Article published In:
Pragmatics and SocietyVol. 12:3 (2021) ► pp.373–389
Face-oriented acts of empathy in psychotherapy
Using Conversation Analytic (CA) methods, the present study attempts to analyze the various functions of face-based therapist empathy, and how they are sequentially realized in different psychotherapeutic settings. Four types of face-based therapeutic functions are discussed; more specifically, it is illustrated how therapist empathy may serve to maintain, enhance, threaten or even save the client’s face. The findings gained could contribute to a better understanding of the face-based therapeutic functions of empathy; also, the study may inspire researchers to further investigate other functions of therapist empathy in psychotherapy.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.What is empathy?
- 3.Conversation analysis, psychotherapy, face in interaction
- 4.Data
- 5.Face-related acts of empathy
- 5.1Face-enhancing acts of empathy
- 5.2Face-maintaining acts of empathy
- 5.3Face-threatening acts of empathy
- 5.4Face-saving acts of empathy
- 6.Overall distribution of face-related acts of empathy
- 7.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
-
References
References
Alm, Maria
2007 Also darüber lässt sich ja streiten! Die Analyse von also in der Diskussion zu Diskurs-und
Modalpartikeln. (‘So you can argue about this! The analysis of
also in the discussion of discourse and modal
particles’.) Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International.
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. 
2011 Applied
Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional
Talk. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Antaki, Charles, Rebecca Barnes, and Ivan Leudar
2005 “Diagnostic
Formulations in Psychotherapy.” Discourse
Studies 7 (6): 627–647.
Arundale, Robert B.
2006 “Face as Relational and
Interactional: A Communication Framework for Research on Face, Facework, and
Politeness.” Journal of Politeness
Research 2(2):193–216.
2010 “Constituting Face in
Conversation: Face, Facework and Interactional Achievement.” Journal of
Pragmatics 42(8): 2078–2105.
Barnett, Mark A.
1984 “Similarity of experience and
empathy in prescholars.” Journal of Genetic
Psychology 145 (2): 241–50.
Bercelli, Fabrizio, Federico Rossano, and Maurizio Viaro
2008 “Client’s
responses to therapists’ reinterpretations” In Conversation Analysis
and Psychotherapy, ed. by Anssi Peräkylä, Charles Antaki, Sanna Vehviläinen and Ivan Leudar, 26–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson
1987 Politeness:Some
Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buttny, Richard
1993 Social
Accountability in
Communication. London: Sage.
1996 “Clients’
and Therapist’s Joint Construction of Clients’ Problems.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 29 (2):125–153.
Cruz, Manuel Padilla
2008 “Phatic utterances as
face-threatening/saving acts or politeness strategies: A pragmatic reflection for their teaching in the L2
class.” In 25 Years of Applied Linguistics in Spain: Milestones and
Challenges, ed. by Rafael Monroy Casas and Aquilino Sánchez Perez, 799–804. Murcia: Edit.um.
Davidson, Judy
1984 “Subsequent
Versions of Invitations, Offers, Requests, and Proposals Dealing with Potential or Actual
Rejection.” In Structures of Social Action, ed.
by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 102–128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eslami, Zohreh R., and Shuan Wei-Hong Ko
2015 “Facework
in Non-face Threatening Emails by Native and Non-native English Speakers.” Russian Journal of
Linguistics 4 (1):111–126.
Greenberg, Leslie S., Laura North Rice, and Robert K. Elliott
1993 Facilitating
Emotional Change: The Moment by Moment Process. New York: Guilford Press.
Haugh, Michael
2007 “The
Co-constitution of Politeness Implicature in Conversation. Journal of
Pragmatics 39(1): 84–110.
Harris, Sandra
2003 “Politeness
and Power: Making and Responding to Requests in Institutional Settings.” Text &
Talk 23 (1):27–52.
Hepburn, Alexa, and Jonathan Potter
2007 “Crying
receipts: Time, empathy, and Institutional Practice.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 40 (1): 89–116.
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.
Heritage, John and D. Rod Watson
1980 “Formulations
as Conversational Objects.” In Everyday Language: Studies in
Ethnomethodology, ed. by George Psathas, 123–162. New York: Irvington Press.
Hoffman, Martin L.
2000 Empathy and Moral Development:
Implications for Caring and Justice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jefferson, Gail
2004 “Glossary
of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” In Conversation
Analysis: Studies From the First Generation, ed. by Lerner, Gene H., 13–31. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Kalisch, Beatrice J.
1973 “What is
Empathy?” American Journal of
Nursing 73 (9):1548–1552.
Kasper, Gabriele
2009 “Politeness.” In The
Pragmatics of Interaction, ed. by Sigurd D’hond, Jan-Ola Ӧstman, and Jef Verschueren, 157–173. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Makoul, Gregory
1998 “Communication
Research in Medical Education.” In Health Communication Research: A
Guide to Developments and Directions, ed. by Lorraine D. Jackson and Bernard K. Duffy. 17–35. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
Marcus, Stroe
1997 Empatie
si personalitate. Bucuresti: Editura Atos.
Miller, Gerald R., and Mark Steinberg
1975 Between
People: A New Analysis of Interpersonal
Communication. Chicago: Science Research Associates.
Paivio, Sandra C. and Christine Laurent
2001 “Empathy
and Emotion Regulation: Reprocessing Memories of Childhood Abuse.” Journal of Clinical
Psychology 57(2): 213–226.
Peräkylä, Anssi
2005 “Patients’
Responses to Interpretations: A Dialogue Between Conversation Analysis and Psychoanalytic
Theory.” Communication &
Medicine 2 (2):163–176.
2011 “After
Interpretation: Third-Position Utterances in Psychoanalysis.” Research on Language and Social
Interaction 44 (3):288–316.
Peräkylä, Anssi, Charles Antaki, Sanna Vehviläinen, and Ivan Leudar
2008 Conversation
Analysis and Psychotherapy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peräkylä, Anssi, and David Silverman
1991 “Reinterpreting
Speech-exchange Systems: Communication Forms in Aids
Counselling.” Sociology 25 (4):627–651.
Pierce, Richard M., and Thomas H. Zar1e
1972 “Differential
Referral to a Significant Other as a Function of Interpersonal Effectiveness.” Journal of
Clinical
Psychology 28 (3): 230–232.
Rogers, Carl R.
1957 “The Necessary and Sufficient
Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change.” Journal of Consulting
Psychology 21 (2):95–103.
Ruusuvuori, Johanna
2005 “ ‘Empathy’
and ‘Sympathy’ in Action: Attending to Patients’ Troubles in Finnish Homeopathic and General Practice
Consultations.” Social Psychology
Quarterly 68 (3):204–222.
2007 “Managing
Affect: Integration of Empathy and Problem-solving in Health Care Encounters.” Discourse
Studies 9 (5):597–622.
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff and Gail Jefferson
1974 “A
simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for
conversation.” Language 50 (1): 696–735.
Salwa, Salwa
2012 “The
Use of Indirect Speech as a Face-saving Act in Anglo-Saxon Cultural Values.” Language, Discourse and Society 2 (1): 43–51.
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
1968 “Sequencing in Conversational
Openings.” American
Anthropologist 70 (6):1075–1095.
Taylor, Charlotte
2012 “Negative
Politeness Forms and Impoliteness Functions in Institutional Discourse: A Corpus-assisted
Approach.” In Situated Politeness, ed.
by Bethan Davies, Michael Haugh and Andrew John Merrison, 209–231. London: Continuum.
Voutilainen, Liisa
2010 “Emotional
Experience in Psychotherapeutic Interaction-Conversation Analytical Study on Cognitive
Psychotherapy.” University of Helsinki Ph.D.
dissertation.
2012 “Responding
to Emotion in Cognitive Psychotherapy.” In Emotion in
Interaction, ed. by Anssi Peräkylä and Marja-Leena Sorjonen, 235–255. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Watson, Jeanee C.
2002 “Re-visioning
empathy.” In Humanistic Pyschotherapies: Handbook of Research and
Practice, ed. by David J. Cain and Jules Seeman, 445–471. London: Springer.
Watson, Jeanee C. and Shari M. Geller
2005 “The
Relation among the Relationship Conditions, Working Alliance, and Outcome in both Process-experiential and
Cognitive-behavioral Psychotherapy.” Psychotherapy
Research 15 (12):25–33.
Watson, Jeanee C., Rhonda Goldman, and Greet Vanaerschot
1998 “Empathic:
A Post Modern Way of Being.” In The Handbook of Experiential
Psychotherapy, ed. by Leslie S. Greenberg, Jeanee C. Watson and Germain Lietaer, 61–81. New York: Guilford.
Weiste, Elina
2018 “Relational
interaction in occupational therapy: Conversation Analysis of Positive Feedback.” Scandinavian
Journal of Occupational
Therapy 25 (1):44–51.
Wilce, James M.
2009 Language and
Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilkinson, Sue, and Celia Kitzinger
2006 “Surprise
as Interactional Achievement: Reaction Tokens in Conversation.” Social Psychology
Quarterly 69 (2):150–182.
Zajdman, Anat
1995 “Humorous
Face-threatening Acts: Humor as Strategy.” Journal of
Pragmatics 23(3):325–339.
Zhu, Weihua
2014 “Rapport
Management in Strong Disagreement: An Investigation of a Community of Chinese Speakers of
English.” Text &
Talk 34 (5): 641–664.