Troubles-Complaints and the Overall Structural Organization of Troubles-Remedy Sequences

ABSTRACT

Reporting troubles can be used as a vehicle for accomplishing many different kinds of actions. In some cases, troubles may be raised to engender practical courses of action—that is, to mobilize some form of remedy or assistance from the recipient to deal with those troubles. In this article, we focus on instances of troubles reports in institutional encounters that are hearable as delivering troubles-complaints. We illustrate how the extended troubles-remedy sequences through which these troubles-complaints are implemented are designed to mobilize an offer of some form of practical action to remedy or assist with those troubles. We propose that although the troubles-remedy sequences are locally produced and involve different situated contingencies, they exhibit a recurrent overall structural organization that arises through sequence expansions of those troubles-complaints, which orients to resolving practical or material troubles, as well as institutional resistance to doing just that. Data are in English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Although the specific participants involved in the interactions we collected necessarily limit the potential generalizability of our findings, we found little evidence, if any, of an orientation to cultural difference or grammatical infelicities on the part of the co-participants, perhaps because the focus of the encounters we examined was on resolving real-world troubles. Interestingly, grammatical (and possible pragmatic) infelicities were not limited to the Saudi EAL speakers, but were also produced by their Australian co-participants. In a small number of cases, these grammatical and potential pragmatic infelicities appeared to impact the local organization of particular sequences within those encounters. However, further consideration of these cases lies outside of the scope this article.

² Ethical clearance from the University of Queensland for this data collection was obtained on October 11, 2016.

³ The remaining 20 recordings involved requests for advice or information, including inquiries about internet plans, electricity, phone or gas bill charges, medical information concerning the side effects of vaccinations and following up on blood test results, and the working hours of staff members, along with attempts to book appointments.

⁴ Although troubles-complaints might also conceivably occasion apologies, displays of empathy and agreement, counter-complaints, or attempts to circumvent or suppress those complaints, we did not observe any such responses in our dataset.

⁵ Co-participants only pursue culpability for the troubles in cases when the troubles-recipient denies responsibility for remedying those troubles. Detailed consideration of this issue, however, lies outside of the scope of this article.

⁶ Of course, not all troubles-complaints necessarily bring about offers of assistance, a point we will address when discussing how troubles-remedy sequences are closed in cases when recipients decline to proffer assistance through denials, accounts or offers of advice.

⁷ We have just two cases in our collection in which the troubles-remedy seeker explicitly announces the purpose of their approach is to make a complaint.

⁸ The assistance the customer is attempting to mobilize is for the travel agent to approach the airline about the matter. Whether he has sufficient grounds to be expecting such a refund is something that is worked through in the course of this troubles-remedy sequence.

⁹ These will only be briefly discussed here due to limitations of space.