Theory as Metadiscourse

Robert T. Craig

Prepared for: "Practical Theory in Classroom Contexts," a panel discussion at the annual convention of the National Communication Association, Seattle, WA, November, 2000.

Version of 6/8/00

Abstract:

Practical metadiscourse is intrinsic to communicative practice. In other words, everyday talk includes quite a lot of talk-about-talk. Much of this metatalk serves very direct practical functions in shaping and managing the ongoing proceedings. Sometimes the practical object is more indirect, as when we discuss the pros and cons of some absent other's communicative actions. This kind of metatalk undoubtedly also arises from and functions within its immediate context, but it also has a speculative aspect, and draws upon conceptual resources (or metadiscursive commonplaces) familiar to the participants. Communication theory can be a rich source of conceptual vocabularies for the conduct of everyday metadiscourse. Theories of communication offer well-thought-out ways of framing and reasoning about communication problems and practices. In teaching communication theory and practice, we need to find ways of integrating theoretical metadiscourse (communication theory) into practical metadiscourse in order to cultivate more thoughtful and well-grounded reflection on society's communicative practices.

Theory as Metadiscourse

I have much to learn from the other members of this panel and look forward to our coming dialogue on email and at the NCA convention. Although my conceptual work on practical theory (e.g., Craig, 1989, 1996a, 1996b, 1999a; Craig & Tracy, 1995), along with the beginnings of some empirical work on practical metadiscourse (Craig, 1997, 1999b, 2000; Craig & Sanusi, in press-a, in press-b) has, I think, some pedagogical implications "in principle," my efforts to apply this conceptual understanding "in practice" in actual classroom situations have been limited. What I can learn from other members of this panel has the potential not only to inform my own (and, if these learnings are disseminated, the discipline’s) classroom practice but also to challenge and reshape my conceptual understanding of practical theory.

This attitude to my participation on the NCA panel reflects my approach to theory and practice in general. Although I count myself as an advocate of practical theory, I think it is a mistake to imagine that theory can be reduced to practice or practice to theory, or that there is no difference between them. Yes, all theory is practice (roughly, the practice of abstract, systematic discourse). Yes, all theory is practical insofar as it potentially orients us to the world in certain ways. Yes, all practice involves theory insofar as it is bound up with vocabularies that reflect certain conceptual understandings and orientations to the world. Yes, all practice can inform theory insofar as we reflect systematically on what we can learn from practice. But, still, there is an irreducible gap between theory and practice that becomes more apparent the more we try to theorize practice or apply theory in practice. The supposed unity of theory and practice at its worst is false consciousness, a failure to acknowledge that what we actually do is different from our verbal accounts (always selective and idealized, often fanciful or self-serving) of what we do. The unity of theory and practice at its best is a dialectical unity, a unity of opposites that emerges in a reflective discourse between theory and practice.

Although this paper is a little disjointed, I hope it will serve as a stimulus for thought and discussion on the pedagogical implications of practical theory. The body of the paper consists of three edited extracts from previously published articles. The first, from "Practical-Theoretical Argumentation" (Craig, 1996a), introduces a way of thinking about communication theory and practice as types of discourse that exist along a theory-practice continuum, and reflective discourse as a dialectical form of talk that "discourses" to and fro along that continuum. On this view, a primary educational goal of a practical discipline of communication is to cultivate the practice of reflective discourse. The second extract, from "Communication Theory as a Field" (Craig, 1999a), introduces a way of thinking about communication theory as a field of "theoretical metadiscourse" (talk about talk in general) that engages with problems of "practical metadiscourse " (talk about talk for immediate pragmatic purposes). On this view, reflective discourse might be cultivated by inviting students (1) to become more aware of their ordinary ways of talking about communication, and (2) to consider how vocabularies derived from communication theory might enrich their practical metadiscourse. The third extract, from "Metadiscourse, Theory, and Practice" (Craig, 1999b), illustrates a discourse analysis of classroom discussion showing how students appropriate theoretical vocabularies for practical purposes in interaction. I conclude by sketching some initial thoughts about the pedagogical implications of this approach to practical theory.

Jonsen and Toulmin (1988) distinguish theory from practice on the grounds that they characteristically involve different kinds of argumentation. Theory employs formal arguments in which particular conclusions are deduced logically from universal principles. Practice, in contrast, employs informal or practical arguments which "involve a wider range of factors than formal deductions and are read with an eye to their occasion of use" (Jonsen and Toulmin, 1988, p. 35).

Consider a hypothetical conversation between two friends, Ann and Bill, in which Bill has been complaining that a mutual acquaintance, Cal, has inexplicably become unfriendly to Bill and has been expressing intense but vaguely grounded negative feelings about Bill to other acquaintances. Ann finally interrupts Bill's tirade to exclaim, "Well, why don’t you just talk directly with Cal about the problem? Otherwise, you’ll never understand what’s going on!" Ann's argument can be reconstructed as follows: Ann claims that Bill should communicate face-to-face with Cal for the reason that doing so will produce better understanding between Bill and Cal. Ann's inference is warranted by an implied generalization: that face-to-face communication produces greater understanding between people (which is good). Although it thus implicates a universal principle, the argument is essentially practical rather than theoretical because it appeals not purely to the logical form of the inference but rather to Bill's judgment of the particular situation in all its complex contingency.

That direct communication (usually) improves interpersonal understanding (usually to good effect) may be a plausible generalization, but its applicability to the present case may nevertheless be questioned by Bill on any number of grounds. Cal may predictably refuse to talk with Bill or may be expected to equivocate or evade the issue. Bill or Cal may become so angry or defensive that direct conversation between them will lead to an emotional blow-up that will only further damage the relationship. Direct communication between Bill and Cal on such a matter may be culturally inappropriate for some reason, or perhaps Bill merely wishes to avoid a predictably unpleasant or even dangerous experience. Bill may be able to learn about Cal’s motives in other ways and may already know enough to guess at them. On the other hand, considerations of personal honor, for example, may weigh more heavily than either safety or interpersonal understanding in Bill's judgment. Bill, then, may be aware of good reasons, some incompatible with the one Ann has provided, either for speaking directly to Cal or against doing so. In short, the persuasiveness of Ann's argument in this particular case would be a matter of judgment potentially involving an indeterminate range of factors that could be explored in further conversation between Ann and Bill, although, in the end, much of the basis for Bill's judgment of what to do in this situation would remain tacit, for that is the way of practice (as distinct from theory, in which conclusions are deduced formally from explicit premises).

As Jonsen and Toulmin acknowledge, however, theory and practice so conceived are not totally divorced from one another (1988, p. 36). They are ideal types that mark the extreme ends of a continuum. Actual discourses are never purely theoretical or practical but combine elements of both in varying proportions.

Pure mathematics and logic are certainly very close to the theoretical extreme, but even these formal disciplines in practice depend upon tacit knowledge and embodied skills and express intellectual passions without which such disciplines would cease to make any sense as human activities (Polanyi, 1964). Physical sciences further depend upon practical activities of experimentation and observation. Moreover, as Kuhn (1970) famously showed, physical scientists, when deliberating about alternative fundamental theories, unavoidably must resort to "persuasion" and efforts to "convert" one another. Although "good reasons" may be found for choosing a particular theory, there can be no strictly formal procedure for proving which among competing theories is the best (Kuhn, 1970, pp. 198-199). Theory choice is finally a matter of practical judgment taken in the context of an argumentative discourse among the community of scientists.

If practical argumentation is essential even to the hard or "compact" sciences, it must have a much larger place in what Toulmin (1972) has described as the "diffuse" and "would-be" disciplines of the human sciences, fields that "blend theoretical and practical goals and methods in other (sometimes even inextricable) ways" (Jonsen and Toulmin, 1988, p. 357) and therefore tend to fall along a middle range of the spectrum. "Finally, toward the practical end of the spectrum are those activities the preeminent concern of which is to change the world rather than to understand it" (Jonsen and Toulmin, 1988, p. 36). Jonsen and Toulmin take clinical medicine as their prime example of a practical field. I submit, however, that the vernacular discourses of everyday life, such as the conversation of Ann and Bill, actually fall much closer to the practical extreme on the theory-practice continuum.

It is not precisely to be said of such mundane practical activities that their preeminent concern is either to change the world or to understand it, although both understanding and change are often at stake in them. More fundamentally, such activities constitute and participate in the world in ways that span the whole broad range of human concerns and intentions. My thesis is that theory is essentially involved in the highly informal argumentative discourses of everyday life, no less than practice is essentially involved in the most rigorously formal, scientific disciplines, and this essential involvement of theory in practice is the basis of the reflective practices that it is the business of practical disciplines, such as communication studies, to cultivate (Craig, 1989, 1996a; Craig and Tracy, 1995).

If discourses are arrayed along a theory-practice continuum, then "theory" can be taken as referring to discourses that are judged to be relatively close to the theory extreme —which is to say, discourses that are relatively formal, or systematic and abstract. A discourse is systematic to the degree that it follows the formal contours of an explicitly elaborated conceptual structure, and is abstract to the degree that it refers to matters in general (universals rather than particulars) and is not restricted in use to a local context of situation but can be extended across a range of situations. Practical discourses, then, are those judged to be relatively unconstrained by an explicit conceptual system and bound to the contingencies of a particular, local context. A discussion between Ann and Bill about Bill's difficulties with Cal would be less "theoretical" than a discussion about communication in general, especially were the latter discussion to become deeply involved with conceptual questions such as the objective determinability of meanings and intentions or the relative merits of avoidance and confrontation as conflict styles.

Not inconceivably, Ann and Bill's conversation might become so embroiled in a discussion of the ontological assumptions of speech act theory that they might temporarily forget about Bill's problem with Cal and decide instead to co-author an academic paper on intentionality. When the paper was written and had passed the rigors of peer review and finally was published, it would then be "theory" in some official sense. Theory in that sort of sense is an institutional category constituted within the discourse of an academic discipline or field, a category constituted quite differently in different intellectual traditions, so theory in departments of physics means various things and in literature departments, various different things. If we put aside these official notions of theory in particular fields and imagine, following Jonsen and Toulmin, an underlying theory-practice continuum on which any discourse can be located, then an academic article on intentionality is probably more theoretical than a free-wheeling conversation about speech act theory, which in turn may be much more theoretical than a personal discussion on Cal's intentions toward Bill. These, however, are relative judgments, for no fixed point along the continuum separates theory from practice, and every discourse is both theoretical and practical to some degree.

Theory, as I pointed out earlier, always has a practical aspect. Rhetorical analysis would reveal that our hypothetical article on intentionality, for example, was artfully adapted to a particular (inter)disciplinary audience at a particular discursive moment. But, can it be made equally obvious that practice always has a theoretical aspect? I believe it can be, if we distinguish practice, which involves intentional human action, from sheer organismic behavior, which does not. Ants and anteaters do things but their doings are not practice. Nor is everything that humans do, practice. Breathing, for instance, is not per se a practice, but breathing deeply in order to relieve anxiety before initiating a difficult conversation might be. Practice is a mode of behavior characteristic of organisms whose intentionality is pervasively informed by, and expressed in, symbolic language (see Burke, 1966, on the dialectics of human "animality" and "symbolicity"). To acquire a human language is to acquire, as Cassirer wrote, "a theoretical attitude" (1970, p. 145), a capacity to form abstract concepts of, hence to reflect on, things and actions. Reflection on a voluntary behavior constitutes it as an object of choice and moral accountability. This practical reflection, conducted in the medium of a symbolic language, is intrinsically social and discursive. Thus, deep breathing to reduce anxiety is constituted as practice by a reflective discourse in which the practice can be described, formulated, explained, warranted by reasons, criticized, etc. (Bill: "I’ll be too nervous to confront him." Ann: "Take a few deep breaths and just do it!") Even at the practical extreme of the theory-practice spectrum, then, practice always involves some minimal degree of abstract conceptualization or theory.

To avoid misunderstanding, I should emphasize that I am not claiming that every practice is underlaid by some elaborate theory or conceptual structure that may be partly or even entirely implicit. In fact, I tend toward an opposite view. My view is that practices are "theorized" to varying degrees and that many practices are only minimally, which is to say hardly at all, theorized. Such practices may involve relatively low levels of reflective intentionality. They may not be widely disseminated. They may be highly variable or unstable. They may be little discussed, and then mostly in formulaic maxims or cliches ("a few deep breaths"). They may have subtle features, seldom noticed, for which no standard names exist, some of which may someday be noticed and named by academic scholars or other careful observers and so become theorized objects of reflection. They may involve false or incoherent or ideologically distorted assumptions that critical reflection may someday bring to light and show cause to be revised. There is no ideal world of Forms in which every practice has its essential, structurally determinate place. But every practice is theorized—objectified abstractly in thought and discourse—to some degree, and therefore can be said to have a theoretical aspect; otherwise, it would not yet be practice at all but sheer organismic behavior, a function of instinct and unreflective habit.

"Communication" is a fairly well theorized field of social practice, a topic frequently discussed in cultural circles that Ann and Bill may be imagined to inhabit. Ann's admonishment to "talk directly with Cal" may allude to a cultural pattern like that described by Katriel and Philipsen (1981), in which "real communication" occurs only when we "sit down and talk" in order "to work out problems." This and related notions of interpersonal dialogue have come to be associated with a broader and more variegated cultural category, "communication," that spans practices ranging from journalism and political oratory to group process and intimate conversation. This broad category of communication has come to be thought so important that a sizable academic discipline has been established to study it and "communication theory" has become an official type of theory published in journals and taught in universities. Although it may still be a rather inchoate, heterogenous, even confused, type of theory (Craig, 1993, 1999a), it is nonetheless widely studied and presumably is working its way into practical discourse. Ann and Bill, as serious students of communication, undoubtedly can go on at some length about "relational dialectics" and "speech acts" and "technological determinism." They try to avoid "defensiveness." They know that the "transmission model" is simplistic. Such concepts, together with the larger theoretical structures that they index, are available to Ann and Bill for whatever uses they may have in reflective discourse.

Reflective discourse, which is discourse about practice, moves to and fro along the theory-practice continuum. There is what we do, or practice, and there is talk about what we do, which may or may not be related usefully to the doing. The practice in question may itself be discursive or partly discursive; and the discourse about practice, of course, itself is practice but is also, in some manner and to some degree, theory. Even moderately theorized practices—teaching, for instance—are much talked about by practitioners and observers alike, and often in rather abstract, conceptually sophisticated language informed by systematic theory.

In reflective discourse, practice is described, formulated, interpreted, criticized, accounted for, projected, planned, and directed. Higher order reflection—reflection upon reflection—emerges as the terms and propositions of reflective discourse are themselves questioned, explained, elaborated, criticized, defended, and revised. Such a process can spiral into "purely" (or "merely") theoretical zones in which it forgets all about matters of non-theoretical practice and takes on, as it were, a life of its own (like Ann and Bill's article on intentionality). Or, it can veer back toward practice in acts of "application" that re-describe a practical situation in terms and propositions mapped onto a conceptual structure. (Ann: "You know, no one, not even Cal, has the final word on Cal's intentions. They are subject to retrospective reinterpretation.") Application, however, is not a linear, formal translation of theory into practice but requires tacking back and forth between abstract concepts and the particular situation, reconsidering the meaning of each until a sufficiently coherent interpretation of both is achieved. (Bill: "Ann, what ‘intentions’ are you talking about? A lot is going on here. I'm more worried about the effects.") How a theory applies and whether it has been applied correctly are themselves practical judgments, open to reflection. In further practical discourse, the conceptual structure of a theory may be followed more or less closely, reinterpreted, or put aside as other perspectives are brought into play. And, of course, attempts at application can lead to questions, objections, or serendipitous insights that once again redirect the discourse toward theoretical reflection or on to other practical matters.

Reflective discourse involves, among other things, argumentation. It involves asking for and offering substantive reasons for choosing among courses of action, critical assessment of reasons offered, and so on. Practical argumentation connects theory to practice; it appeals to general warrants (theory) in order to establish grounds for practical judgments. The warrants may be relatively simple, like maxims, or may tap into elaborate conceptual systems within which formal, theoretical arguments can be constructed. Digressions into theory are undoubtedly rare events in everyday practical discourse. The conversation of Ann and Bill is far from typical, although it is not, I believe, entirely fantastic. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to say very much more about what is typical, or even what is realistically possible, because reflective discourse has not yet been the subject of any systematic empirical study. Such studies are needed and might usefully be pursued, in part through discourse-analytic methods, in any setting in which reflective discourse is likely to occur on its own or can be stimulated experimentally. Talk shows, professional staff meetings, and classrooms, for instance, might be good sites for naturalistic study. (Recently I have begun some research on reflective discourse in a classroom setting, which will be illustrated below in an excerpt from Craig, 1999b.)

The formal inquiry of a practical discipline, like ordinary practical reflection, moves to and fro along the theory-practice continuum but in more methodical steps informed by systematic methodological reflection on the reflective process itself. The goal is to engage theory with practice in ways that are actually helpful to the development of techne and phronesis—fine technical skill under the governance of wise practical judgment—within the community of practitioners. It is this final emphasis on practical judgment that distinguishes a practical discipline from a scientific discipline, the ultimate goal of which is a theoretical understanding of nature. In terms of the theory-practice continuum, the difference is a matter of emphasis, of value priorities. Theory in a practical discipline is instrumental to practice, and is valued insofar as it informs practice in ways that are reasonably judged to be helpful. Nonetheless, it is theory: It expresses impulses toward rational depth and coherence, broad scope and generality, conceptual order as an end in itself. So, there is a certain tension between theory and practice that inheres in the project of a practical discipline and generates its characteristic methodological problems. The discourse of a practical discipline can be typified as a dialectic between theory and practice, an exchange of critical argumentation back and forth across the gap that recurrently opens between them. (For further elaboration see: Craig, 1989, 1996a, 1996b; Craig & Tracy, 1995).

Another way to conceptualize reflective discourse and the theory-practice continuum is in terms of metadiscourse, or discourse about discourse. Communication theory in this perspective becomes a field of metadiscursive practice, a field of discourse about discourse with implications for the practice of communication. The various traditions of communication theory (rhetoric, semiotics, phenomenology, etc.) each offer distinct ways of conceptualizing and discussing communication problems and practices. These ways derive from and appeal to certain commonplace beliefs about communication while problematizing other beliefs. It is in the dialogue among these traditions that communication theory can fully engage with the ongoing practical discourse (or metadiscourse) about communication in society.

Practical metadiscourse is intrinsic to communicative practice. That is, communication is not only something we do but also something we refer to reflexively in ways that are practically entwined with our doing of it. If Ann said to Bill, for example, "you can’t possibly know what I’m talking about," Ann would appeal, in the form of a metadiscursive remark, to certain commonplace beliefs about meaning and reference (such as the belief that true understanding comes only from personal experience), probably in order undermine some assertion of Bill's. Practical discourse abounds in such metadiscursive commonplaces, which are important in everyday life for all sorts of pragmatic functions. In everyday conversation, "the second point I want to make" could be a bit of metadiscourse used to bracket and introduce a segment of talk. "That’s a promise" could be a bit of metadiscourse used to constitute what has just been said as a promise. "There was too much noise in the channel" could be a bit of metadiscourse used to make an excuse for a failure of communication. That last example happens to draw from the language of information theory. It illustrates one way in which theoretical metadiscourse—the formal discourse of communication theory—can be used in practical metadiscourse. Theory becomes a resource for constituting communication as an object of discussion in a particular way, for some practical purpose.

Communication theory is a kind of metadiscourse—a way of talking about talk—that derives much of its plausibility and interest by appealing rhetorically to commonplaces of everyday practical metadiscourse (Taylor, 1992). Socio-psychological trait theories of communication, for example, seem plausible because they appeal to the commonplace notion that people's communication styles reflect their personalities. "Communication apprehension" theory is just a more sophisticated version of everyday metadiscourse about shyness, as in "she was afraid to talk to him because she’s so shy."

I envision communication theory as a field of discourse engaged with the problems of communication as a social practice, a theoretical metadiscourse that emerges from, extends, and informs practical metadiscourse. In a practical discipline of communication, theory is designed to provide conceptual resources for reflecting on communication problems. It does this by "theorizing" (conceptually reconstructing) communicative practices within relatively abstract, explicitly reasoned, normative idealizations of communication (Craig, 1989, 1996a; Craig & Tracy, 1995). Communication can be theorized, of course, from many different perspectives, so the field of communication theory becomes a forum in which to discuss the relative merits of alternative practical theories. This discussion about alternative theories constitutes what I am calling theoretical metadiscourse.

Communication has the potential to be a practical discipline in the first place because "communication" is already a richly meaningful concept in our lifeworld. If ours is a culture in which we tend to think that all problems are fundamentally problems of communication (McKeon, 1957), in which we often find that we need to "sit down and talk" in order "to work out problems" in our relationships (Katriel & Philipsen, 1981), in which we ritually avow that communication is the only tie that can hold together a diverse society across the vast spatial and cultural gaps that divide us (Carey, 1989), then communication is already a topic much discussed throughout society, and everyone already knows that communication is important and worth studying in order to improve. Because communication is already so much talked about in society, communication theory can be constructed inductively through critical studies of everyday practice, in part by transcribing and theoretically reconstructing the "situated ideals" articulated by people themselves in their everyday metadiscourse. This critical-inductive way of constructing communication theory has been explored in earlier work on "grounded practical theory" (Craig & Tracy, 1995).

But communication also has the potential to be a practical discipline in part because "communication" is already an important theoretical category within a wide range of established disciplines, from which we can derive a rich array of conceptual resources for reflecting on the practice of communication. These already-established traditions of communication theory offer distinct, alternative vocabularies that can be critically reconstructed as alternative ways of conceptualizing communication problems and practices. The rich intellectual heritage of communication theory constitutes, then, a second starting point for constructing a field of communication theory.

Here I present an empirical example showing how theory can be appropriated into practical metadiscourse. The example is from an audiotaped discussion involving twenty students in an undergraduate "critical thinking" class. Five students (including Fred, Lisa, Susan, and probably one or more unidentified speakers in the excerpts below) had been assigned to plan and facilitate a forty minute class discussion of a controversial issue. By examining metadiscursive references to the "issue" being discussed, I will show how members used a theoretically informed concept of "issue" as a normative resource for managing the group's interaction.

A brief synopsis of the first third of the discussion will be helpful. Fred officially opened the proceedings with "So! (.) To start this off (.) we want you guys to write down (.) a definition of marriage … " (lines 13-14). After a pause for people to write their definitions, two short videos were shown, the first a marriage scene from the movie Braveheart and the second a clip of an activist speaking on efforts to gain legal recognition of homosexual marriages. This was followed by a round-robin recitation of participants' definitions of marriage, then Fred's reading of "the Webster's [dictionary] definition" of marriage as "the institute under which a man and a woman become legally united, on a permanent basis. Do you agree or disagree with this definition …" (lines 203-207). A student expressed disagreement (most of the participants' definitions had not referred to the marital partners by gender). Several minutes of discussion followed, much of it concerning whether a homosexual couple could gain the legal equivalent of marriage by forming a corporation.

Up to this point (through line 300), no one had explicitly formulated a topic or issue for discussion. This is not, of course, to say that the discussion had been about nothing. Clearly it had been about such things as the definition of marriage, homosexual marriage, the legal advantages of marriage, and whether a homosexual couple might secure the legal advantages of marriage by forming a corporation. Even so, nothing had been metadiscursively proposed or announced as the "topic," "issue," "problem," "question," "what we are discussing," or the like. Facilitators twice implied, however, that there was an official topic or issue, even though it had not yet been explicitly announced.

Jim: Actually, actually you’ve asked (.) one question, (.) and then taken another (.) another (.) um (.) a’n taken another a (.) issue. (1.0) See th’ ya’ asked if- homosexual marriages should be recognized (.) legally an’ then you took the issue of (.) of:: (.) do you think a man- do you think (.) two people of the same sex (.) form a marriage. (2.0) An::d (2.0) of course (.) of course (.) homosexual marriages will be recognized as legally binding.

F?: Maybe not.

((Several speakers talking over))

?: It’s not now.

M?: It’s not now.

F?: They're not now:: then (.) if (.)

Jim: I think they will be (.) in the future.

M?: Eh eh=

Jim: =an the reason I think [it will] be, is becau::se,

Lisa?: that’s

(1.0)

Jim: becuz- (.5) whether or not you can (1.0) you can bear:: children through (.) the marriage of (.) a male and a male, or a female and a female, is irrelevant. There are plenty of children to go around. We don’t need to create any more children. All we need to do is create families, in order to solve the problem of (over)- of children. (2.0) And so that- and that’s the reason I think that interracial er- homosexual marriages will be recognized.

Lisa: Do you think they should be::

Fred: Yeah that’s what we’re asking. Are we:: we’re not saying- they’re going- it doesn’t matter about the future if they’re going[( )

F?: (we’re wondering about)

Jim: I think it’s the best thing for the children. Yes I think it should be. (1.5) The children should be:: (1.5) children children need loving parents.

((3.0, overlapping vocalizations, coughs))

Jim: So whether or not (.) I agree:: with homosexual- homosexuality is- irrelevant. It uh: it’s a different subject.