Troubles talk can be a problematic and precarious type of talk. Given that troubles talk is by definition about some kind of trouble, that is a negative experience or a problematic issue, the act in itself is likely to be face-threatening to all interlocutors involved and potentially diminishes one’s own position (Bayraktaroğlu, 1992) fleetingly or even more permanently if not carefully managed. What this careful management consists of exactly, likely depends on the relationship of the interlocutors and on the gravity of the troubles that are being discussed. However, as discussed in the previous section, Jefferson did clearly identify recurring themes that seem at least in part to mitigate the face threat and counter-act the potential weakening in one’s own position, including laughter and an ambiguous initial telling, until the listeners indicated an alignment with the trouble.
Given this problematic nature of troubles talk, the question as to why it is engaged in in the first place seems more than warranted. While seeking help and advice might appear as the obvious answer, Jefferson and Lee’s (1981) study suggests that advice and with it a focus on the trouble itself and away from the person telling the trouble is only desirable later on in a troubles talk sequence. Other studies also confirm that advice is often neither sought not positively received (Feo & LeCouteur, 2013; Riccioni et al., 2014).
Yet, if finding a solution to one’s troubles is not the goal, what is it? Different studies have emphasised very different functions that troubles talk can fulfil including the provision of social support (Taniguchi & Kaufman, 2014) or communal coping (Goldsmith, 2004), as well as functions that seem quite unrelated to the troubles itself. Faircloth who conducted an ethnographic study of a community of elderly people at first found that a community was hardly visible and only later realised that:
When the residents talked of each other, they were talking into reality collective communicated problems of the neighbourhood. Community was blossoming in their talk of troubles. In essence, I began to consider that community was actively constructed through communication between residents. In Shady Grove, this communication was built around and on troubles talk. (Faircloth, 2001, p. 336)
Troubles talk here was an absolutely crucial ingredient distinguishing the members of the community from the world outside, for creating the sense of living in a community and for talking it into being. Faircloth’s first missing of the significance of troubles talk in the community he studied seems unsurprising given his later assertion:
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Research on troubles talk has not been connected, in any way, with the issue of community construction. Sociological attention has not specifically focused on troubles as making a constructive contribution to social life. (Faircloth, 2001, p. 337)
A similar finding is mirrored by Kyratzis (2000) who has conducted ethnographic research on a very different demographic: The interactions of 4-year olds in same sex-groups. Troubles talk featured prominently in the girls group (Kyratzis is also adopting Tannen’s different cultures assumption) and was found to fulfil a group-affirming function, while at the same time functioning as a device to confer status and power:
When comembers ratify a particular girl’s troubles, this confers status upon her in the friendship group. Nonratifications of one’s troubles by other members of girls’ friendship group indexes one’s low status in the group. (Kyratzis, 2000, p. 294)
Whether adults use troubles talk in a similar vein remains to be seen. However, Jefferson (1980) stated clearly that people do not always align with troubles talk, leading to its non- ratification. Haugh (2016) also reports on disaffiliative responses to troubles talk sequences, yet he did not see status as a reason for this disaffiliation, but found that utterances that too specifically blamed others tended to be disaffiliated with. Mewburn also warns of the negative consequences troubles talk might have including “the marginalisation and othering” (2011, p.330) of people excluded from the so formed groups. As such, while functions overall seem positive the negative aspects that can occur as a result of troubles talk cannot be ignored. Boxer (1993a) investigated troubles talk from a speech act perspective of indirect complaints. She points to a number of functions of indirect complaints, mainly that of creating solidarity, but also “venting frustrations, checking the validity of a negative evaluation, or seeking agreement” (p.167). Her analysis also indicates that indirect complaints (IC’s), and with that troubles talk, can be differentiated according to the focus, which can be the self, others and situations. Depending on the focus and the addressee, functions of troubles talk differ, for instance self-IC’s often serve as apologies to strangers but as “fishing for compliments” when used with friends (Boxer, 1993a, p. 172).
Troubles talk was also found to be an important component of identity construction (Haugh, 2016; Mewburn, 2011). In an examination of troubles talk done by PhD candidates during the completion of their PhD’s, Mewburn (2011) emphasises the importance troubles talk has in enacting an emerging academic identity as well as in constructing a community among PhD candidates who otherwise might share few things in common. She summarises:
Troubles talk seems to emerge in boundary spaces where doctoral identity is precarious, but this does not necessarily mean that everything is going to fall apart. Quite to the contrary: troubles talk may do work to keep the PhD candidature assemblage together or even build a community where there was none before. (Mewburn, 2011, p. 330)
At the same time, she also points to ways in which troubles talk gets mitigated in order to achieve its positive effects, emphasising the use of humour: “Troubles that are laughed at become, potentially, troubles that can be endured - even if one loses moral high ground, status
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or the appearance of authority in doing so” (Mewburn, 2011, p.326). In the second part of the quote, she also points to the more precarious aspects of troubles talk already mentioned. I will now turn to discussing troubles talk across cultures, though we will encounter this dilemma between community and relationship building and potential status loss throughout the section.