Identity as an Achievement and as a Tool

Antaki, Charles; Widdicombe, Sue

doi:10.4135/9781446216958.n1

Cited by 198 publications

(197 citation statements)

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“…Causal accounting is a crucial discursive device in professional interaction and discourse to 'make a case': it enables sense making of client cases where thing are going 'wrong', the client is not proceeding in a direction or behaving as expected by the professionals (Antaki 1998). In mental health and substance abuse work professionals are actually often dealing with a circular argument; substance abuse affects mental health and mental health affects substance abuse.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Categories invoke assumptions about particular features, characters and actions bound to them. Categories are bound to professional talk and are often used in particular institutional tasks and 'people-processing' (Sacks 1992;Antaki and Widdicombe 1998;Psathas 1999;Mäkitalo 2003;Juhila and Abrams 2011: 282). For example, the 'mental health case' (illness category) and 'drug abuser case' (addiction, behavioural problem category) enable professionals to make different causal explanations, responsibility allocation and treatment options (Schubert et al 2009;White 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Causal accounts as a consequential device in categorizing mental health and substance abuse problems

Raitakari¹,

Günther

Juhila

et al. 2014

CAM

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Professionals in human service work are at the centre of complicated client cases. The ways client cases are constructed and the problems explained form the basis for professionals' assessments, decisions, actions and interventions. In this article the ways professionals make sense of dual diagnosis client cases are examined. Applying the concept of causal accounting it is argued that 'theories of cause' are embedded in professional discourse and that they profoundly shape professionals' understanding of the social and health problems, their roles and responsibilities and possible interventions and outcomes.The data consist of 48 tape-recorded weekly team meetings among the professionals in a supported housing unit targeted for clients with both mental health and substance abuse problems. Four different ways to reason for the relations between these two problems are found: (i) substance abuse causes or makes mental health problems worse; (ii) substance abuse eases mental health problems; (iii) mental health problems cause or make substance abuse worse; and (iv) good mental health reduces substance abuse. Causal account research makes visible the ways professionals do institutional work by categorizing clients, accounting for responsibilities as well as assessing their work and clients' achievements according to moral expectations of a 'good' professional and a worthy client.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal accounts as a consequential device in categorizing mental health and substance abuse problems

Raitakari¹,

Günther

Juhila

et al. 2014

CAM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As with all mobilized social identity categories, the specific selection demonstrably attends to inferential concerns arising from account itself (Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998b;Antaki et al, 2007b;Miller and Benkwitz, 2016). In this case, a sister is somebody about whom the speaker has rights to possess reliable information, and to be concerned.…”

Section: Extractmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By paying particular attention to the nuanced activities of clinicians and patients during these consultations, a description is provided of some of the particular, non-cognitive concerns than can inform and shape interaction during these "tricky" clinical moments. Not least among these are matters relating to how patients' social identities are coordinatively constituted by speakers as a part of the interactions themselves (Antaki and Widdicombe, 1998a;Miller and Benkwitz, 2016) and, most importantly, how ostensive challenges to the diagnosis itself can be functional devices for a patient to open up conversational space within the consultation where these matters might be addressed. All emergent matters are finally addressed in terms of a reflection on issues relevant for research and practice around the clinical handling of nominally difficult topics in general, and the diagnosis of depression in particular.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Depression, rational identity and the educational imperative: concordance-finding in tricky diagnostic moments

Miller

Richardson

2017

Palgrave Commun

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It is well-documented, within most medical and much health psychology, that many individuals find diagnoses of depression confusing or even objectionable. Within a corpus of research and practical clinical guidance dominated by the social-cognitive paradigm, the explanation for resistance to a depression diagnosis (or advice pertaining to it) within specific interactions is bordering on the canonical; patients misunderstand depression itself, often as an output of an associated social stigma that distorts public knowledge. The best way to overcome corollary resistance in situ is, logically thus, taken to be a clarification of the true (clinical) nature of depression. In this paper, exploring the diagnosis of depression in UK primary care contexts, the social-cognitive position embedded in contemporary medical reasoning around this matter is critically addressed. It is firstly highlighted how, even in a great deal of extant public health research, the link between an individual holding "correct" medical knowledge and being actively compliant with it is far from inevitable. Secondly, and with respect to concerns around direct communication in clinical contexts, a body of research emergent of Discursive Psychology and Conversation Analysis is explored so as to shed light on how non-cognitive concerns (not least those around the local interactional management of a patient's social identity) that can inform the manner in which ostensibly "tricky" medical talk plays-out in practice, especially in cases where a mental illness is at stake. Finally, observations are drawn together in a formal Discursive Psychological analysis of a small but highly illustrative sample of three cases where a depression diagnosis is initially questioned or disputed by a patient in primary care but, following further in-consultation activity, concordance with the diagnosis is ultimately reached -a specific issue hitherto unaddressed in either DP or CA fields. These cases specifically reveal the coordinative attention of interlocutors to immediate concerns regarding how the patient might maintain a sense of being an everyday and rational witness to their own lives; indeed, the very act of challenging the diagnosis emerges as a means by which a patient can open up conversational space within the consultation to address such issues. While the veracity of the social-cognitive model is not deemed to be without foundation herein, it is concluded that attention to local interactional concerns might firstly be accorded, such that the practical social concerns and skills of practitioners and patients alike might not be overlooked in the endeavour to produce generally applicable theories.

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“…In contrast, those taking a conversational analysis (CA) approach (Auer 1988, Sebba and Wootton 1998, Gafaranga 2007 have argued that code-switching may not always index social identity but can instead function as discourse-related contextualization cues for the conversation at hand. Furthermore, CA-based approaches argue for focusing only on the specific social identities that are brought up or made relevant in talk (Antaki and Widdicombe 1998) as well as limiting social context only to things that are directly related to the conversation at hand (Stroud 1998).…”

Section: Analyzing Multilingual Literacy In Contemporary Globalized Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

preliminary exploration

2014

Dictionary Geotechnical Engineering/Wörterbuch GeoTechnik

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Part of a larger dissertation research, the paper will investigate preliminary data on the codeswitching and language mixing use of Javanese (a local language), Bahasa Indonesia or BI (the national language) and English by youth, both in conversations as well as in writing, in the city of Semarang in Central Java, Indonesia, a multilingual developing country of the global South. The preliminary findings indicate that youth in Semarang use Javanese, BI and English under a norm of polylingualism, with Javanese and BI being the predominant bilingual medium in spoken conversation. Gaul Indonesian, a sub-dialect of BI, acts as an intermediate scale between local and global scales of language. While BI is predominantly used in writing, the use of Javanese re-emerges in the least regulated and most informal domains of writing. The youth in this study use English more in writing than in spoken conversation, using it as a means of expressing a voice that is locally different and resonates with global popular culture but for the purpose of expressing very local and personal expressions.

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Identity as an Achievement and as a Tool

Cited by 198 publications

References 0 publications

Causal accounts as a consequential device in categorizing mental health and substance abuse problems

Causal accounts as a consequential device in categorizing mental health and substance abuse problems

Depression, rational identity and the educational imperative: concordance-finding in tricky diagnostic moments

preliminary exploration

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