Table Of ContentStudies in Ethnomethodology
and Conversation Analysis
No. 2
E.C. Cuff
PROBLEMS OF VERSIONS
IN
EVERYDAY SITUATIONS
1993
International Institute for Ethnomethodology
and
Conversation Analysis &
University Press of America
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 1994 by the
International Institute for Ethnomethodology
and Conversation Analysis
University Press of America~ Inc.
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Printed in the United States of America
British Cataloging in Publication Information Available
Copublished by arrangement with the
International Institute for Ethnomethodology
and Conversation Analysis
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cuff, B.C.
Problems of versions in everyday situations I B.C. Cuff.
p. em. - (Studies in ethnomethodology and conversation
analysis ; no. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Conversation. 2. Ethnomethodology. 3. Discourse analysis
Social aspects. I. Title. II. Series.
P95.45.C84 1993 302.3'46---dc20 · 93-27025 CIP
ISBN 0-8191-9149-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8191-9292-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
§TM
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Studies in Ethnomethodology and
Conversation Analysis
is co-published by
The International Institute for
Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
and
University Press of America, Inc.
Editorial Board
George Psathas, Chairman • Boston University
Jorg R. Bergmann • Universitat Geissen
Egon Bittner • Brandeis University
Graham Button• Rank Xerox Europarc
Jeff Coulter • Boston University
Michael Lynch • Brunei University
James Heap • Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
D.R. Watson • Manchester University
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to David W. Francis, Manchester Polytechnic, for
discussion of issues in Part III; and to Dr. Wes Sharrock,
University of Manchester, for his constant support and advice.
Needless to say, neither is in any way responsible for what I have
made of their suggestions. I am also grateful to Mrs. Jean Davies
for typing and checking the manuscript.
Didsbury School of Education
Manchester Polytechinic
Manchester, England
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
Some Directions for Research 1
II THE PROBLEM OF VERSIONS
1. Schutz and Multiple Realities 9
2. Pollner and Reality Disjunctures 15
3. Smith: Versions and Subversions 21
4. Discussion of Pollner, Schutz and Smith
a. Pollner and Schutz 27
b. Smith 32
III VERSIONS AND MARRIAGE BREAKDOWN
1. Introduction 37
. 2. Partisanship and Moral Adequacy
in Everyday Accounts 37
3. Moral Adequacy, Identities and the
Systematic Subversion of Accounts 46
4. An Elaborated Machinery for
Subverting Accounts 50
IV VERSIONS IN A RADIO DISCUSSION
OF FAMILY TROUBLES
1. Introduction 57
2. Family Versions About What is Happening
in the Family 60
3. 'Expert' Versions About What is Happening
in the Family 71
4. Reality Disjunctures and Multiple Versions
in a Naturally Occurring Setting 78
V IDENTITIES, IDENTITY PUZZLES AND SENSE
ASSEMBLY METHODS: SOME CONCLUSIONS
1. Some Issues 85
2. Conclusion 92
REFERENCES 95
APPENDIX
Symbols used in transcriptions 101
C's Account of Marriage Breakdown MB/c 103
D's Account of Marriage Breakdown MB/d 105
Radio Discussion Program -Pia 109
I
INTRODUCTION
SOME DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH
Don Quixote, Don Juan, an accused person in court, a theorising
sociologist- all can be said to have 'problems of versions'. Yet to
what extent are such 'problems' part and parcel of the way we, as
ordinary members of society, go about our everyday life? What
would our everyday life look like if the 'problems of versions' as set
out in the work of Alfred Schutz, Melvin Pollner and Dorothy Smith
were a routine feature? In exploring these questions, substantive
matters of considerable interest are raised, for example, mental
illness, paranoia, marriage-breakdown and family troubles. Yet the
focus is not on these issues per se, but rather on the sort of
'machinery' we have for making sense of them as they are
encountered in everyday and naturally occurring settings. In short,
this study seeks to explore our 'sense-assembly machinery'.
Our basic materials for analysis are a transcription of a radio
program in a series called "If You Think You've Got Problems." In
these programs, a panel of two or three counsellors discuss
problems that have been volunteered by means of a letter from
members of the listening audience. Occasionally, the letter itself is
discussed, but more often than not, the originator of the letter is
invited into the studio to participate in the discussion, Although the
number and identity of the counsellors can vary from program to
program, the series tends to draw on a number of regulars, such as
WG and JH in our transcription. A constant presence on all
programs is the presenter, JM. Finally, we note that the program is
not broadcast live, but is recorded.
The transcription makes available to us the talk produced in a
naturally occurring setting of the social world: a radio program. The
talk; then, is intendedly produced and designed not only for those
2 PROBLEMS OF VERSIONS
parties actually speaking on the program, but also for the radio
public, the listening audience.
There are seven parties in the talk. Four of these, Lora, Martin,
Susan and Jonathan, constitute a whole family made up of mother,
father, daughter and son respectively. Their ostensible purpose in
appearing on the program is to seek help with a problem in the
family concerning the son, Jonathan. Two of the other parties in the
talk are counsellors, WG and JH, whose task it is to provide expert
advice and help for the problems presented in the program. The
remaining party in the talk is JM whose task it is to present the
program.
Our primary concern is to say something of sociological interest
about these basic materials for analysis: a transcription of a radio
program in which a whole family discusses its problems with two
counsellors and the presenter of the program. At this point we ask
the reader to examine these materials to see, without prejudice to our
subsequent discussion, what issues and interests, if any, they yield
for him. (See the transcription of Account Pia in the Appendix.)
We say "if any" because, for many readers, such materials
would be of little or no interest in that they cannot be readily utilised
as 'data' for analysis though they might serve to illustrate various
known themes about families, radio programs and so on, To
investigate such themes, however, they would require a 'better
form' of data, which might be partially derived from processing our
materials to see what important concepts and behaviours can be
discerned from the standpoint of preexisting sociological theories, In
this way, aspects of our materials might provide an instance of
something or other which can be collated with other instances from
other materials and thereby be explained by adducing a law-like
generalisation.
We demur from this approach, preferring to opt for a research
strategy where our materials can provide us with basic data, rather
than raw materials for selection, processing and collation, For what
these materials represent is a naturally occurring setting, a social
occasion, constituted by the actions, particularly the talk, of the
parties involved. These parties are simply members of their society
who are going about their business and, in so doing, are effectively
producing a 'piece of the social world.'
INTRODUCTION 3
Now, there is something odd about a sociology which, in
purporting to study the social world, can only do so by refining and
reducing such naturally occurring occasions in order to produce
more manageable and pliable 'data'; and where such occasions do
not constitute a primary focus of analysis. If we may borrow Roy
Turner's analogy,l it is like an archaeologist refusing to be
transported in a time machine back to the ancient civilization he has
been painfully and laboriously studying, even though two days
spent in the everyday life of that civilization would be worth more in
terms of human knowledge than many lifetimes of normal
archaeological endeavour. Similarly, we feel that the many
sociologists who would look askance at considering our materials as
basic data for analysis are in effect 'archaeologists by choice';2 they
prefer to operate at several removes from daily life, rather than
attempting to study and analyse the rich materials that surround
them, viz the members of society constitute -in, by and through talk
- their naturally occurring settings and, hence, their social world.
Of course, the problem is how to take advantage of these riches
and to produce sociologically interesting analyses of what seems to
characterise - indeed constitute - social life: naturally occurring
settings. Although it is usually easy to understand what is going on
in any such setting, it is abnormally difficult to use it as an object of
sociological study 'in its own right' so that we are tempted to use it
merely as an instance of such settings as suggested above.
Consequently, sociologists are often taken up with - and taken over
by -problems of counting, measurement and statistical significance.
Alternatively, they may feel obliged to describe a study avowedly
focussed on a single instance as only 'heuristic' or 'exploratory', i.
e., as a possible prolegomenon of subsequent studies which will
provide the further materials for the validation of a general law-like
explanation,
The basic difficulty for this problem of studying the everyday
world is that the analyst is also simultaneously, irreversibly and
irrevocably a member of the society he is attempting to study To
grasp what is going on, he has to employ the self-same methods and
1 Oral communication.
2 We believe that A.V. Cicourel used this expression when he was in
Manchester in 1972.
4 PROBLEMS OF VERSIONS
procedures as any other member of his society, His problem,
therefore, is how to 'get outside' the world of common sense while
remaining irredeemably within it! It is the dominant methodological
problem of the approach to studying the everyday world known as
ethnomethodology,
In founding ethnomethodology as a sociological enterprise,
Harold Garfinkel has provided us with a series of demonstrations of
how this problem might be approached and how we might study
everyday social structures, i.e. how members of society 'put their
world together'. His work, however stimulating, exciting and
exhilarating, serves to do little more than demonstrate the importance
of such research and the possibility of conducting it; it does not
provide us with a research program in the sense of giving
instructions on how to go about it with respect to the sort of
materials represented by our radio program. Moreover, any
guidelines we may discern are far from being direct or unambiguous
so that though we are clear about the sort of study we intend to
produce, we would be extremely reluctant to make any claim to
whatever prestige the label 'ethnomethodology' may give and make
no claim whatsoever that we have realised Garfinkel's intentions
concerning ways of studying the everyday world
The work of Garfinkel's close associate, the late Harvey Sacks,
is prima facie more directly helpful in that it can be seen not only to
derive from ethnomethodological orientations, but also to focus
directly on conversational materials. We detect, however, some
strain between the approaches of Garfinkel and Sacks to the study of
everyday settings. This strain is perhaps expressed in Garfinkel's
description of Sack's treatment of conversational materials as
"dealing with docile texts".3 By this description, we gather that
Garfinkel is criticising Sacks' desire to produce formal descriptions
of conversational 'objects' on the grounds that such a desire works
to the detriment of taking sufficiently into account the situation or
context in which such objects not only appear but, in appearing,
produce.
In other words, the sort of enterprise which Sacks has founded,
namely Conversational Analysis, has separated out from the prime
3orai communication
