Search

Self-help groups offer contexts for individuals with similar experiences of social exclusion to find each other. Members work to understand these experiences of individual deviation from societal norms by drawing on concepts of morality. Moralising narratives are used to discuss how this deviation is experienced and how it is addressed by others, but also how other individuals are perceived as deviating. Applying conversation analytical methods to transcribed audio recordings of a session of a self-help group for people with obesity, this article shows that the norms drawn on in this form of communication are neither homogenous nor stable. Societal norms regarding body shape and local norms of face saving and empathy form a constant tension of expectations resulting in paradoxical interactional positions. Morally integrating the group and maintaining a stance of solidarity proves to be constant hard and complex interactional work under these circumstances. One relevant strategy is the use of specific vagueness in narratives, which fosters affective affiliation while avoiding topical criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The narrative interview is the method of choice for preserving historical experience. However, interviewing as social research method is seriously criticized for neglecting interview interaction. Conversation analysis (CA) could bring in some corrections in this debate. Using this method, the conversational practices in interviews for historical testimony, especially the «recipient design" of interviewee's utterances are examined. In 8 interviews for historical testimony from the years 2005-2006, not only the interviewer but also a third non-present other, an «overhearing audience" (Heritage 1985), is addressed. These findings are discussed in comparison to media interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use the first ten minutes of an audiorecorded 28th psychoanalytic session in order to detect and describe a new therapeutic procedure which we call «Dancing Insight". The session is transcribed according to the standards of conversation analysis and is analyzed at three levels: first, a clinical analysis which leads to the interpretation that the analyst at two opportunities actively turns the table - speaking as if she were the patient. The clinical view can bring this observation in relationship to the concept of «model scenes" and «completing the scene" and some further findings from infant research. Second, the conversation analytic approach observes how the therapist does this maneuver and how the patient responds to it. A further analysis is directed to the «slots" where such a maneuver can be conducted with a natural flair and without any irony. Third, we complement the picture by an acoustic analysis of some prosodic features using PRAAT-software which shows some interesting patterns. At the beginning the patient speaks with a flat intonation, a prosodic property which we relate to affect isolation and its consequence, the lack of assertive commitment. The therapist manages to drag the patient out of this stance by assuming her role and she does this not only by the meaning of words, but also with prosodic means: She pronounces her turns at a «high plateau", the basic meaning of which we tentatively describe as «projection of the assertion to the partner". This is the procedure we call «dancing insight": The conversational move which leads to a change of metaphorical concepts and to a change of positioning is achieved by a prosodic technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]