Managing troubles-talk in the renegotiation of a loan contract

Abstract

This study focuses on troubles-tellings in calls to the Swedish Board for Student Support, where the caller wants to negotiate the repayment contract of a student loan. The study relates to research on the organization of troubles-tellings in institutional interaction, and the overall question of how talk about money is a delicate matter that is shaped by moral concerns. The data consist of 94 calls in which the caller proposes either a reduction or a temporal suspension of repayment. The analysis shows that troubles-tellings are launched to account for past failures to adhere to the contracted payment schedule. These tellings are met with minimal responses, which in turn engender a shift towards solutions that resonate with the institutional agenda. The study explores the resources recruited by the participants to deal with a potentially stigmatic situation by formulating the troubles as merely temporary and projecting a future situation where payments are made on time.

The termination of complaints in calls to an authority for student support

“…A common response to callers' complaints in this context of the calls is the combination of acknowledgments and the projection of a shift towards the main reason for call (the caller's responsibility for initiating the reason for call, and its distinct character in this institutional context, are analyzed in Ekström et al, 2013). The complaints are recognized without being engaged with or contributed to (cf.…”

Managing a moral identity in debt advice conversations

“…Institutional advice‐giving is also asymmetric: medical consultations between physicians and patients are examples of institutional talk where one participant is established as the ‘expert’ in comparison with the other through interaction (Heritage, ; Maynard, ; Peräkylä, ). CA and DP have been used in research on a range of institutional advice contexts, including helplines (Butler, Potter, Danby, Emmison, & Hepburn, ; Emmison, Butler, & Danby, ; Hepburn, ; Potter & Hepburn, ), police interviews (Stokoe & Edwards, ), conversations between health visitors and first‐time mothers (Heritage & Lindström, ; Heritage & Sefi, ), pharmacists and patients (Pilnick, ), peer tutoring (Waring, , ), and renegotiation of student loans (Ekström et al ., ). However, although Ekström et al .…”

“…In a rare example of research on debt advice conversations, Ekström, Lindström, and Karlsson () found that talking about money is a delicate concern and that debtors presented themselves as responsible characters when organizing their ‘trouble‐tellings’. For example, callers made an effort to produce an account for why they were renegotiating their payment loans.…”

“…Barriers to seeking debt advice include lack of confidence (Goode & Waring, ), lack of knowledge (Goode & Waring, ; Pleasance, Buck, Balmer, & Williams, ) but perhaps most important of all, feelings of embarrassment and shame (Dearden, Goode, Whitfield, & Cox, ; Goode & Waring, ). Talking about financial difficulties is related to concerns about one's moral character (Ekström et al ., ) and qualitative interviews found that people in debt perceived their own debt as evidence of lack of willpower or self‐control (Hayes, ; Keene, Cowan, & Baker, ). This self‐stigma associated with problem debt can lead to people hiding their debt from family members and isolating themselves for fear of peers finding out about their financial difficulties (Hayes, ; Thorne & Anderson, ).…”

“…This means that talk carries out an underlying action that people are skilfully picking up on, although they may not explicitly notice it. In addition to discursive psychology, the current study used elements of conversation analysis (CA) when conducting the analysis, which has been used to examine troubles‐talk in institutional settings previously (Ekström et al ., ; Heritage & Lindström, ). Originally founded by Harvey Sacks (Heritage, ), CA examines the organization of talk in naturally occurring conversations to understand the performative action of words, phrases, and silences and how these are coordinated.…”