Recursive Frame Analysis

Bibliographic Data

ID5847834
AuthorsRonald J Chenail (0000-0002-9312-9780, Nova Southeastern University, corresponding author), Ronald Chenail (Nova Southeastern University)
Year1995
Publication date1995-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueQualitative Report (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1052-0147 • E-ISSN: 2160-3715
PublisherNova Southeastern University (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.46743/2160-3715/1995.2062
OpenAlexW871665918
LanguageEN
Citations received22
References cited7

To learn more about how others and I use and understand language in therapy and other such conversations, I have helped to lead a qualitative research project dedicated to the construction of a practical and useful way to "get closer to the talk."The system which has evolved in our project is called Recursive Frame Analysis (RFA) (Chenail, 1991).Created by Bradford Keeney (1991), RFA is a method for understanding and presenting conversations.Later I developed RFA into a qualitative research method for the analysis of narratives, conversations, and other forms of discourse.In this fashion, RFA is used as a type of sequential analysis which helps researchers and therapists to note their perceptions of semantic shifts in a conversation.I have used this method to research a variety of conversations.These studies include an examination of parents' conversations about their children's heart murmurs (Chenail, 1991), a description of family therapist-supervisor talk behind the one-way mirror in a therapy session (Chenail & Fortugno, 1995), an analysis of divorce mediator-disputants discourse in child custody dispute resolution (Chenail, Itkin, Bonneau, & Andriacchi, 1993, October; Chenail, Zellick, & Bonneau, 1992, October), and an in-depth look at systemic family therapy discourse (Rambo, Heath, & Chenail, 1993).Through each of these studies I was able to learn something different, something new, that can happen when two parties sit down to discuss how to solve a problem. RFA AssumptionsThe roots of Recursive Frame Analysis can be traced back to the work of Gregory Bateson (1972) and Erving Goffman (1974).Bateson and Goffman understood frames as being our conceptual or cognitive views of particular situations.For instance, do we perceive a story we hear from a client to be a tale of problems or of solutions?Our choices of frames help us to hear certain aspects of the talk, while not helping us to hear other parts of the conversation.Within this system, frame is synonymous with context: "that which leads up to and follows and often specifies the meaning of a specific expression" (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1970, p. 288).For an observer to comprehend a particular behavior or action, that observer must identify or construct a context or frame for that event.With RFA, Keeney and Chenail have adapted this general usage of frame and have applied it to the understanding of talk.An etymology of the word "context" helps to illustrate just how an observer constructs these frames or contexts in discourse.Context comes from the Middle English word "contextus," which means "coherence" or "sequence of words."The past participle of contextus is "contextere:" "to join together" or "to weave" (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1970, p. 288).Contexts in

Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Linguistic Variation and Morphology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access