. These are far-reaching claims in social life, and we show how they are displayed in the organization of talk.