Directives and their Accounts: A Case Study of Institutional Talk in Guide/Client Interactions

• In Event: 388 - Regular Session. The Interactional Production of Identity and Authority

Abstract

This study is a case of how sea-kayaking guides establish and maintain control over their clients – something that occurs at a micro-interactional level and must be negotiated throughout the trip. The data extracts come from videos shot in an ethnographic study. How do guides deploy verbal directives in a manner that transmits the necessity of commands to the client(s)? And how can recipients discern whether or not directives need to be done immediately or in the future?
Directives demonstrate guides’ high entitlement to control others with little orientation to the contingencies that compliance with directives may have. Of the 43 cases in my data in which directives have accounts, 30 came after the directive and 13 occurred before. While it appears there is a preference for accounts to come after, there are more layers of interactional work to examine before arriving at a conclusion. This becomes evident once these 43 cases are further divided into the two timeframes that directives orient to: Immediate Action versus Anticipatory Action. Having teased out the temporal dimension, it appears there is a preference for accounts to appear before Anticipatory Action directives but after Immediate Action directives. Why would this be? The structural affordance of putting directives ahead of accounts is that guides prioritize directives, which helps clients understand they are accountable to change their current action immediately to an alternate action. Thus, fore-fronting directives helps guides accomplish a sense of urgency which helps them maintain control over their trips.

Author

• Anne White, University of California-Los Angeles