Narrating in protective order interviews

A source of interactional trouble

Bibliographic Data

ID7900895
AuthorsTrinch (0000-0002-6326-6629, Florida State University), Shonna L Trinch, Susan Berk‐seligson (University of Pittsburgh), Susan Berk-Seligson
Year2002
Volume31
Issue3
Pages383-418
Publication date2002-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404502020274
OpenAlexW2097062716
LanguageEN
Citations received30
References cited26

This study examines the types of interactional trouble that arise from narrative variation in institutional interviews. Specifically, we examine protective order interviews in which Latina women tell of domestic violence to paralegal interviewers charged with the duty of helping them obtain a protective order. Victims' narratives are shown to take different shapes, and paralegals respond to them in different pragmalinguistic ways, depending on how they diverge from institutional needs. The factors found most heavily to influence narrative outcomes are contextual ones, related to participant social roles, the type of communicative activity interlocutors perceive themselves to be engaged in, and their interactional goals. An additional finding is that when expectations of what constitutes appropriate speech behavior differ, the interlocutor holding greater institutional power will try to constrain the speech of the other, despite the fact that both appear to share an extralinguistic goal, in this case obtaining a protective order

Business · Duty · Linguistics · Narrative · Order (exchange) · Political science · Power (physics) · Sociology · Variation (astronomy) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Interpreting and Communication in Healthcare · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology · Social Psychology

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