Responses to indirect complaints as restricted activities in Therapeutic Community meetings

Pino, Marco

Abstract

In this chapter I investigate how the staff members of a mental health Therapeutic Community in Italy avoid displays of affiliation in response to residents’ indirect (or third party) complaints. I show how this restriction can be embodied in different practices: ignoring a resident’s turn carrying a possible complaint, avoiding attending the complaint-components of a resident’s turn, and disaffiliating with a resident’s complaint. I also discuss a deviant case in which affiliation is produced and is later treated by the staff members as a problematic stance to be produced following a resident’s complaint. I argue that through a restriction on affiliation the staff members implement the institutionally-relevant identity of intermediaries, whose task is to encourage the residents’ compliance to the decisions of absent third parties.

Citation

Pino, M. (2015). Responses to indirect complaints as restricted activities in Therapeutic Community meetings. In F. H. Chevalier, & J. Moore (Eds.), Producing and managing restricted activities: avoidance and withholding in institutional interaction. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.255.09pin

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: May 18, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: May 18, 2015
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Issue: 255
• Series Title: Pragmatics & beyond new series
• Book Title: Producing and managing restricted activities: avoidance and withholding in institutional interaction
• ISBN: 9789027256607
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.255.09pin
• Keywords: Conversation Analysis, Complaints, Therapeutic Community, Mental Health
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/992843
• Publisher URL: https://benjamins.com/#catalog/books/pbns.255.09pin
• Additional Information: Copyright John Benjamins, who should be contacted for permission to re-use or reprint the material in any form..