The politics of conversation

To understand our core political institutions and the power dynamics that sustain, challenge, and transform them, we need to understand the conversations that are foundational to them. Through conversation, different actors – from politicians, to journalists, to ordinary citizens – participate, collaborate, intervene, exclude, silence, and hold each other to account. Conversation analysis allows us to identify and describe how power is displayed and wielded – second by second, breath by breath, gesture by gesture – through communication practices such as silence, laughter, hesitation, and interruption. Professor Elizabeth Stokoe tells the story of classic and (in)famous political conversations. These conversations show how people, from news interviewers to ordinary citizens, hold politicians to account – and sometimes get caught out in political encounters themselves.