The face of noncompliance in family interaction

Marjorie H. Goodwin; Heather Loyd

doi:10.1515/text-2020-2080

Article

The face of noncompliance in family interaction

Marjorie H. Goodwin
Marjorie H. Goodwin is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, USA. She is author of He-Said-She-Said: Talk as Social Organization among Black Children (Indiana University Press, 1990), The Hidden Life of Girls; Games of Stance, Status and Exclusion (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), and co-author (with Asta Cekaite) of Embodied Family Choreography: Practices of Control, Care, and Mundane Creativity (Routledge, 2018). Her current research interests include examination of the lived and embodied practices through which people establish, maintain, and negotiate intimate social relationships throughout the life span, including practices of living towards death.
and Heather Loyd
Heather Loyd is a senior research analyst at Kresnicka Research & Insights, and a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her PhD in Linguistic Anthropology in 2011 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work lies at the intersection of linguistic anthropology and cultural studies of urban youth, gender, morality, and the family. As a business anthropologist, she helps businesses understand and connect with people. At UCLA, she teaches students how to apply anthropological concepts, research methods, and analytical skills to a range of careers.

Published/Copyright: August 17, 2020

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From the journal Text & Talk Volume 40 Issue 5

Abstract

This article examines the co-construction of dispute in parent-child remedial interchanges, where preference for provocation rather than agreement exists. Employing methodologies of video ethnography, linguistic anthropology, and conversation analysis, we examine practices for dispute management in middle class Los Angeles families (1540 h of video across 32 US families were collected and examined between 2002 and 2005) as well as in (sub)-working-class families in the historic center neighborhood of the Quartieri Spagnoli in Napoli, Italy (120 h of video across six families were collected and examined between 2008 and 2010). We problematize the notion that preference structures featuring politeness and moves towards swift social equilibrium in remedial interchanges are the basic organizing principles used in family interaction. Our findings suggest that rather than quickly restoring ritual equilibrium, children can create their own “character contests” in which they compete with parents for control. In response to a child’s breach, noncompliance, or offensive action, the parents can sanction inappropriate behavior, and socialize the child into what counts, in the family culture, as morally appropriate behavior. Whereas in US middle class families, the parents pursue apologies, in Neapolitan (sub)-working-class families, the parents are more concerned about explanations and accounts for inappropriate desires and actions. There is no expectation that the children apologize for untoward behavior. Across culture and class, during adult-child socializing encounters, moral claims intersect with affective stances to develop and negotiate personhood, identity, and adherence to cultural norms.

Keywords: remedial interchanges; multimodality; affective stance; character contests; family interaction; conflict

Corresponding author: Marjorie H. Goodwin, Department of Anthropology, University of California, 341, Haines Hall, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1553, USA, E-mail: mgoodwin@anthro.ucla.edu; and Heather Loyd, Department of Anthropology, University of California, 341, Haines Hall, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1553, USA, E-mail: hloyd@ucla.edu

About the authors

Marjorie H. Goodwin

Marjorie H. Goodwin is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, USA. She is author of He-Said-She-Said: Talk as Social Organization among Black Children (Indiana University Press, 1990), The Hidden Life of Girls; Games of Stance, Status and Exclusion (Blackwell Publishing, 2006), and co-author (with Asta Cekaite) of Embodied Family Choreography: Practices of Control, Care, and Mundane Creativity (Routledge, 2018). Her current research interests include examination of the lived and embodied practices through which people establish, maintain, and negotiate intimate social relationships throughout the life span, including practices of living towards death.

Heather Loyd

Heather Loyd is a senior research analyst at Kresnicka Research & Insights, and a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her PhD in Linguistic Anthropology in 2011 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work lies at the intersection of linguistic anthropology and cultural studies of urban youth, gender, morality, and the family. As a business anthropologist, she helps businesses understand and connect with people. At UCLA, she teaches students how to apply anthropological concepts, research methods, and analytical skills to a range of careers.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Michael Sean Smith and Hanna Fideli Nordqvist, who rendered the images for the paper from frame grabs. Michael Sean Smith also assisted in making the pitch track.

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Published Online: 2020-08-17

Published in Print: 2020-09-25

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Keywords for this article

remedial interchanges; multimodality; affective stance; character contests; family interaction; conflict