This volume brings together a collection of novel, conversation-analytic studies addressing the related concepts of account, motive, accounting, and accountability, with the goal of re-exposing their multiple senses, reiterating their interrelationships and, in doing so, breaking new conceptual ground and exposing pathways for future research.
This volume brings together a collection of novel, conversation-analytic studies addressing the related concepts of account, motive, accounting, and accountability, with the goal of re-exposing their multiple senses, reiterating their interrelationships and, in doing so, breaking new conceptual ground and exposing pathways for future research.
Within the study of language and social interaction, the concept of 'accountability'-including related concepts, such as 'account' or 'motive,' 'accounting,' and 'being accountable'-has been of longstanding interest in terms of how interactants in both ordinary and organizational contexts manage their image or reputation, as well as how they achieve mutual understanding. However, these concepts are polysemous, with different senses being rather dramatic, such as accountability as 'moral responsibility' and accountability as 'intelligibility.' Even today this fact is not always remembered or fully recognized or appreciated by scholars, which has arguably slowed the development of these concepts. This volume brings together a collection of novel, conversation-analytic studies addressing accountability, with the goal of re-exposing its multiple senses, reiterating their interrelationships and, in doing so, breaking new conceptual ground and exposing new pathways for future research. The collection considers central theoretical issues, including turn taking, sequence and preference organization, repair, membership categorization, action formation and ascription, social solidarity and affiliation, and the relevance of context. Chapters range contextually, canvasing interactions between friends and family members, and during talk shows, broadcast news interviews, airline reservations, and medical visits. Chapters also range culturally, including English, Japanese, and Korean data.
Much of our talk revolves around accounting for our own and other people's actions. We praise one person and blame another, justify our own actions, speculate on motives, tell and retell problematic events. This volume draws upon speech communication, sociology and social psychology to offer an original approach to such accounts. Richard Buttny examines social accountability within communication contexts that range from a therapy session to welfare and broadcast news interviews, from everyday conversation to discussions in a Zen monastery. Throughout his wide-ranging analysis of accounts talk, he integrates conversation analytic methods with social constructionism.
In this book I have concentrated on drawing attention to various conceptions of accountability that might be brought to bear in judging the practice of social research. Much of the book is organized around making explicit the assumptions that influence what counts as “proper” research in society, including assumptions about how social inquirers might be held accountable. My focus is on reviewing discourses around the practice of “professional” inquiry, with a view to reconsidering the way in which people create expectations for accountable social inquiry. My focus hereon is related to my concern that the manner in which judgments about researchers’ accountability are made, is not without social consequences for our way of living in society. I have approached the issues by beginning with a discussion of tenets of the position called “positivism” (so named by certain proponents), and by considering the view on accountability that is implied by adherence to these tenets. Briefly expressed, positivist argumentation suggests that researchers are required to “do science” in a manner that warrants their being considered, indeed, scientists. I use my discussion of accountability as seen within positivist argumentation to explicate ways in which alternative positions have arisen as ways of treating accountability issues. Through my way of comparing the various positions, I hope to provide some indication of the complexity ofethical and accountability issues in social inquiry.
Authority and Power in Social Interaction explores methods of analyzing authority and power in the minutiae of interaction. Drawing on the expertise of a diverse international team of organizational communication and language and social interaction scholars, this book suggests reverting the perspective that notions of authority and power constrain human activity, to determine how people (re)create them through conversation and other joint action. Confronting several perspectives within each chapter, the book offers a broad range of approaches to each theme: how and when to bring "context" into the analysis, formal authority, institutions, bodies and materiality, immateriality, and third parties. A core belief of this volume is that authority and power are not looming over human activity; rather, we weave together the constraints that we mutually impose on each other. Observing the details of how this joint process takes place may at once better account for how authority and power emerge and impact our actions, and provide guidelines on how to resist them. This book will be an important reference for students and scholars in language and social interaction, organizational communication, as well as those interested in an alternative take on issues of authority and power. It will also find resonance among those interested in managements studies, public administration and other disciplines interested in situations where authority is a crucial issue.
Each time we take a turn in conversation we indicate what we know and what we think others know. However, knowledge is neither static nor absolute. It is shaped by those we interact with and governed by social norms - we monitor one another for whether we are fulfilling our rights and responsibilities with respect to knowledge, and for who has relatively more rights to assert knowledge over some state of affairs. This book brings together an international team of leading linguists, sociologists and anthropologists working across a range of European and Asian languages to document some of the ways in which speakers manage the moral domain of knowledge in conversation. The volume demonstrates that if we are to understand how speakers manage issues of agreement, affiliation and alignment - something clearly at the heart of human sociality - we must understand the social norms surrounding epistemic access, primacy and responsibilities.
Childhood is generally conceptualized as a social construct in contemporary research within the social sciences - while the immaturity of children is a biological fact, how such immaturity in this particular period of human life is perceived and made sense of is a structural and cultural component of a society. However, little research has empirically examined precisely how this social construction is accomplished on a moment-by-moment basis in everyday life. Taking a conversation analytic approach, this dissertation investigates how childhood is constructed in the turn-by-turn sequential unfolding of everyday interaction. In modern society, childhood is predominately viewed as a time of innocence, during which children are seen as having limited rights to autonomy. Previous interactional studies also suggest that children's membership status is characterized by their limited rights to participate in interaction. In this dissertation, I draw on naturally occurring adult-child conversational data in English and Mandarin and examine the rights, obligations, and accountability associated with the status of being a child participant in interaction. Chapter 2 shows that adults constantly attend to children's performances in question-answer sequences and work to safeguard their rights to respond, thereby validating their status as interaction participants. Chapter 3 documents how parents assert epistemic primacy over their children, thereby treating them as having reduced rights to make claims about their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Grounded in this asymmetrical relationship between children and their parents, Chapter 4 illustrates that third-party interlocutors (e.g., relatives, friends, and other children) also orient to such asymmetry. That is, the construction of the asymmetrical parent-child relationship is a collaborative effort involving children, parents, and other interlocutors. It is through these special orientations to children that their status as children is constructed in social interaction. By demonstrating how the relative rights of children and adults are manifested in the details of naturally occurring interaction, this dissertation formulates the interactional construction of childhood, which can be related to a wide set of interests in children, including social psychology, child development, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics, and makes important contributions to the insights of childhood in the social sciences more generally.
This book illustrates how social media platforms enable us to understand everyday politics and evaluates the extent to which they can foster accountability, transparency and responsiveness. The first part focuses on accountability and tests whether the offline behavior of politicians is consistent with their online declarations, showing that textual analysis of politicians’ messages is useful to explain phenomena such as endorsements, party splits and appointments to cabinet. The second part concerns responsiveness. By means of sentiment analysis, it investigates the shape of the interaction between citizens and politicians determining whether politicians’ behavior is influenced by the pressure exerted on social media both on policy and non-policy issues. Finally, the book evaluates whether a responsive behavior is successful in restoring online political trust, narrowing the gap between voters and political elites. The book will be of use to students, scholars and practitioners interested in party organization, intra-party politics, legislative politics, social media analysis and political communication, as well as politicians themselves.
Accountability in Social Services examines how - and why - social and human services programs can function even though they are monitored by written communication instead of face-to-face interaction. Author Jill Florence Lackey draws on her experience as a consultant for more than 50 social programs and as director of two nonprofit organizations to demonstrate the strong need for accountability mechanisms and an ethics-based leadership when running social service programs. This unique book walks you through the process of how “paper programs” emerge and operate, the monitoring mechanisms that are - and aren’t - in place during program operations, and recommendations to increase accountability in the social service delivery system. The book examines programs focusing on: youth aftercare adolescent health drug prevention rural community development crime prevention violence intervention services to the homeless and more. Accountability in Social Services concludes with recommendations for organized action by consumer groups to increase responsibility in the social service delivery system. This book is invaluable as a resource for students, teachers, and practitioners working in social work and welfare, evaluation, organizational leadership, public policy, applied anthropology, and consumer science, including local organizations such as PIRGs (Public Interest Research Groups).
