Investigating Reported Absences: “Neutrally” Catching the Truants
The data for the analysis consist of telephone calls initiated by a high school attendance office clerk to the home of students who had been reported absent. The purpose of the calls was to gather information relevant to determining whether the student’s absences were legitimate or not. The clerk’s interactional project was to merely investigate, not to make judgments about the status of the absences. When a parent’s report suggested truancy, the clerk sought and provided information differently than when a parent’s report pointed to a legitimate absence. When she suspected truancy, the clerk adopted a neutral stance. In part the stance involved displaying a cautiousness with respect to knowledge claims. As a side note, when the clerk suspected that the attendance records were inaccurate, she initially avoided detailing the reported absences to the parent.