Greg Myers. Matters of opinion: Talking about public issues

Extract

Greg Myers. Matters of opinion: Talking about public issues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004. Pp xvii, 258.

Public opinion clearly matters very much to a great many people. We are constantly being given figures from the results of the latest survey and the most recent opinion poll; the losses and gains in popularity of our political leaders make headline news. Our opinions are solicited on the doorstep, on the phone, in the street; pollsters, market researchers, government departments – “they” – want to know what we think. But the mass of data collected is quantitatively processed. It is compiled as statistics, presented in percentages, reported as numerical values. In this book, through his analysis of focus group discussions and mediated opinion giving, Greg Myers takes a very different approach to what counts as an opinion on an issue. Using the findings and methods of interactional sociolinguistics and Conversation Analysis, he investigates the production of opinion as a locally emerging, interactive and above all, contextualized phenomenon.