Co-constructing a child as disorderly: Moral character work in narrative accounts of upsetting experiences
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Ann-Carita Evaldsson
Ann-Carita Evaldsson is Professor of Education at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research combines ethnographic studies with interactional approaches to children’s everyday lives, their peer language practices and socialization across culturally and linguistically diverse settings. Her research includes how children accomplish identities-in-interaction (gender, class, age, ethnicity, disability), language play and multilingualism, play and games as situated activities and the moral character of emotions and stance in both child and adult controlled contexts.
and
Helen Melander Bowden
Helen Melander Bowden is Associate Professor of Education at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her primary research interests concern knowledge and learning in interaction, and the role of epistemics and emotion in the unfolding organization of action. Her research covers various areas such as learning in interaction within peer groups, instructional work in encounters between students and teachers, and interaction in professional contexts.
Abstract
This study explores how displays of strong emotions in narrative accounts of emotional experiences provide a context for invoking moral accountabilities, including the shaping of the teller’s character. We use a dialogical approach (i.e., ethnomethodology, linguistic anthropology) to emotions to explore how affective stances are performed, responded to and accounted for in episodes of narrative accounts. The analysis is based on a case study that centers on how a child’s walkout from a peer dispute is managed retrospectively in narrative constructions in teacher-child interaction. It is found that the targeted child uses heightened affect displays (crying, sobbing, and prosodic marking), to amplify feelings of distress and stance claims (incorporating reported speech and extreme case formulations) of being badly treated. The heightened stance claims work to justify an oppositional moral stance towards the reported events while projecting accountability to others. The child’s escalated resistance provides a ground for the teacher’s negative uptakes (negative person ascriptions, counter narratives, and third-party reports). The findings shed light on how narrative renderings of upsetting experiences easily become indexical of the teller’s moral character and adds to dispositional features of being over-reactive and disorderly, in ways that undermine a child’s social position.
1 Introduction
Children commonly tell problems to adults, allocate blame, and account for problematic peer group conduct, including conflicts and offensive behaviors (Cekaite 2012; Evaldsson 2016; Danby and Baker 1998; Theobald and Danby 2012). In this study we explore how narrative accounts of emotionally upsetting experiences provide a context for invoking moral accountabilities, including the shaping of the teller’s moral character. A characteristic feature of narrative accounts is that co-participants reconstruct past dialogs and restage them, while simultaneously managing both “the negotiation of responsibility and the re-categorization of the problematic event/conduct” (Sterponi 2003: 80). Narrative accounts of upsetting experiences also provide a framework for situating the teller’s feelings in a context by making these feelings and emotions understandable and justifiable as a response to certain contingencies (Buttny 1998: 52). Thus, in narrating emotional experiences, tellers are not simply reproducing a neutral version of an event, they are also evaluating own and others’ performed actions and feelings while presenting a particular version of the self in relation to others, in ways that invite story recipients to probe the moral dimensions of human experiences (Ochs and Capps 1996, 2001).
Yet with few exceptions, the research on moral accountability misses the interactional role of negative affect in narrative accounts in finding fault and justifying actions.
In this study, we extend this line of research by exploring 1) how children communicate their feelings and affective stances in narrative accounts as they make moral claims about own and others’ actions, and 2) how children’s narrative renderings of emotional experiences are subjected to evaluative and moral inquiry by adults to instill moral accountability and portray actors.
Thus, rather than locating emotions in interior processes of individuals, we examine the different kinds of moral character work that are accomplished through the uses of emotions and displays of affect in discursive practices, such as narrative-accounts, blaming, accusations and assessments (Cekaite and Evaldsson this issue; Buttny 1993; Drew 1998; Edwards 1999; Goffman 1971). While acknowledging that there are diverse perspectives on affect and emotions, this study builds on ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) and linguistic anthropology that deal with the in situ use of affect in the ongoing constitution of social life (cf. Buttny 1993; Goodwin and Goodwin 2000; Ochs and Schieffelin 1989). Affective stance is here defined as referring to “feelings, moods, dispositions and attitudes associated with persons and/or situations” (Ochs and Schieffelin 1989: 7). The notion of affective stance or emotion as stance (M. H. Goodwin and C. Goodwin 2000; Goodwin et al. 2012) brings forward the socially situated and normative aspects of affect in a nexus of social relations and actions critical in the co-construction of the actors’ self (Jaffe 2009; Ochs and Capps 2001). In line with recent research we argue that an EMCA approach provides a crucial resource for examining the social, moral, and evaluative character of affect and stances in particular sequential and socio-cultural contexts (see Goodwin et al. 2012; Sorjonen and Peräkylä 2012).
The analysis will highlight the value of approaching affect displays and emotions as situated moral practices that are accomplished through affective stances, claims of positions and category work, including person descriptions and psychological characteristics of various kinds, both of the actors in events, and of the current speakers. We are especially interested in the evaluative and moral character of emotions and how emotions can be used in narrative accounts for allocating blame and justifying actions (cf. Buttny 1993, 1998) and for providing ways of characterizing actors’ dispositional features (character) and accountability (Edwards 1999, 2000).
In what follows, we first discuss prior research on children’s telling of problems. Then we present methodological considerations and some relevant ethnographic information about the participants and the educational setting to inform our analysis of the situated moral character of negative emotions in narrative accounts. The detailed analysis focuses on a case study that centers on how a child’s upsetting experience from a peer dispute, ending in a walkout, is managed retrospectively in narrative constructions in teacher-child interactions. We then discuss our findings and conclude with some key observations.
2 Literature review: Children’s telling of problems and moral entitlements
Previous research has shown how teachers solving children’s conflicts and remedying problematic actions, constitutes a delicate situation of dealing with emotionally laden events, based on children’s reports (e.g., Cekaite 2012, 2013; Evaldsson 2016; Theobald and Danby 2012). In such instances, teachers have been shown to possess knowledge and moral entitlements to intervene in and remedy children’s actions and affective displays, but also to critically evaluate and scrutinize children’s versions of events, including their social relationships and membership status. Although teachers support children’s telling of problems in a seemingly neutral way, it is often the teachers’ reconstructed version of what counts as appropriate moral and emotional behaviors that is asserted in the end (Evaldsson 2016; Theobald and Danby 2012). In other words, the asymmetries related to moral entitlements of adult-child relations bring to the fore different lines of “emotion rules” (Hochschild 1979) for adults versus children. While adults can display strong emotions in regulating children’s conduct, a child who does not comply can be treated as disrespecting structures of adult authority (Evaldsson and Melander 2016; Lo 2009) and rules about feelings in educational contexts (Cekaite 2013).
As teachers invoke social and emotional rules of conduct for control purposes, such rules are tested and probed by children, who continually challenge and even subvert teachers’ moral expectations. For example, Evaldsson (2016) shows how a child, who questioned the teacher’s authority by claiming moral entitlement as ‘witness’ to a theft, indirectly managed to undermine the teacher’s moral version of events. Cekaite (2013; this issue) found that children, in defending problematic peer group conduct, displayed complex affective and moral stances indexical of remorse that complied with the teacher’s orders while simultaneously deflecting responsibility for their actions.
Taken together, these studies demonstrate the moral agency displayed by children in accounting for problematic conduct, along with adults’ moral entitlements in sanctioning children’s accounts and displays of affect.
3 Data, method and analytical procedures
3.1 Data, setting and participants
The selected data constitute a case study that centers on how a child’s (a girl we call Maria) walkout from a peer dispute with another child (a boy named Sebastian) is managed retrospectively in narrative constructions in teacher-child interaction. The data draw from an ethnographic study combined with video recordings of everyday interactions (40 h) in a special needs classroom. The class was attended by 1 girl and 6 boys (9–11 years old), all diagnosed with ADHD (i.e., Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). Two female teachers were responsible for the teaching of the group. In this school context, diagnoses such as ADHD operate as tools for excluding children from mainstream classes, as guiding principles for organizing special teaching practices, and for remedying children’s emotional and behavioral disorders. Some of the children routinely engaged in morally transgressive acts of non-compliance and escalated conflicts (see Evaldsson and Melander 2016; Hjörne and Evaldsson 2016; Velasquez 2012). In particular, Maria, who was 10 years old and the only girl in the class, was regularly involved in aggravated disputes with Sebastian, who was of the same age. Toward the end of the school year, Maria and her parents complained regularly to the teachers about Sebastian taunting, picking on, screaming at, and insulting Maria (Hjörne and Evaldsson 2016).
3.2 The case study
The case study focuses on how Maria’s emotional experiences of being badly treated by Sebastian are accounted for, reconstructed and evaluated across different interlocutors. The data draw from recordings on the school yard, where Maria, the teacher and Sebastian narratively account for their different versions of a peer dispute ending in a walkout where Maria leaves the group in a state of turmoil. Below we present a summary from the video recording, which outlines the argument sequence preceding Maria’s walkout.
The walkout event
While in the woods, Maria entered into a discussion with a boy, Henrik, about a plant; Maria suggested it was clover, whereas Henrik thought it was sorrel. Henrik turned to one of the teachers, Anna, who confirmed his proposal. Refusing to accept that she was wrong, Maria walked ahead of the group. At this time, Sebastian started following her to question her knowledge. As the dispute escalated, Sebastian came to focus on faults in Maria’s behavior. While Maria insisted that the plant was clover, Sebastian heckled her for being stupid. Maria then asked him to stop in a heightened voice. As Sebastian continued, Maria left the group in a state of upgraded affect, yelling ‘now I’m going away from here’, with Sebastian responding ‘and don’t ever come back’ (outside of the teacher’s hearing). The teachers briefly called for Maria, but stayed with the group in the woods to finish the excursion.
As Dersley and Wootton (2001: 611) found in their analysis, the actions preceding walkout resolutions are often highly antagonistic and are constructed so as to identify deleterious and generic personal deficiencies. In these instances, the leaver reacts with strong negative emotions “to the persistence of behavior that has been deemed to be at fault” (see also Vuchinich 1990: 132). In the analytic section we will examine how narratives can be used to account for and contextualize own and other’s feelings and emotional experience, and how a child’s displays of emotional distress as a consequence can be evaluated as either justifiable or unreasonable (Buttny 1998; Günthner 1997).
3.3 Analyzing affect and stance as interactionally accomplished
In this study, we use the dialogical notion of interactive footing from Goffman (1981; see C. Goodwin 2007), combined with ethnomethodological conversation analysis to explore the multilayered meanings of affect and morality in negotiations of moral accountabilities, and character work in the context of narrative accounts (Buttny 1993, 1998; Edwards 1999, 2005; Sorjonen and Peräkylä 2012).
The telling of strong emotional experiences inevitably includes re-enactments and animations of actions and emotions performed both by the teller and other actors. As demonstrated in Figure 1, the narrative account episode is constituted through triadic forms of interactive footings (Goffman 1981; C. Goodwin 2007). The participation framework is similar to a complaint story (Günthner 1997) or a gossip telling (Evaldsson and Svahn 2017; M.H. Goodwin 1990), whereby pejorative information is passed on about a (non-present) third party. The figure demonstrates how the triadic organization shifts as the narrative account evolves over time and thereby the co-participants’ alignments towards the actions performed by the self or others.
Action trajectory.
The unfolding episode begins with 1) the teacher requesting Maria to account for her walkout, which leads to Maria blaming the non-present boy for causing her distress (Maria-teacher) [Extracts 1–3], to that ii) the teacher initiating a series of counter narratives in which she elaborates Maria’s transgressive behavior in her absence to get the researcher’s support (teacher-researcher) [Extract 4], ending with iii) the teacher requesting Sebastian to present his version of the original walkout event performed by the non-present Maria (teacher-Sebastian) [Extract 5]).
Various kinds of ‘footings’ (Goffman 1981) are possible in staging reports about a third party where the teller portrays feelings and actions on behalf of the self and someone else for an audience to react to (M. H. Goodwin 1990). We will show how the evolving narrative accounts provide means for the co-participants (Maria, the teacher, Sebastian) to calibrate their stances, alignments, footings or ‘projected selves’ (of author, animator, principle) to make their own emotional experiences and actions understandable and justifiable and how their commitments shifts as the participation frameworks change.
The data have been transcribed following conventions developed within CA (Jefferson 2004). All participants have been given pseudonyms to protect their identities. Written consent was secured from all participants as well as the children’s guardians. During fieldwork there was an ongoing dialogue with the participants about when it was appropriate to use the video camera. Sometimes, as in the case study analyzed here, only audio recordings were made (Velasquez 2012: 79–85).
4 Analysis: Accounting for upsetting emotional experiences
4.1 Doing blaming and upgrading affective stances
In the first series of extracts (1–3), the focal girl, Maria, is requested by the teacher to account for her disappearance from the group in the woods. As will be demonstrated, the accounts involving strong emotions (such as distress, crying, and anger) provide the co-participants with crucial resources for ‘doing blaming’, thereby managing the accountability of conduct (Buttny 1993; Drew 1998; Sterponi 2009).
In this process two conflicting versions or sides of the story are co-constructed with the teacher accounting for Maria as being responsible for causing the walkout and her actions and strong emotions as inappropriate while Maria uses heightened affect to justify her walkout by blaming the protagonist (non-present boy) for causing her distress. This social drama that is staged when the teacher tries to remedy the child’s emotional displays generates further resistance and non-compliance (C. Goodwin 2007; see also M. H. Goodwin and Loyd this issue) on behalf of the child who amplifies her moral stance and agency.
| [You just disappeared] | ||
| 1 | Tea: | men du- asså hu- hur ska vi göra men ja- |
| but hey- like ho- what are we going to do but I- | ||
| 2 | ja blir ju o[rolig om du bara försvi-] | |
| I get worried if you just disapp- | ||
| 3 | Mar: | [JA MEN ↑VET DU VA¿ ↑VET ] DU VA¿ |
| YEAH BUT DO YOU ↑KNOW WHAT¿ DO YOU ↑ KNOW WHAT¿ | ||
| 4 | Tea: | nä men. nä: [men Maria] du- du ha[kar upp-] |
| no but. no: but Maria you- you get stuck on- | ||
| 5 | Mar: | [(amah) ] [vet du ] va ja |
| (buth) do you know what I | ||
| 6 | ja sa. kgh (1.0) ’kan du sluta va så himla elak’ |
|
| I said. kgh (1.0) ’can you stop being so mean’ | ||
| 7 | me- me- vet du va- (0.2) va- då bara han | |
| bu- bu- do you know what- (0.2) what- then he just | ||
| 8 | fortsätter å fort- .hh fortsätter- ja sa- | |
| keeps on and keep- .hh keeps on- I told- | ||
| 9 | ∼ja sa ti dej du skulle säga∼ .hh till | |
|
∼I told you that you should∼ .hh tell
|
||
| 10 | hono[m.] | |
| him. | ||
| 11 | Tea: | [a ] men du bara försva:nn:. Sebastian har |
| yeah but you just disappea:red. Sebastian has | ||
| 12 | gjort prec[is som vi har sagt. ] | |
| done exactly what we’ve told him. | ||
| 13 | Mar: | [↑men- ↑men- ↑men- ve-ve-] |
| ↑but- ↑but- ↑but- do-do- | ||
| 14 | vet du va han sa aå. >han sa (.) | |
| do you know what he said then. >he said (.) | ||
| 15 | ’↓bra: kom aldrig t-mer till↓ba:ka.’ | |
| ’↓goo:d don’t ever b-come ↓ba:ck.’ | ||
| 16 | TEA: | ja de: va ju elakt sagt de kan ja |
| yeah tha:t was ju a mean thing to say that I can | ||
| 17 | förstå men (att [inte du kommer-)] | |
| understand but (that you’re not coming-) | ||
| 18 | Mar: | [∼de e där] för de inte gå:r längre.∼ |
| ∼that’s why it doesn’t wo: rk anymore.∼ | ||
As demonstrated in Extract 1 Maria’s upgraded displays of distress are responsive to the teacher’s request for an account, thus casting Maria as responsible for her actions (Sterponi 2003: 84, 2009). The teacher’s use of an emotional avowal ‘I get worried’ constitutes, in Buttny’s (1993: 102) terms, ‘a shorthand formulation’ of Maria’s walkout as problematic. The teacher’s negative uptake projects a successive upgrading of Maria’s heightened affect displays. Maria’s rapid reply ‘YEAH BUT DO YOU ↑KNOW WHAT¿’ (line 3) in a loud, high-pitched voice, amplifies the reported actions and displays her urgency in getting the teacher’s support. In response the teacher uses an ascription of negative affect that transform the child’s emotional conduct into a permanent and dispositional feature (Edwards 2005) of the individual child’s character as being being over-reactive, ‘you get stuck on’ (line 4). The general dispositions of being over-reactive renders the child responsible for this affect, suggesting that she has no justifiable grounds for her feelings. At the same time, the teacher’s negative assessment of Maria’s heightened affect as extreme undermines the “factual basis and seriousness” (Edwards 2005: 5) of the reported actions.
As Buttny (1993: 102) notes, ascriptions of negative affect make accounts relevant to defend against such critical evaluation. In her response Maria uses direct reported and affective laden speech to animate herself as a protagonist in a drama (Günthner 1997). The use of direct reported speech and prosodic cuing (‘can you stop being so mean’, lines 7–8) upgrades her entitlement and brings her own feelings of being badly treated to the fore in the present situation. The account in lines 5–9, delivered in staccato with cut offs and sobbing, displays the teller’s (Maria’s) upgraded emotional stance (Hepburn and Potter 2012: 200) towards the reported offenses performed by the protagonist (the non-present Sebastian). Maria then proceeds to retrospectively blame the teacher for not helping her, claiming that she had told the teacher to tell Sebastian (to stop) (lines 8–9). Using direct reported speech, Maria upgrades her moral claims to have done the right thing – first talking to Sebastian and then turning to the teacher – thereby trying to justify her own version of the event and her feelings of distress as reasonable.
The teacher’s response, ‘yeah but you just disappea:red’, puts into question both the relevance of Maria’s recounted version and her upgraded displays of distress. The teacher supports her own argument by presenting the background knowledge of the by two children’s affective relationship and Sebastian as having done what he was expected to do: ‘Sebastian has done exactly what we’ve told him.’ (lines 10–11). The teacher’s use of indirect reported speech re-categorizes the emotional expressions and actions performed by the putative offender (the non-present Sebastian) as ‘innocent’. Thereby, the relevance of Maria’s account for her distressful responses is again undermined.
The teacher’s negative evaluation leads Maria to upgrade and recycle her version, now offering further explanations (Buttny 1993: 25). In a heightened tone of voice ‘↑BUT-’ followed by ‘DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE SAID THEN’, Maria upgrades her version projecting the emotions and actions performed by the protagonist towards herself as at fault. The use of direct reported speech provides, as Holt (1996: 242) notes, “an air of objectivity” to the account. Maria proceeds to quote the protagonist in a lowered tone of voice: ‘he said (.) ‘↓goo:d. don’t ever b-come ↓ba:ck’’ (line 13). The contrastive prosodic marking – here displayed through loudness and high pitch and a deep voice – dramatizes the narrated moment into a climax situation. As Günthner (1997: 254) points out, prosodic features in reported speech are “aimed at staging the interactive dynamics and affective atmosphere of the past interaction”. The affectively cued reported speech provides evidence for the teller’s claims as justifiable in respect to what was actually said (Holt 1996: 228–230). Simultaneously, the affective intensity of the reported speech provides a theatrical device to dramatize the reported dialogs (Günthner 1997: 256), staging the actions performed by the protagonist (here Sebastian) as particularly blameworthy.
At this point the teacher shifts in footing and begins to criticize the relational consequences of the reported actions performed by Sebastian as ‘a mean thing to say’. By casting Sebastian’s conduct as offensive the teacher for the first time aligns with Maria’s version of Sebastian as acting in harmful ways. Moreover, the teacher displays empathy with Maria in the form of a claim of understanding, ‘I can understand that’ (Hepburn and Potter 2012). However, the affiliating action is immediately followed by a problematizing action: ‘but (that you’re not coming-)’. For the third time the teacher recycles the preferred remedial action of ‘children telling the teachers’. In this way, the teacher avoids taking a side. Sebastian’s offensive actions towards Maria are retrospectively condemned, but so is Maria’s walkout resolution. The supposedly neutral moral stance taken by the teacher towards the two children involved in the peer conflict reflects the moral expectations of children’s conflicts to be resolved in the school setting at hand. However, as demonstrated, the teacher’s remedial attempts do not succeed; instead they lead to further escalation of Maria’s displayed distress (Ochs and Capps 1996: 35). The relational consequences are that the social drama reaches its climax as Maria now claims in a tremulous, tense voice, with an extreme case formulation ‘∼that’s why it doesn’t wo:rk anymore∼’ (line 16).
4.2 Extreme case formulations as indexing the speaker’s subjectivity
We will now show how Maria’s upgraded displays of affect in the form of extreme case formulations do not produce empathy but become indexical of the teller’s attitude or mental dispositions to over-react rather than being treated as factual descriptions of what happened (Edwards 2000: 352). For example, ‘over-determined descriptions of actions’ (Drew 1998: 318) or extreme or case formulations such as ‘you always say that’ or as in this case the use of reported speech ‘don’t ever b-come back’ (line 13, Extract 1) ”can suggest deliberateness, and thereby enhance the actor’s culpability” (Drew 1998: 318).
Extract 2 begins with the teacher increasing her entitlements to remedy the two children’s relationship, including Maria’s negative emotional actions, by blaming Maria for disappearing rather than talking to the teachers.
| [I hate Sebastian] | ||
|
TEA: | ja men du:: kan komma fram till oss å inte |
| yes but you: : can come up to us and not | ||
|
bara försvinna.=ja ropade på dej flera gånger, | |
| just disappear.=I called for you several times, | ||
|
(1.0) | |
|
TEA: | ja va ju inte orolig att du hade försvunnit så:. |
| I wasn’t ju worried that you had disappeared like tha:t. | ||
|
ja trodde ju att du skulle komma men de första ja | |
| I thought ju that you would come but the first thing I | ||
|
gjorde va å ti:tta om du va inne i klass:rumme. (0.2) | |
| did was to loo:k if you were in the class:room. (0.2) | ||
|
å så gick ja ut å då såg ja att du kom. | |
| an’ then I went out an’ then I saw that you came. | ||
|
(2.0) | |
|
TEA: | å så (.) kan vi [i- du- |
| and like that (.) can we (n-) you- | ||
|
Mar: | [ ∼ja ha:tar Sebastian.∼° |
| °∼I ha:te Sebastian.∼° | ||
|
TEA: | ja:↑: just de: de har du hakat upp dej på. |
| yea:↑:h tha:t’s it that you’ve got stuck on. | ||
|
=så fort han liksom de minsta han gö:r | |
| =as soon as he like the smallest thing he doe:s | ||
|
(0.2) så känner du- (.) | |
| (0.2) you feel- (.) | ||
|
å de e f[el Mari]a. | |
| an’ that is wrong Maria. | ||
|
Mar: | [men han e-] (.) ∼han e ALL↑ti ela[:k.∼] |
| but he is- (.) ∼he is AL↑ways mea:n.∼ | ||
|
TEA: | [nä:]: |
| no:: | ||
|
så ska du in[te säg]a. | |
| you shouldn’t say that | ||
|
Mar: | [∼jo:,∼] |
| ∼ye:s,∼ | ||
|
TEA: | >nej.< |
| >no.< | ||
Maria remains silent during several turns before interrupting the teacher, now in a quiet and wobbly voice with an extreme case formulation, ‘°∼I ha:te Sebastian. ∼°’. As Buttny (1993: 91–94) notes, the use of avowals such as ‘I hate xx’ serves as ‘shorthand formulations’ that expose the actor’s attitude and critical assessment. The upgraded moral stance taken by Maria towards the protagonist (the non-present Sebastian) is remedied by the teacher, who again casts Maria as being disposed to overreact by ‘getting stuck’ on ‘the smallest thing he doe:s’ (lines 4 and 11–13, Extract 1 and line 11, Extract 3). Maria’s quietly produced extreme case formulation, ‘°∼I ha:te Sebastian∼°’, which involves moral entitlement to account for her own actions, becomes encoded in the teacher’s uptake as dispositional to see and feel things negatively. The teacher’s concluding statement ‘yea:↑:h tha:t’s it’ targets Maria’s negative feelings as the main problem (Edwards 2000). In this way Maria, and not Sebastian, is cast as morally accountable in causing the walkout: ‘an’ that is wrong Maria’.
In response, Maria upgrades her version of the event with another extreme case formulation: ‘but he is- (.) ∼he is AL↑ways mea:n.∼. By specifying that this is always the case, that is, a maximum case proportional measure (Pomerantz 1986: 223), Maria legitimizes her feelings of distress and her right to hate Sebastian. The last part of Maria’s utterance is produced with a wobbly voice that intensifies her moral stance claims towards the protagonist (Sebastian) as at fault, as she now almost breaks out crying. However, the teacher does not empathize with Maria’s emotional displays of distress; instead she holds Maria accountable for the inappropriateness of displaying extreme dislike in the form of hate (lines 15–16). Thus, Maia’s heightened affect and use of extreme case formulations and ‘suggest deliberateness, and thereby enhance the actor’s culpability’ (Edwards 2005: 8).
4.3 Reported speech as resources in authorizing accounts for emotions
The use of heightened affect displays in reported speech provides crucial resources for the child/teller to communicate”the expressive and affective features of the ‘original’ speaker” (Günthner 1997). By putting feelings and emotions ”into context” the use of direct reported speech makes past actions and feelings justifiable and relevant to a situated context (Buttny 1998: 52).
As can be seen, in Extract 3, Maria challenges the teacher’s positive evaluations of Sebastian’s conduct by presenting a multilayered animated version in which Sebastian’s friends are solicited as witnesses. The use of direct reported speech allows the teller/Maria to mobilize a multiplicity of voices to justify her version of the actions performed by the protagonist as harmful and the reasonableness of her feelings of distress.
| [Next time I’ll give him a fist] | ||
|
Mar: | Henrik å Adam- Henrik å Adam å Malik >säger- säger-< |
| Henrik an’ Adam- Henrik an’ Adam an’ Malik >say- say-< | ||
|
(de). .h åsså fast dom e hans kompisar så | |
| (that). .h even though they’re his friends | ||
|
säger dom också .hh han e e:lak. | |
| they say .hh he’s mea:n too. | ||
|
TEA: | °°ja:sså.°° |
| °°rea:lly.°° | ||
|
Mar: | [(ja::) ] |
| (yea::h) | ||
|
TEA: | [ja men d]å e ni allihopa elaka tycker ja. |
| yeah but then you’re all mean I think. | ||
|
då e du elak på ditt sätt å andra e | |
| then you’re mean in your way and others are | ||
|
elaka på sitt sätt. | |
| mean in their way. | ||
|
(1.8) | |
|
TEA: | ne::j de går inte å göra så utan |
| no:: you can’t do that but | ||
|
då kommer du fram. (.) | |
| then you have to come up to us. (.) | ||
|
så får man reda ut de direkt. | |
| then you get to sort it out immediately. | ||
|
=inte b[ a r ]a gå:r. | |
| =not just wa:lk away. | ||
|
Mar: | [mpf.h] |
|
(1.6) | |
|
TEA: | [( inte)] |
| ( not) | ||
|
Mar: | [NÄSTA gång han] GÖ:R de då tänker ja:= |
| NEXT time he DOE:s it then I’m going to:= | ||
|
TEA: | DÅ k[ommer du fram till mej å] säger de. |
| THEN you’ll come up to me and say it. | ||
|
Mar: | [=ge honom en KNYTNÄ:ve:. ] |
| =give him a FIS::t. | ||
|
Mar: | nej då tänker ja ge honom en knytnäve:. |
| no then I’m going to give him a fi:st. | ||
|
TEA: | ne:j de ska du inte alls göra. |
| no: you’re not going to do that at all. | ||
|
Mar: | ja tänker inte svara ( ). ((walks away)) |
| I’m not going to answer (…). | ||
The dramatic resources used by Maria in the reported dialogue are carefully chosen. She first presents Sebastian as the main protagonist through his friends by naming them (line 1). She then provides evidence for her own version by using direct reported speech, stating that ‘even though they’re his friends they say .hh he’s mea:n too’ (lines 2–3). The reported utterance gives further evidence (Holt 2017: 23) that supports Maria’s first-hand knowledge about the friends’ view of Sebastian. At the same time the multivocal nature of the reported speech implies that the version can at any moment be turned against the teller (cf. M. H. Goodwin 1990).
The teacher initially responds with a quiet ‘°°rea:lly.°°’ and then picks up on the multivocal character: ‘yeah but then you’re all mean I think’ (line 6). The negative emotional ascription ‘you’re all mean’ constitutes a verbal device for indicating that the teller, Maria, performs the same negative emotional actions that she, with the support of the (non-present) other children, accuses Sebastian of performing. With Maria having failed to authorize her account, the teacher now recycles her critique of Maria’s walkout: ‘no:: you can’t do that but then you have to come up to us’ (line 9, see also line 15, Extract 1). What is at stake here is, on the one hand, the generic moral rule in this school setting of the children being expected to turn to the teacher when in need of help, and, on the other hand, an individual child’s perspective of not being listened to or taken seriously for being badly treated. At this instance the teacher is foregrounding the former at expense of the latter.
At this point there is a shift in footing – first Maria sobs (line 11), but after a brief silence she proceeds to formulate a hypothetical threat. In a determined voice she takes action to remedy the protagonist’s, i.e., Sebastian’s, harmful actions, by elaborating what will happen to him in the future (lines 14, 16): ‘NEXT time he DOE:s it then I’m going to: give him a FIS::t.’. In overlap, the teacher insists on her moral stance that the children should talk to the teacher (line 15). Maria now openly refuses to align with the teacher’s remedial actions; instead she repeats her threat to hit Sebastian (line 17), an action that is rejected by the teacher. At this point, Maria brings the argument between the teacher and herself to a (temporary) close by unilaterally walking out. Before she leaves she states ‘I’m not going to answer ( )’, thus making sure to get the last word, thereby demonstrating her strong resistance towards the teacher’s attempts to sanction her actions.
4.4 Reconstructions of third-party reports and counter narratives
Immediately following Maria’s second walkout, the teacher turns to the researcher and presents a counter narrative in which she evaluates selected pieces of the reported dialogs staged by Maria. In what follows we explore how the launching of a third-party report has consequences for the teller’s emotional involvement in the reported dialogue (Günthner 1997: 258). Already from the beginning, the teacher justifies her own version by defining Maria’s moral character as ‘being manic’.
| [She has slightly strange behavior too] | ||
|
TEA: | men hon blir ju ma:nisk i sitt. °°Sebastian°° |
| but she becomes ju ma:nic in her. °°Sebastian°° | ||
|
behöver ju ba:ra: liksom öppna: munnen. | |
| ju ju:st needs to like open: his mouth. | ||
|
RES: | hur berätta han- ho[n att han:] |
| how did he- she tell that he: | ||
|
TEA: | [nä:::: m]ene::: f’ratt hh |
| no:::: butuh::: b’cause hh | ||
|
dom hade prata om harsyra eller >va de va:< | |
| they had talked about sorrel or >whatever it wa:s< | ||
|
å sen så sa- (1.1) hade Anna sagt att de | |
| and then sa- (1.1) Anna had said that it | ||
|
inte va de å då:: hade ju han sagt a ‘du kan ju | |
| wasn’t that and then:: he ju had said well ‘you know ju | ||
|
ingenting om nånting’ ((whining)) eller a- å så gick hon | |
| nothing about anything’ or a- and then she left | ||
|
’ja hoppas du aldri mer kommer tillbaka’ | |
| ‘I hope you never come back again’ | ||
|
°hade han tydligen sagt till henne°. | |
| °he had apparently told her°. | ||
|
(2.1) | |
|
TEA: | men liksom hon:: provocerar ju fram de här. |
| but she:: like provokes ju this. | ||
|
de e: ja: menar hon gick ju bort när vi | |
| it is: I: mean she went ju away when we | ||
|
satt på morgonmöte (0.2) å sa: | |
| were sitting in the morning meeting (0.2) and sai:d | ||
|
’a nu är Sebastian här. då blir de lju:d.’ | |
| ’ah now Sebastian is here. then there will be sou:nd.’ | ||
|
>hon liksom< (.) de e de första hon tä:nker | |
| >she like< (.) it’s the first thing she thinks | ||
|
när hon ser °S(h)ebast(h)ian.° | |
| when she sees °S(h)ebast(h)ian.° | ||
|
(2.2) | |
|
RES: | °°°okej.°°° |
| °°°okay.°°° | ||
|
TEA: | hon har ju lite konstigt beteende ↑hon också. |
| she has ju slightly strange behavior ↑her too. | ||
|
RES: | m:. |
| m:. | ||
The teacher’s negative emotional ascription adds to Maria’s emotional dispositional character (Edwards 2005: 20) as recognizably ‘disorderly’ (lines 1–2, 11–15) and ‘abnormal’ (line 18). In response to the researcher’s invitation, the teacher provides further evidence of Maria as accountable for her strong feelings by using selected pieces from the incident preceding her walkout (lines 4–9). A counter narrative is introduced by indirect reported speech that sets the scene for what is to come next (Holt 2017: 173). The teacher/teller now uses the other teacher as her main source ‘had said that it wasn’t that’ (i.e., Sorrel, that the plant was in fact sorrel, not clover, see Section 3.1). Two utterances quoting the moral stance taken by Maria towards the reported dialogue follow: first, the belittling epistemic claim ‘you know ju nothing about anything’, which is illustrated by reported speech, marked off by prosodic features and a whining voice; and second, the threatening ‘I hope you never come back again’, presented with a lower tone of voice in direct reported speech (similar to line 13, Extract 1).
The prosodic marking highlights the multilayering of voices in the reported dialogue (Günthner 1997: 259): the reporter’s (the teacher’s) voice, which melts with the original teller’s (Maria’s), simulatenously constructs the reported speech as exaggerated, and Maria performing the actions as overreacting. The teller thus uses double-voiced discourse, reflecting both the present speaker and the original speaker; it is “double voiced” in the sense that the present speaker transforms the quoted speech for his or her own purposes in the present context (Buttny 1998: 48). The teacher then comments on Maria’s version by adding ‘°he had apparently told her°’. The use of a third-party report replaces the ‘he said’-format of direct reported speech (Holt 1996), and marks the reported dialog as a form of complaint and something that the teacher does not have primary epistemic access to. The third-party report also allows the teacher to distance herself from the reported event in ways that downplay the factual basis of Maria’s version (Edwards 2005).
The teacher then authorizes her counter version by using the researcher as a witness to the original event (line 12). The quote, ‘ah now Sebastian is here. then there will be sou:nd.’ (lines 13–14), adds to the teacher’s encoding of Maria’s dispositional emotional features as being ‘overly sensitive’ and her emotional reactions as predictable (Edwards 2005). When the researcher responds minimally ‘°°°okay.°°°’, the teacher adds a conclusive moral evaluation which locates the reason for Maria’s emotional reactions inside the individual: ‘she has ju slightly strange behavior ↑her too’. The teacher’s person formulation ‘her too’ (line 18) of Maria as a particular kind of child indicates that she is not the only child performing deviant actions. The epistemic adverbial ju moreover claims that this is already known to the participants (see also lines 2, 7, 11, 12; Heinemann, Lindström, and Steensig 2011), and as stemming from the recognition of Maria’s problematic behavior as longstanding.
4.5 Recycling third-party reports through reported speech
In the last part, we will show how the teacher uses reported speech together with prosodic marking as rhetorical devices to reconstruct, encode and transform the two children’s affective relationship. She now approaches Sebastian and calls for his attention ‘Sebastian can I ask you something¿’. The request for information can be heard as “telling problems” (Buttny 1993: 71) as it indicates some troubling turn of events.
| [She should apologize first] | ||
| ((Sebastian is playing field hockey with a group of | ||
| boys when the teacher approaches him)) | ||
|
TEA: | Sebastian får ja fråga dej en sak¿ (1.0) |
| Sebastian can I ask you one thing¿ (1.0) | ||
|
hade Mari:- hade du sagt till Maria att- | |
| did Mari:- did you say to Maria that- | ||
|
när hon gick (.) ’kom aldri mer tillbaka.’ | |
| when she left (.) ’don’t ever come back.’ | ||
|
Seb: | ja. |
| yes. | ||
|
TEA: | de var väl lite el- hon blev jättelessen |
| that was like a little mea- she was very sad | ||
|
för de. | |
| because of that. | ||
|
Seb: | °°blev hon de¿°° |
| °°was she¿°° | ||
|
TEA: | m¿ |
|
Seb: | men hur visste du de. |
| but how did you know that. | ||
|
TEA: | därför att ja frå:gade henne.=hon berättade |
| because I a:sked her.=she told | ||
|
de för mej nu. | |
| me that now. | ||
|
(0.2) | |
|
Seb: | ha. |
| hyeah. | ||
|
TEA: | m. (.) tycker ja du ska be om u:rsäkt |
| m. (.) I think you should apologize | ||
|
vid tillfälle till henne. | |
| to her when the opportunity arises. | ||
|
Seb: | a men de e hon som ska be först. |
| yeah but she should apologize first. | ||
|
=hon gör alltid- (.) hon tjafsar a:llti me me:j, | |
| =she always- (.) she’s a:lways fussing with me:, | ||
| ((Sebastian moves away from teacher, re-entering | ||
| the field hockey game)) | ||
The direct reported speech in lines 1–3 in the ‘he said’-format (Holt 1996) marks the reported dialogue as a form of complaint about the actions performed by the protagonist (Sebastian) towards the other party (Maria). The he-said-she-said format of Sebastian’s original statement, ‘don’t ever come back’ (lines 13–14, Extract 1 and line 8, Extract 4) is used to confront the offender with the instigator’s version of the reported dialogue (M. H. Goodwin 1990). At this point, the teacher targets Sebastian’s performed actions as problematic. By characterizing his emotional attitude towards Maria as ‘a little mean’, the teacher simultaneously downplays Sebastian’s offensive actions. At the same time there is a layering of voices (Bakhtin 1981), where the negative emotional ascription is penetrated by the other voices, including both the teacher’s and Maria’s. By means of contrastive prosodic marking, the teacher portrays Maria’s reactions as ‘very sad’ as a consequence of what Sebastian has done. Sebastian’s question, delivered in a quiet voice °was she¿°’ (line 6), both affiliates with Maria’s displays of sadness and questions the information provided by the teacher. In line 8, Sebastian moves on to challenge the source of the third-party information ‘but how did you know that’. In this way he manages to present a counter-complaint to handle the blame-attribution conveyed in the teacher’s complaint (Dersley and Wootton 2000: 383).
The teacher’s use of reported speech projects a ground for Sebastian to apologize to Maria in the near future (lines 12–13). As Watson (1978: 110) notes, one thing that an apology warrants is a “look-again” procedure with new resources, which simultaneously provides for a different profile of events and for a re-distribution of the blame. However, instead of admitting responsibility for acting in an offensive way, Sebastian uses the reported speech to turn the tables and to condemn Maria for her actions. The extreme person depiction of Maria as someone who is ‘always fussing with me:’ (line 15) constructs a further defense to the fault ascribed to him. At the same time, it adds to Maria’s dispositional character of ‘overreacting’. At this point, Sebastian turns away from the teacher, without any reconciliation achieved, showing that neither of the two children is willing to accept the teacher’s remedial actions.
5 Discussion and conclusion
In this study, we have demonstrated how the practice of using narrative accounts as remedial actions for holding children accountable for breaches in social conduct and feelings, contributes to the co-construction of an individual child as acting in disorderly ways. The sequential analysis demonstrates how one child’s heightened displays of affect (distress, crying, and sobbing) in accounting for emotional experiences of being badly treated by a peer contribute to the interpretation of the child/teller as over-reacting, and as being overly sensitive and manic (cf. Günthner 1997). As a consequence, the child’s telling is being ignored and not treated as factual descriptions of what actually happened. In this process the child’s emotional displays of distress in the form of non-compliant oppositional stances are turned into the main problem of the speaking individual “as a recognizable kind of thing that (s)he does” (Edwards 2005: 12).
As Goffman (1971) observes, the person offering an account needs some sign of their sufficiency from the recipient(s); otherwise the person is forced to continue to offer more accounts. The teacher’s negative uptakes of Maria’s narrated version lead to further escalations where the recipient’s (teacher) downgrading of the reported actions have to be managed by the actor (child) performing the telling (Edwards 2005: 26). In fact, already in Extract 1 we find that the focal child stages a social drama through heightened affect displays (crying, sobbing, and prosodic marking) in reported speech and extreme case formulations that both amplify and justify her moral claims of being badly treated. Thus, rather than being a victim in the moral trajectory put into action through the teacher’s request for an account, Maria becomes increasingly active when accounting for her walkout resolution. Maria’s upgraded moral claims include dramatic elements of resistance and non-compliance in the form of upgraded heightened affect displays, direct reported speech and extreme case formulations that serve to project accountability, mitigate own misdeeds and even challenge the moral authority of the teacher.
The mixture of perspectives and multilayered voices staged in the conflicting narrated versions of the dramatic actions performed by the protagonists (Maria versus Sebastian) is reflected in the “double-voiced” character of the reported speech (Bakhtin 1981). The offensive conduct performed by the protagonist (Sebastian) is brought to life and recycled through direct reported speech, interspersed with the tellers’ affect displays in ways that bring emotional experiences to the fore in the present situation (Günthner 1997). The scenic constructions of the reported speech provide evidence for the strong affective features of the reported actions as justifiable (Holt 1996: 228–230) while it places the recipient (the teacher) in “the role of eye-witness” (Günthner 1997: 247). Maria also uses extreme case formulation, imbued with a tremulous, tense voice, to amplify her position as a seemingly innocent child who is doing the morally right thing while being unjustly treated by others. In the end it is Maria, and not the teacher, who brings the escalated conflict to a closure by getting the last word before she demonstratively walks away. The unilateral walkout ultimately demonstrates Maria’s unwillingness to give in and accept the teacher’s perspective on her as causing problems (cf. M. H. Goodwin and Loyd this issue).
The analysis sheds light not only on how narrative accounts of emotional experiences provide frameworks to make sense of multiple perspectives of events, but also the limits of narratives in terms of what Ochs and Capps (1996: 15) describe as “narrative asymmetry” (see also Shuman 2006). As demonstrated through our analysis, narrative renderings of emotional experiences are not an unproblematic interactional activity that the participants enter into without risks or negative implications for their self-identities. The teacher’s negative uptakes, counter narratives and reconstructions of Maria’s oppositional version demonstrate the role of narrative accounts in undercutting and undermining a child’s claims of entitlement to her own experiences including her self-identity (Ochs and Capps 1996). Such asymmetries involve an adult’s increased entitlements to narrate and sanction a child’s accounts, which partly explains why Maria does not manage to justify her actions and strong feelings of distress as culturally valid (see Cekaite this issue; M.H. Goodwin and Loyd this issue; Kyratzis and Koymen this issue). Although the teacher does not orient to Maria’s emotional biography as linked to her ADHD diagnosis, the negative emotional ascriptions and counter narratives of Maria as overreacting and being overly sensitive add to her interactional history of being constructed as disorderly.
Thus, rather than attending to Maria’s narrated version as a method for making sense of her experiences of being harassed by a peer, her upgraded emotional stance claims become repeatedly interpreted as dispositional features to act in disorderly ways (see also Hjörne and Evaldsson 2016). As Shuman (2006: 159) notes, narratives of experiences easily become part of what people already claim to know, although that knowledge does not necessarily produce understanding or empathy.
About the authors
Ann-Carita Evaldsson is Professor of Education at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research combines ethnographic studies with interactional approaches to children’s everyday lives, their peer language practices and socialization across culturally and linguistically diverse settings. Her research includes how children accomplish identities-in-interaction (gender, class, age, ethnicity, disability), language play and multilingualism, play and games as situated activities and the moral character of emotions and stance in both child and adult controlled contexts.
Helen Melander Bowden is Associate Professor of Education at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her primary research interests concern knowledge and learning in interaction, and the role of epistemics and emotion in the unfolding organization of action. Her research covers various areas such as learning in interaction within peer groups, instructional work in encounters between students and teachers, and interaction in professional contexts.
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© 2020 Ann-Carita Evaldsson and Helen Melander Bowden, published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The moral character of emotion work in adult-child interactions
- The face of noncompliance in family interaction
- Co-constructing a child as disorderly: Moral character work in narrative accounts of upsetting experiences
- Morality-in-interaction: Toddlers’ recyclings of institutional discourses of feeling during peer disputes in daycare
- Young children’s affective stance through embodied displays of emotion during tellings
- Subversive compliance and embodiment in remedial interchanges
- Epilogue
- Micro dramas and morality-in-interaction: A commentary
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The moral character of emotion work in adult-child interactions
- The face of noncompliance in family interaction
- Co-constructing a child as disorderly: Moral character work in narrative accounts of upsetting experiences
- Morality-in-interaction: Toddlers’ recyclings of institutional discourses of feeling during peer disputes in daycare
- Young children’s affective stance through embodied displays of emotion during tellings
- Subversive compliance and embodiment in remedial interchanges
- Epilogue
- Micro dramas and morality-in-interaction: A commentary
