This study investigates contextualization processes in two psychiatric interviews. Specifically, it analyses how different analytical tools — frame and narrative — work to clarify contextual embeddings and story bits. Frame analysis provides a way of looking at local and larger social contexts in talk. Specifically it provides a way of understanding “what’s going on here?” (Goffman 1974). Narrativee analysis provides a way of understanding the relation of major topics and themes in an interview situation. Most of all, the unfolding of a key story has implications for understanding who the patient is and what experience she values most in that encounter.

Frame and narrative also work to evidence what makes these interactions such a complex speech event. From a frame perspective, context may present multiple and unexpected frame embeddings. In the development of a story, key organizational components (for example, an orientation section) may display fragmented information or be absent. Frame and narrative address different questions and may clarify different social and linguistic processes at play in the interview situation.