Explore the vast range of titles available.

This article examines how third-party complaints were responded to by counsellors on a men’s relationship-counselling helpline. Much prior conversation analytic research has shown that third-party complaints in institutional settings are embedded in other activities and treated as secondary to the main interactional business. As such, complaints are routinely responded to with a shift to a new, institutionally relevant activity (e.g. the reason for the call/visit). In the context examined here, however, the third-party complaints constituted callers’ reasons for call. We show that, as in many other institutional contexts, counsellors do not, commonly, affiliate with callers’ complaints in the sense of displaying a similar stance towards a described third party. However, unlike in other settings that have been examined, counsellors’ responses did not result in an immediate shift away from callers’ complaints. This was primarily because, following counsellors’ non-affiliative responses, callers regularly engaged in work to pursue affiliation.

Recent discursive research suggests that contemporary racism is typically accomplished in terms of subtle, flexibly managed and locally contingent discussion of the 'problems' associated with minority groups. This study contributes to this work by focusing on the ways in which a particular formulation: 'the possibility of change' was repeatedly implicated in descriptions of two 'riots' that received widespread media attention in Australia: one involving Indigenous, and the other involving non-Indigenous, community members. Data were drawn from a corpus of newspaper articles, television and radio interviews, and parliamentary debates. Analysis demonstrated how, in respect to the event involving Indigenous Australians, 'change' was repeatedly represented as an outcome that was not achievable. By contrast, descriptions of problems within the non-Indigenous community regularly represented 'change' as an achievable outcome. We discuss how discourses around 'the possibility of change' can thus be seen as another identifiable practice in terms of which 'modern' forms of racism are regularly accomplished in media discourse.

This study examined the impact of computers on rheumatologist–patient communication. Fifteen rheumatologist–patient consultations were videotaped and analysed qualitatively. Patients routinely ceased their reporting on a particular topic when the rheumatologist's body and gaze were reoriented toward the computer. Rheumatologists employed the computer to direct the consultation, whilst patients took advantage of spaces in the consultation created by the physician's use of the computer to continue talking, often involving extended pain reporting. These findings are discussed in relation to the potential impact of the computer in the consultation.

This study examined the impact of computers on rheumatologistâ[euro]\"patient communication. Fifteen rheumatologistâ[euro]\"patient consultations were videotaped and analysed qualitatively. Patients routinely ceased their reporting on a particular topic when the rheumatologist's body and gaze were reoriented toward the computer. Rheumatologists employed the computer to direct the consultation, whilst patients took advantage of spaces in the consultation created by the physician's use of the computer to continue talking, often involving extended pain reporting. These findings are discussed in relation to the potential impact of the computer in the consultation.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Background The aim of this project was to explore the process of change in a busy community dental clinic following a team development intervention designed to improve the management of student supervision during clinical placements. Methods An action research model was used. Seven members of a community dental clinic team (three dentists, two dental therapists, one dental assistant and the clinic manager), together with the university clinical placement supervisor participated in the team development intervention. The intervention consisted of two profiling activities and associated workshops spread six months apart. These activities focused on individual work preferences and overall team performance with the aim of improving the functioning of the clinic as a learning environment for dental students. Evaluation data consisted of 20 participant interviews, fourteen hours of workplace observation and six sets of field notes. Following initial thematic analysis, project outcomes were re-analysed using activity theory and expansive learning as a theoretical framework. Results At project commencement students were not well integrated into the day-to-day clinic functioning. Staff expressed a general view that greater attention to student supervision would compromise patient care. Following the intervention greater clinical team cohesion and workflow changes delivered efficiencies in practice, enhanced relationships among team members, and more positive attitudes towards students. The physical layout of the clinic and clinical workloads were changed to achieve greater involvement of all team members in supporting student learning. Unexpectedly, these changes also improved clinic functioning and increased the number of student placements available. Conclusions In navigating the sequential stages of the expansive learning cycle, the clinical team ultimately redefined the ‘object’ of their activity and crossed previously impervious boundaries between healthcare delivery and student supervision with benefits to all parties.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an internationally recognised method for treating depression. However, many of the techniques involved in CBT are accomplished within the therapy interaction in diverse ways, and with varying consequences for the trajectory of therapy session. This paper uses conversation analysis to examine some standard ways in which therapists propose suggestions for behavioural change to clients attending CBT sessions for depression in Australia. Therapists’ proposal turns displayed their subordinate epistemic authority over the matter at hand, and emphasised a high degree of optionality on behalf of the client in accepting their suggestions. This practice was routinely accomplished via three standard proposal turns: (1) hedged recommendations; (2) interrogatives; and (3) information-giving. These proposal turns will be examined in relation to the negotiation of behavioural change, and the implications for CBT interactions between therapist and client will be discussed.

At the public announcement of the completion of a draft map of the human genome (June 2000), Craig Venter, Head of Celera Genomics and chief private scientist involved with the Human Genome Project, claimed that 'race' was not a scientifically valid construct. This statement, based on an analysis of the genomes of five people of different ethnicities, has not served to end the considerable discussion and debate surrounding the concept of 'race'. Using a social constructionist and critical discursive approach, this study analyses text and talk associated with the debate on the scientific validity of the concept 'race'. Given the problematic and highly contested nature of this concept, the present research examines, closely and in detail, a range of ways in which constructions of truth are worked up in scientific discourse. In particular, we analyse the ways in which empiricist and contingent repertoires within scientific discourse are mobilized to establish and contest claims of objectivity and facticity. We also examine a range of rhetorical devices deployed by protagonists in the debate to warrant particular truth claims including quantification rhetoric and the 'Truth Will Out Device' (TWOD). We conclude that despite the promissory representation of the Human Genome Project as having produced scientific evidence to discredit the biological legitimacy of 'race', the concept is likely to persist in both popular and scientific usage.

This article focuses on the rhetorical and argumentative organization of a major political address by the Prime Minister of Australia on the topics of reconciliation and apologizing to the Stolen Generations of Indigenous peoples. The analysis documents the interpretative repertoires that were mobilized to argue around these sensitive, controversial issues in a public forum, in particular the deployment of discursive formulations of 'togetherness', of 'culture' and of 'nation'. The analysis also demonstrates the ways in which a limited number of rhetorically self-sufficient arguments, identified in recent studies of the language of contemporary racism, was mobilized in this important public speech. We argue that the flexible use of such rhetorically self-sufficient arguments concerning practicality, equality, justice and progress worked to build up a particular version of reconciliation which functions to sustain and legitimate existing inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Australia.

The issue of ‘race’ has assumed an extraordinarily salient position in Australian politics since the election of the conservative Howard government in 1996. Central to debate in the Australian polity has been the nature of the relationship between indigenous, or Aboriginal, Australians and the rest of the population, in particular over the issue of the land rights of indigenous people. Land rights, or ‘native title’, assumed a pre‐eminent position in national political life in 1996/97 with the handing down by the High Court of the so‐called ‘Wik judgment’. The discursive management of the ensuing debate by Australia's political leaders is illuminative of key sites of interest in the analysis of political rhetoric and the construction of ‘racially sensitive’ issues. Taking the texts of ‘addresses to the nation’ on Wik by the leaders of the two major political parties as analytic materials, we examine two features of the talk. First, examine how the speakers manage their stake in the position they advance, with an extension of previous work on reported speech into the area of set‐piece political rhetoric. Second, in contrast to approaches which treat social categories as routine, mundane and unproblematic objects, we demonstrate the local construction of category memberships and their predicates as strategic moves in political talk. Specifically, we demonstrate how the categories of ‘Aborigines’ and ‘farmers’, groups central to the dispute, are strategically constructed to normatively bind certain entitlements to activity to category membership. Furthermore, inasmuch as such categories do not, in use, reflect readily perceived ‘objective’ group entities in the ‘real’ world, so too ‘standard’ discursive devices and rhetorical structures are themselves shown to be contingently shaped and strategically deployed for contrasting local, ideological and rhetorical ends.

The aim of this study was to compare the discursive repertoires for explicating teaching and learning that were preferred by university teachers and students. Fifty statements, reflecting Samuelowicz and Bain's (1992) five-dimensional model of conceptualisations of teaching and learning, were administered to 52 academic teachers and 125 students for ranking using a Q-sort procedure (McKeown and Thomas 1988). Statements were grouped, based upon varying gradations of endorsement, and then factor-analysed to identify common response patterns. In terms of the model formulated by Samuelowicz and Bain, the university teachers and students surveyed exhibited broadly different preferred repertoires. We argue, however, that the model is too simplistic, in its formulation of bipolar dimensions of teaching and learning, to capture the complexities of the preferences and practices of university teachers and students. A focus on complexity rather than descriptive reductionism, and an acceptance of the notion that people are inconsistent and variable in the accounts they give, is argued to be more likely to result in fruitful insights into the ways in which people construct pedagogical preferences and practices. The results indicate a need for continued exploration of the range of discourses surrounding teaching and learning in ways that pay attention to the local contextual frameworks within which these repertoires are acted out. (HRK/Abstract übernommen).