Public Controversy in Everyday Life

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session and Reception
  In Interactive Paper Session: Language and Social Interaction Interactive Paper Session: Constructing Controversy, Help, and Play

Abstract

This articles demonstrate how public controversies are manifested and accomplished through the communicative practices of activists for the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and transgender people (LGBT). After a brief historical overview of the notion of public controversy and its use in empirical research, I propose to adopt a more processual view of public controversy. I theorize the production of controversy as an everyday life rhetorical invention (rather than a phenomenon made visible through documentation of mediated traces of public statements). To support this view of public controversy with empirical data, I conducted a four-month ethnography in a community-based organization that defends the rights of LGBT people. In the analysis, I explain how activists become passionate about an issue and engage in political action; then I details problems of alignment that result from talk about political issues, such as the legal and social recognition of transsexuals and transgender people.

Author

• Pascal Gagne, U of Colorado