Los instrumentos de medidas y sus errores

As indicated before, self-disclosures are a common occurrence in the troubles talk data collected. Interactionally, self-disclosures seem particularly risky but also have the potential of connecting their speaker more closely to others, by minimising distance, increasing understanding, empathy and potentially even gaining support in one’s troubles. While the data overall rarely features personal talk, troubles talk tends to feature frequent disclosures about the self or states of mind, worries about the future or negative assessments about one’s own performance. Thus, in regard to the discursive domain, troubles talk seems to allow team members to discuss topics they otherwise cannot talk about in the team.

As shown earlier these self-disclosures are sometimes used to initiate troubles talk and there is not a single incident in the data where a topic introduced via a self-disclosure was not taken up and given attention by the team. We have seen one example of an initiating self-disclosure before in Example 5.4-1 which was initiated by David stating “I'm gonna be honest with you I'm losing interest in this” and while this is not a very grave or personal information to disclose, nonetheless there is at least the risk of it negatively affecting perceptions and assessments by other team members, something David orients to by opening the disclosure with “I’m gonna be honest with you”. As honesty tends to be constructed as a virtue, this makes it more difficult to negatively evaluate David’s self-disclosure. In addition, he shows awareness of the norms that are in place in a team meeting, in that one should always be interested, positioning him as a good team member who must have some strong incentive to lose interest at this precise moment. It seems unsurprising therefore, that – as we have seen – the team is quick to emphasise that they were feeling the same as David, which led to a discussion about how and when to continue and seems to have had no negative repercussions for the perception of David nor for the relationships in the team. Similar instances can be found again and again in the data as can be seen in the following examples:

101

5.4-5 P4_M6_E1: The team meeting pauses to get coffees. David has just stepped outside.

83 (4.0)

84 Bruno: Oh yeah/ Nice (.) My girlfriend/ she sent me back my assignment (.) [and o:h g::od

85 [((laughter)) 86 I: Is she proofreading all of yours? 87 Bruno: Yeah

88 Bev: My husband is turning mine into a red minefield 89 ((laughter))

5.4-6 P3_M2_E3: During a break David brings up a new topic by mentioning an assignment 409 David: We should get the results soon as well shouldn't we?

410 Bev: hhh I feel nervous about not/ I don’t want to get that 411 Jay: I don’t want to get it

412 Bev: I feel like I failed all my tests. So, what’s the point of getting all the results?

413 Akshya: I have no idea 414 Bruno: Yeah, me too hh 415 Bev: yeah hh

416 Akshya: I screwed up even marketing 417 Bev: I failed all

418 Bruno: Me too. After Christmas it’s fine

419 Bev: Yeah/ I don’t want to see it because it will ruin my Christmas 420 Bruno: Yeah me too. I was so upset. I was so upset

In the first example Bruno initiates talk about his written assignments and the proofreading involved by telling the others in a fairly desperate voice that his girlfriend had sent his assignment back. This is not the first time they have talked about proofreading and through the previous conversation and Bruno’s intonation the others predict the negative turn his utterance takes and start laughing even before he sighs and says “oh god”. Bruno speaks English as his third language and has frequently and openly commented about the additional difficulties he faces when having to write in English. While Bruno adds more details about the number of errors his girlfriend found and his frustration about this later on, in this exchange Bev immediately jumps to emphasise that this is a shared struggle and a shared experience by reciprocating the self-disclosure with stating “My husband is turning mine into a red minefield” in line 88. While this might be true, for Bev English is nonetheless her first language and she has noticeably less problems with reading, writing or speaking than Bruno. As such, the utterance seems to function mainly to maintain or re-establish interactional equilibrium, but also to re-assure Bruno that this does not mean that he is less intelligent, or that his assignments are worse written. In addition, Bruno’s utterance is received by a fair bit of laughter, which in the recording does not sound mean-spirited, but seems to imply understanding of Bruno’s experience and that it is not in fact a ‘serious’ trouble that could reflect negatively on Bruno. The exaggerated wording and metaphor in Bev’s reciprocal self- disclosure also seems to function as continuing with the humorous treatment of this issue by the team and sparks another round of laughter.

102

In Example 5.4-6 a troubles talk episode about potentially bad results is introduced by David’s reminder that results should be coming in soon. This sparks a series of self-disclosures about how badly each of them thinks they have done in the exams. These self-disclosures are likely more pre-emptive face-saving strategies or an expression of worry than a very serious assessment of one’s performance. However, we can see again how team members are keen to establish an equal status amongst themselves and are willing to emphasise their own poor performance in order to maintain this. One outcome of this episode is that it prompts Bruno in line 420 to point towards a more serious self-disclosure regarding the exams, which he foreshadows by stating “I was so upset”. While there is a brief interruption first, Bev inquires a few lines later what Bruno was upset about and he reports on the actually more serious mistake over misreading the exam questions we have already seen above (Example 5.4-3). However, given the other team members’ admissions about their worries regarding their own performance, mentioning it is now less face threatening for Bruno.

While self-disclosures sometimes seem more focused on mitigating and pre-empting face threats and maintaining interactional equilibrium (e.g. Examples 5.4-5 & 5.4-6), there are also incidents in the data where participants respond almost with relief at somebody finally admitting to a problem (e.g. Example 5.4-1). In all cases these utterances tend to spark often overlapping agreements and relationship enhancing practices including joint laughter, further inquiries and a reciprocation of self-disclosures.

Interestingly, it seems that exactly the willingness to risk a threat to one’s own face is what contributes significantly to enhancing rapport. It signals trust and opens up a floor that tends to be honest, open and focused on maintaining equality. This is not always present in the team, especially during task-focused discussion where team members are sometimes focused on defending their own opinion and interpersonal goals which sometimes leads to one- upmanship. Yet this is completely absent here, as we can see from the vehemence with which others reciprocate the admission of likely having failed too. Troubles talk thus seems to open up a particular type of floor, that might not always be available to team members in other types of talk.