In this paper, I analyze part of a 1973 phone conversation between President Richard Nixon and Special Counsel to the President Charles Colson, regarding the Watergate scandal. I find that the conversation is organized largely in terms of three, successively developed contrasts. These contrasts brought into play two “dimensions of contrast”—pervasiveness and importance. The analysis resulted ultimately in a structure of meaning that included both taxonomical and scaling relations. It is shown how this structure is developed sequentially and collaboratively, how ambiguities are resolved, and how both participants converge on a common interpretation of the situation. Throughout, Watergate is treated primarily as a news story rather than an event or crime. Matters of law and ethics are subordinated to matters of perception and public relations. The ultimate objective of this analysis is methodological—to add to the toolkit of occasioned semantics, the study of how structures of meaning are developed and manifested in verbal discourse. Whereas my previous work has focused primarily on co-categorization, inclusion structures, and scaling, this study shows how contrast can function as the primary element structuring meaning in talk.

在本文中，我分析了1973年理查德·尼克松总统和特别顾问与查尔斯·科尔森总统之间关于水门事件的电话交谈的一部分。我发现对话主要是根据三个相继形成的对比进行组织的。这些对比发挥了两个“对比维度”：普遍性和重要性。分析最终形成了一个意义结构，包括分类学和比例关系。它显示了这种结构是如何顺序和协作地开发的，如何解决歧义，以及两个参与者如何集中于对情况的共同解释。在整个过程中，水门事件主要被视为新闻故事，而不是事件或犯罪。法律和道德事务从属于观念和公共关系。这种分析的最终目的是方法论上的-为了增加偶然语义学的工具包，研究意义结构如何在言语话语中发展和体现。尽管我以前的工作主要集中在共归类，包含结构和缩放上，但这项研究表明，对比如何成为谈话中主要的元素构成意义。