Responding to What Is Left Implicit: Psychotherapists’ Formulations and Understanding Checks After Clients’ Turn-Final Että (“That/So”)

ABSTRACT

This article examines a specific linguistic practice in psychotherapy in Finnish: ending a turn at talk with että (“that” or “so”). Making että the final item leaves some aspect of the turn implicit and invites the recipient somehow to deal with that implication. This happens in everyday interactions generally. However, whereas in everyday conversation the recipient usually does not explicate the implicit content of the turn, in psychotherapy the therapist may draw out different aspects of the implicit content and offer it to the client for confirmation. We will show that these practices are in service of addressing the problematic contents in the client’s telling and in managing resistance. We argue that the ways in which therapists depart from the practices of everyday conversation to deal with the implicit can be seen as institutionally specific means of working with previously avoided themes and integrating them to the client’s self. Data are in Finnish with English translation.

Notes

¹ Walker et al. (2011) discuss examples such as Q: “Is Ann coming?” A: “Ehm- Ann is eh gone tih North Ohrmsby Market.” Indirect answers may, for example, be used to treat the inquiry as inapposite (as in the example) or to “uncover the perceived agenda or purpose of the prior turn.”

² Raymond (2004) describes the use of turn-final so as follows: They are “produced to project an unstated upshot and are produced in a position that anticipates some response from their recipient.”

³ According to Sorjonen (2015), the difference between nii et and et as a preface in candidate understandings is that the former suggests that the understanding is based on the prior speaker’s words; whereas the latter treats the arrival at the understanding as a joint process. Sorjonen’s data come from everyday conversation. (On candidate understandings/understanding checks as repair initiations, see Schegloff et al., 1977, p. 368; Benjamin, 2013, pp. 188–215; also Sidnell, 2010, pp. 132–133; Kitzinger, 2013, p. 249.)