Question resistance and its management in Chinese psychotherapy

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xue-li Yao ◽  
Wen Ma

From the tape-recording of naturally occurring Chinese psychotherapy sessions, this article explores how repeated occurrences of resistance are managed in the course of interactional sequences and the participants’ actions within these sequences. By employing the methods of conversation analysis, we discuss the main discursive strategies employed by the clients to express their resistance and investigate how the therapist manages this. We find that clients show their resistance to the therapist’s questions in four ways: keeping silence, providing minimal response, making non-answer responses, and being over-talkative. Persistent asking is the main technique we identify in the data for the therapist to manage the resistance; in the meantime, asking questions in a stepwise way, making requests after facing resistance to questions, active retreating and reformulating of the client’s words are employed as subsidiary techniques. The successful management of resistance leads to a smooth sequential development of the psychotherapy, while inappropriate strategies might result in a halt or even breakdown of the therapeutic work. In psychotherapy, resistance is a result of the shared interaction between client and therapist. It is such a complex issue that, in order to understand and manage it, we also take into consideration the broader social and cultural context in which it occurs.

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. i-i

The analysis of naturally-occurring spoken interaction is an area which has attracted growing interest over the last few years. In this issue, Paul Seedhouse reviews Conversation Analysis (CA) and its application to areas of language learning and teaching, including teaching languages for specific purposes, materials design, classroom interaction and proficiency assessment. The author then examines the complex issue of what CA can contribute to the study of ‘learning’ and discusses the contribution of CA as a tool in existing social sciences research methodologies.


2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Chan

This paper uses audio and video data to examine the discourse of a New Zealand IT company director in business meetings. Three examples of the director dealing with behaviour by his subordinates that he wants to influence are analysed by drawing on a collection of discourse analytic frameworks including conversation analysis, social constructionism, politeness theory, and a community of practice framework. The examples reveal that the director employs a range of discursive strategies to express his disapproval and to rationalise his feedback. At times he adopts indirect and mitigated strategies, while at other times he uses explicit and authoritative strategies. Moreover, the examples also demonstrate the dynamic nature and the complexity of interaction. The analysis shows that the director’s choice of strategies in these examples is a response to the specific discourse context and represents the result of negotiation between interlocutors, and that the giving of negative feedback occurs as a sequence of utterances instead of one single utterance. Finally it is suggested that the strategies used by the director are relevant resources because of the close relationships between the director and his subordinates and the shared repertoire of the focus workplace.


2022 ◽  
pp. 146144562110374
Author(s):  
Katerina Nanouri ◽  
Eleftheria Tseliou ◽  
Georgios Abakoumkin ◽  
Nikos Bozatzis

In this article we illustrate how trainers and trainees negotiate epistemic and deontic authority within systemic family therapy training. Adult education principles and postmodern imperatives have challenged trainers’ and trainees’ asymmetries regarding knowledge (epistemics) and power (deontics), normatively implicated by the institutional training setting. Up-to-date, we lack insight into how trainers and trainees negotiate epistemic and deontic rights in naturally occurring dialog within training. Drawing from discursive psychology and conversation analysis, we present an analysis of eight transcribed, videotaped training seminars from a systemic family therapy training program, featuring three trainers and eleven trainees. Our analysis highlights the dilemmatic ways in which participants resist and affirm the normatively implicated trainers’ deontic and epistemic authority. Trainers are shown as mitigating directives and trainees as resisting them, with both displaying (not)knowing, while attending to concerns about (a)symmetry. We discuss our findings’ implications for systemic family therapy training.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Fang Wang ◽  
Mei-Chi Tsai ◽  
Wayne Schams ◽  
Chi-Ming Yang

Mandarin Chinese zhishi (similar to English ‘only’), comprised of the adverb zhi and the copula shi, can act as an adverb (ADV) or a discourse marker (DM). This study analyzes the role of zhishi in spoken discourse, based on the methodological and theoretical principles of interactional linguistics and conversation analysis. The corpus used in this study consists of three sets of data: 1) naturally-occurring daily conversations; 2) radio/TV interviews; and 3) TV panel discussions on current political affairs. As a whole, this study reveals that the notions of restrictiveness, exclusivity, and adversativity are closely associated with ADV zhishi and DM zhishi. In addition, the present data show that since zhishi is often used to express a ‘less than expected’ feeling, it can be used to indicate mirativity (i.e. language indicating that an utterance conveys the speaker’s surprise). The data also show that the distribution of zhishi as an adverb or discourse marker depends on turn taking systems and speech situations in spoken discourse. Specifically, the ADV zhishi tends to occur in radio/TV interviews and TV panel news discussions, while the DM zhishi occurs more often in casual conversations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 320
Author(s):  
Waheed M. A. Altohami ◽  
Amir H. Y. Salama

This paper is a corpus critical discourse analysis of the journalistic representations of Saudi women as they appear in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (Davies, 2008). It follows a sociocognitive approach (van Dijk, 2008) to explore the thematic foci discussing issues related to Saudi women and to discuss the discursive strategies implemented to propagate such issues. The study has reached four findings. First, the thematic foci related to Saudi women are textually and referentially coherent as they were meant to provide a grand narrative underlying a specific context model. Second, Saudi women are negatively represented as no social roles are ascribed to them throughout the corpus. Third, different social actors are also represented alongside Saudi women to put them in a wider socio-cultural context to aggravate their problems. Finally, the most effective discursive strategies which mediated the running context model included victimization, categorization, stereotyping, normalization, and exaggeration.


Human Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Svensson ◽  
Burak S. Tekin

AbstractThis study examines the situated use of rules and the social practices people deploy to correct projectable rule violations in pétanque playing activities. Drawing on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, and using naturally occurring video recordings, this article investigates socially organized occasions of rule use, and more particularly how rules for turn-taking at play are reflexively established in and through interaction. The alternation of players in pétanque is dependent on and consequential for the progressivity of the game and it is a practical problem for the players when a participant projects to break a rule of “who plays next”. The empirical analysis shows that formulating rules is a practice for indicating and correcting incipient violations of who plays next, which retrospectively invoke and establish the situated expectations that constitute the game as that particular game. Focusing on the anticipative corrections of projectable violations of turn-taking rules, this study revisits the concept of rules, as they are played into being, from a social and interactional perspective. We argue and demonstrate that rules are not prescriptions of game conduct, but resources that reflexively render the players’ conducts intelligible as playing the game they are engaging in.


Author(s):  
Louise Tranekjær

The article demonstrates how the combination of discursive psychology and conversation analysis enables an examination of culture as a product of discursive processes which are influenced and permeated by a broader social, discursive and cultural context. In this way an understanding is presented of cultural encounters as something which is not only determined by the background of the participants but is a product of interaction and the resources used in the negotiation of meaning and identity. The article is based on research of internship interviews, that is, interactions between Danish employers and adult second language speakers seeking an internship placement. Through examples from these interviews, it is argued that culture can be analyzed by combining a micro-perspective on the negotiation and organization of meaning in interaction with a macro-perspective on interactions as a manifestation of a broader social, discursive and cultural practice and organization.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Asma Ebshiana

In classroom settings, students` responses are regularly evaluated through the ubiquitous three-part sequence. It is through this pattern that teachers encourage student participation. Usually, the teacher uses response tokens such as “Okay”, Right” /” Alright”, “Mhm” “Oh”, in the third turn slot. These tokens are crucial and recurrent because they show where the teacher assesses the correctness or appropriateness of the students’ responses either end the sequence or begin a turn which ends the sequence. Moreover, such tokens have an impact on the sequence expansion and on the students’ participation. This article is a part of a large study examining the overall structure of the three-part sequence in data collected in an English pre-sessional programme (PSP) at the University of Huddersfield. The present article focuses on the analysis of naturally occurring data by using Conversation Analysis framework, henceforth (CA). A deep analysis is performed to examine how response tokens as evaluative responses are constructed sequentially in the third turn sequence as a closing action, whilst considering how some responses do not act as a closing sequence, since they elaborate and invite further talk. The results of response tokens have shown that they are greatly multifaceted. The analysis concluded that not all responses do the same function in the teacher’s third turn. Apart from confirming and acknowledging the student responses and maintaining listenership, some invite further contribution, others close and shift to another topic that designates closing the sequence, and some show a “change of state”. Their functions relate to their transitions, pauses and their intonation in the on-going sequence. 


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Betsy Campbell

PurposeThis paper seeks to advance research into entrepreneurial uncertainty. Few researchers have attended to the endogenous means by which entrepreneurial teams account for uncertainty in context. This article begins to unpack the concept of uncertainty as an entrepreneurs’ phenomenon by investigating entrepreneurial teams’ situated ways of verbally attending to and accounting for uncertainty in their routine work.Design/methodology/approachThe study draws on the ethnomethodological traditions of Conversation Analysis and interaction order to analyze naturally occurring interactions that have been recorded by entrepreneurial teams in context. It considers entrepreneurial uncertainty as a matter that teammates draw upon and orient to in the process of their naturally occurring workplace interactions.FindingsFirst, it suggests that the endogenous means by which entrepreneurs recognize, account for, and respond to uncertainties is identifiable in a team’s naturally occurring conversations. It transforms entrepreneurial uncertainty as a matter of cognition into a matter of practice that is observable in the structure and order of authentic interaction. Second, it reveals the “epistemic engine” that entrepreneurial teams use to demonstrate greater or lesser levels of knowing and to move to closure that is not marked by the full elimination of uncertainties but by the establishment of a shared sense of not knowing.Practical implicationsBy adhering to the detailed interactional focus of Conversation Analysis, this article emphasizes the value that the structure and order of entrepreneurial conversations can offer to research on entrepreneurship as practice. It points to future research on matters of effectuation and expertise that will be relevant to scholars and educators of entrepreneurship. It also helps to bridge the gap between scholarly research and entrepreneurial work as experienced by practitioners.Originality/valueThis article shows the mundane verbal means by which entrepreneurs account for uncertainties in their everyday work. It reframes entrepreneurial uncertainty, transforming it from a matter of cognition to an accomplishment of practice. It suggests that entrepreneurial uncertainty is a practical matter that is recognized by and accounted for in the conversations of entrepreneurial teams in context.


Author(s):  
Abigail McMeekin

Abstract Analyzing approximately nine hours of video-recorded naturally-occurring conversations over eight weeks of study abroad between three L2 speakers of Japanese and their L1 speaker host family members, the present study uses conversation analysis to explore how the participants manage intersubjectivity using communication strategies in word searches. Specifically the study explores the following: (a) how participants deploy, manipulate, and respond to communication strategies as interactional resources used to co-construct meaning and progressively disambiguate the referent sought; (b) how strategies are used within the sequential organization of word searches to guide the trajectory of the search on a turn-by-turn basis; (c) how linguistic and non-linguistic resources such as intonation and eye gaze are used in conjunction with strategies to organize participant structure and relevant action in the unfolding talk; and (d) how a microanalytic, interactional approach can redefine our understanding of how strategic mechanisms are used and labeled in interaction.


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