Response to Whitaker and Atkinson

We thank Whitaker and Atkinson for their highly constructive and generous response to our discussion of their work in our ‘Beyond Performative Talk’ paper (Hughes et al., 2020). We fully accept that the chief danger of presenting the ‘Radical Critique’ as a singular position is that this has the effect of diminishing significant differences between those variously associated with that position. Central here is the degree to which advocates of the Radical Critique share a commitment to an ethnomethodological stance, or at least, a stance that has its origins in ethnomethodology. We acknowledge important differences between the work of Whitaker and Atkinson and others associated with the position, Silverman included, in this and other respects. We also fully accept that it would be false dichotomy indeed to impel an iron-clad distinction between questions of form and content in the analysis of interview data; considerations of the ‘how’ and the ‘what’.