Citizen Participation, Metadiscourse, and Accountability: A Public Hearing on a Zoning Change for Wal-Mart

Abstract

During a contentious public hearing on a zoning change for Wal-Mart, participants at times moved to a metadiscursive level with utterances such as, "expect to be listened to," "I have a question," or reading quotes of Town Board members from the newspaper.Such metadiscursive references allow participants to attempt to structure, or depart, from the public hearing format. Metadiscursive references also work to criticize their opponents' speech or the process. Metadiscourse has the consequence of contextualizing the participation framework of the hearing as to topic, length of presentation, and mode of interaction. From a normative perspective, metadiscourse is used to reflect on the folk assumptions about communication as expressed by participants during the public hearing.

Democracy-Appealing Partisanship: A Situated Ideal of Citizenship

“…Such is the typical structure in both regularly recurring governance bodies such as city council meetings (Leighter & Black, 2010), school board meetings (Tracy, 2007), and university trustee boards (West & Fenstermaker, 2002), and in meetings that are specially set to decide about an action or policy that is controversial, such as building of a Wal-Mart (Buttny, 2009(Buttny, , 2010 or introduction of a Disney Park (Olson & Goodnight, 2004) in a community.…”

Metacommunication During Disaster Response

“…Putnam (2007) examined metatalk about feelings during a corporate meeting retreat that addressed an organizational leadership crisis. Buttny (2010) examined metacommunication during public meetings on a potential community crisis, and how conflict and dilemmas were managed. Buttny (2010) examined metacommunication during public meetings on a potential community crisis, and how conflict and dilemmas were managed.…”

Between the Procedural and the Substantial: Democratic Deliberation and the Interaction Order in “Occupy Middletown General Assembly”

“…Indeed, a growing body of research on the public hearing format that serves as an “archetypical form” in the organization of public meetings in the United States has shown that “community members have a difficult time trusting public officials, community members often believe their perspectives do not matter in the long run, or that public officials have already made up their minds by the time the meeting is held” (Black, Leighter, and Gastil :144). As Buttny (:637) puts it, “citizens approach such gatherings with apathy or frustration” because many of them believe “that the decision has already been made by the municipal body and that the public hearing is a mere formality, a way to satisfy minimum legal requirements or let the opposition let off steam.” Moreover, insofar as “public hearings are seen as tilted toward those with economic stakes in the outcome—those who can mobilize resources to promote their interests” and are therefore “considered to be a ‘safe’ method for keeping control of the process and diffusing public opposition,” such events represent the kind of corruption that the Occupy activists' originally protested against and sought to remedy.…”

“…As opposed to the public hearing format that involves taken‐for‐granted folk assumptions about communication (Carbaugh ; Craig ) which may seem naive or unrealistic in practice (Buttny :636), the highly specialized guidelines that specify the GA procedures and rationale present us with the kind of self‐reflexivity associated with “folk criticism,” that is, “the creation of certain ways of communicating to address fundamental concerns through local issues” as embedded in the realm of everyday life (Gencarella :255; McLaughlin ). Indeed, one should keep in mind that the GA model, as well as many other characteristics of the Occupy movement, are not unique to the American groups.…”