Bringing together trust research, rhetoric, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, this book formulates an analytical program for conceptualizing and defining trustworthiness as an empirical research object in social interaction.
Revisiting Trustworthiness in Social Interaction examines trustworthiness as a relational and dynamic concept. It reviews sociological and rhetorical approaches to the study of trustworthiness and respecifies it as an interactional phenomenon displayed, tested and negotiated by participants in social interaction. It identifies four participant orientations of trustworthiness that may be foregrounded in peoples’ dynamic identity projects, and it defines the phenomena 'character-bound displays' and 'sequential negotiation of character', both indicative of participants’ orientation to trustworthiness. In this way, the book turns the theoretical concept of trustworthiness into an empirical object of interaction analysis, pointing to a vast number of interactional indicators, which allow interaction analysts to explore if and how interactants orient to trustworthiness in an encounter. Exemplary cases from both mundane and institutional encounters are analyzed using ethnomethodological multimodal conversation analysis showing how trustworthiness is done, challenges, achived, negotiated and lost in interaction.
The intended audiences are scholars of conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, rhetoric and the social sciences, especially communication, organizational and leadership studies, and their students.
Author(s): Mie Femø Nielsen, Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen
Series: Routledge Research in Language and Communication
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 201
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
Trust is a concern for all
Exploring trustworthiness from an EM/CA perspective
Focusing on participants’ sensorially observable actions, rather than their motives
Standing on the shoulders of trust research and rhetoric
2 Doing EM/CA research on inferred social phenomena
Show it in the data
Nobody is claiming that ‘the surface’ of discourse is all there is
Social identity is a research object
‘Member’s competence’ entails doing inferential work
Conduct formulations are inferences from conduct
Recipient design requires inferential work
Participants’ interactional projects are recognized in the interaction as such
CA studies of inferences from conduct
Courtroom interaction
Press conferences
Studies on empathy
Displays of irritation and disappointment in everyday interaction
Concluding discussion
3 Defining trustworthiness as an interactional phenomenon
Approaches to the study of trust and trustworthiness
Approaches to trustworthiness in rhetoric research
Approaches to trustworthiness in social science trust research
Approaches to trustworthiness in psychology
Approaches to aspects of trustworthiness in discursive psychology
Approaching trustworthiness within EM/CA
A theoretical conceptualization of trustworthiness
Rhetoric work on conceptualizing trustworthiness
Conceptualizing trustworthiness in social science trust research
Conceptualizing trustworthiness in psychology
Trust and trustworthiness in ethnomethodology
Our work on conceptualizing components of trustworthiness
Basic premises in our approach to trustworthiness as an empirical concept
Trustworthiness is an identity project for interactants
Participant orientations comprise the analytical object
Social actions, moves and interactional strategies are codable
Interactional actions, moves and strategies are situated in a sequential context
Social character as an identity project is subject to dynamic negotiation
Local identity projects may be foregrounded and backgrounded
Looking for noticeable absence, misplacement and breaches of norms
Defining trustworthiness as a social phenomenon
Identifying orientation to trustworthiness in social interaction
Social actions may be character-bound displays (CBDs)
Character-bound displays may have different sequential positions
Character may be sequentially negotiated (SNOC)
Recognizing clusters of indicators is a member’s competence
Character-bound displays (CBDs) do not equal character
Summary
4 Methodology
Methodology for studying trustworthiness in rhetoric
Methodology for studying trustworthiness broadly in trust research
Our methodology
Analytical focus
Data
5 Orientation to truth and honesty
The truth
Accepting things as the truth
Negotiating the quality or truthfulness of facts and information
The whole truth
Creating openness and transparency and giving access to information
Doing being honest by volunteering unflattering facts and information
Orienting to detail and precision
Pursuing response in cases of reluctance and minimalism
Relevance
Nothing but the truth
Being fishy by giving too much information, detail and precision
Miscrediting others’ versions
Detecting lies: misplacement markers and unfitted responses
Summing up the orientation to truth and honesty
6 Orientation to stake and interest
Is something always at stake?
Stance, neutrality and subjectivity
Displaying, denying and negotiating bias
Negotiating benefactive status
Negotiations of role compliance and living up to expectations
Conflicts, misconducts, blamings and complaints
Politeness and saving others’ face
Summing up the orientation to stake and interest
7 Orientation to knowledge and ability
Why knowledge and competence build trustworthiness
Accepting knowledge
Confronting knowledge
Negotiating and evaluating degrees of knowledge
Negotiating the quality of sources of knowledge
Negotiating primacy of knowledge: the right to know better
Coming off as a knowledgeable insider
Flashing knowledge to bolster trustworthiness
Testing others’ knowledge
Miscrediting others by spotlighting their lack of knowledge
Using lack of knowledge as a resource for escaping responsibility
Why ability, capacity, mandate and entitlement build trustworthiness
Accepting others’ ability
Confronting others’ ability
Doubting trustworthiness by confronting ability
Negotiating and assessing ability and capacity
Using lack of mandate as a resource for rejection
Concluding discussion of orientation to knowledge and ability
8 Orientation to consistency and predictability
Doing being normal provides social-systemic predictability
Predictability and experience
Predictability and interactional projectivity
Predictability and role compliance
Claims of deviant behavior and inconsistency as defense material
Predictability of untrustworthiness as last resort
Summing up the orientation to consistency and predictability as a member’s concern
9 Concluding discussion
Our theoretical and empirical contribution
Four orientations
Character-bound displays and clusters of indicators
Sequential negotiation of character and socially distributed clusters
Indicators of orientations to trustworthiness
Our contribution to prior research
Discussion of our theoretical and empirical conceptualization
Some orientations are more basic than others
Overlapping orientations
Discussion of the empirical approach
When is a display a display?
Baseline required – and debatable
Choice of data
Breaches of norms, trustworthiness and perspicuous settings
Coding what is missing
Coding an action depends on the local and global context
Defining clusters of indicators
Participant versus analyst resources for determining components of trustworthiness
Time will test our project of revisiting trustworthiness
Our trustworthiness as scholars, or the credibility of our study
Methodological prospects of our study
Cross-disciplinary verifications of our study
Practical application?
Future research awaits
References for the monograph: Revisiting Trustworthiness in Social Interaction
Index
