Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

DOI 10.1007/s11133-011-9206-0

Speaking of the Future: Contentious Narration

During the Cuban Missile Crisis

David R. Gibson

Published online: 23 September 2011

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract People tell stories about not only the past, but also the future, particularly when
contemplating difficult decisions. When such stories are constructed aloud, in conversation,
the potential for disagreement is pervasive because no one can claim to have witnessed the
future and thus no one can claim the sole right to narrate it. Consequently, storytelling
procedures need to be broadened to accommodate a diversity of opinions about causes and
consequences. This article argues that those procedures are based on an expanded notion of
narrative relevance, and illustrates their operation in the deliberations of the Executive
Committee of the National Security Council during the Cuban missile crisis. These
storytelling procedures provided scaffolding for the deliberations about possible U.S. responses
after the discovery of Soviet missiles; they delimited the “moving front” for skirmishes around
possible scenarios and outcomes; and they were partly constitutive of the discursive grounds for
Kennedy’s decisions.

Keywords Stories . Decisions . Future . Crisis

Introduction

Much of life is routine, and a good day, for many of us, is one in which we are not forced to
make any major decisions. But sometimes routines fail and stark choices have to be made.
For Dewey (1910, 11), this was the essence of genuine thought: “Thinking begins in what
may fairly enough be called a forked-road situation,” he wrote, “a situation which is
ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives”.
The imagery of the forked road suggests well-defined options, and the ambiguity of
which Dewey spoke seems to pertain to the question of preferability rather than to what
those options consist of. And, at least in this passage, Dewey wrote as if the options are
discerned and weighed by a solitary mind. Thus, what we have is the lone actor confronted

D. R. Gibson (*)
Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, 113 McNeil Building,
Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
e-mail: gibsond@sas.upenn.edu
504 Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

with a difficult decision between distinct alternatives. Yet sometimes alternatives are not so
much presented as actively carved out, less plucked from the shelf than chiseled from stone.
And sometimes the process of crafting options and deliberating between them is interactive,
based in talk (as Dewey [1927] well knew) and subject to its rules and requirements (e.g.,
Sacks et al. 1974).
Elsewhere I have referred to talk about possible futures as “foretalk” (Gibson
forthcoming). Foretalk arguably shapes decisions through two mechanisms. First, inasmuch
as foretalk brings to light possibilities that we might not otherwise have imagined (Carroll
1978), or at least imagined clearly, it is phenomenologically constitutive, depositing mental
models of possible futures, more or less elaborated (Mische 2009), on the basis of which
decisions can be made. Second, decision-makers may anticipate the need to justify their
decisions after the fact (Garfinkel 1967) through appeal to what was said aloud—that is, in
terms of what others advised them to do or cautioned them against doing—which will give
them another, more calculating reason to act in a way commensurate with that talk. Either
way, talk matters, and our understanding of how decisions arise out of talk, insofar as they
do, demands that we begin with the study of foretalk.
Individuals may confront difficult choices only occasionally, but that does not mean that
such choices are hard to find. Examples include choices about family (e.g., whether to have
another child) and career (e.g., whether to change jobs), both of which may be discussed
with others. Professional decision-makers, such as investors and executives, presumably
encounter them more often still, and political decision-makers—those holding the reins of
ultimate power and responsibility—perhaps most of all. Decisions about war and other sorts
of international crises are especially stark because so much is at stake, because such
divergent outcomes are imaginable, and because presidential decisions in this realm are so
immediately consequential. When those decisions are made in consultation with others
(e.g., Woodward 2010) we have foretalk in extremis.
It is hardly hyperbole to say that in the annals of conversations about the future, perhaps
the most fateful were the discussions of the Executive Committee of the National Security
Council, or the ExComm, during the Cuban missile crisis. Following the discovery of
Soviet nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba on October 15th, 1962, President John F.
Kennedy assembled his top advisers in the Cabinet Room for a long series of meetings
about the meaning of the provocation and possible responses. On the basis of these
discussions, and in light of the possible futures that they sketched out, Kennedy decided to
respond with a blockade of the island and a threat of later military action; then to enforce
that blockade sparingly (allowing Soviet ships to pass unmolested while intercepting
foreign ships under Soviet charter); and finally to accept a deal involving a U.S. pledge not
to invade Cuba, accompanied by a secret promise to remove NATO nuclear missiles from
Turkey (Fursenko and Naftali 1997; Gibson forthcoming).
This article focuses on the opening days of the crisis, when stories about the future were
most elaborate, drawing upon extraordinary audio recordings of the ExComm’s
deliberations secretly made by Kennedy. My first goal is to identify the procedures used
to construct stories about the future, procedures that answer the perennial conversational
question: What next? These procedures are related to those used to construct narratives
about the past, but need to allow for a greater range of discursive moves in recognition of
the undecided nature of the future. My second goal—pursued simultaneously—is to show
how ExComm members used these procedures to advance competing stories about the
future, and thus to offer competing recommendations.
I begin with a brief review of research on storytelling. This has focused almost
exclusively on stories about the past, on how they are structured, and on how people
Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522 505

sometimes collaboratively produce them. I argue that stories about the future are different
because no one can claim the exclusive right to narrate the future by virtue of having “been
there”; further, because the future is open-ended, a story about it can develop in radically
different ways, making narrative interventions especially consequential. Next, I describe the
research setting and then the data. In the analysis I propose, and provide evidence for, a
deducible typology of narrative claims that subsumes linear stories about the past but that
also allows for the wider range of discursive moves found in stories about the future (and,
to some extent, in stories about especially contested pasts). Concurrently, I show how
ExComm members used these options to argue for, and against, particular visions of what
the U.S. should do. In the discussion I explain how Kennedy’s hallmark decision—to
impose a blockade rather than immediately bomb Cuba—was only possible when
people stopped availing themselves of these options so as to permit simple linear
narratives to be told by solitary speakers.

Stories: Past and Future

At a minimum, a story is a succession of clauses, or event claims (that such-and-such

happened), structured in such a way that the order of clauses recapitulates, for the most part,
the order of events being described (Labov and Waletzky 1967). The chronological
template is often reinforced with such clause-initial connectors as and then and after that. A
storyteller generally has the “epistemic authority” (Heritage and Raymond 2005) to deliver
a story with minimum interruption, by virtue of having been present at the events being
described; however, others may contribute by backchanneling (e.g., uh huh) and asking
questions, moving the story along through a show of interest. Moreover, when multiple
people witnessed the events being narrated, they may collaborate in the narration, taking
turns in the role of storyteller and aiding one another with names and other details (Eder
1988; Lerner 1992).
The discussion thus far makes it seem as if the person (or people) with epistemic
authority is (are) in the driver’s seat, taking encouragement from others but not otherwise
allowing them to alter the course of the story. Mandelbaum (1989) shows one way in which
audience members can use the limited opportunities afforded them to achieve more of an
impact, namely by asking questions that elicit details that alter the story’s import, that is, the
action achieved by the story—in her example, the evaluation delivered about the person
originally slated to be the story’s “butt.” We could also imagine co-narrators (such as
husband and wife) struggling over the version of events to be produced on this occasion to
this audience, deploying the techniques of collaborative narration even as they pursue
contradictory goals.
This last example points to the potential contestability of stories about the past, and the
collective memory literature is replete with empirical instances (e.g., Roy 1994; Wagner-
Pacifici 1994). Stories about the future take this contestability even further. The reason is
that no one has seen the future, or can purport to have spoken to someone who did, so no
one has a strong claim on the epistemic authority to deliver a story about it without
interference from others (though some may claim to be relatively more expert in the realm
being discussed). This points to the need for storytelling procedures that accommodate
disagreement while still safeguarding the story’s chronological coherence, procedures that
may also shed light on conversations about contested pasts.
Another way that stories about the future differ from stories about the past is in their
path-dependency and in the sense of conversational urgency this may impart. Stories about
506 Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

the past have to be consistent with things that everyone agrees happened (Bennett and
Feldman 1981), which forces competing stories to converge at key nodes (Bearman et al.
1999): a body was found, a bloody glove discovered, a battle lost. Stories about the future,
in contrast, can head in very different directions depending on how they are narrated,
culminating in a broken household or a happy marriage, a superpower détente or a nuclear war.
From the perspective of the story’s coherence, the important thing is that every event that is
narrated as potentially happening is plausible given all events that were narrated as preceding it.
Consequently, a single contribution to a narrative-in-progress can alter its trajectory, while the
failure to contribute may allow a story to develop in a way that a fuller discussion of possible
risks might not have allowed (Gibson 2011). This raises the stakes in speaking, providing
interlocutors with motivation to avail themselves of the resources of future narration.

Research Setting and Data

The ExComm’s commitment to critically talking through possible scenarios, or futures, was
born in the Bay of Pigs. When Kennedy took office in January of 1961, he learned of a
scheme conceived under Eisenhower to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro—who was
growing progressively closer to Moscow—by “invading” the island with about 1,400 CIA-
trained and -equipped Cuban exiles. Kennedy was skeptical of the plan but feared the
consequences of scrapping it and then seeming weak regarding Castro when the aborted
invasion invariably came to light. The exiles were routed four months later, arguably
because Kennedy had insisted on changes in the invasion plan that were intended to ensure
U.S. deniability but that doomed it to failure.1 Kennedy publicly accepted responsibility,
but also blamed his advisers, and the CIA, for failing to express reservations that, after the
fact, they claimed to have harbored (Rasenberger 2011, 131–41, 159, 181, 319).
A week after the failed invasion, Kennedy’s National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy
penned a memo that bluntly indicted everyone for their failure to adequately talk things
through. “The President and his advisers must second-guess even military plans,” he wrote.
“What is and is not implied in any specific partial decision must always be thought
through” (qtd. in Rasenberger 2011, 335). Everyone seemed to take this to heart eighteen
months later, when Kennedy summoned his top defense and foreign-policy officials, along
with his brother Robert Kennedy (the Attorney General),2 to the Cabinet Room to discuss
possible responses to the discovery of the missiles, and then, once the decision was made to
impose a blockade, how it should be implemented and, later still, what sort of deal should
be struck with Khrushchev.
Kennedy secretly tape recorded about twenty hours of the ExComm’s meetings—
virtually all of the meetings that he attended, with the exception of two early in the crisis
that had to be held somewhere other than the Cabinet Room, where the microphones were
concealed, in order to keep the ExComm’s work a secret.3 His motivation in going to such
efforts is unclear. One possibility is that he wanted a record of what his advisers
recommended, so that the right people could be held accountable in the event of another

1
Kennedy also canceled a second air strike against Cuban air fields, leaving much of the Cuban air force
intact and available for the counterattack (Rasenberger 2011, 220–31).
2
ExComm members are listed and identified in Appendix A.
3
Less formal meetings in the State Department, which Kennedy was not present for, were also not recorded.
More information about the recordings can be found in Gibson (forthcoming), especially Chapter 1 and
Appendix D. The audio recordings are available online at http://whitehousetapes.net/tapes/kennedy/meetings.
Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522 507

disaster like the Bay of Pigs. Another is that he simply wanted an accurate record for the
sake of his eventual memoirs (Stern 2003, xxi).
This article focuses on the first three tape recorded meetings, two on Tuesday October
16th (the first day of the crisis), and one midday on Thursday October 18th. It was during
these meetings, and several others that went unrecorded between the 17th and 20th, that the
ExComm deliberated between the main options in terms of the initial U.S. reaction to the
missiles, which included doing nothing (never seriously entertained); an immediate air
strike (of which there were several variations); and a blockade, perhaps in conjunction with
a threat of military action if the missiles were not removed.
Strong objections could be raised against every option, and true to Bundy’s rebuke following
the Bay of Pigs, they were. Doing nothing, it was feared, would undermine U.S. international
standing and embolden the Soviets to seize West Berlin, which they were constantly threatening
to do. An airstrike might have provoked a Soviet retaliation against Berlin or NATO missile
sites in Turkey or Italy, which could have strained NATO if the allies felt they had been subject
to retaliation for an action that they had not been consulted about. Finally, it was difficult to see
how a blockade would compel the Soviets to remove the missiles already on the island;
furthermore, a blockade could also provoke retaliation against Berlin, Turkey, or Italy,
particularly if the U.S. Navy were to start firing upon Russian ships.
In these three meetings, there were thirty-seven episodes of talk about the possible
consequences of one or another course of action, summing to about forty-five minutes of
audio. These were transcribed using the modified conversation-analytic conventions
detailed in the Appendix B.4 These conventions allow for the precise rendering of
conversational overlap, pauses, interruptions, and (more crudely) intonation and volume,
along with other information. One reason for using conversation analysis is that such details
are often germane to the sequential environment that elicits a particular utterance (e.g.,
Gibson 2005a).5 Another is that the excerpts give readers some degree of direct access to
the original data, providing raw material for competing interpretations.
These data are used in two ways in the analysis. First, I tabulate the narrative clauses
across all excerpts using the typology of narrative claims proposed in the next section, in
order to provide support for my claim that this typology provides analytical insight into the
range of permissible narrative contributions at any conversational juncture. Then I illustrate
each type of narrative contribution through an extended analysis of selected excerpts,
favoring those that illustrate multiple types of contribution and those in which narrative
resources were applied to the purpose of narrative contention.

Analysis: An A Priori Typology of Narrative Relevance

Again, the question is, how are stories about the future constructed in multi-party
encounters, given that the future has not happened yet and there may be disagreement about
its likely course? Recall the basic chronological logic of stories about the past, already
discussed. According to Labov and Waletzky (1967), a narrative consists of a succession of
clauses that recapitulate the order of events being described: first this happened, and then

4
Those familiar with conversation-analytic orthography will be tempted to skip Appendix B, but they should
not, as the conventions used here were adapted so as to be better suited to the data—in particular, the
frequency of unintelligible and/or overlapping talk.
5
See Gibson (forthcoming, ch. 1) for a comparison of a conversation-analytic transcription versus a more
conventional “cleaned up” transcription of some of these data (from Zelikow and May 2001, vol. 2).
508 Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

that happened, and so forth. While this is based on their analysis of stories delivered by
single individuals, the same logic applies when people tell stories collaboratively (e.g., Eder
1988). In both cases, however, a speaker may break from the strict narrative format to offer
background, evaluations, and other sorts of commentary and asides, and others may break
in with things like questions, sympathy displays (oh, that’s terrible), and attempts to draw
conclusions (so you’re not going to be dating him again).
The future stories constructed by the members of the ExComm sometimes conformed to this
template. An example is in Excerpt 1,6 from the morning of October 18. To set the stage, the
immediately preceding talk was about whether a blockade or an immediate air strike would
make it more likely that Khrushchev would “grab Berlin.” At the start of the excerpt,
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara asks what such a “grab” would entail, and ExComm
members quickly spin the dire scenario diagrammed in Fig. 1a. As with stories about the past,
this one recapitulates events in the world, in chronological order, but now these are anticipated
events so we might do better to say that the narrative precapitulates them. We also see a
number of other devices typical of stories about the past. These include questions that push the
narrative along (“then what do we do”?), the use of the present tense (Schiffrin 1981), the use
of connectors like and and then that communicate succession, and expressions of agreement,
including through word repetition (Eder 1988; see also Heritage and Raymond 2005).
Excerpt 1. 10/18 11:10 a.m. meeting, tape 30a, 7:49 (approximately 62:13 into meeting)
1 McNamara.... well (and) when we’re talking about taking
2 Ber lin (.3) what do we (.5) mean exactly does
3 he take it with Soviet troops (.)
4 JFK......... that’s what I would seem to me
5 McNamara.... then we have I think
6 there’s a real possibility (that) we have U.S.
7 troops there what do they do (.8)
8 Taylor...... they fight (.3)
9 McNamara.... they fight I think that’s perfectly clear
10 JFK......... they get overrun (.7)
11 McNamara.... yes they get overrun exactly (.7)
12 Bundy?...... well you have a (direct)
13 R. Kennedy.. then what do we do
14 ?........... confrontation
15 McNamara?... then what do we do (.8)
16 Taylor...... go to general war if it’s in the interest of ours
17 ?........... (yeah) it’s then general war consider the use of
18 (a nu-) (1.0)
19 JFK......... you mean nuclear exchange (1.3)
20 Taylor...... ((quietly)) guess you have to

This was the exception rather than the norm, however, partly because there was, at least
for the space of this exchange, chillingly little disagreement about the likely course of
events. More typical, in terms of complexity, is the exchange in Excerpt 2 from the third
meeting. (This is diagrammed in Fig. 1b.) The group had been discussing the plan
involving a blockade followed, if needed, by an air strike. Directly before this excerpt
begins, former Soviet Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson predicted that the Soviets would
respect a blockade established in conjunction with a formal declaration of war justified to
the world as a response to the threat posed to the U.S. by Castro. National Security Adviser

6
Excerpt headers include information about the audio file, or “tape,” and time. Because the tapes included
some meetings not analyzed (e.g., a 10/18 meeting about the budget), tape times do not correspond to
meeting times (i.e., minutes and seconds into a meeting at which an excerpt began).
Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522 509

McGeorge Bundy begins the excerpt by responding that an immediate air strike could be
justified the same way.
Excerpt 2. 10/18 11:10 a.m. meeting, tape 30a, 14:25 (approximately 68:49 into meeting)
1 Bundy....... it seems to me that’s your whole posture even: if
2 you go in with a strike your posture is simply
3 that this man has uh .hh has: uh: got entangled in
4 this notion of doing unacceptable things from the
5 point of view of the security of the hemisphere
6 (.5) that has to be your posture ((5.2 seconds
7 omitted)) you will in fact get into the invasion
8 before you’re through
9 Thompson.... well I mean you probably (.2)
10 Bundy....... either way
11 Thompson.... probab ly will the other way too in the
12 end uh very likely (.4)
13 A. Johnson.. on the other hand (.) if you do declare a
14 blockade and the Soviets do ob serve it this could
15 very quickly bring down Castro within Cuba (.4)
16 very quickly (you know if) (.5) if they in effect
17 appear to be deserting him
18 Ball........ and and their
19 A. Johnson.. this is the problem of course in their
20 observ ing
21 Ball........ and Khrushchev’s a bility (.) to observe it
22 would be greatly (.4) helped if there were a
23 legal basis (.7)
24 A. Johnson.. ((urgently)) yes yes
25 McCone...... don’t don’t you think that that (would) (.4) be an
26 almost im:possible thing for him to accept (.2)
27 Dillon...... well except this is the confrontation with them
28 McCone...... with his prestige at stake
29 Dillon...... rather than Cuba
30 McCone...... I I I don’t think he would recognize a blockade
31 (1.1) I think he would tell you (he’s)
32 ( )
33 ?........... I don’t think ( )
34 McCone...... (one that) it was his right (.2) and he would go
35 right through

In lines 7–8 (after some omitted talk), Bundy predicts that an immediate air strike would
likely lead to an invasion of the island. Then he and Thompson together predict that an invasion
is likely “either way”/“the other way ↑too↓” (lines 10–11)—presumably referring to the
blockade plan. Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs U. Alexis Johnson then
predicts a different consequence of the blockade, namely that, if the Soviets respect it, Castro
could fall (even without an air strike). Cutting off Under Secretary of State George Ball,
Johnson turns this into a challenge to the belief that they would in fact respect it (lines 19–20).
Ball then predicts that the Soviets would be more likely to respect the blockade “if there were a
legal basis”—the aforementioned declaration of war. Johnson concurs, but then C.I.A. Director
John McCone, in partial overlap with Secretary Treasury Douglas Dillon, questions that very
connection, predicting that rather than respect the blockade, the Soviets “would go right
↑through↓” (lines 34–35, culminating an objection that began in line 25).
This exchange is entirely occupied with the construction of a narrative about the
consequences of a blockade—and to a lesser extent (at the very beginning) an immediate air
strike—in the sense that the group is trying to arrive at an understanding of where such
510 Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

Fig. 1 Diagrammatic representa- a. Excerpt 1 b. Excerpt 2

tions of Excerpts 1 and 2
Soviets attack Air strike vs. Blockade Declaration
West Berlin Cuba of Cuba and of war

U.S. troops fight Invasion of Soviets Soviets

Cuba won’t respect
respect
U.S. troops are
overrun Castro
falls

U.S. responds with

tactical nuclear
weapons (implied)

General/nuclear war

actions would lead. But what results is hardly a linear, chronological story of the sort
described by Labov and Waletzky (1967). This suggests the existence of a broader set of
narrative-construction procedures or rules, which allow for simple unilinear narratives but
that also accommodate narrative disagreement and other complications associated with
telling stories about an uncertain future, some of them seen here.
In place of Labov and Waletzky’s narrative clause, I propose that the more general narrative unit
is the narrative claim. This can be represented as A→B, where A and B are actions or events.
The arrow can mean one of two things: either that A causes B (or at least makes B more likely),
or that some course of action is being described in which B follows A, as in a recipe or simple
story about the past where causation is not a concern. In the first case I will say that B is the
consequence of A, and in the second that B is the subsequence of A. We can also focus on A, and
say that it is either a cause of B, or a precursor, where only the former implies causation. (That
said, in what follows I will generally use the language of causes and consequences, both for the
sake of simplicity and because causation was so much at issue in the ExComm discussions.)
A simple, unilinear story takes the form of a succession of such A→B claims, or
A→B→C, etc., where what is “relevant” after A→B is some consequence or subsequence
of B. But again, future narratives, such as the one in Excerpt 2, can be more complex, so
our notion of relevance needs to be extended. It is a common observation that a remark is
deemed relevant when it combines some piece of whatever was said last with something
new (e.g., Sacks 1995, 566; Schank 1977). From this it follows that a narrative claim is
relevant when it combines either the A or the B from the last narrative claim with some new
X, either as a new cause or a new consequence.
A number of possibilities are logically possible. These are diagrammed in Fig. 2, along
with some of the associated connectors, or “discourse markers” (Schiffrin 1987). Say that
someone just claimed A→B, where A may have been implicit by virtue of having been
inherited from the claim before that. (For example, Kennedy’s “they get overrun” in line 10
of Excerpt 1 is a narrative claim about the consequence of American troops fighting, an
action introduced by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor at line 8 and
repeated by McNamara in line 9.) First, one may then identify a further consequence of B:
A→B→X, where X is the further consequence and B→X is the new narrative claim. I call
this a simple consequence. Second, one may identify an additional consequence of A: A→B
Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522 511

followed by A→X, where the implication is that B and X will occur together. In this case, I
call X a co-consequence. Third, one may identify an alternative consequence of A, which is
like a co-consequence except that now B and X are now described as mutually exclusive: if
X happens B will not. Fourth, one may identify a simple cause of A: A→B, or sometimes
just mention of A, followed by X→A. Fifth, one may identify an additional cause of B
which works in combination with A: A→B followed by X→B. I call this a co-cause. Fifth,
one may identify an alternative cause of B, which is similar to a co-cause but now with the
understanding that either A or X can cause B, but not both simultaneously. A final
possibility was less foreseeable on a priori grounds but proved important in the data and is
easily reconciled with this framework. This is when A→B makes relevant the claim that
some other event or action does not lead to B: X→~B. In this case, I call X a negating
cause. We will see that negating causes sometimes take the form of full-fledged alternative
narratives if the way to avoid B is to embark on a different course of action from the outset.
The typology of relevant narrative claims in Fig. 2 is mostly the product of a priori
reasoning, extending existing notions of conversational continuity to the new realm of
stories about the future.7 That the ExComm’s discussions were actually organized along
these lines is strongly indicated by Table 1, in which the frequencies of each type of
narrative claim in the three meetings are given, along with exceptions or violations, when a
narrative claim was made that did not relate to the previous claim in one of these ways. In
each case I distinguish between claims made in response to someone else and those made in
the course of a longer storytelling episode by a single person. While these figures are, for a
number of reasons, approximate,8 they do strongly suggest that speakers were strongly
oriented to the story as it stood an instant before, building upon the narrative-in-progress rather
than dropping causal assertions without regard for sequential placement.9 And when exceptions
occurred, they were almost always modest exceptions, involving narrative claims connecting
back to the story as it stood very recently, and were in various ways self-explicating so that
interlocutors had little difficulty in discerning the connections they were intended to make.
I discuss and illustrate each possibility in turn, introducing new excerpts as needed but,
when possible, revisiting earlier ones in order to show how these discursive moves interlace
in extended episodes of talk. Most of the examples involve consecutive narrative claims
made by different speakers (from the second column of Table 1), which is what is most
relevant to narrative contention.

Simple Consequences

Simple consequences are the stuff of stories about the past, and some future narratives are
comprised of them as well, as in Excerpt 1. As already indicated, succession is often
marked with connectors such as then or and then (Eder 1988), though lines 15–16 in
Excerpt 1 show how a “then what do we do”-type question may eliminate the need for such
a leading marker, since whatever is said as a response will be heard as the next step in the

7
See Gibson (2003, 2005b) for an analogous typology of speaker-addressee transitions. The typology also
has much in common with the triad inventories of network analysis (e.g., Davis and Leinhardt 1972), and in
fact could be restated in terms of the graph-theoretic notion of adjacency (Wasserman and Pattison 1996).
8
One difficulty is that some narrative claims were implicit; a second is that when two claims are separated
by unintelligible speech it is difficult to know how to categorize the second one. In terms of the distinction
between claims contained within turns versus those that spanned turns, one difficulty is knowing what to do
when a long turn is broken up by a short non-narrative response by someone else (e.g., right).
9
Alternative narratives will complicate this characterization somewhat, but, as will be explained, they also
tended to occur under very precise sequential conditions.
512 Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

A A A

Bal B and X B or X
X
Simple Co-consequences Alternative
consequence consequences
(and) then and (also) or (else)

X
A and X A or X A X
A

B B B B B
Simple cause Co-causes Alternative causes Negating cause/
alternative narrative
will…if especially if will…anyway on the other hand,
whereas

Fig. 2 Forms of narrative relevance (of X), with typical connectors (in italics)

narrative. There are other ways in which succession can be conveyed as well, such as when
a single speaker makes a future-tense prediction. In lines 7–8 of Excerpt 2, for instance,
Bundy says “you will in fact get into the invasion before you’re through,” soon after talking
about an immediate air strike. If…then formulations achieve something similar.
Simple consequences provide a ready vehicle for challenging a narrative, because it is
through a simple consequence that one can identify a troubling consequence in a previously
hopeful narrative or a hopeful consequence in a previously troubling one. An example of
the former possibility (which was more common) is in Excerpt 3. Immediately preceding
talk was about whether a limited air strike (against missiles only), a plan that at the time
was winning favor with the President, would force the U.S. to invade (due to the resulting
social unrest). In the excerpt, Attorney General Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, often the devil’s
advocate in these meetings, identifies another undesirable consequence of the limited air
strike, namely that the Soviets would simply replace the missiles. McNamara replies that a
blockade would be implemented following any strike, which (it is implied) would prevent

Table 1 Frequency of narrative claims, without and between speaking turns

Within turn Between turns Total

Simple consequence 45 35 80
Co-consequence 9 14 23
Alternative consequence 3 17 20
Simple cause 5 1 6
Co-cause 0 0 0
Alternative cause 5 5 10
Negating cause/alternative narrative 9 11 20
Exception/violation 1 4 5
Total 77 87 164
Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522 513

new missiles from being delivered. Bobby10 responds by identifying a simple consequence
of a blockade, using the then connector: The U.S. will have to sink Soviet ships and
submarines (lines 18–19, 21–22). In this way Bobby extends McNamara’s blockade
narrative in such a way as to challenge it.
Excerpt 3. 10/16 6:30 p.m. meeting, tape 28a, 22:34 (approximately 50:12 into meeting)
1 R. Kennedy.. Mister President while we’re considering this (.3)
2 problem tonight I think that we should also consider
3 what uh: Cuba’s gonna be: a year from now (.7) or
4 two years from (now) assume that we go in and
5 knock these sites out (.8) uh: I don’t know what’s
6 gonna stop them (.5) from saying we’re gonna build
7 the sites six months from now (.) bring
8 them in
9 Taylor...... nu-
10 Taylor...... nothing permanent about it (.3)
11 R. Kennedy.. >well then what< where are we six months from now:
12 uh that we’re in any better position or a- aren’t we
13 in worse position if we go in and knock them out and
14 say uh (.2) (.3) don’t do it uh I mean obviously
15 they’re gonna have to do it then (.2)
16 McNamara.... you have to put a blockade in following any limited
17 (act ion )
18 R. Kennedy.. then we’re gonna have to sink Russian
19 sh i p s
20 McNamara.... right
21 R. Kennedy.. then we’re gonna have to sink
22 Russ ian submarines
23 McNamara.... right
24 R. Kennedy.. now whether it wouldn’t be: in in the argument if
25 you want to get into it at all: uh (.2) whether we
26 should just get into it and get it over with and say
27 that uh take our losses ((...))

Co-consequences

Co-consequences, when a speaker builds upon the previous narrative claim by adding an
additional consequence, may be more common in stories about the future than in stories about
the past, given how often the latter are used to give an account of some particular outcome (e.g.,
losing one’s job or getting lost while driving). Because so many of the possible consequences of
U.S. action during the Cuban missile crisis were bad, co-consequences almost always provided
a strike against the narrative-in-progress, either because they identified the downside to some
action that, a moment before, was projected as having an upside, or because they hammered
another nail into a coffin that was already on its way to being sealed. At one point during the
evening meeting of October 16th, for instance, Bobby proposed keeping spy planes aloft over
Cuba following the announcement of the missiles’ discovery in order to keep careful tabs on
them. Taylor responded with the simple consequence that the missiles could quickly be hidden
in the woods, and then McNamara identified the even more damning co-consequence, that
some of them “could also be readied (.8) perhaps between the time we (.3) in effect say we’re
going to come in and the time we do come in this this is a very very great danger to this (.7)

10
I use the Attorney General’s nickname to avoid confusion, because McNamara’s first name was also
Robert and the President’s last name was also Kennedy.
514 Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

this coast↓” (tape 28a, 9:46)—alluding here to the risk that the missiles might be fired in the
event of a subsequent air strike against the island.11 Bobby quickly abandoned the idea.12

Alternative Consequences

An even sharper form of disagreement comes in the form of an alternative consequence, or what
could also be called a counter-prediction: that won’t happen, but this will. Excerpt 2 provides an
example. After Ball’s prediction that the Russians would respect a legally-established blockade
(lines 21–23), McCone offers a challenge and then makes a counter-prediction: “don’t ↓you
think that that (would) (.4) be an almost im:possible thing for him to accept↑…with his
prestige at stake↑ I I ↑I ↓don’t think he would recognize a blockade (1.1) I think he would tell
you …that it was his right↑ (.2) and he would go right ↑through↓.” Here the alternative
consequences are that Khrushchev would respect the blockade, and that he would not.
The interplay of prediction and counter-prediction, or consequence and alternative
consequence, runs throughout Excerpt 4, from the third meeting (midday on October 18th).
The President asks for confirmation that the blockade plan would not entail an air strike
against Soviet missiles and aircraft (lines 1–3). Thompson says no, not in the first stage, and
then seems to be in the midst of formulating a U.S. threat to attack the missiles were they to
be made operational (lines 4–6) when Kennedy interrupts with Khrushchev’s likely
response to such a threat (a simple consequence). Thompson then interrupts the President in
turn, and thinking that Kennedy is about to predict that Khrushchev would threaten nuclear
war, challenges that prediction,13 eventually offering the counter-prediction that Khrushchev
would limit himself to vague threats. Then Kennedy offers a counter-prediction of his own,
that the Soviets would be more likely to “grab Berlin.”
Excerpt 4. 10/18 11:10 a.m. meeting, tape 30, 87:25 (approximately 44:11 into meeting)
1 JFK......... in other words under this uh (1.1) plan however we
2 would not take these (.2) missiles they <now have
3 out> or the planes they now have out (.7)
4 Thompson.... not in the first stage I think uh it would be
5 useful to say that if they are ((clears throat)) if
6 they’re made operational we might (.8) er er would
7 (.7)
8 JFK......... of course then he would say that if you do that
9 then we will (2.9) (.4) (.7)
10 Thompson.... as Chip [Bohlen] says >I agree with him< that if
11 if they’re prepared to say all right (.4) you do
12 then this is nuclear world war then they would do
13 that anyway uh uh (1.2) I think he’d make a lot of
14 threatening language but very vague terms in keeping
15 his ( )
16 JFK......... yeah I would think it’s more likely that he
17 would just grab Berli:n that’s the more likely

11
Talk around this particular risk, which plagued any proposal to warn Khrushchev before an attack on
Cuba, is analyzed in detail in Gibson (2011).
12
Bobby’s prediction in Excerpt 3 that the U.S. would have to sink Russian submarines could also be seen as
a co-consequence, namely of sinking Russian ships.
13
Both interruptions only make sense in light of ExComm’s history of talk to this point, on the basis of
which Kennedy is able to anticipate Thompson’s incipient prediction and Thompson is able to guess at
Kennedy’s (though given Kennedy’s prediction in lines 16–17 it is possible that Thompson guessed
incorrectly). To borrow an idea from Fine (1979), such interruptions are only interpretable in light of the
group’s “idioculture,” for which they simultaneously provide evidence.
Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522 515

Simple Causes

Stories about the past usually move forward in time; an exception is when someone
identifies the cause of the event or condition in question in the process of assigning blame
for it (Mandelbaum 2003). Stories about the future move more readily backwards in time
(towards the present), particularly when some futures, but not others, are deemed desirable
and there is disagreement about how to bring the former about. In the simplest case this just
means moving one step back in the causal sequence to identify a cause or contributing
factor to the event or state now being considered (X→A following talk of A), such as when
McNamara says that, in order to “prevent their [the missiles’] use…we carry out open
surveillance (.4) so we know what they’re doing” (tape 28a, 50:24). Another variation is
when a full-fledged narrative claim that A causes B is followed by the identification of a
cause of A. A slightly complicated example is in Excerpt 2. In lines 13–17, Alexis Johnson
predicts that, were the Soviets to observe (respect) a blockade, Castro would be toppled,
and (in lines 19–20) suggests that this would make observance less likely. Ball responds
that such observance would be made more likely if the blockade had a legal basis of the sort
that, shortly before the excerpt begins, Thompson opined could only come from a formal
declaration of war. The President, however, had been resisting such a move, so that by
laying hold of this opportunity to advocate for a declaration of war (as a simple cause, or
precondition, of the blockade’s success), Ball is taking issue with any plan that would
dispense with it.14

Co-causes

The identification of a co-cause is another way in which one may move backwards in
narrative time while still making a relevant claim. But this is more of a theoretical
possibility than an empirical one, for it is hard to find a clear-cut example in the data.
Perhaps the best example comes from a letter to Secretary of State Dean Rusk from Russian
specialist Charles Bohlen, read by Rusk to the group. In the event of a surprise air strike,
Bohlen wrote, “I am reasonably certain that the allied reaction would be dead against us,
especially if the Soviet Union retaliated locally (in Turkey or in Berlin)” (Zelikow and May
2001, vol. 2, 525). Here the co-causes of allied opposition are the surprise attack in
combination with a Soviet retaliation (recognizing that the first is also the cause of the second).

Alternative Causes

Much more common were claims of alternative causation when, following the claim that
one thing will cause or contribute to another, there is a claim that some other cause would
have the same outcome. I call the common consequence of alternative causes a convergent
consequence. Claims of alternative causation, and thus convergent consequences, were
particularly important in the ExComm discussions, for in this way some very bad outcomes
were removed (at least temporarily) from consideration on the grounds that, being equally
likely (so far as anyone could judge) whatever the U.S. did, they did not militate in favor of

14
One thing that makes this example complicated is that it lends itself to at least two alternative typological
classifications. For one, the blockade and a declaration of war might be seen as co-causes of the blockade’s
success, though it seems tautological to make the imposition of a blockade a precondition for its observance.
Alternatively, the declaration of war could be seen as a negating cause for the blockade’s failure. In any case,
however, the more general point holds, that by mentioning the blockade’s observance in line 20, Alexis
Johnson creates an opening for an additional claim about what would make observance more likely.
516 Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

any single option. One instance of this is in Excerpt 2. After Bundy predicts that an
invasion of Cuba would likely follow a surprise air strike, he and Thompson predict an
invasion “either way” and “the other way too” (lines 7–11), referring to a blockade, which
most thought would eventuate in military action against the island.
Excerpt 4 provides another example. ExComm members sometimes subscribed to the
view that the likelihood of a general war with the Soviet Union was entirely a function
of Soviet bellicosity, and that the U.S. response in Cuba would do little to alter that
likelihood though it might provide Khrushchev with a pretense for initiating hostilities
sooner rather than later. Thompson says as much in lines 10–13 (“if they’re prepared to
say all right (.4) you do then this it is nuclear world ↑war↓ they would do that
anyway↓”), affiliating with a written statement by Soviet expert Bohlen to this effect.
In so doing, he negates the power of Kennedy’s objection to his (Thompson’s)
suggestion of a threat.
The pre-eminent convergent consequence was a Soviet assault on West Berlin. As
already explained, the members of the ExComm were very concerned that whatever they
did, the Soviets would find a pretext to make good on their threats to seize that city, which
Khrushchev described as a “rotten tooth” in the mouth of the Soviet empire (Zelikow and
May 2001, vol. 2, 573). Thus, for instance, in the meeting of October 18th, after Ball
advocated giving Khrushchev twenty-four hours notice before an attack on Cuba, Kennedy
responded: “and then if he says (.2) well if you do that [the air strike] we’re going to grab
Berlin the point is he’s probably grab Berlin anyway.” A moment later McNamara made the
same point in more general terms: “I suspect the price we pay to Khrushchev will be about
the same whether we give him the advance warning or don’t give him the advance warning”
(tape 30a, 5:18). The result is that though the threat to Berlin was on everyone’s minds, it
provided the ExComm with little basis to discriminate between better and worse options, and at
times it seemed that the same was equally true of the threat of a full-fledged nuclear war.

Negating Causes

Sometimes a narrative ends up where no one wants it to be. Then a common discursive
move is to backtrack so as to find a narrative pathway that ends differently—in the simple
case, A→B warranting X→~B, where X is the negating cause. Immediately after Taylor’s
final turn at the end of Excerpt 1, for instance, and in the immediate wake of the prediction
of a nuclear exchange, Bundy predicted a different outcome on the condition that
Khrushchev received explicit warning not to use a U.S. attack on Cuba as a pretext for
attacking West Berlin: “if you go in at the same time you do this [air strike] and you say to
him that Berlin still means general war I don’t think he’ll do it that way” (tape 30a, 8:24).
Another example is in Excerpt 2, though now it is from the (imagined) Soviet perspective
that the narrative runs into trouble. Having predicted that Castro would be toppled were the
Soviets to observe a blockade (lines 13–17), Alexis Johnson challenges the likelihood of
that observance, essentially predicting that the Soviets would not observe a blockade so as
to avoid the consequence of jeopardizing Castro (lines 19–20).
Negating causes can also be invoked in order to make a positive statement about the
course of action currently being considered, namely that it avoids a consequence that the
alternative would bring about (so that the notation might be reversed: A→~B making
relevant A→B). For example, in the first meeting on October 16, Bundy argued for a
limited air strike as opposed to a more extensive one on the grounds that the former ran a
smaller risk of escalation: “there’s an enormous premium on having as small (.6) as small
and clear-cut an action as possible,” he said, “because the hazard of uh (.3) going after all
Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522 517

the operational air fields becomes a kind of”—and then a chorus of people completed his
sentence: “nuclear war” (tape 28, 54:19).
In the extreme, a bad narrative ending (or at least the lack of a good ending) can be the
occasion for an entirely new story, or alternative narrative. For example, in Excerpt 3,
Bobby begins by identifying a likely, and undesirable, consequence of an immediate air
strike: the Soviets will simply deliver new missiles (lines 5–8). McNamara responds that
the air strike would be followed by a blockade, with the implication that this (negating
cause) would prevent the delivery of additional missiles. But then the Attorney General
identifies the consequence of a blockade discussed earlier, that it would force the U.S. to
sink Soviet ships and submarines. These various negative consequences—the missiles
would either be restored or they would be kept out at the expense of sinking Soviet ships
and submarines—are then the backdrop for Bobby’s support of a completely different
option, namely an immediate invasion (lines 24–27), which is what I am calling an
alternative narrative. In this way, then, Bobby establishes the sequential conditions for the
alternative narrative, which implicitly promises to avoid the failings of the just-
contemplated option (an air strike with or without a blockade).

Discussion: From Deliberation to Decision

The typology in Fig. 2 is an elaboration upon the core idea of narrative relevance. We might
say, borrowing a metaphor from Schutz (1967, 70), that narrative relevance shines a “cone
of light” on that part of the imaginable future that is currently available for exploration. But
as this imagery fails to capture the contention that is thereby made possible, it might be
better to say that narrative relevance defines the moving front along which skirmishes about
the future are fought on those occasions that people are motivated to fight.
An important implication of the foregoing is that, at any point in time, most narrative
claims are not relevant—specifically, those not connected to whatever was said last (or at
least very recently). That is not to say that such claims can never be made—recall the five
exceptions in Table 1—but to say something not relevant to whatever was said last takes
additional work, and whether because people do not wish to undertake such work, or
because it does not occur to them to try, they rarely do. A related implication is that one
narrative claim often comes at the expense of others that could have been made in its place,
and that are no longer as relevant in its wake. When, for instance, after someone claims
A→B someone else adds B→C, further or additional consequences of A are no longer
relevant, or can only be made relevant with additional work, even as consequences (or other
causes) of C become newly relevant. Because of this, it is very unlikely that there will ever
be an occasion—a spate of narrative talk—on which all narrative branches are explored,
and no guarantee that the narrative branches neglected on one occasion will receive their
due the next time around.
This may explain Robert McNamara’s repeated lament that, in spite of all the time that
the ExComm spent talking, the consequences of each course of action were never fully
explored. Well into the midday meeting of the 18th, for instance, after about ten hours of
(recorded and unrecorded) discussion, McNamara complained that “what’s lacking here is a
real well thought-out course of action, or alternative courses of action” (tape 30a, 43:13).
The analytical mind—and McNamara had a famous one—may perceive a complex tree of
narrative branches and twigs awaiting exploration, but conversation is an awkward
instrument for the purpose, allowing for the recognition of multiple narrative branches (e.g.,
alternative consequences) but providing no guarantees that each will be carefully examined.
518 Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

But how did foretalk thusly structured influence Kennedy’s decisions? To continue with
the military metaphor, I have explained elsewhere (Gibson 2011, forthcoming, ch. 4) how
his decisions often seemed to be contingent on narrative ceasefires that allowed stories to be
told to which serious objections were not made—although, in fact, they had been made
earlier and although nothing had been said or learned in the meantime that alleviated the
concern. Consider, for instance, his decision to impose a blockade with the threat of later
military action, announced to the nation six days after the start of the crisis. The perils of
that course of action were repeatedly articulated, in the form of simple, co-, or alternative
consequences. Most worrisome was the danger of later attacking missiles that, by that time,
could have been readied for firing. McNamara, in particular, repeatedly warned that one or
more missiles could be launched against the U.S., something which posed “a very very
great danger to this (.7) this coast↓” (tape 28a, 9:54). However, a short way into the midday
meeting of the 18th, ExComm members (starting with Rusk, Thompson, and Ball) were
able to narrate a blockade, followed by an air strike, without anyone pointing out the
various ways in which this could go wrong, although such objections had been voiced only
minutes before and although they were, by the standards of this article, sequentially relevant.
After a time, Kennedy joined in, proposing that “we do the message (.3) to k- uh: Khrushchev
(1.7) and tell him that if work continues etcetera etcetera we at the same time uh launch the
blockade (1.6) uh (.8) if the work continues uh we (1.0) go in (.4) and uh take them (.2) out [i.e.,
attack the missiles]” (tape 30a, 11:02). No one objected, and by the end of the meeting a nascent
consensus in favor of the blockade was clearly discernible to virtually everyone.
Bringing the article full circle, Dewey (1922, 192) wrote that we find it impossible to
act “[a]s long as deliberation pictures shoals or rocks or troublesome gales as marking the
route of a contemplated voyage.” It is only “when imagination finds no annoying
hindrance, when there is a picture of open seas, filled sails and favoring winds, [that] the
voyage is definitely entered upon”. Living with the memory of the Bay of Pigs, most
ExComm members took their job to be to point out exactly those obstacles, using the
discursive resources described here, but actual choices seemed to be contingent on narrative
episodes in which objections that could have been raised were not.

Conclusion

Schutz (1962, 277–93) tells the story of Tiresias, blinded early in life for having seen
Athena naked, but then, as compensation, granted the ability to see the future. In real life no
one can see the future—though physicists are hard-pressed to explain why the past and
future seem so distinct (Carroll 2010)—but often people try to divine what it will bring, and
sometimes they do that divining together. Insofar as this is done through talk, it is an
activity that is governed by conversational rules and procedures, including those for story-
telling, but with the added complication that no one has seen the future and thus no one can
claim epistemic authority to relate its details uncontested. Consequently, a more inclusive
set of narrative procedures is employed, procedures that extend the range of what can be
said next beyond what actually happens next to include, among other things, competing
causes, competing consequences, and altogether different narratives.
This article, and the larger project of which it is a part (Gibson forthcoming), makes
contributions to a number of subfields. To the study of conversation, and collaborative
story-telling in particular (Eder 1988), it introduces stories about the future (i.e., foretalk) as
a phenomenon with distinct yet, for the most part, logically foreseeable properties,
properties that I suggested might also be found in talk about especially contentious pasts of
Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522 519

the sort more often studied by scholars of collective memory (e.g., Wagner-Pacifici 1994).
To the study of decision-making (March 1994), and also deliberation (Gutmann and Thompson
1996), it adds the mechanics of conversation as applied to the specific activity of scenario-
building (van der Heijden 2005), mechanics that follow a logic that is not easily subordinated
to the formal requirements of rational choice. To the study of cognitive and cultural
representations of the future (Cerulo 2006; Mische 2009) it contributes something similar,
anchoring such representations in concrete conversational exchanges, as the sites where they
are assembled. Finally, to scholarship on the Cuban missile crisis it adds a sociological (and
more precisely, ethnomethodological) perspective on discussions that have not previously been
subject to serious sociolinguistic scrutiny, showing how contributions were affected not only by
personal temperament and biography—the standard explanations—but also by the endogenous
requirement of telling stories about an uncertain future while in the company of others.

Acknowledgement For comments on earlier versions of this work I am grateful to Ann Mische, Iddo
Tavory, Melissa Wilde, QS reviewers, and attendees at the University of Pennsylvania Sociology Colloquium.

Appendix A. Dramatis Personae

(ExComm members and others quoted or referred to, with positions in October 1962)

Name Position
Ball, George W. Under Secretary of State
Bohlen, Charles E. (“Chip”) Former Ambassador to Soviet Union, Ambassador to France
Bundy, McGeorge (“Mac”) Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Dillon, C. Douglas Secretary of the Treasury
Gilpatric, Roswell L. Deputy Secretary of Defense
Johnson, Lyndon B. Vice President
Johnson, U. Alexis Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
Kennedy, John F. President
Kennedy, Robert F. (“Bobby”) Attorney General
Martin, Edwin M. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs
McCone, John A. Director of Central Intelligence
McNamara, Robert S. Secretary of Defense
Nitze, Paul H. Assistant Secretary of Defense
Rusk, Dean Secretary of State
Sorensen, Theodore C. Special Assistant to the President
Taylor, Maxwell D. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Thompson, Llewellyn E. (“Tommy”) Former Ambassador to Soviet Union

Appendix B. Transcribing Conventions (adapted from Gibson 2011)

In the main, the article uses transcribing conventions customary in conversation analysis, with
some important modifications to accommodate limitations of the data, particularly the frequency
of talk which is unintelligible either because it is too faint, because of background noise, or
because it overlaps with the (intelligible or unintelligible) talk of one or more other people.
520 Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522

Overlapping speech Vertically aligned partial brackets indicate

A: Russ ian overlapping speech.
B: right

Pauses Numbers in parentheses indicate pauses in

them (.5) from seconds, measured to one decimal point. A
lone period (.) indicates a “micro-pause,”
hand (.) if audible but too short to be measured reliably
(generally <.15 second).

Self-interruptions A hyphen indicates self-interruption, often a

a nu- dental or guttural stop.

Intonation Arrows at the end of words indicate rising ( )

going to overfly or falling ( ) pitch. Arrows at the beginning of
words indicate a sudden jump or drop in
then what do we do intonation without a corresponding increase in
volume (cf. stress, below).

Stress Bold face is used to indicate stress, a

in worse position combination of volume and pitch.

Volume Degree marks enclose talk that is significantly

°guess you have to° softer than previous talk in the same speaking
turn.

Sound stretching One or more colons indicate that a sound

has: uh: within a word (that preceding the colon) is
“stretched,” or prolonged. The more colons,
the longer the prolongation.

Breathing Audible breathing is transcribed with one or

has uh .hh more hs, with the number of hs roughly
reflecting the duration (approximately one h
for each .2 seconds of respiration).
Inhaling is indicated with a leading period, and
exhaling with the lack of a period.

Unclear speech Single parentheses contain the transcriber’s

you have a (direct) guess as to speech that cannot be discerned
clearly.

Unintelligible overlapping speech Unintelligible speech by an unidentifiable

the interest of person that overlaps with someone else’s
speech is indicated by underlining. An
(.3) underlined pause means that someone can be
heard speaking during a lull in the named
speaker’s turn.

Transcriber’s comments Double parentheses contain the transcriber’s

((urgently))
take our losses ((...))
you do this [air strike] and
description of events, not spoken words.
Ellipses enclosed in this way indicate talk
omitted from a given speaking turn. Brackets
enclose explanatory notes.
Qual Sociol (2011) 34:503–522 521

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David Gibson is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
His work is in the areas of social interaction, social networks, and theory. His articles have appeared in the
American Journal of Sociology, Social Psychology Quarterly, Sociological Theory, along with other journals.
His first book, Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis, will be
published by Princeton University Press in 2012.