We have seen in Chapter 7 that participants in focus groups offer a range of voices besides their own present voice: those of officials, parents, colleagues, passers-by, figures made up for the occasion, and their own earlier or hypothetical or interior selves. These voices may be echoed, answered, or mocked, presented as sources of information, or brought in to dramatize a story. In this chapter I consider a specific way of invoking another voice: the way participants talk about or talk as experts. For instance, a woman in one group refers to what ‘they say’:

I will come back to the context later; what is important here is that she both refers to an authority and questions it. In this chapter I will consider ways participants in focus groups talk about experts – the ‘they’ here – as indefinite, interrelated, inconclusive, and interested. Then I will consider ways in which participants talk as experts, by talking to experts they trust, seeing for themselves, or sharing memories. Finally I will consider an extended passage in which participants argue over which experts to believe.