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 16 other publications

No author info given

2017. In Epistemic Stance in Dialogue [Dialogue Studies, 29],

Antaki, Charles & Steven Bloch

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.

Bongelli, Ramona, Ilaria Riccioni & Andrzej Zuczkowski

2015. Consigli per dare consigli: salvaguardare il benessere relazionale nelle interazioni informali d'aiuto. RICERCHE DI PSICOLOGIA :1 ► pp. 193 ff.

Connabeer, Kathrina

2021. Lifestyle advice in UK Primary Care consultations: Doctors’ use of conditional forms of advice. Patient Education and Counseling 104:11 ► pp. 2706 ff.

Fatigante, Marilena & Saverio Bafaro

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

Feng, Bo & Eran Magen

2016. Relationship closeness predicts unsolicited advice giving in supportive interactions. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 33:6 ► pp. 751 ff.

Herlin, Ilona & Laura Visapää

2016. Dimensions of empathy in relation to language. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 39:2 ► pp. 135 ff.

Holmes, Edward J. B., Merran Toerien & Clare Jackson

2017. The Interactional Bind of “Just [Do X]”. Research on Language and Social Interaction 50:4 ► pp. 419 ff.

Ilomäki, Sakari & Johanna Ruusuvuori

2022. Preserving client autonomy when guiding medicine taking in telehomecare: A conversation analytic case study. Nursing Ethics ► pp. 096973302110510 ff.

Jin, Ying & Dennis Tay

2021. Discretion. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 12:2 ► pp. 158 ff.

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.

Peng (彭卓), Zhuo

2022. An epistemic illumination of the acceptance of advice in Chinese phone-in counseling for family problems. Discourse Studies ► pp. 146144562210740 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.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.