Teasing as a practice of managing delicate issues in institutional talk

Abstract

This article takes the practice of teasing in institutional talk as its focus and examines a Mandarin Chinese case of request from a conversation analytic perspective. It turns out that teasing can effectively perform the tasks of social control and tension management in institutional interactions. With detailed analyses of the mechanisms that can be employed to resolve delicate issues in institutional contexts, it is proposed that teasing as a social action can enable conversational participants to express and tackle the underlying conflicts or problems in institutional encounters. The present research also probes into the tacit manoeuvring of the teaser and the tease recipient’s identities or category memberships achieved or built up by minor transgressions, deviant claims, deontic assertions, and (dis)affiliation displays. This study contributes to the understanding of dynamic identity construction in social encounters and overall tension management in institutional contexts as well.

Teasing in Outpatient Clinical Interaction in China: Managing Epistemic and Deontic Authorities

“…Teasing is a multifaceted social action that blends humour with seriousness, serving diverse functions across both personal and institutional contexts [ 17 , 19 , 20 ]. In conversation analysis (CA), teasing is examined for its detailed linguistic and nonverbal cues, which demonstrate its adaptability and function across different settings, highlighting its role in navigating complex social dynamics [ 18 , 21 , 22 ]. This study focuses on three salient aspects of teasing within the CA framework: sequence, design, and action, particularly how these elements play out in clinician–patient dialogues.…”