Supporting adults with intellectual disabilities by protecting their footing in a challenging conversational task
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jircd.36199Keywords:
intellectual disability, communication, empowerment, Goffman, production formatsAbstract
One element of empowering vulnerable clients is to accord them conversational rights they are otherwise denied. The objective of this study was to identify the conversational practices used by staff supporting clients with intellectual disabilities in a linguistically demanding, but ostensibly empowering, task: taking control of a meeting. An analysis of Goffman's 'production formats' was used to identify how staff supported service-users in: nominating next speaker, asking questions, and evaluating answers, and moving to next speaker. Staff's support strategies ranged along a gradient, from those that most respected the service-user's footing as chair (by displays of low entitlement in suggestions, provision of candidate questions, speaking on behalf of the chair, and so on) to those that least did so (ultimately taking full control of the meeting).Without staff intervention, service-users with intellectual impairments struggle to meet the demands of chairing meetings. The practices identified here work to preserve the service-users' entitlement to carry out a designated task, in appearance if not in reality.
References
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Williams, V. (2011). Disability and Discourse: Analysing Inclusive Conversation with People with Intellectual Disabilities. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470977934
Antaki, C. and Wilkinson, R. (2012). Conversation analysis and the study of atypical populations. In J. Sidnell and T. Stivers (Eds) The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, 533–550. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118325001.ch26
Antaki, C. (2013). Two conversational practices for encouraging adults with intellectual disabilities to reflect on their activities. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research 57: 580–588. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2012.01572.x
Antaki, C. (1999). Interviewing persons with a learning disability: How setting lower standards may inflate well-being scores. Qualitative Health Research 9: 437–454. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973239900900402
Antaki, C. and Kent, A. (2012). Telling people what to do (and, sometimes, why): Contingency, entitlement and explanation in staff requests to adults with intellectual impairments. Journal of Pragmatics 44: 876–889. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.03.014
Beeke, S., Wilkinson, R., and Maxim, J. (2007). Grammar without sentence structure: A conversation analytic investigation of agrammatism. Aphasiology 21: 256–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687030600911344
Bolden G. B. (2009). Implementing incipient actions: The discourse marker ‘so’ in English conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 41: 974–998. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.10.004
Curl T. S. and Drew P. (2008). Contingency and action: A comparison of two forms of requesting. Research on Language and Social Interaction 41: 129–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351810802028613
Department of Health (United Kingdom) (2001). Valuing People. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Department of Health (United Kingdom) (2009). Valuing People Now. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Drew, P. (1992). Analyzing talk at work: An introduction. In P. Drew and J. Heritage (Eds) Talk at Work. Interaction in Institutional Settings, 3–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Finlay, W. M. L., Walton C., and Antaki C. (2008b). Promoting choice and control in residential services for people with learning disabilities. Disability & Society 23 (4): 349–360. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687590802038860
Finlay, W. M. L., Antaki, C., and Walton C. (2008a). A manifesto for the use of video in service improvement and staff development in residential services for people with learning disabilities. British Journal of Learning Disabilities 36: 227–231. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-3156.2008.00511.x
Gill, V. T., Halkowski, T., and Roberts, F. (2001). Accomplishing a request without making one: A single case analysis of a primary care visit. Text–Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 21: 55–81. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.21.1-2.55
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk, 124–159. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goodley, D. (2005). Empowerment, self-advocacy and resilience. Journal of Intellectual Disabilities, 9 (4): 333–343. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744629505059267
Krummheuer, A. (2015). Performing an action one cannot do: Participation, scaffolding and embodied interaction. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders 6 (2): 187–210. https://doi.org/10.1558/jircd.v7i1.26986
Levinson, S. C. (1988). Putting linguistics on a proper footing: Explorations in Goffman’s participation framework. In P. Drew and A. Wootton (Eds) Erving Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order. 161–227. Bristol: Polity Press.
Macbeth, D. (2004). The relevance of repair for classroom correction. Language in Society 33: 703–736. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404504045038
Mortensen, K. and Hazel, S. (2011). Initiating round robins in the L2 classroom-preliminary observations. Novitas-Royal 5: 55–70.
Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: Volume 1: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791208
Sempik, J., Aldridge, J., and Becker, S. (2005). Health, Well-being, and Social Inclusion: Therapeutic Horticulture in the UK. Bristol: Policy Press.
Sidnell, J. (2011). Conversation Analysis: An Introduction. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Williams, V. (2011). Disability and Discourse: Analysing Inclusive Conversation with People with Intellectual Disabilities. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470977934
Published
2019-01-17
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Section
Articles
How to Cite
Antaki, C. (2019). Supporting adults with intellectual disabilities by protecting their footing in a challenging conversational task. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders, 9(1), 98-113. https://doi.org/10.1558/jircd.36199
