LAS CARACTERÍSTICAS DE LA ESCUELA

The pattern seen above, of positive evaluations by the SLT being used to counter negative self-assessments by clients, is also seen in the following example of a client evaluating his own performance in a first turn. This is the only example, in the entire data set, of a client producing a FTE about his own performance. The rarity of such evaluations says much about how difficult it is for clients to assert epistemic rights to evaluate themselves in therapy contexts. The excerpt involves the client, who has an acquired language impairment following a stroke, working through a series of word matching tasks, where he has to match examples that fit with the semantic category term provided. He negatively evaluates his ability to do the task (line 63 in excerpt 4.16), but this evaluation is immediately countered by the SLT.

Excerpt 4.16: no good at this

56 T: yea:::::h (.) fantastic (0.4) tra:nspo:rt

57 (5.4) <tape clicks>

58 T: I::’m sorry (0.6) you: had the right one I missed one

59 (0.6)

60 T te:n a:nd (1.4) fi:ve (0.4) well do:ne (0.8) no:w

61 transport

62 (5.0) <tape clicks on>

63  C: not very good at this,

64 T: no: you’re actually managing very well (.) with this (.)

66 certainly not really la::rge print, 67 C: mm

68 T: <transpo:::rt> (0.8) fa:n (.) trai:n (.) >hold on w-<

69 maybe not fa::n (0.4) trai::n? (1.0) rope or bus

70 (0.8)

71 T >which one’s a transport< (.) bus? excellent

72 (0.6)

73 T maybe instead of fan? (.) what about that one,(0.6)

74 trai:n

75 (5.0) <tape clicks> 76 C: (which)

77 T : can you see train the:re?

Prior to the client’s negative evaluation of his own performance (line 63: “not very good at this”), the SLT has positively evaluated two of the activities the client has completed. She evaluates one activity (line 56: “fantastic”) with a high grade assessment (Antaki, 2004) and another activity with a more general positive phrase (line 58: “you: had the right one”), followed by a more overt evaluation (line 60: “well done”). Thus, at the point in the interaction where the client produces his negative self-evaluation (line 63: “not very good at this”), there appears to be nothing in his prior efforts that would warrant this evaluation, other than the time it is taking him to locate and underline words as

indicated by the silences in lines 57 and 62. Though the client’s turn finishes on a continuing intonation, suggesting he had more to add, the SLT responds to his negative self-evaluation by producing a turn-initial negation (line 70: “no: you’re actually managing very well (.) with this”), which is the preferred response (Pomerantz, 1984) to self- deprecation. Tarpley (2012) identifies that self-deprecation can be a resource used to call for reassurance. This may well be how the SLT has read the client’s negative self-evaluation, as she goes on to build a counter-position to the client’s negative stance through the use of the adverb actually (Clift, 2003: 181), which frames the client’s ability to ‘manage’ the task demands ‘very well’, as if this perspective were fact. She also creates a casual link between his experience of difficulty and the size of the print on the activity sheet, through the use of a linking conjunction because (line 70: “because it’s not– it’s not small print, but it’s certainly not really large print.”). So, any experience of ‘difficulty’ is

linked to the font size, rather than to his acquired language impairment. This pair of utterances highlights the divergent perspectives that client and SLT have on the client’s

performance, with the SLT using positive evaluations to counter negative client perspectives.

When the SLT returns to the category ‘transport’ (line 68), for the third time in this

sequence, it becomes apparent, from the words that she reads out, that the client has indeed made an error by underlining fan as a word that fits the semantic category ‘transport’. Thus, the client’s negative evaluation of his own performance may well link to the difficulty he experienced in matching words to the transport category. The phonological similarity between fan and van, the latter being a form of transport, may indicate that his difficulty relates to phonological processing of written words. Whatever the origin of his sense of difficulty, the client claims the epistemic right (Heritage, 2005) to evaluate his own performance. The SLT does not take up his negative evaluation as a topic for discussion, apart from linking it to the font size in the Text, even when it becomes apparent that there was a real basis for his negative evaluation, namely difficulty deciding whether the word fan

referred to a form of transport. Thus, in this solitary example of a client evaluating his own performance, we see the SLT treating the client’s negative evaluation of his ability to do the task as if it were a request for re-assurance, which she provides, both through her positive evaluation and by linking any ‘difficulty’ he might be experiencing to something that is external to the client, viz. the font size.