The Talk and Back Talk of Collective Action: A Dialogic Analysis of Repertoires of Discourse among Nineteenth‐Century English Cotton Spinners

This article offers a critique of framing perspectives on collective action discourse and an alternative dialogic approach. The argument set forth is that the latter sees collective action discourse as a joint product of actors' agency and discourse dynamics, including its multivocal nature. Such discourse is a joint product of challengers' rational actions and the constraints of the discursive field. Challengers seek to appropriate and subvert the dominant discourses that legitimate power, creating discursive repertoires. To illustrate this, the contentious actions of English cotton spinners in the 1820s and 1830s are analyzed. The spinners produced a discursive repertoire drawing on mill owners' dominant discourses.