"I'm a Bit Concerned"--Early Actions and Psychological Constructions in a Child Protection Helpline

By Jonathan Potter, A. Hepburn. 2003

116 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article analyzes early actions in 50 calls reporting cases of abuse to a national child protection helpline in the UK (the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Helpline, NSPCC). It focuses on the early turns in the caller's reason for call, in particular, a class of constructions in which the caller describes himself or herself as "concerned about x" (or similar). Analysis of the corpus of calls suggests concern constructions are canonical early elements of the reason-for-call sequence. Concern constructions (a) are oriented to a pre-move in the caller's reason for call, (b) project the unpacking of concerns in a way oriented to the NSPCC's institutional role, (c) attend to epistemological asymmetries between caller and call taker and remove the requirement for disaffiliative next actions such as asking for the basis of claims, (d) provide a way for the Child Protection Officer to take abuse claims seriously while not presupposing their truth, and (e) display an appropriate caller stance. These observations are supported by an analysis of deviant cases. The broader implications of this study for the relation between psychology, interaction, and institutions are discussed.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ed95559984bf502ad0e4615a632f2c300f56d37c

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In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Language and Linguistics

Citations in the corpus

“So What's Up?”: Using the Discourse Marker So to Launch Conversational Business (2008, background): “5 For institution-specific practices of introducing reasons for calling see, for example, Potter and Hepburn (2003) and Zimmerman (1992).”
Some uses of subject-side assessments (2017, background): “…psychological or psychologically implicative expressions – think, know, feel, the range of emotion terms, the management of complaints as not just S-side whinges, the expression of ‘concerns’ when reporting possible child abuse and so on (e.g. Edwards, 1999, 2000, 2005; Potter and Hepburn, 2003).”
Developments in discursive psychology (2005, background): “…2003; Peräkylä, 1995); parapsychology experiments (Wooffitt, forthcoming); market research focus groups (Puchta and Potter, 2004); psychiatric assessment for gender reassignment (Speer and Parsons, forthcoming); and child protection helpline interaction (Hepburn, 2004; Potter and Hepburn, 2003).”
Discursive psychology, focus group interviews and participants' categories (2004, unknown): “Edwards, 1995, 1997, 2000; Potter, 1997; Potter & Hepburn, 2003; Wiggins & Potter, 2003).”
Crying Receipts: Time, Empathy, and Institutional Practice (2007, methodology): “…the intensity of the emotional display, note that the caller is still constructing the report in the standard manner for early actions in calls (Potter & Hepburn, 2003)—in particular, she uses a mental state13 construction “worried” that generates an appropriate stance to the abuse but allows…”
Moaning, whinging and laughing: the subjective side of complaints (2005, background): “For example, callers to helplines for reporting child abuse often express their ‘concerns’ (Potter and Hepburn, 2003), where any suspicion that they may have a personal grievance with their neighbours might threaten the factual objectivity of what they are reporting, and question for whose sake…”
Crying: Notes on Description, Transcription, and Interaction (2004, background): “For further details and examples of analysis, see Hepburn and Potter (2004) and Potter and Hepburn (2003).”
Qualitative Psychology: Introducing Radical Research (2004, methodology): “It is possible to use CA to do interesting research (e.g. Potter and Edwards 2003; Potter and Hepburn 2003), but the costs are high.”