Discourse and Diversionary Justice by Michele Zappavigna & JR Martin

Author:Michele Zappavigna & JR Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

5 Conferencing as Pedagogic Discourse

This chapter has explored how the Convenor manages the conferencing macro-genre as a communicative interaction featuring multiple participants. We have surveyed how exchange structures operate in the conference, in particular focusing on the joint construction of the YP’s commissioned recount . The focus on exchange structure reveals that conferencing is best interpreted as a pedagogic discourse in which the Convenor plays the important role of scaffolding the YP so that he or she may produce a full and productive account of the offence, paving the way for the possibility of reintegration into relevant communities of concern. In other words, what we have seen is a regulative discourse projecting an integrative discourse, supported by Convenors who attempt to open up the possibilities of taking responsibility for their behaviour.

This survey of exchange structure naturally raises questions about what exactly is being exchanged in the kinds of interaction we have sampled. All of the analyses presented in this section have underlined the fact that the Convenor, along with other experienced, institutionally powerful participants like the ECLO, is not simply allocating turns or managing major transitions across the macro-genre. The Convenor is in control of the regulative discourse and, through this, is able to shape many of the knowledge exchanges that make up the integrative discourse as well. These knowledge exchanges , of course, often touch on moral judgements and emotional reactions; and, as we saw in Chaps. 1 and 2, moral judgements and reactions are posited as central to the efficacy of conferencing in almost all versions of restorative justice theory. Certainly, there are many places in the New South Wales youth justice conferencing script where the Convenor is instructed to directly question the YP, or a Support Person, probing for their emotional reaction to the offence (and we have seen examples of this in the exchange structure analysis provided earlier).

Contrary to the impression that some restorative justice theorists have evoked in their characterizations of conferencing—where a YP is supposed to be suddenly overcome and transformed by ‘an avalanche of shame’ (Nathanson 1997)—what we are looking at here is a careful, deliberative process whereby the Convenor, and other well-positioned conference participants, map out the territory within which ‘emotion talk’ and interpersonal bonding is possible. In the next chapter, we will re-examine our set of conferences using the tools of appraisal, a framework for analysing the patterning and rhetorical function of the evaluative language that is negotiated through the various steps and stages of the conference macro-genre.

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