| Meetings differ from ordinary conversation in that they have an agenda that specifies in advance the topics to be addressed during the meeting. However, the introduction of these topics needs to be locally accomplished and recognized by the participants as agenda items. This paper contrasts the practices used for introducing agenda-based topics with those used for introducing non-agenda topics. The analysis is based on a collection instances drawn from video-recorded business meetings in two large Scandinavian companies. It shows that the introductions of agenda items rely on the known-in-advance status of the items, and are presented by the chair as unilateral announcements. They exploit and invoke the written agenda in several ways. The announcements are often short and elliptical, citing the written title of the agenda point. Furthermore, gaze down at the written document is used as a public display that the introduction is related to the agenda, and a distinct intonation pattern signals that the formulation is reproduced from the agenda rather than being formulated on the spot. The meeting participants display their understanding of the announcements as topic introductions in that the person responsible for the issue referred to frequently self-selects and starts to give an account, rather than waiting to be explicitly allocated the turn by the chair. In contrast to this practice of introducing agenda items, topics not specified by the agenda are introduced by suggestions and questions that present the introduction as contingent on acceptance by the co-participants, much like topics in non-institutional conversation. The speakers thereby display an orientation to them as not pre-specified and institutionally warranted. The paper thus contributes to describing a specific organizational practice related to meeting talk, and more generally to describing the procedural consequentiality of the written agenda as a template for the talk. |
