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RECURSIVE FRAME ANALYSIS: a Qualitative Research Method for Mapping Change-Oriented Discourse Nova Southeastern University NSUWorks The Qualitative Report Books The Qualitative Report 2015 RECURSIVE FRAME ANALYSIS: A Qualitative Research Method for Mapping Change-Oriented Discourse Hillary Keeney The Keeney Institute for Healing, [email protected] Bradford Keeney The Keeney Institute for Healing, [email protected] Ronald Chenail Nova Southeastern University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr_books Part of the Community-Based Learning Commons, Community-Based Research Commons, and the Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons NSUWorks Citation Keeney, Hillary; Keeney, Bradford; and Chenail, Ronald, "RECURSIVE FRAME ANALYSIS: A Qualitative Research Method for Mapping Change-Oriented Discourse" (2015). The Qualitative Report Books. 1. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr_books/1 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the The Qualitative Report at NSUWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Qualitative Report Books by an authorized administrator of NSUWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RECURSIVE FRAME ANALYSIS A Qualitative Research Method for Mapping Change-Oriented Discourse Hillary Keeney, Bradford Keeney, and Ronald Chenail RECURSIVE FRAME ANALYSIS: A Qualitative Research Method for Mapping Change‐Oriented Discourse Hillary Keeney, Bradford Keeney, and Ronald Chenail 1 Acknowledgement Hillary Keeney and Bradford Keeney would like to express their gratitude and appreciation to Pedro Vargas Avalos and Clara Haydee Solis Ponce for their support of this work. They and their colleagues have sponsored our teaching at the Department of Clinical Psychology, Universidad Nacional de Mexico (UNAM), F.E.S. Zaragoza, where many of the ideas in this book were able to develop. Ronald Chenail would like to recognize the contributions Jan Southern Chenail, his late wife, made to his development as a husband, father, and friend; as well as to becoming a better writer, speaker, teacher, and thinker. Even though she passed away in 2013, their thirty‐year marriage suggests just because something doesn’t last forever, doesn’t mean it wasn’t perfect. Hillary, Bradford, and Ronald also would like to thank Rebecca J. Allison, Melissa Rosen, and Laura Patron for the work on the production of the final manuscript for this book; Michele Gibney for her efforts in creating the TQR Books web site and managing the publishing of the book; and Adam Rosenthal for his artistic and marketing efforts with the book. 2 RECURSIVE FRAME ANALYSIS: A Qualitative Research Method for Mapping Change‐Oriented Discourse Hillary Keeney, Bradford Keeney, and Ronald Chenail 3 Contents Prelude: Distinguishing the Primary Distinction ......................................... 5 Invitation to Response‐Ability........................................................................ 13 1. Introduction to Recursive Frame Analysis .............................................. 17 2. Methodological Basics .................................................................................. 39 a. Distinctions, Frames and Transitional Linkages ................................................. 39 b. Plot Lines and Recursion ...................................................................................... 50 c. Domains of Analysis ............................................................................................... 59 d. RFA Procedural Guidelines .................................................................................. 68 e. The RFA Score ....................................................................................................... 70 3. Analysis of a Session: “Magmore” .............................................................. 82 4. Analysis of a Session: Selling a Cancer .................................................... 146 5. Analysis of a Session: Seeing a Ghost ...................................................... 174 6. Further Considerations of Recursive Frame Analysis ......................... 206 Appendix ........................................................................................................... 218 How to Create Recursive Frame Analysis Figures with Microsoft Office SmartArt Graphics Tool .......................................................................................................... 218 References ........................................................................................................ 232 4 Prelude: Distinguishing the Primary Distinction In 1969 George Spencer‐Brown proposed the groundbreaking idea that a “universe cannot be distinguished from how we act upon it” (1969, p. v). He was referring to how a universe – whether linguistic, mathematical, physical, or biological – comes into being the moment a distinction is made, that is, any attempt to distinguish or separate whatever is regarded, proposed, defined, perceived, found, decided, allowed, or intended as different. Furthermore, since “the boundaries can be drawn anywhere we please,” any reality is subject to change, “like shifting sand beneath our feet” (p. v). To understand a change‐oriented conversation, whether it takes place in therapy, counseling, social work, diplomacy, community relations, mediation, or elsewhere, we must identify the first distinction that sets in motion the subsequently elaborated network and weave of distinctions that eventually constitute a conversational reality. In the beginning of a conversation, a distinction is made that can serve as a foundational starting point. For example, a client begins by saying “I have a problem,” “Others say I have a problem,” “I am a problem,” or “My therapist says my problem is the problem.” All these variations of an opening utterance propose the primary distinction of “problem.” In the beginning of a conversation, an initial distinction is only a distinction. A practitioner can then re‐ distinguish the client’s distinction and enter into its theme, building up further discourse that maintains a focus on a problem‐distinguished reality. Or another distinction can be offered such as “I like your shoes,” “Your middle name is longer than your first name,” or “I’m not sure we got enough rainfall last year.” These latter 5 distinctions are likely not to be associated with the client’s initial distinction. If these variant distinctions are given further attention and elaboration, we drift away from a problem‐distinguished conversational reality and possibly initiate the construction of an unexpected contextual orientation. What one needs to know about any conversational reality is already present in the first conversational moves. Whether we feed (re‐distinguish) or starve (ignore) a distinction helps determine where the conversation will go. How we participate and interact with distinctions contributes to whatever reality the client and practitioner both face. Specifically, the stage is initially set with distinctions and potential frames, and how we act determines what is distinguished, re‐ distinguished, extinguished, framed, and unframed. We are more responsible than we may have previously assumed for bringing forth a conversational reality. In the beginning, a distinction is made and we either accept it or we offer an alternative. Whatever the case, within seconds or minutes a distinction grows into something larger than a mere distinction – it moves toward becoming a frame. A distinction that is re‐distinguished becomes more distinguished than before; each subsequent re‐distinguishing contributes to it becoming more “real” until it becomes experientially realized as “thing‐like,” reified as more than a conceptual abstraction. For example, distinguishing that a problem is “truly” a problem leads to the further “hardening” of problem‐distinguished discourse, whether it examines historical origins, social involvement, attempted solutions, fantasized solutions, or anything at all related to its absence or presence. As this activity of re‐distinguishing or re‐indication proliferates, the original distinction 6 moves past being a mere distinction. It grows and becomes a contextual frame that holds all the distinctions of similar kind. In other words, a singular distinction shifts to being a class or set of distinctions. In this example, a problem distinction becomes a problem frame. The problem with problems, whether regarded as internal or external to the agents experiencing them, lies not in their presumed nature, cause, or locale, but in their becoming contextual frames rather than distinctions. Existentially, life hosts the ongoing entry, exit, and re‐entry of innumerable problems; suffering is unavoidable. As long as life is bigger than its problems, we are able to have more creative movement inside life. However, when a problem grows into being the primary contextual frame, we find our life unnecessarily constrained and impoverished. Drawn out with an illustration, clients often come to a practitioner with this framing of their life: Without knowing it, they seek a frame reversal where life becomes the primary frame that holds its distinctions, including those that are named problems: 7 The above diagram is the simplest sketch of change‐oriented conversation. It aims to de‐contextualize life as held inside a problem (or impoverished, unnecessarily limited, or suffering) frame and move problems inside the more resourceful and expansive framing of the whole of life. Recursive frame analysis (RFA) begins with the primary distinction
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