Family Talk: Deontic Rights and Initiating Interaction in Domestic Space

This thesis investigates the initiation of talk-in-interaction within domestic space. Using the research methods of Conversation Analysis (CA), I examine the practices family members use to initiate social interaction and explore the claims to, and displays of, entitlement and authority within these sequences of action. Using naturally occurring data recorded over a span of 100 days for the 2008 fly-on-the-wall documentary television series, The Family, I examine the production of summonses, greetings, and the deployment of interrogatives to implement suggestions and complaints, and their responses. This analysis focusses on both the sequential and social implications of initiating sequences of talk-in-interaction, specifically examining actions produced in and around doorway thresholds within the home, for instance, a summons deployed at a closed bedroom door, or a greeting produced after coming home or coming into a room. Through the use of linguistic and bodily resources, parties construct their turns-at-talk as more or less deontically entitled: firstly, through directing their own or another’s current and future actions; and secondly, in the determination of what is or is not appropriate regarding current or previous (in)actions. Furthermore, through the initiating actions they implement and the deontic entitlements they claim, parties negotiate and display their orientations to theirs and their co-participant’s claimed identity and social roles, as well as manage their relationships with one another. All together, this study shows how deontic claims to authority and entitlement are displayed and managed by interlocutors in initiating sequences, and how the interplay of the physical space with verbal and embodied resources shapes their subsequent trajectory.