Taking the Moral High Ground: Avoiding Accounts as a Practice for Being Uncompromisingly Principled

• In Event: Top Papers in Organizational Communication

Abstract

We apply a discourse analysis of accounts to a video-recording of a confrontation between a same-sex couple seeking a marriage license, and a county clerk refusing to provide the license for religious reasons, which took place after the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act in the U.S.A. (which had prohibited same-sex couples from marrying). In the case we examine, account sequences exploit the multiple frames available in a situation and appeal to incompatible authorities in order to accomplish “being morally principled.” This case study illustrates how mediated public conversations around social changes provide participants opportunities to perform moralities and define the terms of debate in relation to particular institutions. We reflect on how the consequence of this practice is a form of debate in which participants speak past each other and construct problems as unresolvable.

Authors

• Jessica Sarah Robles, Loughborough U

• Theresa R. Castor, Univ of Wisconsin-Parkside