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This thesis is a conversation analytic study of how people talk in clinical group supervision sessions. The study sought to describe and elucidate patterns of discourse by which group supervision members talk the institution of supervision ‘into being’ (Heritage, 1984:290). The data comprise a core of 21 audio recorded sessions. The recordings were made in a British University’s Practice-Based Counselling and Psychotherapy Research Clinic. All recordings are of one supervision group comprising of an experienced supervisor and three counsellors. The counsellors also all worked as clinicians in the clinic’s counselling agency. The recordings cover fortnightly supervision sessions over the course of one year. The thesis presents a detailed analysis of communications amongst the participants. In particular the thesis will show how they begin the business of supervision, with an ‘business-opening’ activity phase, which functions as an interim stage between small talk and getting down to business and orients the interactional activity to ‘feelings talk’. It shows how participants co-ordinate the presentation of case studies in a sequentially managed way. The thesis will also show how the use of ‘modelling talk enactments’ by the supervisor is responded to as advice-giving and shows how the interactants negotiate and align to the enactment with reference to an inference regarding ‘who knows what’ and ‘who knows most’. And finally, the thesis demonstrates how interactants organise laughter for negotiating the ‘tricky’ aspects of professional consideration, such as ‘liminal’ ethical aspects; appointing or accepting ‘responsibility’ for institutional problems and for negotiating where delicate matters between group members may be incipient. The study contributes to conversation analytic knowledge regarding CA literature on institutional interaction, particularly on therapeutic discourse and opens up directions for further CA research. The study also offers the findings to supervision research comprising a rare study into the ‘real-life’ interactions in group supervision.

Initial child mental health assessment appointments are an under researched area of interaction. Within the appointment, parents and children work to present a case to the clinicians of the child’s difficulties which situates their cause as legitimate, doctorable, and as requiring specialist services. The clinicians establish the reason for the child’s attendance, build an understanding of the difficulties the child is facing, and formulate and communicate a decision about whether there is a mental health related concern. The objective of this research was to explore the sequences of interaction between clinicians, parents, and the children in order to understand the social actions that are being accomplished through the participants talk. A conversation analytic framework was utilised to explore the interactions at a child and adolescent mental health service within 15 video recorded initial assessment appointments. Access to mental health services is organised through the construction of each participant’s turns in the interaction. Clinician’s question design elicits certain responses from the child, which then further orient to their perceived right to knowledge. Parents work to build a case for their child’s difficulties using a variety of rhetorical devices such as extreme case formulations and contrast devices that legitimise their need for specialist intervention. Clinicians deliver their decision about the child’s difficulties in such a way that asserts their authority and accountability in the relationship, whilst parents’ responses maintains this asymmetry. In conclusion, through their turns at talk, all parties in the interaction perform and accomplish different tasks which impact on the shape of the remainder of the appointment as well as the clinician-patient relationship and the child centeredness of the interaction. Conversation analysis proves a valuable and appropriate resource for researching child mental health appointments; a communication centred methodology for a communication based service.

This study investigates the organisation of topic in Japanese conversation. Using the framework of conversation analysis (CA), it aims to identify the mechanisms of the organisation of topic initiation, maintenance, and shift by investigating the environments where these actions occur and the devices participants use in order to achieve their actions at a particular place. Through the examination of questions and repair initiation, the organisation of topic initiation is shown as a boundaried topical movement in which the closing of one topic is followed by the initiation of another. It is crucially characterised as the recipient design, thereby, participants thoroughly attend to the co-participants’ events/experiences. The topic negotiation is illustrated through the examination of devices such as discourse marker dakara (‘so’) and figurative expressions pursuing the recipients’ response by means of the upshot and summary assessments. While orienting to the topic closing, participants monitor whether they can move to a next topic or they have something mentionable. The practice of reformulation and the reformulation questions reveal the organisation of topic shift which may enable the participants to manage or control the topical movement by organising their utterances through the initiation of repair. While keeping some connection with the prior or earlier turn(s), participants introduce a new topic. Participants effectively use repair initiation in implementing topic initiation/topic shift in order to develop the topical talk when they face troubles or fail to make their projections. Participants’ management elicits the co-participant’s coordination, which is an important social action. The study shows that the ways participants organise their conversation are overwhelmingly similar between Japanese and English, which indicates that conversational structures are in fact somehow primordial and they transcend linguistic and cultural differences.