THE INTERACTIVE ACHIEVEMENT OF MORALITY IN EVERYDAY TALK: A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MORAL PRACTICES AND PROBLEMS IN INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS by JESSICA SARAH ROBLES B.A., University of San Francisco, 2004 M.A., University of Essex, 2005 A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication 2011 This thesis entitled The Interactive Achievement of Morality in Everyday Talk: A Discourse Analysis of Moral Problems and Practices in Interpersonal Relationships written by Jessica Sarah Robles has been approved for the Department of Communication Robert T. Craig David Boromisza-Habashi Cindy H. White Karen Tracy Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. IRB protocol # 0909.9 iii Robles, Jessica Sarah (PhD, Communication) The Interactive Achievement of Morality in Everyday Talk: A Discourse Analysis of Moral Problems and Practices in Interpersonal Relationships Dissertation directed by Professor Robert T. Craig Abstract This project has two primary purposes. The first purpose is to formulate the key problems involved in enactments of morality in interpersonal interaction, and how these problems are constructed and managed in participants’ discursive practices. Based on a communicative perspective situated in a grounded practical theory approach (chapter 1), this project draws on literatures across the field of communication (chapter 2) and applies discourse analytic methods (chapter 3) to video recordings of interpersonal interactions. Results of these analyses indicate that doing morality involves confronting the problematic nature of difference with regard to the fundamental commitments of interaction (intersubjectivity, chapter 4); the conditions of the particular relationship and its closeness (intimacy, chapter 5); the judgment-inflected ideas and norms arising in cultural contexts (ideology, chapter 6); the impact of salient cultural differences implicated in intercultural contact (culture, chapter 7); and the effects of difference on relationships over time (conflict, chapter 8). The second purpose of this project is to move toward identifying normative ideals for local concepts of moral communication in interpersonal relationships (chapter 9). Keywords: grounded practical theory, discourse analysis, interpersonal relationships, morality, intersubjectivity, intimacy, ideology, culture, conflict, difference iv Acknowledgements I thank my family, my cat, and Richard Newcombe; the faculty and staff at the Department of Communication, and especially my fellow graduate students; Marco Jacquemet and Evelyn Ho at the University of San Francisco; my comprehensive exam and dissertation committee (Barbara Fox, Cindy White, David Boromisza-Habashi, Karen Tracy); and my adviser, Robert Craig. v CONTENTS Chapter 1: A Grounded Practical Theory Approach to Moral Interaction……………..…...1 Morality and Communication……………………………………………………………..5 A Grounded Practical Theory Approach………………………………………...………11 Background and Practice of GPT………………………………………..………11 Communication as a Practical Discipline………………………………..………13 Communication as a Practice……...………………………………….…………15 Theories and Assumptions………………………………………………………………21 Chapter 2: Morality as Discursive Practice…………………………………………………...30 Interpersonal Communication and LSI Research……………………………………….31 A Communicative Concept of Morality……………….………………………..33 Moral Problems, Moral Practices……………………………………………………….36 Intersubjectivity: The Proto-Morality Approach………………………………..37 Intimacy: Linking Identities and Relationships…………………………………43 Ideology: The Cultural Logic of Morality……....………………………………52 Culture: Organizing Ideologies………………………………………………….69 Conflict: Confronting Morality………………………………………………….79 A Vocabulary of Moral Practices……………………………………………….93 Implications, Questions and Directions………………………………………………...113 Chapter 3: Morality in Interaction: A Discourse Analytic Method………………………..115 Method………………………………………………………………………………….115 Influences and Modifications………………………………………………...…117 Approach and Modes of Analysis………………………………………………120 The Research Project…………………………………………………………………...124 Data……………………………………………………………………………..126 Participants…………………………………………………………………...…128 The Transcription Process………………………………………………………129 On Data and Empirically Relevant Context…………………………………………….130 Chapter 4: Intersubjectivity: A Fundamental Moral Problem………………………….....144 Sharedness: Commitment and Intersubjectivity………………………………………..146 Interpersonal and Interactional Commitment………………………………….146 Intersubjectivity……...…...…………………………………………………...149 Intersubjectivity as a Moral Discursive Practice……………………………………….151 Some Devices……………….………………………………………………….152 Intersubjectivity as a Moral Relational Practice………………………………………..198 Chapter 5: The Dilemma of Intimacy in Close Relationships…………………………...…202 Closeness: Relationality and Intimacy…………………………………………………203 Relationality: Identities and Relationships……………………………………..204 Intimacy………………...……………………………………………………...209 Intimacy as a Moral Relational Practice………………………………………………..212 Intimacy-Relevant Cues and Morality………………………………………….214 Moral Discursive Practices and their Dilemmas………………………………..225 Moral Dilemmas: Ideological, Interactional Interpersonal……………………………..257 Chapter 6: Ideology as a Problematic Moral Achievement…………………...……………259 vi Moral Discourses: Relationships and Ideology…………………………………...……260 Relationships: Relationality and Culture………………………………...……..261 Ideology…………………………………………………………………...……263 Ideology as a Moral Discursive Practice………………………………………….……265 The Case of an English Family…………………………………………………268 The Case of U.S. American Friends……………………………………………280 The Cultural Context of Moral Practice……………………………………………...…294 Chapter 7: The Trouble with Culture for Doing Morality…………………………………297 Morality as Cultural Practice…………………………………………………………...299 Intercultural Interaction and Cultural Practices………………………………...299 Ideology and (Inter)culture……………………………………………………..300 Culture as a Moral Discursive Practice…………………………………………………301 The Case of a Finnish-American Family……………………………………….303 The Case of Two Asian American Friendships………………………………...316 Moral Orientations in Intercultural Relationships……………………………………...330 Chapter 8: Conflicted Consequences of Moral Interaction……………………..………….334 Difference: Ideology and Conflict……………………………………………………..335 Difference and Communication………………………………………………...336 Conflict…………………………………………………………………………340 Conflict as a Moral Discursive Practice………………………………………………...341 Case Study of Conflict Management in a Family………………………………343 Morality and Conflict…………………………………………………………………..371 Chapter 9: Moral Communication: Toward Ideals of Practice……………………………374 Implications…………………………………………………………………………….379 Normative Ideals of Moral Practice in Interpersonal Relationships……………383 Implications for Communicative Approaches to Morality……………………..407 Limitations and Directions in the Communicative Study of Morality…………………412 Limitations…………………………………………………………………...…412 Directions for Future Research…………………………………………………414 References……………………………………………………………………………………...418 Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………..458 Appendix A: Survey, Questionnaire, Interview Schedules…………………………….458 Survey…………………………………………………………………………..458 Questionnaire…………………………………………………………………...460 Interview Schedules……………………………………………………………461 Appendix B: Data Description…………………………………………………………464 Whole Corpus…………………………………………………………………..464 Example List………...…………………………………………………………465 Appendix C: Transcription……………………………………………………………..466 Transcription Notations………………………………………………………...466 Running Head: THE INTERACTIVE ACHIEVEMENT OF MORALITY 1 Chapter 1 A Grounded Practical Theory Approach to Moral Interaction Goffman (1967) claimed that interaction is a committed enterprise. The expectations and responsibilities attendant on such a commitment are part of what makes interactants morally accountable to one another. The other side to the morality of human interaction is that it produces, reproduces, ratifies and instantiates the social order. As Garfinkel (1967) proposed, people’s day-to-day interactions are orderly recreations of the mechanisms of interactive processes, the practices and activities that move interaction along and make it work. To disrupt the order is to break the social contract, if you will, by which people are ordinarily able to get on in the world. Thus, morality is not only visible when people mention it explicitly or in obviously morally-imbued contexts, such as religious arguments: morality is apparent and relevant from the most contentious social controversy to the tiniest hitch in social graces. This work is centrally about the discursive construction of morality—the ways in which talk orients to the ideological judgments of persons and their actions in interpersonal conversation. Based on a grounded practical theory discourse analytic approach to interpersonal interaction, this work argues that the pervasive possibility of difference underlies moral interaction. Specifically, the threat of potentially irreconcilable differences between close interactants is made visible through, constituted by, and managed in discursive practices for accomplishing intersubjectivity, intimacy, ideology, culture, and conflict. These “moral problems” are part of a moral vocabulary