Using a discursive and ethnomethodological analytic framework, this article explores the social construction of moral transgression and moral meanings in the context of coming to terms with the recent communist past in Eastern Europe. This article illustrates some significant aspects of everyday uses of morality and the socio-communicative organization of public judgements on moral transgression. The article considers the range of public reactions and commentaries to a public confession of having been an informer for the former Romanian secret police. Moral (...) reasoning around transgression takes several forms: a) invoking everyday psychological categories and morally implicative descriptions associated with identities of persons and actions; b) drawing upon culturally available metaphors and images with roots in Judaeo-Christian ethics and morality; c) using the wider political context of coming to terms with the past as foundation and criterion for moral judgement. This article argues that rather than attempting to analyse moral judgement in abstract, one must focus on the everyday constructions and uses of morality found in social interaction and social responses to moral transgression. (shrink)

The article analyzes an interactional form of tunnel vision or cognitive bias in a series of mundane police–suspect interactions. The data come from a murder case in which the suspect, later convicted and then released from prison with the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, frequently calls police detectives to inquire about his confiscated van. As he is operating in a context in which accusations are rarely made explicit, we highlight the suspect’s use of a complaint-denial device to tacitly claim (...) innocence. The police respond by focusing on the complaint rather than the denial part of the device. The use of the complaint-denial device is compared to more formal inquiries in which accusations are overt. We discuss the implications of a sociological understanding of cognitive bias – how it may operate in practices of talk and social interaction during informal encounters – for other criminal justice settings. (shrink)

BackgroundHealth decisions occur in a context with omnipresent social influences. Information concerning what other patients decide may present certain interventions as more desirable than others.ObjectivesTo explore how physicians refer to what other people decide in conversations about the relevancy of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation or do-not-attempt-resuscitation orders.MethodsWe recorded forty-three physician–patient admission interviews taking place in a hospital in French-speaking Switzerland, during which CPR is discussed. Data was analysed with conversation analysis.ResultsReference to what other people decide in regards to CPR is used five (...) times, through reported speech. The reference is generic, and employed as a resource to deal with trouble encountered with the patient’s preference, either because it is absent or potentially incompatible with the medical recommendation. In our data, it is a way for physicians to present decisional paths and to steer towards the relevancy of DNAR orders. By calling out to a sense of membership, it builds towards the patient embracing norms that are associated with a desirable or relevant social group.ConclusionsIntroducing DNAR decisions in terms of what other people opt for is a way for physicians to bring up the eventuality of allowing natural death in a less overt way. Formulating treatment choices in terms of what other people do has implications in terms of supporting autonomous and informed decision making, since it nudges patients towards conformity with what is presented as the most preferable choice on the basis of social norms. (shrink)

Drawing on insights from conversation analysis, discursive psychology and social psychology, this article describes some interactional features of two celebrity TV confessionals and the resources used by the TV interviewers and celebrity guests to attribute, accept or deny responsibility for their transgressions. The analytic interest lies in how confessions are locally and interactionally managed, that is, how ‘doing confessing’ is achieved in the television interview context. We show how the host’s opening turn constrains the celebrity guest’s contribution and secures overt (...) admission of guilt, while simultaneously inviting the celebrity guest to tell their side of the story. We also show how celebrity guests produce descriptions which minimize the extent and severity of their transgressions, reduce agency and transform the character of their transgression. In doing so, we argue that celebrity interviewees can convey mitigations and extenuations which diminish the extent of their responsibility – calling into question the very nature of their confession. We propose that our findings demonstrate the hybrid nature of interviewing in the celebrity TV confessional and contribute to our understanding of how ‘doing confessing’ in the public eye is discursively and interactionally negotiated. (shrink)

The present study provides an ethnomethodologically informed respecification of intention in the context of architectural education. The analyses focus on the ways in which participants deal with the relation between formulations of intention and designed objects. Claimed mismatches between stated intention and design make relevant instructional sequences elaborating alternative ways of understanding the design and possible routes by which articulated intentions could have been realized. The practice of topicalizing intentions appears to be a technique by which aspects of architectural competence (...) are made visible and instructed. In particular, the practice makes otherwise unattended aspects of the design process accountably available for assessment and remark. Furthermore, the complexities of architectural consequence in relation to individual design decisions are addressed as an instructional matter. The study expands existing work on intention ascription and avowal by examining a setting where participants deal with the intentional status of designed objects. It is argued that the analyzed assessment sequences are shaped and organized with reference to the particularities of architectural knowledge as well as to the educational character of the activity. Their basic logic, however, is grounded in ordinary understandings of action and intentionality. (shrink)

When citizens are pulled over by police for traffic violations, they often volunteer accounts for their driving conduct. These accounts convey important character qualities about the citizen, as well as exigencies that motivate officer response. We use the method of conversation analysis to show that where a citizen positions an account in the course of an encounter is subject to different interactional-organizational constraints, which in turn afford citizens different resources for self-presentation. We also show that officers are sensitive to citizens’ (...) accounts and respond to them in differentiated ways. In addition to being a resource for self-presentation, citizens’ volunteered accounts are a resource for motivating and shaping police action. (shrink)