Blended voices and co-narration in lay– interprofessional talk about return-to-work

• This article examines the co-production of narratives based on an analysis of audio recordings from 12 statutory lay–interprofessional meetings involving clients and concerning rehabilitation for return-to-work. Using Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of voice in a similar vein to Mishler (1984), it is argued that a voice represents a specific normative order, displayed in the way of speaking. The premises of the approach taken is that citizens’ problems and needs are often presented as stories and that this particular type of meeting opens up the possibility for what Wertsch (1991) calls multi-voicedness. Three patterns of co-narrating the client’s story of illness and the process of rehabilitation were found. In the most frequently recurring form, there was one primary storyteller and another participant who joined in as a co-teller. Another pattern was that dyadic co-narrated episodes commonly drew on prior contacts between the two storytellers. A third salient feature was how storytelling episodes involved revoicing an absent expert – that is, the interactional move when a speaker makes use of someone else’s words, and what Bakhtin (1981) calls rhetorical double-voicedness. Due to the multi-voicedness character, co-narrated stories in lay–interprofessional meetings often represent two or more perspectives and are founded on the blending of voices.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Socialt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Social Work (hsv//eng)

Keyword

cross-institutional settings; institutional discourse; long-term illness; narrative analysis; sickness benefit; social welfare; story-telling

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)