Conversation Analysis at the fair

The authors of the ‘Conversational Rollercoaster’ article give a vivid and engaging account of a difficult but worthwhile exercise: bringing live Conversation Analysis (CA) to the public in a Science Fair. Part of their motivation is a claim that CA is uniquely qualified for such exhibition: as a mode of enquiry, it has what they call a ‘public ethos’. I examine that part of their case and suggest that it might not be as waterproof as it appears. But, such qualms ought not detract from the positive benefits of sharing CA’s attractions with the public. The manifest success of the event, and its grounding in solid CA practice, is enough reason to hope that others will be inspired to follow in these pioneers’ footsteps

When police treat straightforward answers as uncooperative

In formal police interviews, interviewers may have institutionally mandated reasons for following up even apparently fully co-operative answers with questions that imply that the interviewee is in fact (knowingly or unknowingly) being uncooperative. From a sample of over 100 UK interviews with suspects arrested for minor offences, and 19 interviews with witnesses alleging sexual assault, we identify and analyse follow-up questions which do not presume that interviewees' apparently 'normal' answers respect the Gricean maxims of quantity, quality, relevance or manner. We identify three institutional motivations working to over-ride the normal communicative contract: to 'get the facts straight'; to prepare for later challenges; and pursue a description of events that more evidently categorizes the alleged perpetrators' behaviour as criminal

The pivot point between problem presentation and advice in a health helpline service

This paper examines interactions between callers to a health helpline and specialist nurses. Helpline call-takers must judge the appropriate moment to move from listening to the caller's problem to offering them the appropriate service. In a study of Parkinson's UK nurse call-takers, we find that the pivot is the point at which the caller reports the upshot of their trouble in terms of an impact on their daily life. Indeed, if the caller seems likely not to produce this upshot report, it is generated by the call-taker. Using the methods of Conversation Analysis we analyse how these upshot formulations are reached, and how the call-taker subsequently edits them to deliver a service that stays within their institutional guidelines. The findings contribute to sociological and clinical understandings about how health problems are framed and managed interactionally in order to reach a deliverable outcome for both participants in a helpline environment

Social support and unsolicited advice in a bipolar disorder online forum

How does a newly diagnosed user get inducted into a forum dedicated to people suffering from bipolar disorder? Is their opening message "matched" by the forum's reply? We add to the literature on social support online by using conversation analysis (CA) to explore an apparent contradiction between a new user's first post and forum members' replies with ostensibly unsolicited advice. CA reveals the intimate relation between turns in sequence, an aspect of online communication largely ignored in existing work on social support. Seen from this perspective, giving unsolicited advice, although apparently a "mismatch," turns out to be a consequence of the open design of the new user's initial posting. We speculate that such unsolicited advice might function at the ideological level to induct the new user into the mores of the group, not only in the kind of support it countenances giving, but into the very meaning of bipolarity itself

Conversational practices promoting a discourse of agency for adults with intellectual disabilities

Conversational practices promoting a discourse of agency for adults with intellectual disabilitie

How diabetes forum-users complain about others’ expectations: Troubles-telling and troubles-receiving

This article offers a qualitative analysis of two instances of troubles-telling threads on a diabetes forum, with a specific focus on how these instances contribute to constructing a way to manage others’ expectations concerning how persons diagnosed with diabetes control their condition. From the perspective of conversation analysis and discursive psychology, this article shows some recurrent features of both troubles-telling (namely announcement, stake inoculation and self-deprecation) and of troubles-receiving (namely appreciation, second stories, escalation). Our analysis furthermore shows how inadequate expectations from family members are judged differently from those of health professionals. The latter are judged more harshly for what seems a lack of professional competence, whereas the former are more easily pardoned but pose a particular challenge in that patients do not wish to remove these persons from their lives. Through this analysis, we contribute to showing a particularly important function of patient fora, namely allowing patients to tell troubles about others’ expectations and to receive support and advice for these circumstances that put a heavy emotional burden.</p

Promoting choice and control in residential services for people with learning disabilities

This paper discusses the gap between policy goals and practice in residential services for people with learning disabilities. Drawing on a nine month ethnographic study of three residential services, it outlines a range of obstacles to the promotion of choice and control that were routinely observed in the culture and working practices of the services. Issues discussed include conflicting service values and agendas, inspection regimes, an attention to the bigger decisions in a person's life when empowerment could more quickly and effectively be promoted at the level of everyday practice, problems of communication and interpretation and the pervasiveness of teaching. We offer a range of suggestions as to how these obstacles might be tackle

Diagnostic formulations in psychotherapy

Conversation analysts have noted that, in psychotherapy, formulations of the client’s talk can be a vehicle for offering a psychological interpretation of the client’s circumstances. But we notice that not all formulations in psychotherapy offer interpretations. We offer an analysis of formulations (both of the gist of the client’s words and of their implications) that are diagnostic: that is, used by the professional to sharpen, clarify or refine the client’s account and make it better able to provide what the professional needs to know about the client’s history and symptoms. In doing so, these formulations also have the effect of shepherding the client’s account towards subsequent therapeutic interpretation. In a coda, we notice that sometimes the formulations are designed discreetly. We examine one such discreet formulation in detail, and show how its very ambiguity can lead to its failure as a diagnostic probe

Beware the ‘Loughborough School’ of social psychology? Interaction and the politics of intervention

The authors explain the attractions of applying discursive psychology (DP) and conversation analysis (CA) by reporting three different examples of their engagement with practitioners and clients. Along the way, a case is made for separating DP/CA from other kinds of qualitative analysis in social psychology, and for deconstructing some commonly held misunderstandings and caricatures of DP/CA

Police interviews with vulnerable people alleging sexual assault: probing inconsistency and questioning conduct

Reporting sexual assault to the authorities is fraught with difficulties, and these are compounded when the complainant is hindered by an intellectual disability (ID). In a study of 19 UK police interviews with complainants with ID alleging sexual assault and rape, we found that most interviewing officers on occasion pursued lines of questioning which not only probed inconsistencies (which is mandated by their guidelines), but implicitly questioned complainants' conduct (which is not). We detail two main conversational practices which imply disbelief and disapproval of the complainants' accounts and behaviour, and whose pragmatic entailments may pose problems for complainants with ID. Such practices probably emerge from interviewers' foreshadowing of the challenges likely to be made in court by defence counsel. As a policy recommendation, we suggest providing early explanation for the motivation for such questioning, and avoiding certain question formats (especially how come you did X? and why didn't you do Y?)