Full Description
This volume strengthens the case for analysing discourse from the point of view of discourse participants' accountability and responsibility. It adds an important and largely neglected strand to research in discourse studies and pragmatics by analysing the expression and attribution of responsibility, particularly in professional discourse. Debates on social and professional responsibility have proliferated in recent years both in the public sphere (e.g. in connection with corporate responsibility reports) and in more local practices (e.g. as manifested in the publication of in-house codes of conduct). However, there is little academic research on professional discourse which systematically addresses the ways in which responsibility relations are construed in language use. This volume contains a number of case studies focusing on different professional settings: media, health care and social work. The types of data examined range from globally available mass-consumed discourse (such as news agency dispatches) to local and essentially private face-to-face encounters (such as counselling sessions).The studies examine different linguistic features (such as reported speech in written texts and backchannelling in spoken encounters) and different types of meanings (such as agency and causality).
The studies draw on different methodological approaches (mainly pragmatics, conversation analysis and (critical) discourse analysis). A common thread running through the contributions is that responsibility is not a stable quality of people or institutions, but a dynamic and variable resource that language users negotiate in interaction.
Contents
I Discourse and responsibility 1. The Notion of Responsibility in Discourse StudiesAnna Solin & Jan-Ola Ostman 2. Taking 'Responsibility': From Word to DiscourseRobin Tolmach Lakoff, University of California, Berkeley 3. Owning Responsible Actions/selves: Role-relational Trajectories in Counselling for Childhood Genetic TestingSrikant Sarangi, Aalborg UniversityII Constructing responsibility in health care and social work 4. Negotiating Parental/familial Responsibility in Genetic CounsellingGoril Thomassen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Srikant Sarangi & John-Arne Skolbekken, Norwegian University of Science and Technology5. Whose Business is it Anyway? Distributing Responsibilities between Family Members and Formal CarersOuti Jolanki, University of Jyvaskyla6. "Getting Placed" in Time: Responsibility Talk in Caseworker-Client InteractionMaureen T. Matarese, Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York 7. Reflexivity in the Institution, and how it Entangles with ResearchChris Bulcaen, Ghent UniversityIII Responsibility relations in the media8. Political Interviews and Responsibility: A Case Study of its Interactional OrganizationAnita Fetzer, University of Augsburg9. Roles, Dramaturgy and Responsibility in Swedish TV-DebatesChristian Svensson Limsjo, Linkoping University10. Responsibility and the Conventions of Attribution in News Agency DiscourseMaija Stenvall, University of Helsinki 11. Who has the Power to Act in the World? Social Actors, Agency and Voice in a Catholic NewspaperKarin Tusting, Lancaster University12. Construing Professional Norms in Journalism: Responsibility and Risk ReportingAnna Solin
