Conversation analysis and family therapy: a narrative review

Abstract

Conversation analysis (CA) can provide insight into interactional micro‐processes of family therapy. Past reviews of CA and family therapy have focused on methodology without descriptions of research findings, reducing the likelihood that the findings of CA research are employed to guide practice. This narrative review provides therapists with a description of CA findings that can inform family therapy practice. Systematic searches of databases, individual journals, and citation analyses were completed in April 2018 resulting in twenty‐five articles for review. The findings of this narrative review were summarised around three areas: family members’ talk about each other, therapists’ responses to the family, and the use of reflecting teams. The use of reflecting teams and various conversational devices may help engage multiple participants. Future CA research into family therapy could focus on longer sequences, the overall structural organisation of sessions and the interactions of multiple therapists. Practitioner points CA can offer practitioners insight into the interactional micro‐processes occurring in family therapy that can inform future practice Micro‐interactions between therapists and family members can indicate their perspectives on sensitive topics, blame and accountability Blaming talk creates a dilemma for therapists trying to maintain both neutrality and engagement Family therapists use conversational practices to respond to difficult conversations while maintaining engagement and collaboration Reflecting teams may help to acknowledge and engage multiple family members

The Discursive Performance of Change Process in Systemic and Constructionist Therapies: A Systematic Meta‐Synthesis Review of In‐Session Therapy Discourse

“…To date, not many formal syntheses of research have focused on in‐session dialogue. The few exceptions include a study on solution‐focused brief therapy process (Franklin et al, 2017) and a narrative review of findings of CA studies of family therapy, but these studies do not attend to change process (Ong, Barnes, & Buus, 2019). Two methodological reviews (Ong, Barnes, & Buus, 2020; Tseliou, 2013) reported the use of CA/DA to examine in‐session dialogue, again without focusing on change process.…”

Eliciting Stance and Mitigating Therapist Authority in Open Dialogue Meetings

“…There has been scant empirical investigation of how therapists actually manage these potential conflicts in real‐life therapy sessions. One research technique that can reveal how such family conversations are actually conducted is conversation analysis (Ong, Barnes, & Buus, 2019, 2020; Schriver, Buus, & Rossen, 2019; Tseliou, 2013).…”

“…Put another way, CA seeks to describe how people achieve various social actions through conversation and the methods they employ to achieve them. CA has been applied to different aspects of family therapy (Ong et al, 2019, 2020; Tseliou, 2013). For the current study, two features of conversation are particularly relevant: stance (Du Bois, 2007) and deontics (Stevanovic, 2018; Stevanovic & Peräkylä, 2012, 2014).…”

“Y, what do you think about what X just said?” Conversation analysis of stance‐eliciting questions in open dialogue network meetings

“…Through a detailed scrutiny of how people actually talk (e.g., choice of words, prosody, intonation, voice quality, and sequences of talk), CA can reveal how participants in everyday conversations create meaning as a shared accomplishment (Sidnell, 2010). Over the past decades, scholars have applied CA to various institutional settings such as doctorpatient interactions (Heritage & Maynard, 2006), psychotherapy (Ong, Barnes & Buus, 2019;Ong, Barnes & Buus, 2020;Tseliou, 2013), and other helping professions (Graf & Pawelczyk, 2014). Therapy is based on talk, and studying therapeutic talk can produce new insights into therapeutic practice (Parker & O'Reilly, 2013).…”

“…It unfolds the psychotherapeutic sessions utterance‐by‐utterance and explicates the practices and interactional patterns through which the therapeutic work is carried out” (p. 219). CA can therefore offer insights into the microprocesses occurring in family therapy sessions (Ong et al, 2020; Tseliou, 2013), such as open dialogue network meetings.…”