Family therapy and accountability
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v9i2.25730Keywords:
accountability, alignments, blame, categorizations, problem descriptionsAbstract
A basic issue of family morality is the local matrix of accountabilities, that is, the regulation of issues concerning who is accountable to whom and in what areas. Family therapy talk is therefore a genre that may inform us about the moral order of family life. This paper draws on video-recorded sessions of family therapy (involving adolescents and their parents). The analyses involve detailed sequential analyses of alignments and disalignments in the creation and contestation of various blame accounts, including analyses of justification and excuses as responses to blame. The therapeutic sessions are partly oriented to the nature of 'the problem'. Therapy talk between parents and children is indeed found to be replete with blame-implicative descriptions and categorizations. The analyses specifically focus on the ways in which blame-implicative descriptions and social categorizations are deployed and contested in blame sequences between parent and child. Both parties deployed a number of interactional resources for backing up their social categorizations and their version of past events.
References
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Capps, L. and Ochs, E. (1995) Constructing Panic: The Discourse of Agoraphobia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Pomerantz, A. (1986) Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims. Human Studies 9 (2–3): 219–230. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00148128
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation. Two volumes. Edited by G. Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444328301
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50 (4): 696–735. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/412243
Sätterlund Larsson, U., Säljö, R. and Aronsson, K. (1987) Patient–doctor communication on smoking and drinking: Lifestyle in medical consultations. Social Science and Medicine 25 (10): 1129–1137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(87)90354-6
Schegloff, E. (2007) A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39 (3): 462–482. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.07.007
Scott, M. B. and Lyman, S. M. (1968) Accounts. American Sociological Review 33 (1): 46–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2092239
Spence, D. (1982) Narrative Truth and Historical Truth. New York: Norton.
Stokoe, E. (2003) Mothers, single women and sluts: Gender, morality and membership categorization in neighbourhood disputes. Feminism and Psychology 13 (3): 317–344. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353503013003006
Stokoe, E. (2010) ‘I’m not gonna hit a lady’: Conversation analysis, membership categorization and men’s denials of violence towards women. Discourse & Society 21 (1): 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926509345072
Stokoe, E. (2012) Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis. Discourse Studies 14 (1): 277–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 1461445612441534
Aronsson, K. (1998) Identity-in-interaction and social choreography. Research on Language and Social Interaction 31 (1): 75–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3101_5
Aronsson, K. (in press) Narrative, sociology of. In J. D. Wright (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Second edition. Oxford: Elsevier Science.
Aronsson, K. and Cederborg, A-C. (1994) Conarration and voice in family therapy: Voicing, devoicing, and orchestration. Text & Talk 14 (3): 345–370. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ text.1.1994.14.3.345
Aronsson, K. and Cederborg, A-C. (1996) Coming of age in family therapy talk: Perspective setting in multiparty problem formulations. Discourse Processes 21 (2): 191–212. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/01638539609544955
Aronsson, K. and Cederborg, A-C. (1997) A love story retold: Moral order and intergenerational negotiations. Semiotica 114 (1–2): 83–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ semi.1997.114.1-2.83
Aronsson, K. and Sätterlund Larsson, U. (1987) Politeness strategies and doctor–patient communication: On the social choreography of collaborative thinking. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 6 (1): 1–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0261927x8700600101
Bakhtin, M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Edited by M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987 [1978]) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buttny, R. (1993) Social Accountability in Communication. London: Sage.
Buttny, R. (2001) Accounting. In W. P. Robinson and H. Giles (eds) The New Handbook of Language and Social Psychology, 285–301. New York: John Wiley.
Capps, L. and Ochs, E. (1995) Constructing Panic: The Discourse of Agoraphobia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Edwards, D. (2000) Extreme case formulations: Softeners, investment and doing nonliteral. Research on Language and Social Interaction 33 (4): 347–373. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/ s15327973rlsi3304_01
Foucault, M. (1997) Technologies of the self. In M. Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, Volume 1, 223–252. Edited by P. Rabinow. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Glenn, P. (1989) Initiating shared laughter in multiparty conversations. Western Journal of Speech Communication 53 (2): 127–149. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10570318909374296
Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M. H. (1992) Assessments and the construction of context. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds) Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, 147–189. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gorell Barnes, G. (1990) Making family therapy work: Research findings and family therapy practice. Journal of Family Therapy 12 (1): 17–29.
Heritage, J. and Watson, R. (1979) Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (ed.) Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology, 123–162. New York: Irvington.
Hoffman, L. (1981) Foundations of Family Therapy. New York: Basic Books.
Ingrids, H. (2014) Category work in courtroom talk about domestic violence: Gender as an interactional accomplishment in child-custody disputes. Feminism and Psychology 24 (1): 115–135. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353513515294
Ingrids, H. and Aronsson, K. (2014) Reported speech and reported affect in child custody disputes. Research on Language and Social Interaction 24 (1): 69–88. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/08351813.2014.871806
Minuchin, S. and Fishman, H. C. (1981) Family Therapy Techniques. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ochs, E. and Taylor, C. (1992) Family narrative as political activity. Discourse & Society 3 (3): 301–340. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926592003003003
Peräkylä, A. (2011) After interpretation: Third-position utterances in psychoanalysis. Research on Language and Social Interaction 44 (3): 288–316. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 08351813.2011.591968
Peyrot, M. (1987) Circumspection in psychotherapy: Structures and strategies of counsel–client interaction. Semiotica 65 (3–4): 249–268. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ semi.1987.65.3-4.249
Pomerantz, A. (1986) Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims. Human Studies 9 (2–3): 219–230. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf00148128
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation. Two volumes. Edited by G. Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444328301
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50 (4): 696–735. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/412243
Sätterlund Larsson, U., Säljö, R. and Aronsson, K. (1987) Patient–doctor communication on smoking and drinking: Lifestyle in medical consultations. Social Science and Medicine 25 (10): 1129–1137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(87)90354-6
Schegloff, E. (2007) A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39 (3): 462–482. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.07.007
Scott, M. B. and Lyman, S. M. (1968) Accounts. American Sociological Review 33 (1): 46–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2092239
Spence, D. (1982) Narrative Truth and Historical Truth. New York: Norton.
Stokoe, E. (2003) Mothers, single women and sluts: Gender, morality and membership categorization in neighbourhood disputes. Feminism and Psychology 13 (3): 317–344. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0959353503013003006
Stokoe, E. (2010) ‘I’m not gonna hit a lady’: Conversation analysis, membership categorization and men’s denials of violence towards women. Discourse & Society 21 (1): 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926509345072
Stokoe, E. (2012) Moving forward with membership categorization analysis: Methods for systematic analysis. Discourse Studies 14 (1): 277–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 1461445612441534
Published
2015-03-25
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Articles
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Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Aronsson, K., & Cederborg, A.-C. (2015). Family therapy and accountability. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 9(2), 193-212. https://doi.org/10.1558/japl.v9i2.25730
