Constructing and validating troubles

As indicated in the previous section, initiating an episode of troubles talk is only possible with the cooperation and co-construction of several team members. Team members can reject or ignore a topic or can refuse to construct something as a trouble even if one team member treats a topic as such. Thus, in order for a troubles talk episode to begin, at least some members of

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the team need to agree that indeed there is a trouble deserving of attention and interactional space. The next extract provides a good example on how this can be done in a team.

5.4-1 P2_M6_E11: Three hours into the team meeting

2972 Jay: Okay (.) Any more points for volume? 2973 (5.0)

2974 David: I'm gonna be honest with you (.) I'm losing=

2975 Bruno: =losing [it

2976 David: [losing interest in this 2977 Akshya: yeah

2978 Jay: yeah

2979 Bev: hhhh [laughing and crying at the same time]

The troubles talk episode is initiated by David (line 2974) with a self-disclosure after a prolonged silence, indicating his loss of interest. Bruno immediately agrees by trying to complete David’s sentence adding “losing it” while David continues with “losing interest”, but nonetheless clearly aligns himself with the sentiment David is expressing. Akshya and Jay also are quick to add their agreement in line 2977 and 2978 while Bev reinforces the trouble with some rather desperate sounding laughter in line 2979 that seems to suggest that she has been at this point for a while, but also injects some humour into the situation. For all accounts and purposes, we have a quick and basically flawless introduction of a trouble that gets immediately accepted and validated not only as a legitimate trouble but even as a shared trouble that affects every member of the team (Alden stays silent here, but adds to the episode later on). From a rapport management perspective, we have a number of domains managed effectively: Discursively the topic is immediately taken up, in regards to participation a number of speakers take turns and seem to be heard in addition to Bruno’s attempt to complete David’s utterance; stylistically we have plenty of alignment with the mirrored “losing” and “yeah”, in addition to some humour. From an illocutionary perspective we see a self-disclosure by David that gets introduced with “I’m gonna be honest” thus positioning him in a positive light despite the potential face-loss by mentioning his losing interest, which gets mitigated with Bruno’s alignment in line 2975 anyways. Thus, rapport seems not only to not have been harmed but was probably enhanced not only by the way the talk played out but also by the discovery of common ground (“we are all tired”) and by the initiation of a discussion to jointly adjust their goals for this meeting.

It should be noted that there are not many examples of troubles talk in the data where the validation of a trouble runs as smoothly as here; in most cases more negotiation takes place to settle on a trouble and on the severity attributed to it. I will deal with this later in section 5.5.1. For now, I will turn to some of the features common in troubles construction and validation and the joint narration of a troubles talk that follows as soon as a trouble is sufficiently validated.

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Validation can comprise a number of different features. In the last example explicit agreement was prominent through agreement tokens and vicarious utterance completion, while Bev’s laughter added to the severity of the trouble, thus validating it further. The following example provides a very different validation of a topic as a trouble. We have seen the initiation of this troubles episode above in section 5.3.3 where Akshya repeatedly fails to gain uptake, but a troubles talk episode gets established after David starts laughing desperately. However, after initiating the episode, instead of David developing a narrative on the trouble or a justification for treating it as a trouble, this becomes jointly constructed by the team. Fascinatingly, despite the absence of a single person developing a full narrative, over the course of the interaction enough contextual information is provided to understand the nature of the trouble as an outsider. Thus, bit by bit a shared narrative is composed by all interactants that they all seem to accept as true.

5.4-2 P2_M1_E3: Bruno and Alden have just stepped outside to get coffees, so only Jay, Akshya, David and Bev are present

56 Jay: oh God it's happening again (.) just give me a second to sort this stuff out

57 (5.0) [sounds of somebody banging equipment - presumably Jay "sorting it out"]

58 David: hhhhh

59 Akshya: what happened? hhh 60 Jay: David's crying

61 David: I want to shake him (.) I want to find him (.) and shake him 62 ((laughter))

63 Bev: Shake his (xxx) 64 David: WHY?

65 Bev: hhhh

66 Akshya: we actually HAD a session to solve those (.) question papers 67 David: what's what's the point?

68 Akshya: I mean like (.) EXACTLY! 69 David: what is the point?

70 Akshya: He could have at least told during the session "guys this is all fine/ but the test is gonna be different/ and it's gonna be harder" 71 Bev: Hhh

72 David: yeah it's gonna be a lot [harder

73 Jay: [No that that's what I was telling him/ I think he did more bad than good by sharing previous years' papers because we were all like really confident

74 Akshya: YEAH (.) [and then

75 David: [last year (.) They must have all gotten really good marks last year

76 Bev: I know 77 Jay: yeah 78 Akshya: yeah

79 David: and then they must have been like "oh we can't have this" hhhh 80 ((laughter))

94 82 Bev: no it isn't [so long as we...

83 David: [AT no point did he say it's gonna be a lot more difficult

84 Jay: a lot is an understatement 85 David: Jesus! (.) FUCKING tittie a::h

86 Jay: you're gonna punch someone aren't you? hh 87 Bev: hhh you need a punching bag

This fairly long extract provides a good example of the joint construction of a narrative. The laughter in line 62 coming from all members of the team in response to David’s “I want to shake him I want to find him and shake him” functions as a validation that this is an acceptable topic to pursue and also indicates an affiliation with the trouble. Interestingly, no explanation as to who David is referring to is given although this topic has not come up in the 50 turns that occurred since team members have entered the room. Enfield (2009) suggests that such elliptic utterances are important in minimising interactional distance as they indicate how much ground is shared between interlocutors. As an analyst the initial utterances might seem rather obscure but gradually the story then gets revealed by different speakers adding different points to the story.

Instead of a re-telling of the story by one participant the team members compose a narrative together of having written an exam (which never gets made explicit), for which the professor even bothered to have a special preparation class (line 66) in which he showed last year’s exam paper (line 73) that was so easy that students underestimated the difficulty of the actual exam (line 70-72 & line 83) and have likely now performed a lot worse than they otherwise would have (line 73) for which they assign blame to the professor (line 61). David spins the narrative even further by introducing a fictitious story of what happened last year after the exams (line 75 & 79). What seems striking is that despite them referring to a context they perceive to be shared, so many details are nonetheless made explicit. Team members are not exchanging new information here though, instead they are presenting their own interpretation and checking whether others’ interpretations align. With this they are not only creating a shared understanding and common ground but also a sense of solidarity after jointly having experienced something they perceive as unfair.

Troubles thus get progressively more defined and explicit over the course of the interaction. The trouble could be constructed to be “the exam” or one’s own performance but led by David the team constructs the professor’s “misleading” behaviour as the “real” trouble, thus creating a shared understanding of the situation that has not necessarily existed before. We have only one disagreement on the assessment of the trouble at the end. Akshya states in line 81 “oh God (.) this is bad”, a fairly unspecific but quite negative assessment. Such an assessment (especially when it is fairly general) tends to be contested across the data set and indeed, Bev disagrees by saying: “no it isn't so long as we” (line 82). With this she makes a move towards closing the troubles sequence and focusing away from the trouble towards a more solution- oriented approach. This could be problematic from a rapport management perspective as Bev

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is disaffiliating from the team with this move. At the same time, one could argue that Akshya’s negativity might negatively affect group mood and thus could threaten rapport. Jefferson discusses this behaviour in terms of the convergence of troubles talk and a service encounter (Jefferson & Lee, 1981), highlighting that these moves towards advice giving or towards a solution tend to index a move towards a closure of the episode and are thus often ignored if they come too early in a troubles sequence. And in fact, in line 81 we see that Bev gets interrupted half way through by David who seems not done discussing the topic. At the same time, Bev’s statement foreshadows the nearing end of the episode and initiates a negotiation of the troubles assessment in terms of the severity of the troubles.

The entire episode has up to this point been characterised by lots of laughter. This seems surprising as the trouble they are discussing could be considered very serious and with a direct impact on team members’ marks. Nonetheless, utterances are frequently accompanied by the producers’ laughter and in line 58 and line 79 are received by loud laughter from all team members present. The moment somebody, in this case Akshya in line 81, produces a non- humorous negative assessment, however, it gets immediately rejected by another team member.

While Bev seems unwilling to allow a too negative framing of the troubles and thus disagrees in line 82, David is not yet done with the elaboration of the troubles, making a more explicit complaint about the professor in line 83. Jay agrees first (line 84) but in line 85 David changes his tone, which had started out quite humorous and produces a very negative assessment with some very strong language that is not accompanied by laughter. David now sounds actually angry and there is an immediate move by both Jay and Bev to distance themselves from David and his more severe and angry assessment of the troubles by stating: “you're gonna punch someone aren't you? hh” (line 86) and “hhh you need a punching bag” (line 87). While the first part of the troubles episode firmly established team members as jointly sharing a trouble, pronoun use now establishes David as the only one who could punch somebody or who needs a punching bag.

Before this relationally possibly more problematic end, we can see however how the collaborative style with which the participation-domain is handled plays an important part in enhancing solidarity and is crucial in establishing a shared story and the accompanying sense of solidarity. If the floor had not been shared here, and instead one person had told the story alone it seems unlikely that the same degree of humour could have been achieved or that there would have been the same amount of convergence in people’s perspectives. The shared floor with mostly short turns and quick speaker changes allows for the joint construction of the story in the first place. In a sense the degree with which the floor is shared and the story is constructed jointly by the group seems to affect the more general sense of togetherness and sharedness as indicated by the frequent laughter and overall happy seeming team mates. When this changes in line 85 with David’s apparent anger we see that team members politely and humorously, but also quickly, disaffiliate. This is probably in order to avoid being put in

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a position where an association with David’s anger might cause them to lose face, but also may be because the rapport enhancing orientation they have displayed does not match with the negative emotions David displays. Like Bev’s disaffiliation from Akshya in line 82 this is another example of a disaffiliation from a team member’s utterance that could threaten some of the rapport achieved in the interaction.

While one could read this as a rapport harming move when looking at the disaffiliation itself, when looking at its context it becomes, to the contrary, a rapport maintaining move, as rapport maintenance at the group level is prioritised over the relationship between the dyad. It should be noted though that both Bev and Jay also work on saving David’s face by injecting humour into their disaffiliative responses.

I will now turn to another collaborative form of dealing with troubles talk, that seems to complement shared story-telling or replace it where shared story-telling is not possible.