Accepted and resisted: the client's responsibility for making proposals in activation encounters

Abstract

In line with Norwegian welfare policies, clients in vocational rehabilitation encounters are responsibilized to take an active part in the planning of measures that will qualify them for suitable work. In situ, among other things, this is actualized by the counselor's open what-question, eliciting the client to propose appropriate actions. The article analyzes two cases where a long-term education is proposed in the answer-slot, which, due to its contingent acceptability, is a very ambiguous interactional enterprise. The analysis demonstrates by means of ethnomethodological conversation analysis how clients might proceed when they deal with the eliciting question. In the first case the client complies with the allocated responsibility of reporting plans/ideas and formulates a proposal easily heard as an answer to the request. The second instance demonstrates a less aligned approach where the client by “proposal-implying tellings” takes steps to transform proposal making into a more open-ended activity. It is argued that the second approach, relying on the counselor's active co-participation, represents a more distributed responsibility, and to the client, a less troublesome way for introducing and discussing a contingent proposal.