Svennevig, J. (2012) Interaction in workplace meetings. Discourse Studies, 14(1), 3-10.

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427203 DIS14110.1177/1461445611427203SvennevigDiscourse Studies

Introduction

Discourse Studies

Interaction in workplace
14(1) 3­–10
© The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
meetings co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1461445611427203
dis.sagepub.com

Jan Svennevig
University of Oslo, Norway

The research tradition of Conversation Analysis (CA) has a long history of studying
institutional interaction, but much of it has focused on situations of contact between
institutional representatives and ‘users’ of the institution, such as patients, clients,
customers, etc. (Arminen, 2005; Drew and Heritage, 1992; Heritage and Clayman,
2010). Less attention has been devoted to the internal life of organizations, in situations
of collaboration between professionals, inside and across their respective sections and
departments. A seminal work that established this as an explicit research focus was
Deirdre Boden’s (1994) book The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action. Here,
meetings were analysed as a major source of information about how organizations were
‘talked into being’ in the day-to-day practices of their members. Since then, there has
been a growing research interest in meetings and other types of encounters inside
organizations. The current special issue seeks to contribute to this growing body of
studies by presenting new insights on practices and actions in meetings, and it also seeks
to develop the methodological orientations of the field by insisting on the need for a
multimodal approach to meeting interaction.
Meetings are important and interesting objects of research for many reasons. First,
they are important due to their pervasiveness in the workplace. Meetings constitute one
of the most significant arenas for organizational communication involving more than
two persons. They take up a large amount of the work time for many employees, especially
in white-collar jobs. For leaders, participating in meetings constitutes one of the main
activities of their work day. Meetings thus represent one of the main arenas where
organizational knowledge and culture are created, negotiated and disseminated (Boden,
1994; Nielsen, 2009).
Furthermore, meetings are prime sites where organizational roles and relations are
manifested (Putnam and Fairhurst, 2001; Taylor, 2006). Scholars interested in leadership

Corresponding author:
Jan Svennevig, Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo, PO Box 1102,
Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway.
Email: jan.svennevig@iln.uio.no
4 Discourse Studies 14(1)

can observe how leaders in actual practice carry out their assigned managerial tasks and
exert their privileged rights and responsibilities. As noted by Boden (1994: 81), meetings
are ‘the interaction order of management, the occasioned expression of management-­
in-action, that very social action through which institutions produce and reproduce
themselves’. Researchers in organizational and managerial communication have repeat-
edly pointed to the need for more empirical research on actual leadership practices as
observed in day-to-day work settings (Cooren, 2007; Fairhurst, 2007; Samra-Fredericks,
2003; Svennevig, 2008).
Finally, meetings are especially interesting to conversation analysts because they
constitute a specific speech exchange system, with special and characteristic norms and
conventions regarding such things as turn-taking, sequence organization and topic
progression (Asmuß and Svennevig, 2009). The main differences vis-a-vis ordinary
conversation and other institutional genres, such as, for example, consultations, are the
role of the chair in managing the access to the floor and the topical progression of
the talk, and the role of the agenda in specifying in advance the topics and the time
frame of the encounter. Previous research describing some of these characteristics will
be reviewed below.

Meetings as speech exchange systems

Schwartzman (1989) describes a meeting as:

[. . .] a communicative event involving three or more people who agree to assemble for a
purpose ostensibly related to the functioning of an organization or a group, for example, to
exchange ideas or opinions, to solve a problem, to make a decision or negotiate an agreement,
to develop policy and procedures, to formulate recommendations, and so forth. A meeting is
characterized by multiparty talk that is episodic in nature, and participants either develop or use
specific conventions [. . .] for regulating this talk. (Schwartzman, 1989: 7)

Meetings are thus distinguished from more incidental workplace encounters by the fact
that they are planned in advance and have a pre-specified purpose or goal, usually
indicated on a meeting invitation. They are also usually bounded in time by a schedule,
and located in specifically designated meeting rooms. But more relevant than such
external characteristics is the second part of Schwartzman’s characterization, which
associates meetings with specific conventions for regulating talk. In a conversation
analytic perspective, it is rather the intra-interactional norms and practices that define
a speech genre. Thus, conducting a meeting means orienting to the normative practices
constitutive of this speech exchange system, that is, producing ‘meeting talk’.
Organizational members assembled in a meeting room may consequently move in and
out of the meeting proper, and this will be marked by the transitions in the speech
exchange system being used.
Several studies have described such transitions in and out of meeting talk. An early
study by Atkinson et al. (1978) analyses how the chair gets the attention of the other
participants present in order to start a meeting. Boden (1994) similarly shows how the
shift from pre-meeting talk to a common focus of attention and a different interaction
Svennevig 5

order is performed. The chair (whether appointed or self-selected) usually initiates the
shift, frequently by the use of standard topic transition markers such as ‘okay’ produced
with markedly loud volume. Other ways of initiating the meeting proper is to explicitly
propose getting started, to greet and welcome the participants, and to comment on the
attendance (people present and missing). After this, the main resource for moving to the
business of the talk is presenting the reason or purpose for the meeting.
Deppermann et al. (2010) show in detail how not just the chair, but several meeting
participants manage the transition from meeting to break and back again to work as an
emergent collective accomplishment. What starts as an inserted action in the ongoing
meeting activity (a slide show presentation) engenders new inserted actions and
develops gradually into a state of time-out from the meeting, in which the participants
serve themselves with drinks and move about in the room. After a period of time, the
presenter displays readiness to resume her presentation by non-verbal means, such as
looking at her watch, standing in a stable position at the front of the room, and crossing
her arms behind her back. This leads the chair and the other participants to end their
non-professional activities and refocus their attention on the presenter and give her the
opportunity to resume her presentation. This study shows that achieving a common
orientation among participants to the meeting frame is accomplished by local verbal
and non-verbal means. It is thus the interactional practices themselves that define the
activity going on, as being either conducting a meeting or taking a break. It furthermore
shows that non-verbal resources are an integral part of the actions constituting such
transitions, and thus that a multi-modal approach is essential to grasping the practices
of meeting interaction.

The role of the chair

The most distinguishing feature of meeting interaction is the presence of a chair that is
charged with managing the access to the floor and assuring the topical progression of
the meeting according to the agenda. These tasks provide the chair with special rights
and obligations in controlling the contributions of the participants. He or she has a
dominating and privileged position in being authorized to encourage contributions
and actions that are considered constructive to the goals of the meeting and sanction
behaviour that is considered illegitimate or counter-productive. Also, in formulating
decisions and conclusions the chair acquires a strategic position in the meeting.
In meetings among members of sections or departments inside an organization it is
common that the head of the unit functions as chair, and in such cases the privileges of
controlling the interaction are seldom topicalized by the leaders themselves or by other
participants. In other cases, however, chairs may not have an obvious position of insti-
tutional seniority, and in such cases the basis for the chair’s interactional authority
seems to be made explicit more often. For instance, Pomerantz and Denvir (2007), in an
analysis of a management meeting, describe how a chair in a non-senior position
presents his mandate as being a facilitator on behalf of the group. In the beginning of the
meeting he explicitly asks the group their opinion about the procedures to be followed,
and in the course of the chairing he refers to the group as the authoritative basis for his
6 Discourse Studies 14(1)

actions and decisions. He presents directions to the participants as merely suggestions

that require ratification from them. He also shows deference to the participants by
presenting his attempts to monitor and regulate speakership as based upon their wishes.
Potter and Hepburn (2010) analyse the role of a chair in a school board meeting who
repeatedly produces disclaimers and accounts that distance him from the acts of authority
he performs (such as sanctioning a speaker that speaks too long). He does this by
presenting himself as just carrying out board policy and as acting out of concern for the
other participants (who also have a right to speaking time). In this way, the authority of
the chair may sometimes be taken for granted, and other times be subject to explicit
legitimizing (or delegitimizing) by the participants.

Turn-taking in meetings
The turn-taking model of informal conversation as described by Sacks et al. (1974) is
characterized by local management of turns by the participants themselves on a turn-­
by-turn basis. Formal meetings differ from this in that an appointed chair has the formal
right and responsibility to manage the interaction among the participants. However, in
any single meeting there will be an implicit negotiation regarding to which degree the
chair actually takes and is accorded this role in the talk (Boden, 1994). In formal meet-
ings, the chair will typically allocate turns, and participants wanting to get a turn must
signal their wish to the chair. The chair will thus be responsible for allocating turns, but
also for monitoring them and sanctioning departures from norms of turn length, topical
relevance, etc. In informal meetings, the management of talk will approximate conversa-
tional turn-taking, with more self-selection and next turn allocation by the current
speaker. In most meetings there will be a mixture of self-selection by the speakers and
pre-allocation of turns by the chair. Sometimes the chair will let speakers self-select as
long as the conversation runs smoothly, and only intervene with explicit turn allocation
in cases where problems arise, such as unresolved competition for the floor (Pomerantz
and Denvir, 2007). And, for a participant wishing to get a word in, making a formal bid
for a turn to the chair may constitute a strategic method for getting the turn in situations
of competition.
The detailed management of turn-taking in meetings has been studied by Ford
(2008) with data from various types of meetings in an academic organization. She
shows that making a bid for a turn to the chair is mainly done by non-verbal means,
such as leaning forward, gazing at the chair and raising a hand. However, she notes that
turns may also be taken without addressing the chair. One interesting mechanism
involved in this is when speakers produce extensions of a previous speaker’s turn. In
this way, they may take a role as a co-author of the contribution, and thereby align as a
team with the previous speaker. But even turns that are not such extensions may on
occasion simply be taken by speaking up at a transition relevance place. Participants
are shown to prepare the ground for such self-selection by performing non-verbal
actions directed at the current speaker, such as making eye-contact and nodding. Also,
Mondada (2007) has shown how one type of non-verbal resource, namely pointing,
may be used in meetings to project an upcoming turn by the speaker.
Svennevig 7

Topic organization
In ordinary conversation, topics are not specified in advance, but are established and
managed by local initiatives on a turn-by-turn basis. Meetings differ fundamentally from
this organization in that some purpose for the meeting and some issues to be addressed
are specified in advance and usually made available to the participants in a written
agenda. The participants in a meeting thus orient to a set of predetermined issues as
business-at-hand (Button and Casey, 1988/9) and the chair has the responsibility to make
sure that they are addressed during the meeting. This central management of the topical
progression is achieved by introducing items on the agenda (see Svennevig, this issue)
and managing the transitions between them. Furthermore, the chair keeps the discus-
sion on track by moving the group back to the agenda topic during or after a digression
(Holmes and Stubbe, 2003). However, also here there is large room for variation in
how strictly the chair will control the topic by reference to the agenda, or allow the topic
to be locally managed and possibly drift into adjacent matters. The degree of formality
and leadership style will be decisive for this control (Holmes et al., 2007).
A central practice for closing topics and moving on to the next point on the agenda is
that of candidate pre-closing formulations (Barnes, 2007). Agenda items are often ori-
ented to some practical end (such as finding a solution to a problem or making a deci-
sion), and the provision of a formulation of gist may thus work to re-establish the
collaborative achievement of that end (Heritage and Watson, 1979). This provides the
relevance of closing the topic and moving on to adjacent matters. But in contrast to
ordinary conversation, the preferred response to such formulations in meetings is not
confirmation, but silence, according to Barnes (2007). The meeting participants’ silence
is treated by the chair as acceptance and assent, and thus provides the opportunity to
introduce a new topic.
Barnes (2007) also observes that pre-closing formulations are strategic in assuring
agreement among the participants and preventing subsequent objections or recycling of
the issue. A formulation of gist presents the conclusion as a collaborative achievement,
and thus as representing a common understanding of the issue. Clifton (2006) notes that
such formulations are also powerful leadership actions in that they provide the leader
with the opportunity to ‘fix’ their version of reality and have it endorsed by the co-
participants. This privileged opportunity to influence the collective sensemaking process
thus gives leaders the interactional tools to exercise epistemic authority.
Although a new topic may be introduced immediately after this type of closing
sequence, most often the transition to a new topic is marked by pauses, vocalizations
or various discourse markers (Ford, 2008). A discourse marker that seems to have an
especially prominent role in signalling transition to a new point on the agenda is okay
(produced with averted eye gaze, see Barske, 2009). This is one of the practices chairs
use to manage topic transition, and thereby enact the role of facilitator.
A basic expectation in informal conversation is that every new contribution is
locally relevant and connected to the prior contribution unless otherwise indicated
(Schegloff and Sacks, 1974). In meetings, the pre-allocation of turns might change this
local negotiation of topic progression. The participants may tie their contribution not
to the previous speaker, but to the agenda point under discussion or to a contribution
8 Discourse Studies 14(1)

by some other participant earlier in the discussion. The result may be longer and more
‘monological’ turns, that is, turns that are less directly related to the previous turn. In
certain cases, participants are seen to orient to this characteristic of the talk by producing
certain types of prefaces to their extended turns. These prefaces might be comments
that explicitly address the topical relevance of their contribution, such as ‘I wanted to
bring up the issue of storage’ (Ford, 2008: 75). Another sort of introductory comment
may be ‘transitional beginnings’, in which speakers explicitly tie their talk to ideas
presented by other speakers, such as ‘One idea building on Stephie’s comment . . .’
(Ford, 2008: 80). These sorts of prefaces thus place the forthcoming contribution in
relation to previous talk and display an orientation to the fact that topic organization in
meetings is not merely a local phenomenon, but also a matter of orienting to the ‘global’
topic represented by the agenda.

Multimodal practices
Meetings arenas for activities that crucially involve various modes of communication,
such as talk, text, images and embodied action. This complex form of interaction requires
a multimodal approach that allows the researcher to integrate different modes of action
into the description.
All communication is in essence multimodal, but certain inherently multimodal
practices are characteristic of meeting interaction. First, there are the typical artefacts
associated with meetings. Meetings are generally held in designated meeting rooms,
where the architecture, the furniture and the technological equipment are specially con-
structed for or adapted to the activities associated with meetings. Meeting interaction
often involves slide presentations, writing on whiteboards, inspecting illustrations or
figures in documents, etc. (see Asmuß and Oshima, this issue; Nielsen, this issue), and in
order to describe such activities, the researcher needs to incorporate into the analysis
of conversation the use of written text and images and the manipulation of material
objects.
Another characteristic feature of meetings is the dependence on certain types of
written documents. Meetings are often organized by reference to a pre-formulated,
written agenda and thus need to be analysed for their relations to this type of document
(see Svennevig, this issue). Furthermore, the discussion itself often takes for granted or
refers to information contained in case documents that the participants have read in
preparation for the meeting. Finally, meetings often include a written record in the
form of minutes. Such documents are not merely to be considered as ‘external context’
for the meeting, but are in complex ways manifested or reflected also in the talk itself,
and thus procedurally consequential for the interaction. Studying meeting interaction
(and many other types of institutional interaction) thus crucially involves exploring the
interrelations between text and talk (see Moore et al., 2010).
Finally, meetings generally involve multiparty interaction, and embodied actions
including gesture, gaze, posture, etc., are essential in coordinating the interaction between
the participants. This is especially important in the management of turn-taking (see Ford
and Stickle, this issue; Markaki and Mondada, this issue), but is also crucial in establish-
ing alliances among participants and expressing affiliation (Djordjilovic, this issue).
Svennevig 9

The current issue of Discourse Studies aims to contribute to developing the study of
meeting interaction as a truly multimodal enterprise. The empirical studies all focus
explicitly on the interrelations between different modes of communication.
The articles in this issue are based on papers presented at the International Conference
on Conversation Analysis in Mannheim, Germany in July 2010, in a panel called
Multimodality in Meetings. The discussions in the panel contributed to developing the
papers, and the authors have also since then commented on each others’ manuscripts
before they were sent to external review. In this way, the current issue is to a large extent
a result of collective work, expressing a common understanding of the basic principles
of meeting interaction.

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Jan Svennevig is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is

currently involved in research on interaction in workplace meetings, and has also previ-
ously edited a special issue on meeting interaction in Journal of Business Communication
(46(1), 2009, with Birte Asmuß). Other research topics include second language interac-
tion and Norwegian discourse markers. Recent publications include ‘Pre-empting refer-
ence problems in conversation’ (2010, Language in Society 39: 173–202) and ‘Trying
the easiest solution first in other-initiation of repair’ (2008, Journal of Pragmatics
40: 333–348).