Formulations of users’ initial problem descriptions in social services’ online chat
(2022) Digital Meeting for Conversation Analysis 31 October- Abstract
- In anonymous online text-based counselling provided by social services, counsellors face specific communicative and professional challenges. One of the challenges is a higher risk of misunderstanding in textual encounters due to the lack of non-verbal clues and conversation participants’ anonymity (Bambling et al. 2008; Dowling & Rickwood 2014; Fukkink & Hermanns 2009). Chat counsellors need to ensure that they have understood the chat users right in order to provide relevant information and advice. The paper studies how counsellors check their understandings of users’ situations by summarising and rephrasing users’ initial problem descriptions.
The data consists of chat logs from 56 web-based counselling sessions provided by... (More) - In anonymous online text-based counselling provided by social services, counsellors face specific communicative and professional challenges. One of the challenges is a higher risk of misunderstanding in textual encounters due to the lack of non-verbal clues and conversation participants’ anonymity (Bambling et al. 2008; Dowling & Rickwood 2014; Fukkink & Hermanns 2009). Chat counsellors need to ensure that they have understood the chat users right in order to provide relevant information and advice. The paper studies how counsellors check their understandings of users’ situations by summarising and rephrasing users’ initial problem descriptions.
The data consists of chat logs from 56 web-based counselling sessions provided by social services in Sweden. Only chat logs with anonymous users have been collected and the Swedish Ethical Review Authority has no ethical objections to the research project (diary number: 2020-02578). The research approach is conversational analysis (CA), which although usually used to study oral conversations (such as face to face and on telephone) has also proved to be useful in studies of text-based communication (Giles et al. 2015; Meredith 2019) including chat counselling (e.g. Stommel & te Molder 2015; Stommel 2016).
In the present study CA is used to examine how chat counsellors employ formulation, that is, a conversational practice of providing a candidate reading of a preceding utterance (Heritage & Watson 1979, 1980). Formulations have previously been shown to be more common in institutional contexts than in mundane interaction (Drew 2003) due to their potential to allow professionals to edit the client’s words in institutionally relevant ways while presenting the edited version as a neutral summary (Antaki 2008). Previous research has also indicated that formulations may have distinct functions in web-based chat counselling, namely dealing with discontinuities in chat interactions (Stommel & Van der Houwen 2013). The present paper explicates some further usages of formulations in chat counselling. It shows how formulations can be employed to recast chat users’ requests in line with the social services’ agenda and how formulations may serve affiliating with a user. Besides this, the study provides additional evidence on how formulations can be used to prevent potential misunderstandings by clarifying ambiguity in users’ posts. (Less)
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https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/73c2e88e-e250-40c9-9918-f5590866bdc7
- author
- Thell, Nataliya LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2022-11-03
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- conference name
- Digital Meeting for Conversation Analysis 31 October
- conference dates
- 2022-10-31 - 2022-11-04
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 73c2e88e-e250-40c9-9918-f5590866bdc7
- date added to LUP
- 2024-10-11 20:53:00
- date last changed
- 2024-10-14 15:19:51
@misc{73c2e88e-e250-40c9-9918-f5590866bdc7,
abstract = {{In anonymous online text-based counselling provided by social services, counsellors face specific communicative and professional challenges. One of the challenges is a higher risk of misunderstanding in textual encounters due to the lack of non-verbal clues and conversation participants’ anonymity (Bambling et al. 2008; Dowling & Rickwood 2014; Fukkink & Hermanns 2009). Chat counsellors need to ensure that they have understood the chat users right in order to provide relevant information and advice. The paper studies how counsellors check their understandings of users’ situations by summarising and rephrasing users’ initial problem descriptions. <br/>The data consists of chat logs from 56 web-based counselling sessions provided by social services in Sweden. Only chat logs with anonymous users have been collected and the Swedish Ethical Review Authority has no ethical objections to the research project (diary number: 2020-02578). The research approach is conversational analysis (CA), which although usually used to study oral conversations (such as face to face and on telephone) has also proved to be useful in studies of text-based communication (Giles et al. 2015; Meredith 2019) including chat counselling (e.g. Stommel & te Molder 2015; Stommel 2016). <br/>In the present study CA is used to examine how chat counsellors employ formulation, that is, a conversational practice of providing a candidate reading of a preceding utterance (Heritage & Watson 1979, 1980). Formulations have previously been shown to be more common in institutional contexts than in mundane interaction (Drew 2003) due to their potential to allow professionals to edit the client’s words in institutionally relevant ways while presenting the edited version as a neutral summary (Antaki 2008). Previous research has also indicated that formulations may have distinct functions in web-based chat counselling, namely dealing with discontinuities in chat interactions (Stommel & Van der Houwen 2013). The present paper explicates some further usages of formulations in chat counselling. It shows how formulations can be employed to recast chat users’ requests in line with the social services’ agenda and how formulations may serve affiliating with a user. Besides this, the study provides additional evidence on how formulations can be used to prevent potential misunderstandings by clarifying ambiguity in users’ posts.}},
author = {{Thell, Nataliya}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{11}},
title = {{Formulations of users’ initial problem descriptions in social services’ online chat}},
year = {{2022}},
}