Reviewed by Bojana Petrić, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Greg Myers’ fourth book deals with expressions of opinion in group discussions and broadcast media events. In Ch. 1 (1–21), M introduces this theme by pointing to paradoxical aspects of opinion: opinions are both private and public, consistent and contradictory, local and global, individual and shared, and while no one would want to be seen as having no opinion about an issue, opinions are considered inferior to facts, yet facts can be represented as opinions and vice versa.

Chs. 2–4 present analytical and methodological approaches to exploring expressions of opinion in group discussions. Ch. 2 (22–46) overviews a range of frameworks by providing analyses of a focus group excerpt from the perspectives of (i) conversation analysis; (ii) the categories participants use in the discussion; (iii) participant roles; (iv) linguistic analysis of discourse markers, politeness, pronouns, and reported speech; and (v) rhetorical analysis focusing on the participants’ use of commonplaces to frame arguments. In Ch. 3 (47–66), using the framework of the ethnography of communication, M compares focus group discussions to other types of group discussions (e.g. classroom and dinner table discussions as well as business meetings) and analyzes their structural elements, such as the moderator’s opening and prompts, participants’ introductions, and the closing. Ch. 4 (67–88) deals with institutions that study public opinion and presents two perspectives: cognitive, which sees opinions as individual; and social, which regards opinions as interactive. M supports the social perspective, arguing that ‘all expressions of opinion begin in interactions’ (71).

Chs. 5–8 explore how opinions are expressed in focus group discussions by analyzing topics (Ch. 5), agreement and disagreement (Ch. 6), reported speech (Ch. 7), and the notion of expertise (Ch. 8). In Ch. 5 (89–111), M argues for studying topic boundaries in group discussions rather than topical content and analyzes how topics are opened, acknowledged, interpreted, rejected, changed, closed, and reopened by the moderator and focus group participants. Ch. 6 (112–33) investigates different ways in which participants express agreement and disagreement both among themselves and with the prompts offered by the moderator. Ch. 7 (134–56) looks at forms, signals, and functions of reported speech in expressing one’s own and others’ opinions in group discussions, while Ch. 8 (157–78) explores the ways in which participants talk about experts as well as how they talk as experts. M warns that researchers should not take individual statements out of context as expressions of opinion, as they may in fact be rhetorical statements leading to opinions (e.g. concession to the previous speaker preceding an expression of disagreement) or quotations of others’ opinions who the speaker does not necessarily agree with. He argues that opinion must be analyzed in the context of previous turns—that is, in the social interaction within which it is embedded.

The following two chapters analyze expressions of opinion in two types of media events: phone-ins on radio programs and vox pop (i.e. man on the street) television interviews. In Ch. 9 (179–202), M stresses that, despite the asymmetry between the host and the caller in the phone-in interview, this media event is a result of their cooperation, produced for the overhearing audience who participates in the ‘para-social interaction’ (184). M’s analysis of vox pop interviews (Ch. 10, 203–22) focuses on the ways the media categorize people to construct the public. The concluding chapter (Ch. 11, 223–34) summarizes the main points of the book: that expressing an opinion is an act in words; that opinions are expressed in interaction; and that opinions are packaged, mediated, and intertextual.

This highly readable book will be of interest to media scholars and linguists, especially sociolinguists and discourse analysts. Particularly valuable are the detailed transcript analyses, which will be of interest to students and scholars alike.