Doing vulnerability? Talk about risk behaviors & vulnerable topics in social work settings

This paper investigates talk about risk and vulnerable subjects in institutional interactions between health and social care workers and adults in vulnerable positions. People with dual diagnosis (mental illness and a comorbid substance use disorder), often find themselves in vulnerable and marginalized positions in society, many regularly engage in what can conventionally be labelled ‘risk behavior’ and statistically they are more likely to come in contact with police and be incarcerated than people with only one or none of these disorders. In this paper we explore the discursive construction of risk and vulnerability in encounters between people with dual diagnosis and how this underpins an ongoing negotiation and construction of practical trust (González-Martínez & Mlynář, 2019). Data are from a large corpus of video and audio recordings of naturally occurring interactions at an open prison, a municipal social psychiatric housing facility for people with dual diagnosis and a civil organization targeted at (ex)prisoners, who during imprisonment have decided to make a fresh start. Data are collected in the project Trust in (re)socializing interactions (#TIES). Using Conversation Analysis we explore the interactional strategies and practices employed by social workers and citizens when talking about risks and risk behavior and other vulnerable topics. The paper addresses the following question. How are risk and vulnerability co-constructed? Previous studies have pointed to interactional strategies for managing risk and vulnerable topics such as uptake to troubles talk (Jefferson & Lee, 1981); using cautious frasing (van Nijnatten & Suoninen, 2014); inter- or intra-turn pauses, intonation changes or repairs (Silverman & Peräkylä, 1990); trail-off “or” turn endings (Stokoe, 2010); and delivering advice as information (Silverman, 1997). However, the interactional work of upgrading, downgrading, and normalizing risk and vulnerable topics in social work talk about behavior and circumstances conventionally linked to risk is understudied. In our data we show how interactants discuss, evaluate, and relativize the residents' risk behavior; what we in these interactions may infer about the vulnerability of the residents, and thus how an ongoing negotiation and in situ orientation to both individual trustworthiness (Nielsen & Nielsen, 2022) and mutual trust (Jørgensen, 2017, 2018) may be accomplished. Our findings contribute to the understanding of risk talk in social work settings, interactionellay constructed vulneravility as well as the interactional construction of practical trust. References: González-Martínez, E., & Mlynář, J. (2019). Practical trust. Social Science Information, 58(4), 608630. https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018419890565 Jefferson, G., & Lee, J. R. E. (1981). The Rejection of Advice: Managing the Problematic Conversion of a “Troubles Telling” and a “Service Encounter”. Journal of Pragmatics, 5, 399 - 422. Jørgensen, S. (2017). Det er jo rarest at vi er enige om at der er brug for at samarbejde—PhD afhandling [PhD]. https://aauforlag.dk/shop/phd-udgivelse/phd-by-sabine-joergensen.aspx Jørgensen, S. (2018). Tillid som samtalefænomen i socialt arbejde. uden for nummer, 2018(37), Article 37. Nielsen, M. F., & Nielsen, A. M. R. (2022). Revisiting Trustworthiness in Social Interaction. Routledge. Silverman, D. (1997). Discourses of Counselling: HIV Counselling as Social Interaction. London: Sage. Silverman, D., & Peräkylä, A. (1990). AIDS counselling: The interactional organisation of talk about “delicate” issues. Sociology of Health & Illness, 12, 293–318. https://doi.org/10.1111/14679566.ep11347251 Stokoe, E. (2010). “Have You Been Married, or …?”: Eliciting and Accounting for Relationship Histories in Speed-Dating Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 43(3), 260–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2010.497988 van Nijnatten, C., & Suoninen, E. (2014). Delicacy. I C. Hall, K. Juhila, M. Matarese, & C. Nijnatten (Red.), Analyzing Social Work Communication (1–1). Routledge.