Everyday Troubles by Robert M. Emerson

Author:Robert M. Emerson [Emerson, Robert M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226238135
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Troubles-Tellings and Alignment

Informal others may become involved in dyadic troubles on their own initiative: a friend may notice another’s upset and ask what is going on; a neighbor may hear arguing and banging in an adjacent apartment and knock on the door to see if everything is okay. But more commonly one or the other party to a trouble takes the initiative to reach out to involve someone outside of the troubled relationship. In many cases this outsider—a friend, a family member or intimate, a more distant acquaintance, or perhaps even a complete stranger—has no knowledge of or contact with the troubling party. In other cases the troubled party turns to someone previously uninvolved but who has some contact with the other party to the trouble—in-laws or children of couples, apartment or suite mates of a troubled roommate dyad, colleagues and peers in work settings.

Troubled parties rely on troubles-tellings to inform outsiders about the problematic situation (Sacks 1992; Jefferson and Lee 1981; Jefferson 1988). At the core of such troubles-tellings is a report or announcement of the trouble, shaped to reflect the third party’s familiarity with the trouble and/or the troubling other. At times the report presents the current issue in a nutshell, at other times it simply recounts the “latest incident,” and at still others it outlines the history of the problem leading up to some current crisis. This description of the trouble expresses the teller’s upset and discontent with the troubling party and highlights particular reasons why he or she feels this way, thereby delivering an indirect complaint about the troubling party to the outsider. The outsider in turn is put in the position of having to respond to the claims and implications of the troubled party’s report and complaint. The following sections will examine these processes, first looking at the contingencies of selecting an outsider to hear one’s troubles, then presenting a case study of the interactional features of one troubles-telling, and finally examining the problematics of aligning in troubles-tellings.

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