Logic of Accounting: The Case of Reporting Previous Options in Norwegian Activation Encounters

Abstract

The article deals with the enactment of client resistance in Norwegian vocational rehabilitation encounters. More specific, a practice here called “reporting previous options” is analyzed by using the resources of ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA) in five instances as doing some sort of accounting. In response to the counselor's investigative action, an earlier considered option is reported, but in the delivery, this option is also described as unsuitable at the moment of speaking. Across the cases, clients' reports of previous options had a conventional agreement-preface organization as described in the CA research on how dispreferred actions tend to be packaged. This accounting practice surely manages misaligning actions in a diplomatic manner, but a closer inspection reveals that the clients' accountings were also designed to defend the speaker's case and moral identity as an appropriate client. Thus, self-concerns, rather than other-concerns alone, lie at the hearth of this accounting practice.