Counseling Online and Over the Phone: When Preclosing Questions Fail as a Closing Device

Abstract

In this article, we present an analysis of closings in two counseling media: online, text-based exchanges (usually referred to as “chat” sessions) and telephone calls. Previous research has found that the participant who initiated a conversation preferably also initiates its termination with a possible preclosing. Advice acknowledgments, lying in the epistemic domain of the client, are devices that may work as preclosings. However, in text-based chat clients regularly refrain from advice acknowledgment. While counselors use various practices to elicit advice acknowledgment in the context of potential advice resistance, hoaxing, and/or seemingly long pauses, these questions do not always succeed as “closing devices.” This offers an explanation for counselors’ perception of online chatting as more difficult than calling. The data are in Dutch with English translation.

We thank Trimbos Institute, and particularly Nathalie Dekker, for the collaboration in and commitment to the research project that resulted in, among other things, this article.

Notes

¹ The meaning of the emoticon “^o)” is unclear. It may contain a typing error and be intended as “^o^”, which means happy or joyful.

² Syntactically, this post consists of an assertion, but the question mark renders an agreement particularly relevant (see Stommel & Van Der Houwen, 2013).

³ Had the counselor not sent the “good luck” so quickly, the hope-formulation could have elicited an implicit advice acknowledgment (cf. practice 2).

⁴ The counselor does not produce another preclosing question to eventually close the session, but she uses extreme case formulations to rephrase her reassurance (“it will really be ok,” “really nothing could go wrong now”), which finally receives a “thank you” from the client.

⁵ These names refer to institutions for addiction care in the Netherlands.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Dutch Organization for Academic Research [Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek] (NWO) program Comprehensive Language Use (project BGRK-11-06).