Transforming talk in community-based feminist groupwork

Abstract

qHaving the opportunity to talk about one's life, to give an account of it, isnintegral to leading that life rather than being led through itq (Legones anSpelman quoted by Patai, 1988, p. 163).n n This thesis was born out of the countless conversations I have had with other women,naround kitchen tables, over fences, at playgroups and in community-based women'sngroups. I know from the testimony of these women, including those in the groups I havenfacilitated, that such conversations can change lives, hi such places stories are told, thenpersonal search for words to match experiences becomes collective, and the moments ofnmutual recognition enable us to go on with a lighter, or at least a more purposeful, step.nYet these conversations have also perplexed me. If they are so important, why so taken-for-ngranted? And if they are indeed 'consciousness-raising', why do they not producenmore obviously radical personal transformations?n n In this study I have taken one instance of women's talk in non-public spaces, ancommunity-based, facilitated group of mothers of children with a disability, and teasednapart the threads of its conversations to better understand what happens there, and whynit matters. n In settling upon a methodology for this task, a pilot study first revealed that the densitynof the group conversations required just one research site, and that their breadth requirednthe analysis to include interactions and discourses pis well as narratives. Twonmethodological choices followed from this: firstly to be the group's facilitator andnhence a practitioner-researcher, and secondly to use an applied conversation analysisnmethod. The former gave me access to data that would otherwise be difficult if notnimpossible to obtain, that is, extended and often overlapping talk between multiplenparticipants that could only be adequately transcribed by someone who was present andnhad listened closely. This placed me squarely within the research event. The latter is anrigorous discipline that insisted I stay close to the data, so balancing and making explicitnmy personal involvement. In addition, conversation analysis supplied a body of existingnknowledge that valued the everyday, brimmed with fresh metaphors for groupnprocesses, and focused above all on interaction.nn n The resulting descriptions of the group have an order of detail that is new to groupworknresearch, and a language that is sometimes surprising, but illuminating in its relevance.nThey maximize the data available from one local site, and give rise to a research-basednmodel of group process that captures at least some of the dimensions of women's talk innthis setting. Because this is essentially an 'applied' study, I use two further theoreticalncontributions, feminism and poststructuralism, to locate it usefully in the world ofnemancipatory action. The addition of a feminist analysis allows women's talk outsidenthe public sphere, which has often been invisible, to emerge as a potential form of civicnparticipation. Poststructural theory provides links between language and identity,nexplaining how marginalized people can gain agency through their interactions andndiscourses, and situating this thesis within the field of language-based research.n n Therefore my original impulse, to understand what difference women's conversationsnmight make, has been satisfied not by looking behind the participants' talk at theirnpsychological processes, but by looking closely at their talk-in-interaction with ansociological approach. The resulting account speaks into the theoretical silences thatnsurround community-based feminist groupwork, providing practitioners with new waysnto listen to the talk occurring there, and scholars with encouragement to furtherninvestigate such 'ordinary' comers of experience.n