Lay and expert voices in public participation programmes: A case of generic heterogeneity

This article deals with the status of lay and expert voices in public participation programmes. It has been argued that public participation programmes have undermined the traditional view according to which only expert knowledge, not knowledge based on life-world experience, is considered valuable and reliable. Talk shows in which ordinary people are given the floor and encouraged to tell their stories may have changed this epistemology (see especially Livingstone and Lunt, 1994; Tolson, 2001 for a discussion of this issue). By means of a close analysis of the linguistic choices made in fragments taken from one episode of the talk show Kilroy, this study shows that the authority which experts, through their profession, have in society permeates their discourse on television, even in the artificially created social space of the talk show. Wood (2001), has argued convincingly that the interaction on Kilroy is governed by the host's agenda, which is primarily to create entertainment. This study adds to the picture by focusing on how experts and lay guests bring their own discourses into the studio and embed them into the talk show. It is shown that the resulting discourse must be seen as reflecting generic heterogeneity (Fairclough, 1995).