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Advice-implicative interrogatives: building 'client-centered' support in a children's helpline

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journal contribution
posted on 2012-02-10, 10:19 authored by Carly Butler, Jonathan Potter, Susan Danby, Michael Emmison, Alexa Hepburn
Interactional research on advice giving has described advice as normative and asymmetric. In this paper we examine how these dimensions of advice are softened by counselors on a helpline for children and young people through the use of questions. Through what we term “advice-implicative interrogatives,” counselors ask clients about the relevance or applicability of a possible future course of action. The allusion to this possible action by the counselor identifies it as normatively relevant, and displays the counselor’s epistemic authority in relation to dealing with a client’s problems. However, the interrogative format mitigates the normative and asymmetric dimensions typical of advice sequences by orienting to the client’s epistemic authority in relation to their own lives, and delivering advice in a way that is contingent upon the client’s accounts of their experiences, capacities, and understandings. The demonstration of the use of questions in advice sequences offers an interactional specification of the “client-centered” support that is characteristic of prevailing counseling practice. More specifically, it shows how the values of empowerment and child-centered practice, which underpin services such as Kids Helpline, are embodied in specific interactional devices. Detailed descriptions of this interactional practice offer fresh insights into the use of interrogatives in counseling contexts, and provide practitioners with new ways of thinking about, and discussing, their current practices.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies

Citation

BUTLER, C. ... et al., 2010. Advice-implicative interrogatives: building 'client-centered' support in a children's helpline. Social Psychology Quarterly, 73 (3), pp. 265 - 287.

Publisher

Sage Publications © American Sociological Association

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publication date

2010

Notes

This article was published in the journal, Social Psychology Quarterly [Sage Publications © American Sociological Association] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0190272510379838

ISSN

0190-2725;1939-8999

Language

  • en