Emotion displays in “moments of conflict” in parent-child interaction
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Younhee Kim
Younhee Kim received her PhD in Second Language Acquisition (with a specialization in Language and Social Interaction) from University of Hawai’i at Manoa and is currently Assistant Professor at University of Macau. Her research interests include Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, interaction with and among children, and teacher education. Her recent work has appeared in journals including
Journal of Pragmatics ,Applied Linguistics ,Journal of Teacher Education ,Research on Language and Social Interaction ,Pragmatics ,Text & Talk .
and
Andrew P. Carlin
Andrew P. Carlin received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Stirling and lectures at Ulster University. His research interests include parent-child interaction, the Social Organization of Scholarly Communication, Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity, Disciplinary contexts for Teaching, Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, Sociology of Information, and conceptual analysis.
Abstract
“Moments of conflict” occur regularly in daily routines within parent-child interaction. Video data of a mother attempting to ready her son for kindergarten make perspicuous the subtleties of emotion displays in negotiations for future courses of action, e.g., parental directive/non-compliance. By focusing on the interactional dynamics of emotion display in conflictual action negotiation sequences, this conversation analytic study highlights the significant role of emotion display in compliance negotiation and managing a parent-child relationship. The findings demonstrate how emotion display may constitute a social action to which co-participants in interaction respond within the progressivity of sequences of action, and how both parent and child orient to each other’s displays of emotion. Further, that emotion displays may be used as resources for negotiating compliance. Emotion display also allows parents to propose affiliation on a relational level while remaining firm on family rules. Our study contributes to the growing body of research on directive/response sequences in parent-child interaction, and more broadly to conversation analytic research on affect and emotion by illustrating the nexus between emotion display and progressivity.
Funding source: Universidade de Macau
Award Identifier / Grant number: MYRG2020-00068_FAH
About the authors
Younhee Kim received her PhD in Second Language Acquisition (with a specialization in Language and Social Interaction) from University of Hawai’i at Manoa and is currently Assistant Professor at University of Macau. Her research interests include Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, interaction with and among children, and teacher education. Her recent work has appeared in journals including Journal of Pragmatics, Applied Linguistics, Journal of Teacher Education, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Pragmatics, Text & Talk.
Andrew P. Carlin received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Stirling and lectures at Ulster University. His research interests include parent-child interaction, the Social Organization of Scholarly Communication, Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity, Disciplinary contexts for Teaching, Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, Sociology of Information, and conceptual analysis.
Acknowledgment
We thank three anonymous reviewers and Srikant Sarangi for their engagement with our paper, Ratih Oktarini who produced anonymized artwork for the presentation of data and the family who agreed to participate in our project.
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