Going too far: Complaining, escalating and disaffiliation
By Paul Drew, Traci Walker. 2009
171 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This report, arising from a study of affiliation and disaffiliation in interaction, addresses an apparently ‘anomalous’ finding in relation to complaint sequences in conversation. In some of the cases we collected in which one speaker was complaining on behalf of the other (their co-participant), taking her side in some matter, the one on whose behalf the other was complaining did not affiliate with the complaint. Instead they resisted the complaint (again, one made on their behalf) and demurred to ‘go so far’. This finding is anomalous in the sense that if A is complaining on behalf of B, in respect of some harm done to B, then it might be expected that B would go along with the complaint, and affiliate with A. To account for how it might come about that B demurs from ‘going as far as’ A, we explore how complaints are frequently introduced in conversation. We show that complaints may emerge through a progression in which ‘the complainant’ does not initially go on record with a complaint, but instead secures the other's participation in co-constructing the complaint. Hence the ‘complaint recipient’ may be the first to make the complaint explicit, in a sequence of escalating affiliation. In the ‘anomalous’ cases, it appears that this escalation goes too far for the putative complainant (B).
Subfields: General Health Professions, Language and Linguistics, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1fce94c8bdc1a7604f58df9b38cd6bc7b8e28003
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In General Health Professions
In Language and Linguistics
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Three orders in the organization of human action: On the interface between knowledge, power, and emotion in interaction and social relations (2014, background): “5 Let us consider extract (3), from Drew (1987).”
- Responses to Wh-Questions in English Conversation (2010, background): “Her question You weren't done til two in the morning pursues the issue of when Betty finished cleaning, this time in a complaint-relevant format (a negative noticing; see Drew & Curl, 2008 ; Schegloff, 1988 , 1995 ).”