ABSTRACT
This study investigated the relevance of participants’ social group differences with regard to the processes and outcomes of community dialogues on affirmative action. We found that participants’ professional status was most salient to both the quantity of participants’ contributions as well as their persuasiveness within the dialogues, with participants’ race and gender also being potential factors. Participants across all social groups used the communicative strategy of argument as well as other forms of discourse that Young (2000) identified: greeting, rhetoric, and narrative. Our findings counter the assumption that communicative styles vary systematically by social group and suggest the need for research into the ways in which political equality can be fostered in deliberative dialogues in addition to the inclusion of multiple forms of discourse.
