ABSTRACT
During monthly administrative meetings among some communities of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), there is a practice of reaching decisions through a process called finding the “sense of the meeting” or “corporate discernment.” This process relies heavily on moments of communal silence (Molina-Markham, 2014). The process also includes a distinctive way of speaking in order to reach the “sense” that the group is in agreement about a decision. This way of speaking practiced specifically by the “clerk” (the facilitator) of the meeting, as well as other participants, does not appear to have a common name in the community, although some participants have referred to it as an instance of what Friends sometimes call “Quakerese” (Imani, 2001; Molina-Markham, 2011). It is likely that this way of speaking could be traced back to the way of speaking of early Friends called “plain speech,” which is no longer commonly practiced in most Quaker communities. This chapter is an examination from the perspective of cultural discourse theory (Carbaugh, 1988, 2007, 2012; Scollo, 2011) of the manner in which participants taking part in Quaker administrative meetings-called meetings for business-position themselves and altercast others in drawing on this way of speaking in order to reach community decisions.
