Reinterpreting Speech-Exchange Systems: Communication Formats in AIDS Counselling

Abstract

Sociologists concerned with describing the organization of interaction have, until recently, been faced with two diverging options. Either they can focus on local cultures or on the sequential order of conversation. Ethnography's emphasis on context underpins the first option; conversation analysis' concern with a context-free structure of turn-taking provides the rationale for the second. Analysis of transcripts of AIDS Counselling suggests a middle way. Building on Goffman's account of `footings', the concept of `communication formats' allow us to describe the local management of the turn-taking machinery. By considering sequential explanations of the stability of each format and contextual explanations of their functionality, we are able to describe and analyze counselling interviews in ways which are sensitive to the local organization of communication but avoid reducing it to `culture' or to the structure of adjacent turns-at-talk. The method allows the precise description of the special characteristics of counselling as a structure of communication in ways which are relevant to both sociologists and practitioners.