Article published in:

Producing and Managing Restricted Activities: Avoidance and withholding in institutional interaction
Edited by Fabienne H.G. Chevalier and John Moore
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 255] 2015
► pp. 83–114

Avoiding giving advice in telephone counselling for children and young people

Empowerment as practical action

Carly Butler | Loughborough University, UK

Susan Danby | Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Michael Emmison | University of Queensland, Australia

Kids Helpline is an Australian 24-hour telephone counselling helpline for children and young people up to the age of 25 years old. The service operates with the core values of empowerment for clients, and the use of child-centred practices,one aspect of which is a non-directive approach highlighted by the avoidance of overt advice giving. Through analysis of a single call to the helpline, this chapter demonstrates how counsellors actively manage and minimise the normative and asymmetric properties of advice in the course of helping clients develop options for change. In doing so we illustrate the practical relevance and enactment of abstract institutional policies and discuss the interactional affordances of institutional constraints on practice.

Published online: 27 March 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.255.03but

References

Antaki, Charles

2008 “Formulations in Psychotherapy.” In Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy, ed. by Anssi Peräkylä, Charles Antaki, Sanna Vehviläinen, and Ivan Leudar, 26–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Antaki, Charles, Rebecca Barnes, and Ivan Leudar

2005 “Diagnostic Formulations in Psychotherapy.” Discourse Studies 7 (6): 627–647.

Butler, Carly W., Susan Danby, Micheal Emmison, and Karen Thorpe

2009 “Managing Medical Advice Seeking in Calls to Child Health Line.” Sociology of Health & Illness 31 (6): 817–834 [Special Issue on ‘Communication in Healthcare Settings: Policy, Participation and New Technologies’, ed. by Alison Pilnick, Jon Hindmarsh, and Virginia Gill]. 

Butler, Carly W., Jonathan Potter, Susan Danby, Michael Emmison, and Alexa Hepburn

2010 “Advice Implicative Interrogatives: Building ‘Client-Centred Support’ in a Children’s Helpline.” Social Psychology Quarterly 73 (3): 265–287.

Chevalier, Fabienne H.G.

2011 “Managing Impartiality in French Tourist Offices: Responses to Recommendation-Seeking Questions.” Discourse Studies 13: 139–161.  

Clayman, Steven E.

2010 “Address Terms in the Service of Other Actions: The Case of News Interview Talk.” Discourse & Communication 4: 161–183.

Danby, Susan, Carly W. Butler, and Michael Emmison

2009 “When ‘Listeners Can’t Talk’: Comparing Active Listening in Opening Sequences of Telephone and Online Counselling.” Australian Journal of Communication 36 (3): 91–114.

2011 ““Have You Talked with a Teacher Yet?”: Helpline Counsellors Supporting Young People Calling about Being Bullied at School.” Children & Society 25 (4): 328–339.

Danby, Susan, Carolyn Baker, and Michael Emmison

2005 “Four Observations on Openings in Calls to Kids Help Line”. In Calling for Help: Language and Social Interaction in Telephone Helplines, ed. by Carolyn Baker, Alan Firth, and Michael Emmison, 133–151.  Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Edwards, Derek

2006 “Facts, Norms and Dispositions: Practical Uses of the Modal Would in Police Interrogations.” Discourse Studies 8 (4): 475–501.

Edwards, Derek, and Elizabeth Stokoe

2007 “Self-Help in Calls for Help with Problem Neighbors.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 40 (1): 9–32.  

Emmison, Michael, and Allen Firth

2012 “Requesting and Receiving Advice on the Telephone: An Analysis of Telephone Helplines in Australia.” In Advice in Discourse, ed. by Holger Limberg, and Miriam A. Locher, 213–232. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  

Emmison, Michael, and Susan Danby

2007 “Troubles Announcementsand Reasons for Calling: Initial Actions in Opening Sequences in Calls to a National Children's Helpline.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 40 (1): 63–87.

Emmison, Michael, Carly W. Butler, and Susan Danby

2011 “ScriptProposals: A Device for Empowering Clients in Counselling.” Discourse Studies 11 (1): 3–26.  

Geldard, Kathryn, and David Geldard

2008 Counseling Children: A Practical Introduction (3rd ed.). London: Sage Publications.

Hepburn, Alexa, and Jonathan Potter

2011 “Designing the Recipient: Some Practices that Manage Advice Resistance in Institutional Settings.” Social Psychology Quarterly 74 (2): 216–241.

Heritage, John

1984 “A Change-of-State Token and Aspects of itsSequential Placement.” In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 299–345. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1998 “Oh-Prefaced Responses to Inquiry.” Language in Society 27: 291–334.  

2010 Questioning in Medicine. In Why Do You Ask?’:The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice Freed, and Susan Ehrlich, 42–68. New York: Oxford University Press.

Heritage, John, and Sue Sefi

1992 “Dilemmas of Advice: Aspects of theDelivery and Reception of Advice in Interactions Between Health Visitors and First Time Mothers.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 359–419. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hutchby, Ian

2005 “Active Listening: Formulations and the Elicitation of Feelings-Talk in Child Counselling.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 38 (3): 303–329.  

2007 The Discourse of Child Counselling. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  

Hutchby, Ian, and Robin Wooffitt

1998 Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications. Cambridge: Polity Press (UK and Europe), Blackwell Publishers Inc (USA).

Jefferson, Gail, and John Lee

1981 “The Rejection of Advice: Managing the Problematic Convergence of a Troubles-Telling and a Service Encounter”. Journal of Pragmatics 5: 399–422.  

Peräkylä, Anssi, and David Silverman

1991 “Owning Experience: Describing the Experience of Other Persons.” Text 11 (3): 441–480.

Pilnick, Alison

1998 “‘Why Didn’t You Just Say That?’: Dealing with Issues of Asymmetry, Knowledge and Competence in the Pharmacist ⁄ Client Encounter”. Sociology of Health & Illness 20 (1): 29–51.

1999 “Patient Counselling by Pharmacists: Advice, Information or Instruction?” The Sociological Quarterly 40 (4): 613–622.  

Pudlinski, Christopher

1998 “Giving Advice on a Consumer-Run Warm Line: Implicit and Dilemmatic Practices.” Communication Studies 49: 322–341.  

Robinson, Jeffrey D.

2003 “An Interactional Structure of Medical Activities During Acute Visits and its Implications for Patients’ Participation.” Health Communication 15 (1): 27–57.  

Rogers, Carl

1951 Client-Centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory.  London, UK: Constable.

Sacks, Harvey

1995 Lectures on Conversation, ed. by Gail Jefferson with introductions by  Emanuel A. Schegloff. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Sarangi, Srikant, and Angus Clarke

2002 “Zones of Expertise and the Management of Uncertainty in Genetics Risk Communication.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 35 (2): 139–171.

Schegloff, Emanuel A.

1984 “On Some Questions and Ambiguities in Conversation”. In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 266–298. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

1988 “Analyzing Single Episodes of Interaction: An Exercise in Conversation Analysis.” Social Psychology Quarterly 50: 101–114.

Schegloff, Emanuel A., and Gene H. Lerner

2009 “Beginning to Respond: Well-Prefaced Responses to Wh-Questions.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 42 (2): 91–115.  

Schegloff, Emanuel A., and Harvey Sacks

1973 “Opening Up Closings.” Semiotica 8: 289–327.  

Sharrock, Wes

1974 “On Owning Knowledge.” In Ethnomethodology: Selected Readings, ed. by R. Turner, 45–53. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Silverman, David

1997 Discourses of Counselling: HIV Counselling as Social Interaction.  London: Sage.

Vehviläinen, Sanna

2003 “Avoiding Providing Solutions: Orienting to the Ideal of Students’ Self-Directedness in Counselling Interaction.” Discourse Studies 5: 389–414.  

Waring, Hansun Z.

2005 “Peer Tutoring in a Graduate Writing Center: Identity, Expertise and Advice Resisting.” Applied Linguistics 26: 141–168.

2007 “Complex Advice Acceptance as a Resource for Managing Asymmetries.” Text & Talk 27 (1): 107–137.

Watson, Rod

1986 “Doing the Organization’s Work: An Examination of a Crisis Intervention Centre”. In Discourse and Institutional Authority: Medicine, Education and Law, ed. by  S. Fisher, and A. Dunas Todd, 911–920. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Zimmerman, Don H.

1992 The Interactional Organization of Calls for Emergency. In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 418–469. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

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.

Bloch, Steven & Geraldine Leydon

2019. Conversation Analysis and Telephone Helplines for Health and Illness: A Narrative Review. Research on Language and Social Interaction 52:3 ► pp. 193 ff.

Monzoni, Chiara M. & Markus Reuber

2015. In Producing and Managing Restricted Activities [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 255], ► pp. 239 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 september 2021. 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.