Troubles Announcements and Reasons for Calling: Initial Actions in Opening Sequences in Calls to a National Children's Helpline

Abstract

Calls to emergency assistance providers, and helplines more generally, have typically been analyzed from the assumption that for both caller and call taker, the primary orientation is the reason for the call. For the caller, this is one of seeking, and for the call taker, that of attempting to provide some specified help, assistance, or advice. In this article, we draw on the opening sequences on calls to “Kids Help Line,” a national Australian helpline and counseling service for children and young persons aged between 5 and 18, to show this assumption as problematic for this service. The helpline operates from a child-centered organizational philosophy, we care, we listen, rather than we can solve your problems. Unlike many helplines in which an explicit offer of help is made in the call taker's opening turn, the Kids Help Line counselors provide only an organizational identification. The consequence of this design is that the onus is placed on the caller to account for the call, a process that typically involves the announcement or description of a trouble or problem and then, delivered separately, a specific reason for the call. In particular, we identify one construction in which the caller formulates their reason for the call with a claim to the effect that they do not to know what to do. Utterances such as this work, we argue, as sequence closing devices, a method by which the caller demonstrates the trouble has been adequately described and that they are now ready for counseling advice. We investigate the structural and sequential features of the opening turns that provide for the occurrence of this particular accounting work.

Notes

A reviewer raised the intriguing question as to whether the widespread adoption of cell (mobile) phones may be resulting in changes to the canonical order of these sequences. We accept that this may be a possibility, but it is not a matter we can enter into in this article. Moreover, we take solace from Schegloff's (2002) observation in his contribution to an edited collection dealing with mobile communication (Katz & Aakhus, 2002) that it would be essential for researchers investigating such technological developments to ground their data in already established analytical frameworks. Schegloff (2002)refers to

The long-term payoffs of setting new technological inventions in the proper context, an analytically conceived context. For they are like naturalistic versions of experimental stimuli: given precise analytical characterizations of the field into which they are introduced, their effect can be revelatory. Examined as objects in their own right, they may yield only noise. (p. 298).

In this sense, the continuing relevance of the canonical opening seems assured, if only for comparative purposes.

However, see Schegloff (1986, pp. 121-122) who argues that hi is not so much a informal variant of hello but something that is semantically closer to a yeah.

The delivery of the word “stay” on line 6 is marked, but we cannot conclusively say in what way. It appears to be a faint laughter particle, but there is also the possibility that it is closer to what Hepburn (2004) termed wobbly voice in which case it could indicate emotional distress. However, as there are no other features of crying evident in the call, we are inclined to the former description. See also Note 4 for further comment.

There are some additional aspects to the call that might also influence the CT's more cautious alignment. Both the occurrence of the laughter particle and the fact that the caller is with a friend are features that counselors orient to closely in the initial stages of calls. The helpline receives a considerable number of prank calls, and one resource that is utilized by counselors in identifying such calls is hearable information (e.g., background giggles and whispers) that the caller is not alone. In this case, although its status as an outright prank cannot be determined, it is possible that the CT has heard the news about the friend having no credit on her mobile phone as an indirect request for the helpline to somehow provide this. Warrant for this interpretation can be found later in the call after the caller has repeated the information about the lack of credit on the phone and therefore her inability to make contact with her friends. The counselor remarks as follows:

CT: I'm not really sure what we can do for you,

(0.4)

Ah I mean there's no way we can arrange to put (.) put any money on her phone.

(1.0)

A::h

(1.0)

If she wanted to make a call to a hostel or a youth hostel or something like that we might be able to do a three-way,

(0.2)

C: Ye:ah,

CT: But um

(1.4)

I don't think there's any way we can do three-ways with a whole bunch of her friends.

A detailed consideration of prank calls is beyond the scope of this article. For an initial discussion of this phenomenon, see Baker, Danby, and Emmison (2003).

A very small number of calls in our corpus concern matters about which additional, external, professional help may be warranted For example, a female caller reports being suicidal and the counselor, after almost an hour of talk, elicits an agreement from her that she will call the helpline again the following day.