Blame–account sequences in child custody disputes

Abstract

This article analyzes how cross-examining attorneys and litigating parents accomplished blame attributions and accounts during courtroom examinations in child custody disputes. It draws on recordings from 42 cases. It is shown how person descriptions were vital parts of sequences of blame ascriptions and subsequent blame accounts, where cross-examining attorneys elicited and then invoked parents’ disparaging person descriptions of their ex-partners. As part of the institutional format of these disputes, parents had to handle an interactional dilemma concerning the reflexive implications of blaming others. While blame-implicative descriptions had been used to allocate blame to the ex-partner, they now backfired in that cross-examining attorneys would deploy the same descriptions as ways of reallocating blame (to the testifying parent). As part of such blame reallocations, cross-examining attorneys upgraded alleged prior blame attributions, thus fueling the dispute and setting up a recursive machinery in the form of a never-ending series of blamings.