The Study of Language in Laboratory Based Interactions- The Stanford Prison Experiment

This paper aims to re-evaluate the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) using a conversation analytic approach to analyse talk-in-interaction between experimenters and participants. This analysis re-evaluates this experiment and analyses how language is used as a tool in the interactions to elicit social actions. The analysis examines a meeting between Zimbardo and the guards in the preparation stages of the experiment. The experimenter in this interaction was able to use rhetorical devices such as extreme case formulations, listings, contrast devices and categorisations amongst others to construct varying descriptions of the participants, past experiments and the experiment itself through a speech. The significance of this paper challenges statements Zimbardo made in which he concluded how both guards and prisoners had fallen into roles assigned to them and violence escalated quickly. These devices help the speaker to persuade and recruit his audience and encourage specific behaviours that this type of experiment is designed to elicit. These devices helped the experimenter to mitigate the artificiality and short time frame of the experiment before it had started. Using conversation analytic methods to examine audio extracts from the experimental archives provides a scaffolding that highlights patterns in data as a rhetorical matter. The results showed significant patterns occurred in the talk-in-interaction. These patterns challenge statements made by Zimbardo, which reflect on the notion the participants fell into their roles naturally.