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Institutional and conversational modes of talk in bureaucratic consultations

Jan Svennevig Agder University College Dept. of Scandinavian and Media Studies Servicebox 422 4604 Kristiansand Norway

1

Institutional and conversational modes of talk in bureaucratic consultations

Jan Svennevig Agder University College, Norway

This paper1 explores the effects of blending institutional and conversational modes of talk in bureaucratic encounters. The data are from consultations at a job qualifying center for nonnative speakers. The non-native clients frequently introduce personal matters into the consultation and engage in conversational forms of talk. At times, the institutional representatives respond to this by themselves adopting a conversational mode, thereby accommodating to the linguistic level of the clients and displaying affiliation with them. This is shown to enhance participation by the non-native speaker. At other times, an institutional mode is used to resist affiliation and to display professional neutrality towards the matters. In this way, different modes of talk are used to reduce or to reinforce the asymmetry between the parties, by displaying either affiliation or disaffiliation and by encouraging or constraining participation by the client.

Everyday conversation and institutional interaction Institutional interaction is a certain form of interaction, and not just any interaction occurring within an institution. This means that various forms of institutional interaction are constituted by specific linguistic resources and communicative procedures, and that participants display their orientation to the institutional character of the interaction by using these resources. The 2

procedures are in turn formed by the character of the roles and activities relevant to the institution concerned. As noted by Drew and Sorjonen: The institutionality of dialogue is constituted by participants through their orientation to relevant institutional roles and identities, and the particular responsibilities and duties associated with those roles; and through their production and management of institutionally relevant tasks and activities. (Drew and Sorjonen 1997:94) Many researchers have explored differences in speaking practices in institutional interaction and everyday conversation. Most prominently it has been pointed out that, first, institutional interaction is characterized by a certain degree of prearranged global organization of the contributions to the conversation (often realized as sequences of question-answer pairs). Second, that the differences in responsibility and expertise between the parties show up as asymmetric patterns of speaking rights and obligations (such as who introduces topics, who draws the conclusions etc.). Third, that conversations are characterized by a technical or professional perspective, as displayed by the use of technical categorizations, restrictions on expressions of personal evaluation by the institutional representative, etc. However, institutional formats vary from strictly formal interactions, such as for instance court proceedings, to less formal interactions, such as most social work consultations (Hutchby & Wooffitt 1998). Regarding the less formal type, it has been noted that many of them allow considerable amounts of ‘small talk’ and may on occasions employ certain practices associated with informal conversation. In many such non-formal contexts, ‘although the talk […] is clearly institutional in that official task-based or role-based activities occur at least some of the time, turn-taking procedures may approximate conversational or at least ‘quasi-conversational’ modes’ (Drew & Heritage 1992b:28). This blending of resources from various types of activities calls for an analytic distinction between topical relevance and ‘ways of speaking’ (so-called ‘speech exchange systems’, Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson 1974). The topic of talk may be characterized as having a personal or an institutional focus, depending on the relevance of the talk to various institutional tasks. On the other hand, talk may be organized according to different systems of participation rights and obligations. For instance, ‘small talk’ in an institutional setting will in general be talk not related to the institutional task at hand, but it may yet be organized by procedures from the institutional speech exchange system, for instance if it happens that the institutional representative asks all the questions and the client merely answers them without 3

reciprocating. There are also conversations where institutionally relevant matters are raised without recourse to the formal procedures normally associated with this activity. This implies that there may be a great deal of variation in the production of talk within an institutional frame, resulting in hybrid genres of talk that exploit linguistic and interactional resources from different registers. Institutional and conversational modes of talk penetrate each other because the social bodies behind them are woven steadily more intimately together. Bureaucratic and institutional systems invade the private sphere of life in modern society, and conversational language has increasingly been adopted by public institutions (the ‘conversationalization’ of public discourse, cf. Fairclough (1992)). It is thus reasonable to say that the borderlines between the institutional and the private are not impermeable, and that ‘voices’ from each of these spheres resonate in the other. Such blending of generic resources is interesting because, at the microlevel, it gives the participants a greater opportunity to challenge the constraints of a certain activity type and redefine the situation (Roberts & Sarangi 1999). And at the macrolevel, it is considered a major factor in social change (Fairclough 1992). In the following, differences in topical focus as well as in speech exchange systems will be investigated. But first I will review some of the differences that have been noted concerning topic organization in institutional interaction as opposed to everyday conversation. In everyday conversation, topics usually have their basis in the life-world of the participants, either concerning personal matters or personal perspectives on the subject matter. Assuming a ‘reciprocity of perspectives’ (Schütz 1970:183) the participants may expect more or less equal background knowledge as the resource for mutual understanding. In institutional consultations, although the client is usually the matter of concern, the perspective is institutional in that the client’s experiences are treated in terms of technical categorizations. The resources for formulating the institutionally relevant matters are unequally distributed, in that the official representative has expert knowledge of the institutional field, whereas the client usually is a lay person. For the client, this asymmetry may render opaque the question of relevance (‘why that now?’ cf. Schegloff & Sacks 1974) and constitute an obstacle to competent participation in the talk, as noted by Sarangi & Slembrouck (1996:52): From the institution’s point of view, a question asked by the bureaucrat has relevance to the procedure, but this relevance may not be apparent to the client. Still, the client is asked to provide a relevant response – even though the ultimate decision about relevance rests with the bureaucrat. 4

When clients have problems in deciding what the ultimate goal of a question is, they will be discouraged from expanding their responses beyond the explicit focus of the question. As a result, they will acquire a rather passive role in the interaction, presenting their experiences bit by bit in terms of the categories asked for in the questions rather than as a comprehensive and coherent account. Another difference between the modes of talk is the management of the topic. In conversation topics are locally managed, that is, all parties to the conversation have the right, in principle, to nominate or elicit topics, to accept or decline taking them up, and to contribute in the development or in the closing of them. In institional interaction, it is in general the institutional representatives who have the right to control the development of topics more or less unilaterally. They nominate new topics, control their development by asking questions, and terminate them. The third difference concerns the overall coherence of the talk. In conversation topics are proposed and developed extemporaneously and incrementally. Every turn is fitted to the prior turn so that it ‘occurs naturally’, or topically coherent with it, unless otherwise is explicitly signalled (Schegloff & Sacks 1974). The topic thus develops step by step, with one turn building on what was said in the prior turn. This gives the participants a resource for understanding each new turn by interpreting it by reference to the context created by prior turns in general and the prior turn in particular. In institutional interaction topic progression is usually based on a more or less predetermined agenda or some written instruction or questionnaires, and the client loses the resource of contextualizing one turn in relation to what has preceded. The questions are not necessarily based on each other or on the client’s answers, and the topic may change radically from one question to the other. The result is often series of local question-answer sequences with little overall coherence. Faced with a list of relatively decontextualized questions, the client loses the possibility of contextualizing one question in relation to the preceding turns and also the possibility of monitoring in the subsequent turn how his or her answer was understood or taken up by the official (Button 1992). The asymmetric and fragmented character of institutional talk may constitute a special problem for non-native clients, who, in addition to the linguistic difficulties, face problems in assessing the relevance of the questions posed and in monitoring the reception of their answers. In addition, it may presuppose a great deal of cultural background knowledge which is not accessible to them. The result is that the client will often adopt a conversational mode 5

of talk and speak from a personal, lay perspective rather than in institutional categories. The following parts of this article will analyze instances of such talk, where the clients introduce matters that are not directly relevant to the institutional task at hand. We will see how such conversational parts are treated by the institutional representatives as either a resource for, or an obstacle to, the institutional business at hand. The argument is that institutional representatives may use practices from institutional or conversational modes of talk strategically to invite or to inhibit further talk by the client. The data come from consultations at a career center in Oslo, offering job qualifying courses to non-native speakers of Norwegian. The clients have passed a language test prior to the consultation, and the aim of the consultation is to assess their linguistic and professional qualifications for various jobs and to consider courses they can take in order to improve their qualifications.

Conversational style and informalization In certain cases, a conversational mode seems to be used strategically by the institutional representative in order to make the consultation less formal and thereby facilitate participation by the client. This can be illustrated by an extract from a consultation between a male social worker and a female, Pakistani client2. Extract 1: 1

S: du er ^gift du ikke ’sant?

2

S: you are ^married right?

S løfter et ark og ser på det under

S lifts up a sheet and looks at the one

3 4

underneath A: ’ja= jeg har tre ^barn.

5 6

A: ’yes= I have three ^children.

@@[@@@]@ S:

[tre ’barn ja.]

@@[@@@]@ S:

[three ’children.]

7

S smiler

S smiles

8

’jaha hvor gamle er de ^barna dine a?

’right so how old are your ^children?

9 10

A: .. e= ’sto=re ’barnet mitt er snart ’fem ^år,

A: .. e= my ’o=ldest ’child is soon ’five years ^old,

S: ja

S: yeah

6

11

A: .. ^an=dre= tre og ^halvt,

A: ..^se=co=nd three and ^half,

12

S: ja

S: yeah

13

A: .. og ’så XX en liten ^jente=,

A: .. and ’then XX a little ^gi=rl,

14

S: [ja]

S: [yeah]

15

A: [og] ’hun er snart ’seks ^månder.

A: [and] ’she is soon ’six ^months.

16

S: .. okei

S: .. okay

17

.. hvor er ’de om dagen a,

so where are ’they during the day,

18

er de i ^barnehage eller?

are they in ^day care or?

19

A: e= ’to barna går ^barnehagen,

A: e= ’two children go ^day care,

20

S: [ja]

S: [yeah]

21

A: [’jen]ta min er på ^sykehus.

A: [my] ’girl is in the ^hospital.

22 23

@@[@@]@ S:

24

[på ^sykehus?]

@@[@@]@ S:

A retter seg opp

[in the ^hospital?] A raises her back

25

A:

A:

26

S: sier du ^det?

S: is ^that so?

27

A:

A:

28

S: hva slags ^sykdom er ^det da?

S: so what sort of ^illness is ^that?

29

A: hun har ^feber.

A: she’s got ^fever.

30

nå- i ’dag hun ^bra,

now- ’today she’s ^well,

31

hun reise ’hjem i ^dag.

she go ’home ^today.

32

S: okei

S: okay

33

A: ja @[@@]

A: yeah @[@@]

34

A nikker

35 36 37

S:

[reiser] ’hjem i ’dag ja, [[det]] var ^fint.

A: [[ja]]

A nods S:

[goes] ’home ’today right, [[that’s]] ^good.

A: [[yeah]]

38

@@@ (H)

@@@ (H)

39

S smiler

S smiles

40

S: … og ’mannen din a,

41

^jobber han eller?

… and your ’husband, does he ^work or?

The extract starts with a question by the social worker: ‘you are ^married right?’ At the outset, the relevance of this question is not obvious. It might be just a formality, something 7

that has to be filled into an official form, or it might be a question which is relevant to some further issue on the social worker’s agenda. The woman does not have any contextual clues in the preceding talk that can help her decide the institutional relevance of the question. The normal response in such cases is to just answer the question in a minimal format and leave it to the social worker to go on with the procedure. However, the woman does more than just answer the question. Instead she gives an expanded response, where she volunteers more information about her situation at home, namely that she has three children. This is followed by a long spurt of laughter by her. This way of answering the question seems to belong to a conversational mode of talk rather than to an institutional mode. When strangers get acquainted in ordinary conversation, they also ask each other questions like whether the other is married. In such a frame of talk, giving an expanded response is the preferred thing to do (Svennevig 1999). One thereby signals willingness to establish one’s personal background as a potential topic of conversation. Mentioning the children in the extract above thus looks like a way of providing a newsworthy item, a ‘mentionable’, for further talk about her family background. The laughter also testifies to the relevance of this item as a personal, and not an official, matter. The official representative’s next question, ‘so how old are your children?’ (l. 8) looks like a token of interest in her family, given its placement in the topic nominating sequence. The client has offered the information that she has three children, and the social worker seems to expand on the proposed personal matters and thus to accept her topical bid. However, from other consultations it appears that this is a common question posed to women in this institution in order to find out whether they can attend day-time courses or have full time employment. The social worker’s next question, about where the children are during the day, also seems oriented toward this institutional concern. Interestingly, the social worker does not signal the institutional relevance explicitly. The questions are formulated so that they could be taken to be part of an informal ‘getting acquainted’ conversation rather than parts of a formal interview. First and foremost he makes the questions appear as triggered, or occasioned, by the previous answers, and not as points on a list or blanks in an official form. He formulates his questions with reference to what she has just said in her previous answers. In this way, the topic progression seems to emerge from the local contributions, as in informal conversation, rather than from a predetermined agenda, as is common in institutional talk. Another thing that contributes to the informal character of the talk is the official’s use of the final particles da (literally then) and eller (literally or) in his questions: 8

l.8: ’jaha hvor gamle er de ^barna dine a? (’right so how old are your ^children (then)?) l.18: er de i ^barnehage eller? (are they in ^day care or?) l.28: hva slags ^sykdom er ^det da? (so what sort of ^illness is ^that (then)?) These particles are intensifiers – adding personal involvement to the questions (Fretheim 1991) – and are thus associated with informal rather than institutional talk. Both interactional and stylistic features thus seem to indicate that the official exploits an ambiguity in the situation to get institutional work done using techniques associated with informal conversation. The client continues to apply a personal perspective on the matters when she answers the question about where the children are during the day (l. 17-18). In addition to confirming that the two older ones are in day care, she says that her youngest child is ‘in hospital’ (l. 21). Although it might be literally true that the child is in the hospital for the time being, this is not a relevant answer to the question from an institutional point of view. Her answer treats the question as a personal enquiry into her family situation here and now rather than as an enquiry about her possible day time obligations in the future. The social worker, however, does not treat her talk about the illness as problematic or irrelevant. On the contrary, he shows interest by expressing surprise: ‘is that so?’ (l. 26) and by enquiring into the details of the illness (rather than, say, the consequences for her career plans). By using these sorts of topicalizing moves, he invites the client to expand on the matters instead of initiating closing of them or redirecting the topic in a more institutionally relevant direction. He also shows involvement in the topic by displaying some degree of affective commitment. When he learns that the child has recovered, he produces a positive assessment: ‘that’s good’ (l. 36) and smiles. This sort of emotionally invested comments to an interlocutor’s report of a trouble shows an orientation to the personal rather than to the institutional relevance of the problems (Jefferson & Lee 1992). This section thus shows that the client throughout operates within an informal, personal framework for assessing the relevance of how to answer the questions that are posed. The social worker does not do anything to correct this understanding, but instead exploits it and manages to use this form of talk for his institutional purposes. This strategy results in some talk that is not primarily relevant to the institutional goals, but on the other hand it creates a relaxed and informal atmosphere which seems to make the client more at ease and active, despite her limited proficiency in Norwegian. In this way, the use of a conversational 9

mode may be a strategic choice to informalize the encounter and encourage participation by the client. We may expect that this woman also has limited experience with institutional genres of talk. During the consultation she reports not having attended school in Pakistan in her childhood, and never having had a job outside the household. Throughout the conversation she has an expressive, involved style of talk. Her use of a conversational mode may thus be interpreted as not a strategic choice, but a default mode of talking. In this situation, the social worker seems to accommodate to her speech style in order to enhance her means for participating in the talk. This affiliative effect of speech accommodation has been widely observed in various studies within the framework of Communication Accommodation Theory (see Giles, Coupland & Coupland 1991).

Institutional style and professional neutrality The institutional mode of talk is designed to place the institutional representative in a position of professional neutrality vis-à-vis the client. As we shall see in the following cases, this mode of talk may clash with the personal style of the client and thereby constitute a disaffiliating action and inhibit participation by the client. In the next three extracts, we meet the same male client. He has lost his job six months earlier and is at the office to get information about various courses. After he has been offered a place at a so-called ‘job-seeking course’, this exchange occurs: Extract 2 1

K: ja men e=

K: yes but e=

2

K lener seg forover i stolen

K leans forward in the chair

3

jeg har tenk- jeg ’tenkte på det e=

I’ve thought- I ’thought about it e=

4

… e= …(1.2) … hu- ’hus

… e= …(1.2) … hou- ’house

5

og så … ’gjeld og - -

6

K lener seg tilbake igjen

K leans back again

7

jeg ’betaler hver måne e= den - -

I ’pay every month e= that - -

8

… og= ’barna,

… and= the ’children,

and then… ’debts and- -

10

9

jeg har ’tre ^barn som - -

I have ’three ^children that - -

10

S: hva- hvor gamle er de ^barna dine a?

S: so wha- how old are your ’children?

11

((UTELATT SEKVENS OM BARNAS

((OMITTED PASSAGE ABOUT

ALDER, CA. 1.20 MIN.)) 12

CHILDREN’S AGE, CA. 1.20 MIN.))

S: ’kona di er ^hjemme.

S: your ’wife is at ^home.

13

S skriver

14

K: hjemme.

K: home.

15

S: …(3.0) når det gjelder ’din ^økonomi,

S: …(3.0) as for ’your ^finances,

S writes

16

K lukker veska si

K closes his briefcase

17

så er det veldig vanskelig for ^meg å

it’s very difficult for ^me to do anything

18

gjøre noe med ’den,

19 20

about ^them,

for det er e[= K:

cause it’s e[=

[økonomi XXXXX

21

… hva vi ’gjøre ^no?

22

K rister på hodet og slår ut med armene

K:

[finances XXXXX … what we ’do ^now?

K shakes his head and spreads out his hands

23

S: ja

S: yes

24

K: he

K: he

25

S: det [er-]

S: it [is-]

26

K:

K:

[

28

K tar jakkeslagene til siden

K turns out his lapels

29

S: (0) ja det er [’oppgave] S: (0) yes it’s [’job] to help

30

å hjelpe deg med din ^økonomi.

31

K:

32

S: det er nok [[’trygdekontoret ]] K:

[[

[@@] office ]]

K:

[[

37

S: ja

S: yes

38

K: … K slightly shakes his head

11

41 42

S: nei men ’det .. kan du ikke ta opp med ^meg.

43

S: no but ’that’s .. an issue you can’t raise with ^me.

44

K: .. nei

K: .. no

45

S: nei

S: no

46 47 48

det er e= ’trygdekontoret og ’sosialkontoret du må gå og ^søke,

it’s e= the public ’assistance and social ’security office you should go to and ^apply,

49

hvis du skal e= be om ^penger.

if you’re going to e= ask for ^money.

50

… men ^arbeidskontoret kan hjelpe deg

… but the ^unemployment office can

51

med ^jobb.

help you to get a ^job.

52

K: mhm

K: mhm

53

S: ja

S: yes

54 55 56 57 58 59

så du bør gå ’dit hver ^dag.

so you should go ’there every ^day.

K: (H) ’betaler K: (H) ’pays to e= til e= ^arbeidsledig? S: …(1.5) eh du- det du kan ’gjøre hvis du har hatt ’jobb, det er å ’søke om ^dagpenger.

^unemployed? S: …(1.5) eh you- what you can ’do if you have had a ’job, is to ’apply for ^unemployment benefit.

60

K: .. dagpenger.

K: .. unemployment benefit.

61

S: ja

S: yes

62

S nikker

S nods

63

.. det gjør du også på ^arbeidskontoret

.. you do that too at your ^unemployment

64 65

ditt. K: ja

office. K: yes

The issue of personal finances is introduced with many signs of hesitation: restarts, filled and unfilled pauses etc. (l. 3-9). In addition the topic is broached in an indirect way: the client tells about his expenses rather than about his lack of money. This hesitant, indirect and hedged way of introducing the topic is characteristic of the introduction of sensitive topics (Linell & Bredmar 1996). It may thus be considered a preface, projecting an upcoming delicate action (a ‘pre-delicate’, cf. Schegloff 1980). The most plausible candidate in this case is a request for financial aid. The client shows signs of great difficulty in expressing himself, but the social 12

worker does not offer any help with finding words, and he does not either orient to the projection of a potential request. Instead, he picks up and topicalizes a peripheral aspect of the client’s utterance, namely the mention of children. This abrupt and unilateral topic shift obstrues the client in formulating the projected action. As such, it may be considered an interruption, intruding in the middle of a turn-constructional unit before its projected end point. The questions about family members are presented as an institutional matter in that the questions concern institutional categories such as age and occupation, and that the answers are written down. The social worker thus uses an institutional activity (collecting biographical information) as an occasion for interrupting the client. So in this case, the social worker can be seen to use the authority of the institutional voice to override and silence the personal voice of the client. However, when the sequence about family members has been brought to completion the social worker reinitiates the topic of personal finances by claiming that he cannot help the client (l. 15-18). He thereby shows an interpretation of the client’s initial turn as a request for financial aid. The client accepts this interpretation, but resists the upcoming rejection by interrupting the social worker and supplying more information to support the request. Several times in what follows, the client interrupts the social worker with strong emotional expressions of despair. The most dramatic of them are: ‘I’m completely broke’ (l. 26) and ‘I haven’t got any money either’ (l. 38). These utterances are produced with accompanying expressive gestures, such as spreading out his hands as a sign of despair, and turning out his lapels to indicate that his pockets are empty. They are also produced with a diverging voice quality, characterized in the first case by laughter and in the second by ‘thin’ voice in high pitch. All this gives a strong emotional quality to his utterances. However, in this case the social worker does not relate to the personal perspective of the client, as he did in the previous example. There are no signs of what would be a relevant response in a personal mode of talk, such as declarations of sympathy, displays of interest for his situation, or the like. Instead, he repeats the institutionally relevant answer, namely that this is a case for some other office. He thereby treats the client’s complaints as a professional problem to be solved rather than as a personal appeal for understanding and sympathy. In this way, he applies an institutional perspective and takes a neutralistic and professional stance to the client’s requests. As the client pursues and intensifies his emotional appeals, this form of response increasingly appears as withholding of affiliation. Although the social worker here adopts an institutional perspective on the client’s problems, he uses a feature of conversational style in that he refers to himself with the first 13

person pronoun (‘jeg’ – ‘I’) rather than referring to the institution or using impersonal syntactic constructions. as for ’your ^finances, it’s very difficult for ^me to do anything about ^them. (l. 15–18) it’s ’job to help you with your ^finances. (l. 29–30) but ’that’s .. an issue you can’t raise with ^me. (l. 42–43) This might give rise to the impression that the negative answer is based on personal preferences rather than on institutional criteria. This personal perspective is further strengthened by the use of the expression ‘very difficult’ (l. 17), which may imply that it is not impossible either. In the next response (l. 29–30), parts of the utterance is produced with a laugh quality, also adding a personal rather than an institutional flavor to the answer. These features of a conversational mode may explain why the client seemingly does not accept the rejections and instead repeats his request in increasingly stronger forms. As it appears later in the extract, the client is unaware of who pays the unemployment benefit, and he might well think that the social worker may be in a position to help him after all. In this situation, the conversational style of the social worker undermines his institutional authority, and opens for an interpretation of the rejection as a negotiable decision rather than as a statement of an institutional fact. Turning down a request is a face threatening act. The institutional mode is designed to manage this potential for conflict by impersonalizing the matter. It is the institution, through its rules and regulations, who is responsible for the decision and not the individual clerk. However, in presenting the rejection as a personal decision, the social worker reinforces the sensitive character of the action. And by associating his personal identity with this face threatening act he signals disaffilitation with the client. The evaluative character of the laughter in line 29 further adds to this disaffiliation. Thus, the personal involvement in the interaction in this extract thus contributes to social distancing rather than to affiliation. Rejections constitute dispreffered actions, and are normally produced in a marked format, including delay devices, such as hesitations, pauses and repair initiation, and mitigating devices, such as prefaces (e.g. appreciations, apologies, qualifiers) and accounts for why the act is performed (cf. Levinson 1983, Pomerantz 1984). There are few of these dispreference markers in this extract. It is possible to consider the explanations for the rejection (that it is the responsibility of other institutions) as an account, but apart from this, the rejections are produced directly and immediately, as in preferred turns. They start with a 14

minimal acknowledgement token (‘ja’ – ‘yes’ in l. 23/29, ‘nei’ – ‘no’ in l. 41) and then go directly on to the declination component. This lack of mitigation and remedial action may be considered yet another aspect of the social worker’s disaffilition with the client. This vacillation between an institutional and a personal perspective is observable also in the next excerpt, which is from a bit later in the same conversation: Extract 3 1

S: det .. e= ’tilbudet det .. ’starter en eller

2

annen gang på [^høsten.]

3 4

S: that .. e= ’offering .. ’starts sometime in the [^fall.]

S sitter i skriveposisjon, ser ned K: [men e=]

S sits in writing position, looking down K: [but e=]

5

K lener seg bakover

K leans backward

6

XXX

XXX

7

denne s-

this s-

8

K klør seg i øret

K scratches his ear

9

.. og den e= baisledige ’penger,

.. and that e= ployment ’money,

10



12

K: begge hender ned mot bordet

K: both hands down towards the table

13

S: … (H) [du] altså=,

S: … (H) [well] you see=,

14

K:

K:

15

S: (KREMT)

S: (THROAT)

16

K: men ^først .. jeg ’trenger jobb,

K: but ^first .. I ’need a job,

[]

[]

17

K: hender nedover ved trykk

K: hands downward at accent

18

men ’liker ikke sånne ^penger.

but don’t ’like that sort of ^money.

19

K: hender ut til siden (som om han skyver

K: hands out sideways (as if shoving

20

noe unna)

something away)

21

S: … du ’liker ikke sånne ^penger nei.

S: … so you don’t ’like that sort of ^money.

22

K: .. [nei-]

K: .. [no-]

23

K: rister på hodet

24

S:

25

K: .. ’best å finne en ^jobb,

[men] ’da er det best å finne en ^jobb.

K: shakes his head S:

[but] ’then it’s best to find a ^job.

K: .. ’best to find a ^job.

15

26

S: ja

S: yes

27

K: og ^bra ’jobb,

K: and ^good ’job,

28

… men e=

… but e=

29

…(1.7) .. da jeg ’fikk ikke

…(1.7) .. when I

30

noe ’jobb,

31

’didn’t get a ’job,

og men jeg .. ’lenge bare hjemme

32

and but I .. ’long just home ^home,

^hjemme,

33





34

jeg fikk mange X-

I got many X-

35

K lener seg framover, krysser armene

K leans forward, crosses his arms

36

’mange kamerater gi ’penger i ^Norge nå,

’many friends give ’money in ^Norway

37

now,

38

S: .. mhm

S: .. mhm

39

K: jeg har betalt ^regninger.

K: I have paid ^bills.

40

K ser vekselvis på kameraet og på S

K looks alternately at the camera and at S

41

S: .. ja

S: .. yes

42

K: ^pråblem

K:

43

for meg.

^problem for me.

44

S: ja

S: yes

45

K: .. jæ liker ikke ’problem for

48

me,

49

S:

50

K: men jeg blir !mer ’stresset.

K: but I get !more ’stressed.

51

S: mhm .. ja jeg ’skjønner.

S: mhm .. yeah I ’see.

[asså-]

S:

[well-]

52

S samler hendene

S puts his hands together

53

.. men ^penger kan jeg ^ikke hjelpe deg

.. but ^money is something I ^can’t help

54 55 56 57

med. S smiler svakt K: …(2.0) den ’arbeidsledig hvem skal- må ^betale det?

you with. S smiles faintly K: …(2.0) this ’unemployment benefit who will- shall ^pay it?

16

In this extract we also find markers of hesitation in the introduction of the topic. The meaning of the question itself seems somewhat opaque (‘and that e= ployment ’money, ‘), but if we consider it in the light of the renewed initiative at the end of the extract, it seems that the client is asking once more where to apply for unemployment benefit. The social worker does not initiate repair but starts to answer the question, thus displaying that he has reached a construal of the question. However, the client does not let him answer the question, but interrupts him to add something to the question. In this inserted expansion he gives an account for having to ask for financial support. Accounts are explanations or justifications for actions that are unexpected or potentially inappropriate (cf. Heritage 1988, Buttny 1993). This account deals with remedying the face loss of having to ask for financial support. In saying that he does not like ‘that sort of money’ (l. 18) and would prefer getting a job, he accounts for the request by describing it as something that is forced upon him and which is contrary to his wishes or standards. The social worker does not answer the initial question about unemployment benefit, but instead goes against the claims presented in the appended account. The argument is that if he does not like unemployment money, then the solution is to get a job (rather than to ask for unemployment benefit). In this way, he does not accept the client’s account, but challenges it. He thereby dismisses the client’s grounds for asking for help, thus further suspending the relevance of answering the question. In addition, this disalignment is highly face-threatening, as it implicitly questions the client’s willingness to take a job. In this exchange, the client asks an institutionally relevant question about where to apply for unemployment benefit. But here the social worker links on to the justification of the question rather than to the question itself, thereby topicalizing the personal and not the institutional aspects of the problem. Rather than keeping a neutralistic stance towards the matter of concern, he gives advice about ‘what it is best to do’ (l. 24). This advice has not been asked for by the client, and is not based on institutional practice. On the contrary, the rules of the institution entitle any former employee to apply for unemployment benefit. The implicit expression of suspicion towards the client’s motives reflects a personal, evaluative stance towards the client rather than professional neutrality. The social worker’s challenge triggers a new and extended account by the client (l. 25–50), in which he explains how he got into the financial problems. It culminates in a description of the severity of the situation (his friends stopping to lend him money and ‘making problems’ for him) and ends with an expression of emotional distress (‘but I get !more ’stressed.’ l. 50). This comment is related to a prior reporting of a heart problem which 17

requires him to avoid stress. The explanation accounts for his initial question, by showing that the request for assistance is not made with a light heart. The social worker’s response (‘yes I understand, but money isn’t something I can help you with’ (l. 53-54)) is yet another direct and unmitigated rejection. This response treats the client’s initiative as a request for financial support, whereas the analysis above shows that the client seems just to be trying to get information about where to address his application. The client does not acknowledge the response by a single word, but lets a two second gap pass before he reiterates his initiative, namely the question about where to apply for unemployment benefit. The lack of acknowledgement may be considered a withholding of acceptance of the interlocutor’s interpretation of his own prior turns. And the renewed request thus appears as a third position repair, correcting this interpretation. In the former two extracts, then, the social worker invokes an institutional perspective in dismissing the requests by the client. He treats the client’s talk about his financial worries as a problem to be solved – which is done by referring him to other offices – and not as a call for personal involvement. In this respect, the extracts contrast radically with example (1), where the same social worker engages in a conversational mode of talk and thereby achieves affiliation with the client. Even these latter examples contain certain departures from the norm of neutrality of the institutional representative, but these features achieve disaffiliation rather than affiliation. The social worker takes on a personal identity in using the pronoun ‘I’, and he expresses personal evaluations of the client by giving a piece of personal advice that implicitly conveys a rather harsh criticism. Why, then, does the social worker allow the woman in the first extract to ‘go conversational’ and himself take a personal and affiliative stance, whereas he insistently rejects every attempt made by the second client to raise personal matters? One reason might be that in the latter case, the financial worries may be thought to have institutional relevance after all. If the social worker had listened and sympathized with the second client, he might have given rise to expectations that this was after all institutionally relevant, that is, that the client could obtain financial support from him.

Personal involvement out of character In the previous examples, resources from a conversational mode have been used for affiliation or disaffiliation with the client, whereas the main activity has all the time been to treat matters 18

according to their institutional relevance. There are, however, cases where the parties leave the institutional activity altogether and switch to entirely non-institutional concerns. We shall consider one such passage here, still from the same conversation as the two previous examples. Right after the official representative has explained how to apply for unemployment benefit we get the following: Extract 4 1

S: …(3.2) så da kan du bare [’dra ^dit.]

2 3 4

S: …(3.2) so then you can just [’go ^there.]

S blar og ser på et ark K:

S turns over a sheet and looks at it [’mange]

jeg ’sa til eh,

K:

[’many] I said to eh,

5

det kan finnes jol- -

it can be found jo- -

6

K tar opp og bretter papirene sine

K takes up and folds his documents

7

’dere kan finnes ^jobb til meg,

’you can find a ^job to me,

8

’dere kan eh,

’you can eh,

9

’all sier ja ’jeg kan ’finnes ’jeg kan

’everyone says yes ’I can ’find ’I can ’find

10

’finnes ’jeg kan ’finnes,

’I can ’find,

11

… (H) (Hx=)

… (H) (Hx=)

12

K slår ut med armene og rister på hodet

K spreads his hands and shakes his head

13

S: .. no but how ’long have you been ^applying for jobs? K folds his documents once more K:

19

det blir ’før ^påske.

it will be ’before ^easter.

20

K tar opp veska fra gulvet

K takes up his briefcase from the floor

21

S: når ’kom du tilbake fra ^Pakistan a?

22 23 24 25 26

S: when did you actually ’come back from ^Pakistan?

K: jeg ’tilbake fra fjerde i ^martsj. K legger papirene ned i veska S: ja

K: I ’back from fourth in ^March. K puts documents into the briefcase S: yes

19

27

… ja nei det ’tar litt tid å ’finne en ^jobb.

… well it ’does take some time to ’find a

28 29

^job. K:

31 32

K:

K hever øyebrynene og smiler S:

[ja]

K raises eyebrows and smiles S:

33

…(2.2) det har ’jeg ^også.

34

K: …

[yes] …(2.2) so have ^I.

K: …

35

K smiler

K smiles

36

S: (0) mhm

S: (0) mhm

37 38 39 40

S smiler svakt

S smiles faintly

K: … dere har bra ’jobb ikke sant? K nikker mot S og strekker hendene mot pulten hans

K: … you have a good ’job right? K nods toward S and stretches his hands toward his desk

41

S: jo jeg har ’masse ’regninger for ^det.

S: yes but I have ’lots of ’bills all the ^same.

42

K:

44

S: .. ’masse ^studielån.

S: .. ’lots of ^student loans.

45

K: men

K: but

46

.. ’butikkjobb .. de betaler ikke no ’bra.

.. ’sales job .. they don’t pay very ’well.

47

K hender nedover

K hands down

48 49

rister på hodet

S: … (H) nei men asså det er ’bedre å ha en

S: … (H) no but it’s ’better to have a ’job,

’jobb,

50

som er dårlig ’betalt,

which is badly ’paid,

51

enn å !ikke ha en ’jobb.

than !not to have a ’job.

52

shakes his head

K: mhm

K: mhm

This is the third time the client’s financial worries surface. The comment about having ‘big bills’ (l. 29) is here again accompanied by expressive gestures and a ‘thin’ smiling voice. It is presented as an account for why he is uncomfortable with not finding a job. As such, the comment is primarily oriented backwards as support for a complaint about not having a job. However, the social worker treats the turn as a complaint in its own right, and responds with a complaint in return: ‘so have I’ (l. 33). Here he blatantly departs from the neutrality of his institutional role and instead speaks as a private person with problems of his own. Note, 20

however, that this is not a naive departure from the norms of institutional interaction. In gricean terms it is a flouting of the maxim of manner, a blatant departure from the norms of the genre (Grice 1989). By saying something recognizably inappropriate to the situation, the social worker conveys an implicature, in this case a reproach on the client for raising inappopriate matters. The social worker’s reply is disaffiliative at both the literal and the implicit level. At the literal level, he reduces the importance of client’s problems by comparing them to his own problems. In a personal frame of talk, presenting troubles or worries will usually call for declarations of concern or sympathy (as in the case with the hospitalized child in the first extract). Here, however, the social worker retorts that he also has financial worries, thus indicating disinterest in the client’s problems. At the implicit level, an ironic comment like this constitutes a strong criticism, and thus openly displays his disaffilition. Both the disregard for the client’s problems and the evaluative character of using irony constitute a radical departure from the norm of institutional neutrality and convey an open expression of negative affect. The social worker did in fact say in the post-recording interview that this client had made him ‘visibly annoyed’. The client does not, however, seem offended, but goes on arguing that the social worker has a good job, and even asks him what he earns. From this, it is not quite clear whether he has grasped the irony of the comment or not. On the one hand, he picks up on the topic as if the social worker had actually been proposing to discuss his financial situation with him, but on the other, he smiles and talks with a laugh quality, which may be a signal that he is pursuing this as a mock discussion. And at this point even the social worker smiles. As an ironic comment, the social worker’s utterance has primarily a topic closing function, discouraging the client from going on with his personal problems. However, by taking the comment at face value, the client treats it as a proposal for a new topic. This gives him the right (and even the obligation) to contribute to developing the topic by asking questions. The fact that it was the social worker himself who initiated this personal topic, obliges him to answer the questions. He is caught in his own trap. The social worker accepts the challenge and a short argument sequence develops. The switch to a conversational mode thus puts the participants on an equal level, and the discourse roles are inversed. For a short time it is the client who asks the questions and the social worker who has to account for his personal finances. In this case, then, the social worker’s personal comment is not part of any official, institutional business. Rather, he departs from the institutional frame in order to express a 21

personal message, namely his irritation with the client. In Goffman’s (1959) words, he is ‘out of character’ – no longer enacting and maintaining the public face of the institution, but representing himself as an individual.

Interactional effects of blending and switching modes of talk In these excerpts we have seen instances of personal talk introduced by the client. The personal character of this talk lies both in the content of the talk and in the mode of talking. The content in all the cases refers to domestic problems of some sort, and they are presented in an emotionally loaded way, with expressive gestures and emotive paralinguistic features such as laughter and voice modulations. The social worker may treat the introduction of personal troubles as either a personal or an institutional matter. In a personal ‘troubles telling’ the focus is on the experiences of the client as a person, whereas in an institutional perspective the focal object is the problem itself (Jefferson & Lee 1992). The relevant response in the first case is to affiliate with the troubles teller, whereas in the second it is to give an advice or suggest a solution to the problem. In excerpts (2) and (3), the social worker treats the client’s troubles as a problem to be solved. He refers him to another office and tries to close the topic. However, the client does not cooperate in closing it, and instead continues to talk about his problems. As he persists, the social worker shows increasing signs of impatience and irritation. But, since the client already has got information about where to apply for unemployment benefit, it might seem that what he is seeking in the subsequent excerpts is not a solution to an institutional problem, but recognition of his difficult situation – affiliation and restoration of face. Instead of getting this, he is met with increasing disaffiliation. The parties’ differing assessments of what constitutes a relevant topic of talk is explainable if we suppose that they are invoking different modes of talk. The client is applying a conversational mode where ‘troubles telling’ is a relevant activity, whereas the social worker is maintaining a strictly institutional perspective in treating the talk as adviceseeking and dismissing the report of personal worries as irrelevant. In the first extract, by contrast, the social worker allows – and even invites – personal talk. He enquires into the details of the child’s illness, and expresses relief that she has recovered. Although this does not develop into an extended ‘troubles-telling sequence’, the social worker both contributes to developing the topic and shows personal involvement in it. 22

However, in engaging in a conversational mode of talk, he does not abandon the institutional activity of gathering background information relevant for the client’s participation in jobseeking courses. Instead, he exploits this mode of talk strategically to fulfill the institutional task at hand. As noted, he seems to use this mode of talk to invite participation and enhance understanding by a client with rather poor knowledge of both the language and the institutional genre. This contrasts markedly with the social worker’s personal tone in extract (4). Here, he actually does abandon the institutional activity and his associated role of ‘interviewer’ and counsellor. He talks as an individual and expresses a personal message at both the explicit and the implicit level of communication. At the explicit level, he presents his own financial problems, and at the implicit level, he expresses his irritation with the client. Thus, personal talk may also serve purposes of disaffiliation and face aggravation. However, whereas the personal talk is successfully integrated with the institutional activity in extract (1), it constitutes an evident infraction of the institutional norms in (4). Exploiting resources from conversational interaction has different effects on the regulation of the interaction, on the process of creating mutual understanding, and on the management of social relations between the participants. A conversational mode of talk allows for a more free and equal participation. The clients can present their case from their own perspective and elaborate on what is important to them. This is what the social worker exploits in extract (1). The shift to a conversational mode thus changes the discourse roles of the participants, opening for a more symmetric pattern of contributions. In extract (4), the roles are even reversed, so that the client temporarily takes the ‘interviewer role’. Since it is the social worker himself who has shifted to this conversational mode, he is under some pressure to accept and answer these otherwise inappropriate questions. The institutional frame involves a more asymmetric distribution of rights and obligations. The institutional representative does the interviewing, and decides the topical progression of the talk. In extracts (2) and (3), the social worker uses mechanisms from this speech exchange system to obstruct an upcoming initiative by the client, and to initiate closing of the topic of personal finances. In this way, the institutional frame may be used to inhibit participation by the client by exploiting the differences in speaking rights. In (2), where he does not at first succeed in closing the topic, the client’s persistence in talking about his financial worries appears as an infringement of the norms of the interaction. He has to

23

interrupt the social worker to get the opportunity to talk and to prevent the social worker in producing a topic-closing turn. As for establishing mutual understanding, it was noted in the introduction that it is easier to see the relevance of a question that is linked to a preceding turn than one which appears ‘out of the blue’, or as an item on a list of disconnected questions. Another effect of the local coherence of turns in conversation is that speakers can monitor in the next turn how their own contribution has been understood by their interlocutor. And if they have been misunderstood, they can clear up the misunderstanding by initiating repair in the next (third) turn (Schegloff 1992). As we have seen, in extract (1) the social worker designs his questions so as to appear to be triggered by the client’s previous response. This results in a more coherent topical progression, and may thus seem to help the client in assessing the relevance of the questions. The social worker’s use of a step by step development of the topic may thus be considered a strategy for enhancing mutual understanding in communication with a non-native speaker. On the other hand, this strategy opens for local negotiation of the topic development and results in reports on institutionally irrelevant matters. Finally, institutional and conversational modes of talk imply different social relations between the participants. Many of the characteristic practices employed by institutional representatives are aimed at displaying professional neutrality. In extract (2) and (3), the social worker maintains this neutralistic stance in not giving any assessments of the client’s problems. In (1) and (4), however, he does in fact show more personal involvement in the topical matter. In the first extract he affiliates with the client in showing interest for her problems and in giving emotional expressions of concern. As we have noted above, this personal tone seems to be a strategic use of personal resources for an institutional goal. In (4), however, it seems to be genuine personal affect which transpires in the social worker’s disaffiliating comments. In conclusion, then, the practices of institutional talk are designed to manage institutional activities and roles, but may constitute a problem to second language speakers and/or people with limited experience of institutional genres. In this situation, institutional representatives may strategically use resources from conversational modes of talk in order to enhance mutual understanding and promote active participation by the client. Conversely, they may also discourage clients from presenting their experiences from their own perspective by invoking the norms of institutional interaction. In addition, a conversational mode may enhance the social relations between the parties by allowing increased displays of affilition. In 24

this way, blending and switching modes of talk may be used by institutional representatives in order, on the one hand, to invite or inhibit participation by their clients and, on the other, to display affiliation or professional neutrality towards them.

25

Notes 1

I would like to thank Arja Piirainen-Marsh, Anne Hvenekilde and Paul Drew for helpful

comments on an earlier version of this paper. 2

The data are transcribed according to the Santa Barbara system, developed by DuBois et al.

(1993). The transcription symbols are explained in the appendix.

Appendix: Transcription symbols [carriage return]

intonation unit

?

appeal intonation

.

terminal intonation contour

,

continuing intonation contour

..

micropause (under 0.3 seconds)

…

short silence (0.3-0.7 seconds)

…(1.0)

long, measured silence (over 0.7 sec.)

(0)

latching

wor-

truncated word

--

truncated intonation unit

^word

primary accent

’word

secondary accent

!word

emphatic stress

wo=rd

lengthening

A: x [xx]

(vertically aligned brackets) overlap

B: [xx]xx (H)

inhalation

(Hx)

exhalation

@

laughter

(THROAT)

vocal noises (throat clearing, coughing etc.)



high pitch



laugh quality

((COMMENT))

researcher’s comment



uncertain transcription 26

X

undecipherable syllable

italics

non-verbal actions (below the verbal transcription)

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Giles, Howard, Nikolas Coupland & Justine Coupland 1991 Accommodation theory: Communication, context, and consequence. In Giles, Howard, Nicolas Coupland & Justine Coupland (eds.), Contexts of Accommodation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–67. Goffman, Erving 1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Grice, Paul 1989 Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Heritage, John 1988 Explanations as accounts: a conversation analytic perspective. In Antaki, Charles (ed.), Analyzing Lay Explanation: A Casebook of Methods. London: Sage, 127-144. Heritage, John & David Greatbatch 1991 On the institutional character of institutional talk: the case of news interviews. In Boden, Deirdre & Don H. Zimmerman (eds.), Talk and Social Structure. Cambridge: Polity Press, 93–138. Heritage, John & Sue Sefi 1992 Dilemmas of advice: aspects of the delivery and reception of advice in interactions between Health Visitors and first-time mothers. In Drew & Heritage 1992 a:359–417. Hutchby, Ian & Robin Wooffitt 1998 Conversation Analysis. Principles, Practices and Applications. Cambridge: Polity Press. Jefferson, Gail & John R.E. Lee 1992 The rejection of advice: managing the problematic convergence of a ‘troublestelling’ and a ‘service encounter’. In Drew & Heritage 1992 a:521–548. Levinson, Stephen C. 28

1983 Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Linell, Per & Margareta Bredmar 1996 Reconstructing topical sensitivity: Aspects of face-work in talks between midwives and expectant mothers. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 29:347– 379. Pomerantz, Anita M. 1984 Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In Atkinson, John M. and John C. Heritage (eds.) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 57-101. Roberts, Celia & Srikant Sarangi 1999 Hybridity in gatekeeping discourse: Issues of practical relevance for the researcher. In Sarangi, Srikant & C. Roberts (eds.), Talk, Work and Institutional Order. Discourse in Medical, Mediation and Management Settings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 237–270. Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff & Gail Jefferson 1974 A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking in conversation. Language, 50(4), 696-735. Sarangi, Srikant & Stefaan Slembrouck 1996 Language, Bureaucracy & Social Control. London: Longman. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1980 Preliminaries to preliminaries: ‘Can I ask you a question?". Sociological Inquiry, 50(3/4), 104-152. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992 Repair after next turn: the last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology 97, 1295–1345.

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Schegloff, Emanuel A. & Harvey Sacks 1974. Opening up closings. In Turner, Roy (ed.), Ethnomethodology: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 233–264. Schütz, Alfred 1970 On Phenomenology and Social Relations (ed. by Helmut Wagner.) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Svennevig, Jan 1999 Getting Acquainted in Conversation. A Study of Initial Interactions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

30

Notes 1

I would like to thank Arja Piirainen-Marsh, Anne Hvenekilde and Paul Drew for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. 2 The data are transcribed according to the Santa Barbara system, developed by DuBois et al. (1993). The transcription symbols are explained in the appendix.

31