Grief participation rights and the social support hierarchy: Exploring the communicative role of the bereaved in a social support interaction

Abstract

This article explores how bereaved individuals co-construct social support and social norms in the social interaction of 14 bereavement group meetings in Denmark. To study this, we used a discourse analytical approach focusing on how the participants position their social supporters. The results show that the participants designate, uphold, and presuppose two hierarchical positions to bereaved and non-bereaved supporters with different abilities to understand them. Based on this finding, the concepts of “grief participation rights” and “social support hierarchy” are proposed to supplement existing notions of “rights to grieve” and “grief hierarchy.” These concepts suggest that non-bereaved supporters are not accorded the same participatory rights in social support conversations as bereaved individuals who have suffered a similar loss as the speaker. The concepts are discussed in relation to effective social support and in the context of research on social disconnection in grief.

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the participation of all support group members, group leaders, and institutions for their contributions to this project.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

Participants in this study did not provide written consent for all their data to be shared publicly; therefore, due to the sensitive nature of the research supporting data is unavailable.

Notes

1 Normativity is considered the normative judgments by which individuals attribute some actions or outcomes as desirable, good, or legitimate and others as undesirable, bad, or illegitimate.

2 Positioning is used equivalent to the discourse analytical terms of subject and discursive positions (Bamberg, 1997; Davies & Harré, 1990; Hollway, 1996).

3 In group 1, two participants dropped out during the course of meetings: one after the first meeting, another after the fourth meeting. This was due to (1) the participant experienced too big an age difference (too young) from the rest of the group, and (2) the participant got a new job and had to work when the meetings were held. In group 2, one participant dropped out after the fourth meeting due to illness.

4 par = support group participant

5 un = unidentified speaker (uncertain who the speaker is)

6 At the first group meeting, the group leaders invited the participants to present themselves, to share whom they lost and why they chose to attend a bereavement support group. HE was the first participant to respond to the invitation voluntarily, here accounting for why he wanted to attend the group.

7 Lead = group leader

Additional information

Funding

No financial funding was provided for the research, authorship, or publication of this paper.