Catálogo de servicios y prestaciones

Goffman starts to build a (non-exhaustive) model of possible frames, which include both the abnormal and the more commonplace interaction. He starts with what he terms ‘primary frames’. The ‘natural frame’, is formed of ‘unguided’ or purely physical events; Goffman provides the example of reporting the weather (1974: 22). The ‘social frame’ is the result of the “controlling effort of an intelligence” (Goffman, 1974: 22). Though he acknowledges that these might overlap, they are the first level of frame on which he builds. Frames are then constructed inside other frames, or ‘laminated’. Frames are not merely a static reference point but are used and shifted by participants within an interaction through what Goffman calls

‘keying’.

‘Keying’ or shifting frames allows participants to do different work with their discourse, but it

also allows them to change their position in relation to the other participants and to present a different image of self. In this way, frames are not only how participants make sense of the situation, but also how they re-construct what the situation is.

“*...+ one can easily turn to a central concept in frame analysis: the key. I refer here to the set of conventions by which a given activity, one already meaningful in terms of some primary framework, is transformed into something patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to be something quite else. The process of transcription can be called keying.” (Goffman, 1974: 43-44)

Goffman identifies a range of basic keys under five headings: make believe; contest; ceremonials; technical redoings (e.g. demonstrations or experiments); and regroundings. The last of these is the most relevant to this thesis. Goffman describes regroundings as:

“the performance of an activity more or less openly for reasons or motives felt to be radically different from those that govern ordinary actors. The notion of regroundings then, rests on the assumption that some motives for a deed are ones that leave the performer within the normal range of participation, and other motives, especially when

stabilized and institutionalized, leave the performer outside the ordinary domain of the activity.” (Goffman, 1974: 74)

In the context of this study, therefore, the motives involved in psychiatric consultations are removed from the ‘ordinary domain’ of face-to-face talk. It therefore requires a keying into a psychiatric consultation frame. In other words, there are forms of interaction that would be expected in ‘standard’ talk that would not be expected in the psychiatric consultation (and vice versa), or which take on different meanings as a result of this keying. A common example of such keying in relation to medical discourse is seen in the significance of the term ‘how are you?’. When used in passing when friends or acquaintances meet, this term takes on significance as part of a ritual greeting, a social nicety, rather than as an invitation to provide a health assessment or describe ailments. In a doctor’s consultation, the phrase is keyed. The same words may be used, but by virtue of participants sharing an understanding of the nature of a medical appointment, the hearer knows that the phrase has this different significance and is likely to respond with information about their health.

Goffman uses this same example in arguing that neither type of significance should be viewed as standard, though we might overlook some forms of keying because they are so commonplace:

“there are strips of doing which patently involve a keying but which are not much seen in these terms. Thus, as often remarked, our interpersonal greeting rituals involve questions about health which are not put or taken as literal request for information. *...+ In order to be careful then perhaps the terms ‘real’, ‘actual’ and ‘literal’ ought merely to be taken to imply that the activity under consideration is no more

transformed than is felt to be usual and typical for such doings.” (Goffman, 1974: 47)

Tannen describes different ‘levels’ of frames which represent the interaction of both context and content. There is a broad level context of (in the case she is discussing) the interaction being part of an experiment using an interview mode (Tannen, 1993a: 22). In this thesis, the

equivalent might be the keying between a broader social frame and the psychiatric consultation, as shown in figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1

In Chapter Four, I discuss in more detail some of the levels of framing which may be relevant to this data, for example, the keying of the ‘psychiatric consultation’ to the ‘participation in a study of talk occurring in the psychiatric consultation’ (Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2

1. Social frame

2. Institutional (psychiatric consultation) frame

1. Social frame

2. Institutional (psychiatric consultation) frame

3. Research participation frame 2. Institutional (psychiatric consultation) frame

Within the primary and keyed frames many different frames may be laid on top of or overlap with each other. “Talk appears as a rapidly shifting stream of differently framed strips, including short-run fabrications (typically benign) and keying of various sorts.” (Goffman, 1974: 544) Ribeiro describes these as ‘double framing’, in which more than one frame may occur either simultaneously or with one embedded in another.

“For example, within the context of the psychotic crisis several framings emerge. While some are predominant (the framing of the child addressing the mother), others appear to be subsumed under the first one (the child addressing the grandmother, the

[childlike] patient addressing the doctor [mother]). These subordinated contexts need the outer framing (the child addressing the mother) to establish the ground against which the inner framings are to be discerned.” (Ribeiro, 1994: 52)