Chapter 8. Advice giving – terminable and interminable: The case of British health visitors

John Heritage

Anna Lindström

Advice giving is a central feature of many forms of professional-client interaction. This paper looks at advice giving on medical and related matters by British community nurses to first-time mothers of new-borns, in the context of visits to the new mothers’ homes. Current evidence from survey studies and interaction analysis suggests that much of the advice giving in these visits may be a source of tension between mother and nurse and may give rise to problems in relationship making between the two. The present study develops Heritage and Sefi’s (1992) research on the initiation and reception of advice in health visits by describing the problems that both mothers and nurses may find in bringing different kinds of advice to a conclusion.

Published online: 24 May 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.221.11her

Cited by

Cited by 13 other publications

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2020. Advising without personalising: how a helpline may satisfy callers without giving medical advice beyond its remit. Sociology of Health & Illness 42:5 ► pp. 1202 ff.

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2021. Lifestyle advice in UK Primary Care consultations: Doctors’ use of conditional forms of advice. Patient Education and Counseling

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2014. In Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific Contexts [Dialogue Studies, 25], ► pp. 157 ff.

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Jin, Ying & Dennis Tay

2021. Discretion. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal

MacGeorge, Erina L., Lisa M. Guntzviller, Sara E. Branch & Liliya Yakova

2016. Paths of Resistance. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 35:5 ► pp. 548 ff.

Shaw, Chloe & Alexa Hepburn

2013. Managing the Moral Implications of Advice in Informal Interaction. Research on Language & Social Interaction 46:4 ► pp. 344 ff.

Shaw, Chloe, Jonathan Potter & Alexa Hepburn

2015. Advice-implicative actions: Using interrogatives and assessments to deliver advice in mundane conversation. Discourse Studies 17:3 ► pp. 317 ff.

Sikveland, Rein Ove & Elizabeth Stokoe

2020. Should Police Negotiators Ask to “Talk” or “Speak” to Persons in Crisis? Word Selection and Overcoming Resistance to Dialogue Proposals. Research on Language and Social Interaction 53:3 ► pp. 324 ff.

Thell, Nataliya & Anssi Peräkylä

2018. ‘What are you taking away with you?’ Closing radio counselling encounters by reviewing progress. Discourse Studies 20:3 ► pp. 377 ff.

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