Helpline Discourse

Abstract

Helplines are services where callers can request help, advice, information, or support. While such help is usually offered through telephone helplines, Web chat and e‐mail helplines are becoming increasingly available to members of the public. Helplines tend to offer specialized services, such as responding to computer‐software queries or medical and health issues or seeking information about natural disasters. Further, they may be aimed at particular populations, such as children and young people. The earliest research investigating discourse in calls to helplines in social interactional research began in the 1960s, with Sacks' early work on calls made to a suicide prevention center. Since then interactional research has produced a wealth of understandings of the mundane and institutional interactional practices through which help is sought and delivered. In addition to discussing the breadth of research into helplines, this article explores the relationship between philosophies and interactional practices of helpline services.

“Basically it's the Usual Whole Teen Girl Thing”: Stage‐of‐Life Categories on a Children and Young People's Helpline

“…In so doing, we propose to demonstrate how cultural notions of a natural lifetime-packaged as category-generated features-are mobilized in the service of the parties' "explicative work" (Watson 1986) involved in making sense of and working out a possible remedy for the client's trouble. By demonstrating the methodical use of membership categories across clients' accounts and counselors' corresponding actions, this study contributes to the growing body of knowledge of professional counseling (see Danby, Harris, and Butler 2015b, for a review) and, more generally, to current work in MCA in studies of institutional interaction.…”