3. METODOLOGÍA
3.2. Definición del Modelo
3.2.1. Construcción de Modelos
5.2.1 Troubles talk episode locations in meetings
In this section I will discuss the specific location in meetings in which troubles talk occurs, providing again a broad overview. Afterwards I will turn to the analysis of how troubles talk episodes actually unfold.
During team meetings team members engage in different types of talk. As outlined in 3.5.2.1 this talk can be divided into: On-topic talk, process talk, or off-topic talk. Troubles talk occurs within all these types of talk, however most incidents occur during off-topic talk. The team regularly branches off the ‘normal’ work talk and discusses other issues or engages in small talk. This usually occurs towards the beginning or end of the meeting and during breaks or where the ‘normal’ workflow gets interrupted by an outside noise, a technical problem or a
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person actually interrupting the meeting. In some cases, team members go off-topic for a while, which is usually sparked by some topical shifts in the discussion. MAXQDA provides functions to visualise the distribution of codes and Figure 5.1 shows the distribution of off- topic, on-topic and process-talk in the meetings, while Figure 5.2 shows the distribution of troubles talk across meetings.
The figures only provide a very broad overview. Each line constitutes one meeting whose lengths has been levelled and only full meetings or meetings where only middle parts were missing are included. Bright green indicates troubles talk during off-topic talk, purple during process talk, while dark-green represents on-topic talk.
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Figure 5.1 On-topic (dark green), off-topic (bright green) and process (purple) talk distribution during team meetings
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As can be seen from the chart, process talk occurs mostly at the end of team meetings when the team turns more towards planning, while off-topic talk tends to occur more at the beginning as the team settles into their meeting, or during breaks. These are the two most common contexts in which troubles talk occurs and as such it is no surprise that troubles talk also occurs most frequently towards the beginning or the end of a team meeting (see Figure 5.2). At the same time, the fact that interlocutors fulfil certain interactional activities at the beginning and at the end of an encounter to establish and re-affirm built relationships, as is the case with greetings and closings, has been described repeatedly in the literature (Laver, 1975). While unlike greetings and closings troubles talk is not necessarily the first and last talk in every meeting, the fact that it seems to almost always appear in the first and in the last quarter of the meeting might nonetheless suggest that it is relevant in creating the setting for the meeting and also in re-affirming the relationships towards the end.
On-topic troubles talk on the contrary is much rarer and usually branches off more directly from an on-topic discussion, which is why there is no principal location in the meeting for it to occur. It can be noted though that on-topic troubles talk becomes more frequent in the final project and it seems likely that complaints about the client are replacing much of the process- troubles talk, as in this project it is the client who sets the task and not the course coordinators so instead of discussing inappropriately set tasks or task-requirements the problems of the client become the focus of the troubles talk. This, however, seems to suggest that the activity of doing troubles talk might be more crucial than the actual topic discussed, as troubles topics that become superfluous seem to be replaced by other topics rather than leading to a decrease in the amount of troubles talk conducted.
5.2.2 Pre-conditions for realising troubles talk episodes
I will analyse in section 5.3 how exactly troubles talk episodes are initiated but will focus here on some of the circumstances under which they are initiated, as there seems to be a certain pattern. Troubles talk frequently occurs at points where a topic transition seems necessary. This means that one topic is slowly coming to an end and a move to another topic is necessary. While this in itself seems very obvious and is to be expected, in a number of cases this means that troubles talk is prefaced by long silences (i.e. a silence of a minimum of 4 seconds). The most common initiators after a silence consist of a self-disclosure, and, interestingly, an exclamation of something just realised. This at least raises the question as to whether troubles talk – at least on occasions – fulfils the role of filler or of phatic talk, in the case that no other talk is currently ongoing. Phatic talk tends to be conducted for its rapport enhancing properties and it seems possible that troubles talk was awarded this position within the team as the go-to type of talk, if nothing else is currently discussed.
Of course, silences or other fairly obvious turn-transitioning points, are not the only moments when troubles talk gets initiated. Troubles talk is also frequently initiated on the topic that is currently being discussed. This is particularly often the case during process talk, where time
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and workload issues are regularly brought up as part of a more focused discussion of scheduling. In these cases, the boundary between planning-talk and troubles talk can become blurry. Troubles talk is also sometimes initiated as a clear interruption to something else that is being discussed, but then it is always framed as something the initiator has just realised and urgently needs to share with their team members.
Finally, troubles talk is sometimes initiated with the suggestion that a specific trouble might be relevant to the team’s decision making. This leads us to an interesting phenomenon. While troubles talk often seems to be relational talk and done with the goals of sharing problems and experiences, on occasion people introduce troubles talk with what appears to be a particular goal in mind. I will discuss this phenomenon further in section 5.7.8.
I will now turn to the actual initiation of troubles talk. As we shall see, this might be a more complex activity locally than this overview may have initially suggested.