Category Archives: 2016 Volume 49 Issue 3

Guest blog: Stuart Ekberg on digital psychotherapy

Can psychotherapy really be offered online, without seeing or hearing the other person? Is rapport possible? What does the therapeutic conversation look like? These are increasingly topical questions as therapists explore the affordances of the internet and email. In this fascinating guest blog, Stuart Ekberg introduces us  to the world of digital therapy in his report on the article in the new issue of ROLSI that he wrote with Alison R. G. Shaw, David S. Kessler, Alice Malpass and Rebecca K. Barnes.

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Stuart Ekberg, QUT, Brisbane

Talk is supposed to be central to psychotherapy – so much so that therapy has been described as ‘the talking cure’ since the 1890s. However central, this basic format has not been immune from digital disruption. Continue reading →

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Guest Blog: Lisa Mikesell on repair in conversation with dementia patients

Readers of the journal will often see Conversation Analysis applied to real-world problems, and in this guest blog, Lisa Mikesell reports on her work with patients with dementia. The full story is in her article in the current issue, and here she asks how   caregivers manage the delicate task of monitoring patients’ actions – and on occasion, correcting them when things go wrong.

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Lisa Mikesell, Rutgers University

I often work closely with clinicians, from neurologists to psychiatrists. I take a keen interest in how communicative and social behaviors are typically measured, and what those measures end up meaning clinically and practically to both providers and patients. Continue reading →

Guest blog: Bethan Benwell on patients’ small talk while being assessed for surgery

Even the most sober-sided institutional interaction can be infused with ordinary human concerns, expressed in everyday terms. In this very welcome guest blog trailing her and May MacCreaddie‘s article in the new issue of ROLSI, Bethan Benwell casts a humane yet analytic eye over the talk that goes on in a highly charged medical encounter. Continue reading →

Guest blog: Weatherall and Keevallik on claims about others’ mental states

Some forms of words are so completely familiar that we never notice the work they do. In this guest blog, Ann Weatherall and Leelo Keevallik make us look afresh at the formulation I [mental appreciation] that you X, where X is some state of mind – so things like I know that you’re angry, or  I thought that you’d like that and so on. Are they as innocent as they seem? Their article is in the latest issue, but to see how they got there, read on….

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Ann Weatherall, Victoria University of Wellington

This paper had a long and sometimes fraught gestation. In this blog we describe how the research began, the difficulties we encountered in defining/refining our target phenomenon and the challenges of establishing the interactional matter it was mobilised to address. The research process has been a roller coaster ride of highs from the thrill of discovery to the lows of (at first!) failing to convince reviewers. It is very satisfying to have the end result finally published. Continue reading →

Guest blog: Alexandra Kent and Kobin Kendrick on Imperatives

How do you get someone to do something? The range is from making a gentle hint through to barking out a peremptory order (and further on out to issuing an undisguised threat). In the latest issue of ROLSI Alexandra Kent and Kobin Kendrick tease out the subtle elements of actions done and undone in a blow-by-blow analysis of directives in interaction. Here Alexandra and Kobin recruit the British royals into an illustration of their study.

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Alexandra Kent, Keele University

During the 2016 Trooping the Colour Parade to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s official birthday, the British Royal Family stood on the Buckingham Palace Balcony together to watch an aircraft fly-past by the Royal Air Force (RAF). Continue reading →

Guest blog: Catrin Rhys on strange interview questions

Sometimes a Conversation Analysis study makes you realise that you’d seen an odd bit of talk somewhere, and half-registered it as being strange in some way. So I’m delighted that Catrin Rhys has written a guest blog on her article in the upcoming issue of ROLSI – on the strangeness of interviews in (British) football-land. 

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Catrin Rhys, University of Ulster

One of the joys of teaching is that students sometimes, usually unwittingly, deliver up golden nuggets of data. That was how I ended up analysing post-match interviewing in football, despite having absolutely no interest in football. Continue reading →