Managing Guilt

The Personal Responsibility Rhetoric among Parents of "Troubled" Teens

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2277148
AutoresSandra E Godwin (Georgia College & State University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2004
Volumen45
Número3
Páginas575-596
Fecha de publicación2004-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSociological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0038-0253 • E-ISSN: 1533-8525
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/tsq.2004.45.3.575
OpenAlexW4247509708
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas40

In this article I illustrate the connections between talk, emotion management, and identity. In much of the recent work on collective, discursive strategies such as narrative and rhetoric, this link is left implicit. Through the study of a support group for parents of “troubled” teenagers, I highlight how parents' rhetorical talk created an emotional pathway that enabled them to maintain their good-parent identities despite their teenagers' rebellion. Parents used a personal responsibility rhetoric to make sense of their teenagers' misbehavior. For the most part as parents applied the personal responsibility rhetoric, they followed meeting protocol. Occasionally, however, parents violated the rhetoric's expression rule that parents were to avoid talking about guilt. I address how parents collectively constructed meeting discourse and conclude that their use of the personal responsibility rhetoric was how they collectively managed their own and each others' emotions. As a result they set the stage for becoming strict disciplinarians, which made it possible to see themselves as good parents, regardless of their teenagers' rebellion

Aesthetics · Collective responsibility · Identity (music) · Linguistics · Literature · Moral responsibility · Narrative · Political science · Public relations · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Set (abstract data type) · Sociology · Emotional Labor in Professions · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology