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This study examines two public hearings on a zoning proposal that would allow the construction of a Super Wal-Mart Center on a field over the town's aquifer. Many citizens speak out against the zoning change because of the risk to drinking water, as well as other issues. Citizens face the speaker's problem of how to make their presentations convincing, given the technical matters involved and the fact that Town Board members have likely already heard about these issues. Some speakers draw on the words of others in their presentations. Using another's words allows the speaker to cite an authoritative source or to respond to what another has said, to evaluate it, and often to challenge it. Speakers use other devices in addition to quotes, such as formulations, repetition, and membership categorizations to develop their evaluative stances in the reporting context. The study's focus is the discursive construction and rhetoric of using others' words for the speaker's own purposes. (Public hearings, risk, reported speech, quotes, Wal-Mart, discursive analysis, rhetoric)* I N T R O D U C T I O N This study examines participation at two public hearings before a Town Board in upstate New York. The hearings were called to solicit public input on a proposed zoning change. Zoning issues are not typically the stuff that excites the passions of the citizenry to turn out to public hearings, but this proposal would allow for the construction of a Wal-Mart Super Center on an environmentally sensitive site. The proposal calls for a Wal-Mart to be built on a vacant lot, extending the town's commercial development along a fast-growing traffic corridor. While Wal

Public meetings are sites for democratic participation and deliberation on issues facing a municipality. In the North American context, the New England Town Hall meeting epitomizes this democratic ideal. Such meetings are a place where ordinary folks can get up on their feet, have their say, and possibly influence the town's decision. Not surprisingly, what transpires at public meetings often falls short of these ideals or mythos of democracy. The gap between the ideal and the realities of public meetings has led to calls for empirical studies of citizen participation and deliberation. A language and social interaction ( LSI ) approach seems especially well suited for studies of public meetings given the focus on talk as social action and interaction. This discursive turn to actual communicative practices as embodied in participants' discourse has been called “ordinary democracy.”

This is a study of poverty as it is constructed in the talk of 11 guests who regularly eat at a soup kitchen in upstate New York. Framed within the perspective that talk constitutes identity and action, this study offers a critical interpretation of how the soup kitchen guests present themselves and the other impoverished guests of the kitchen. The essay also evaluates their characterizations in terms of how they may reflect or influence society's views and policies on poverty. The interpretation and evaluation are guided by the concept "relevancy in meaning" as it is being developed in interpretive audience studies.

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