Empowerment on warm lines: microanalytical explorations of peer encouragement

Abstract

This study asserts that empowerment, as a type of social or psychological transformation/change, can be evidenced within interaction. Using conversation analysis and its orientation to describing practical actions and activities in interaction, this study examines sequences in which a caller to a peer-run warm line expresses hesitancy and/or uncertainty regarding adoption of a self-generated remedy to one's ongoing troubles. A prototypical sequential pattern emerges, with call takers subsequently encouraging callers to do this reported action/remedy, and callers verbally committing, without hesitancy or uncertainty, to doing this action. In a few instances, a negotiation ensues, concerning adoption of a version of the prior sequence as one in which the callers are seen as primarily responsible for the decision and commitment to do that particularly beneficial action. Implications for additional discursive approaches to empowerment are also discussed.