Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Theory and method
- Generating theory: the social bond
- Generating theory: emotions and conflict
- 6 Gender wars: love and conflict in Much Ado About Nothing
- 7 Microanalysis of discourse: the case of Martha Johnson and her therapist
- 8 Conflict in family systems
- 9 Conclusion: integrating the human sciences
- Appendix
- References
- Index of authors
- Index of topics
- Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction
7 - Microanalysis of discourse: the case of Martha Johnson and her therapist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Theory and method
- Generating theory: the social bond
- Generating theory: emotions and conflict
- 6 Gender wars: love and conflict in Much Ado About Nothing
- 7 Microanalysis of discourse: the case of Martha Johnson and her therapist
- 8 Conflict in family systems
- 9 Conclusion: integrating the human sciences
- Appendix
- References
- Index of authors
- Index of topics
- Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction
Summary
This chapter connects the small parts of discourse, the words, gestures, thoughts and emotions to the larger whole of the relationship. I describe a model of attunement, the process through which interactants achieve (or fail to achieve) joint attention and feeling, and a methodology appropriate for studying it. Two separate but interrelated systems are involved, a system of communication which can lead to joint attention, and a system of deference which can lead to the sharing of feeling, processes which occur both between and within interactants.
Through prospective-retrospective and counterfactual methods, interactants appear to use the resources of an entire society in each encounter. Their ability to understand any given moment in reference to the extended context in which it occurs provides the link between the individual and social structure. Society is based on the minute and unexplicated events which make up the micro-world underlying ordinary discourse. Research on human action involves reference to this world, and requires methods similar to those the interactants use, part/whole methods, as well as systematic, analytic methods.
Social action and natural language
How are the actions of individuals translated into recurring patterns of collective behavior? How is social structure realized in the actions of individuals? These questions pose an obvious conceptual problem for the social sciences, since they involve the basic model of social behavior. Less obviously, also implicated is the methodology of social science. All empirical research implies a model of social action, since it is ultimately dependent on observations of individual behavior.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Emotions, the Social Bond, and Human RealityPart/Whole Analysis, pp. 170 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997