Cover not available
Part of
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. 305–336

Talking to/through the baby to produce and manage disaffiliation during well-child visits

| Swiss Paraplegic Research & University of Lucerne, Switzerland
| University of Fribourg & University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, Switzerland
Relying on multimodal conversation analysis, this chapter examines the sequential and collaborative deployment of talking to/through the baby to produce and manage disaffiliation during well-child visits. We argue that this practice is oriented to and constitutes disaffiliation as a restricted activity preempted, mitigated and limited by the participants of the visits. It makes relevant and conciliates the medical, interactional and relational constraints of the visits and contributes to their institutional specificity. The chapter concentrates on three nurse-baby-mother interaction sequences drawn from a corpus of video recordings of well-child visits at a healthcare centre in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.
Published online: 27 March 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.255.10zan
References (52)
Aronsson, Karin, and Bengt Rundström. 1989. “Cats, Dogs, and Sweets in the Clinical Negotiation of Reality: On Politeness and Coherence in Paediatric Discourse.” Language in Society 18 (4): 483–504. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar


Butler, Carly, Susan Danby, and Michael Emmison. 2014. “Avoiding Giving Advice in Telephone Counselling for Children and Young People: Empowerment as Practical Action.” In Producing and Managing Restricted Activities: Avoidance and Withholding in Institutional Interaction, ed. by Fabienne Chevalier, and John Moore. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar


Cahill, Patricia. 2010. “Children’s Participation in their Primary Care Consultations.” In Analysing Interaction in Childhood: Insights from Conversation Analysis, ed. by Hilary Gardner, and Michael Forrester, 128–145. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar


Clayman, Steven E. 1993. “Booing: The Anatomy of Disaffiliative Response.” American Sociological Review 58 (1): 110–130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Coulter, Jeff. 1990. “Elementary Properties of Argument Sequences.” In Interaction Competence, ed. by George Psathas, 181–203. Lanham: University Press of America.Google Scholar


Ferguson, Charles A. 1964. “Baby Talk in six Languages.” American Anthropologist 66 (6): 103–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Gardner, Rod. 2001. When Listeners Talk: Response Tokens and Listeners Stance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Gardner, Hilary, and Michael Forrester (eds). 2010. Analysing Interaction in Childhood: Insights from Conversation Analysis. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar


Gill, Virginia T., and Douglas W. Maynard. 1995. “On ‘Labelling’ in Actual Interaction: Delivering and Receiving Diagnoses of Developmental Disabilities.” Social Problems 42 (1): 11–37. 
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Goffman, Erving. 1979. “Footing.” Semiotica 25 (1/2): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Heinemman, Trine, and Ben Matthews. 2014. “Concessions in Audiology.” In Producing and Managing Restricted Activities: Avoidance and Withholding in Institutional Interaction, ed. by Fabienne Chevalier, and John Moore. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar


Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity press.Google Scholar


. 2002. “Ad Hoc Inquiries: Two Preferences in the Design of Routine Questions in an Open Context.” In Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Interview, ed. by Douglas W. Maynard, H. Houtkoop-Steenstra, N.C. Schaeffer, and J. van der Zouwen et al., 313–334. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar


Heritage, John, and Anna Lindström. 1998. “Motherhood, Medicine, and Morality: Scenes from a Medical Encounter.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 31 (3–4): 397–438. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


. 2012. “Knowledge, Empathy, and Emotion in a Medical Encounter.” In Emotion in Interaction, ed. by Anssi Peräkylä, and Marja-Leena Sorjonen, 256–273. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Heritage, John, and Marja-Leena Sorjonen. 1994. “Constituting and Maintaining Activities across Sequences: And-Prefacing as a Feature of Question Design.” Language in Society 23 (1): 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Heritage, John, and Rod Watson. 1979. “Formulations as Conversational Objects.” In Everyday Language. Studies in Ethnomethodology, ed. by George Psathas, 123–162. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar


Heritage, John, and Sue Sefi. 1992. “Dilemmas of Advice: Aspects of the Delivery 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, 359–416. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar


Heritage, John, and Tanya Stivers. 1999. “Online Commentary in Acute Medical Visits: A Method of Shaping Patient Expectations.” Social Science & Medicine 49 (11): 1501–1517. 
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Hutchby, Ian. 2001. “‘Oh’, Irony and Sequential Ambiguity in Arguments.” Discourse & Society 12 (2): 123–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Hydén, Lars-Christer, and Christina Baggens. 2004. “Joint Working Relationships: Children, Parents and Child Healthcare Nurses at Work.” Communication & Medicine 1 (1): 71–83. 
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Jefferson, Gail. 1978. “Sequential Aspects of Storytelling in Conversation.” In Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction, ed. by Jim Schenkein, 219–248. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


. 2004. “Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, ed. by Gene H. Lerner, 13–31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Komter, Martha L. 1994. “Accusations and Defences in Courtroom Interaction.” Discourse & Society 5 (2): 165–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Lerner, Gene H. 1996. “On the ‘Semi-Permeable’ Character of Grammatical Units in Conversation: Conditional Entry into the Turn Space of Another Speaker.” In Interaction and Grammar, ed. by Elinor Ochs, Sandy Thompson, and Manny Schegloff, 238–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Mangione-Smith, Rita. 2003. “Online Commentary during the Physical Examination: A Communication Tool for Avoiding Inappropriate Antibiotic Prescribing?” Social Science & Medicine 56 (2): 313–320. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Maynard, Douglas W. 2003. Bad News, Good News: Conversational Order in Everyday Talk and Clinical Settings. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar


Mitchell, Robert W. 2001. “Americans’ Talk to Dogs: Similarities and Differences with Talk to Infants.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 34 (2): 183–210. 
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Monzoni, Chiara, and Marcus Reuber. 2014. “Linguistic and Interactional Restrictions in an Outpatient Clinic: The Challenge of Delivering the Diagnosis and Explaining the Aetiology of Functional Neurological Problems.” In Producing and Managing Restricted Activities: Avoidance and Withholding in Institutional Interaction, ed. by Fabienne Chevalier, and John Moore. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar


Moore, John. 2014. “Assessments, Interrogatives, and Semi-Scripted Talk in Managing a Restriction on Advising.” In Producing and Managing Restricted Activities: Avoidance and Withholding in Institutional Interaction, ed. by Fabienne Chevalier, and John Moore. 
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar


Mozingo, Tracy A. 2009. “Well-Child Care: A Check-Up for Success.” Healthy Children (Summer/Back to School): 17–18.Google Scholar


Raymond, Geoffrey, and John Heritage. 2006. “The Epistemics of Social Relations: Owning Grandchildren.” Language in Society 35 (5): 677–705. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Roberts, Felicia. 2004. “Speaking to and for Animals in a Veterinary Clinic.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 37 (4): 421–446. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Sacks, Harvey. 1974. “An Analysis of the Course of a Joke’s Telling in Conversation.” In Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking, ed. by Richard Bauman, and Joel Sherzer, 337–353. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar


. 1992. Lectures on Conversation (I–II). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar


Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1992. “On Talk and its Institutional Occasions.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 101–134. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar


. 1996. “Confirming Allusions: Toward an Empirical Account of Action.” American Journal of Sociology 102 (1): 161–216. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


. 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Silverman, David. 1987. Communication and Medical Practice: Social Relations in the Clinic. London: Sage.Google Scholar


Spencer-Oatey, Helen. 2000. “Rapport Management: A Framework for Analysis.” In Culturally Speaking. Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures, ed. by Helen Spencer-Oatey, 11–46. London: Continuum.Google Scholar


. 2007. “Theories of Identity and the Analysis of Face.” Journal of Pragmatics, 39 (4): 639–656. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Steensig, Jakob, and Birte Asmuß. 2005. “Notes on Disaligning ‘Yes but’ Initiated utterances in German and Danish Conversations: Two Construction types for Dispreferred Responses.” In Syntax and Lexis in Conversation: Studies on the Use of Linguistic Resources in Talk-in-Interaction, ed. by Auli Hakulinen, and Margret Selting, 349–373. Amsterdam: John 
Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Steensig, Jakob, and Paul Drew. 2008. “Introduction: Questioning and Affiliation/Disaffiliation in Interaction.” Discourse Studies 10 (1): 5–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Stivers, Tanya. 1998. “Prediagnostic Commentary in Veterinarian-Client Interaction.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 31 (2): 241–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


. 2007. Prescribing Under Pressure: Parent-Physician Conversations and Antibiotics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


. 2008. “Stance, Alignment and Affiliation during Storytelling: When Nodding is a Token of Affiliation.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 41 (1): 31–57. 
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Stivers, Tanya, and Jack Sidnell. 2005. “Introduction: Multimodal Interaction.” Semiotica 156 (1–4): 1–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Strong, Philip M. 1979. The Ceremonial Order of the Clinic: Patients, Doctors, and Medical Bureaucracies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar


Tannen, Deborah. 2003. “Power Maneuvers or Connection Maneuvers? Ventriloquizing in Family Interaction.” In Linguistics, Language, and the Real World: Discourse and Beyond, ed. by Deborah Tannen, and James E. Alatis, 50–62. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar


. 2004. “Talking the Dog: Framing Pets as Interactional Resources in Family Discourse.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 37 (4): 399–420. 
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar


Zimmerman, Don H. 1999. “Horizontal and Vertical Comparative Research in Language and Social Interaction.” Research on Language & Social Interaction 32 (1–2): 195–203. 
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Caronia, Letizia & Federica Ranzani
2024. Epistemic Trust as an Interactional Accomplishment in Pediatric Well-Child Visits: Parents’ Resistance to Solicited Advice as Performing Epistemic Vigilance. Health Communication 39:4 ► pp. 838 ff. DOI logo
Ranzani, Federica
2023. Chapter 9. The pediatrician’s normalizing practice in well-child visits. In A Pragmatic Agenda for Healthcare [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 338], ► pp. 227 ff. DOI logo
Monzoni, Chiara M. & Markus Reuber
2015. Linguistic and interactional restrictions in an outpatient clinic. In Producing and Managing Restricted Activities [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 255], ► pp. 239 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. 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.