Mechanism of Interpersonal Relationship Construction Observed by Mapping Linguistic Evaluation of Family Therapy Interview Texts Quantitative Analysis

Abstract

　　The overall importance of evaluation common to every text is that (1) it expresses the speaker's or writer's opinion, and in doing so it reflects the value system of that person and his/her community; (2) it constructs and maintains relations between the speaker or writer and the hearer or reader; and (3) it organizes the discourse. What importance, then, does evaluation have for psychotherapy texts?

　　In family therapy, the initial session is important in the sense that the interactional attitude between the therapist and the family members in the initial session decides whether the family members will continue the session or not. In other words, how the therapist builds interpersonal relationships is the key to reaching therapeutic agreement. This study examined how linguistic evaluation was utilized in family therapy to construct interpersonal relationships, focusing especially on (2) mentioned above. It also performed an analysis by comparative observation of sample sessions under the same settings, through analysis regarding the characteristics derived from the use of evaluative language by three therapists, as well as the deviation from the effective interactional factors in view of establishing interpersonal relationships.

　　Martin developed the Appraisal theory, which systematizes linguistic evaluation of any text, by utilizing the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. This study implemented Martin's Appraisal theory to analyze the transcripts of three sessions from family therapy conducted by three therapists under the same settings. This allowed for the construction of lexical mapping of appraisal and an overview of the findings. Quantitative analysis was presented on (1) how the amount of evaluative lexis affects the process of constructing the interpersonal relationships of the members, (2) the focal point of negotiation among sessions, (3) the strategic differences among the sessions in constructing the interpersonal relationships of members observed from the statistical results.

　　The other purpose of this study is to present the effectuality of constructing linguistic evaluation based on a more scientific and objective way of research implementation as a common method among schools of psychotherapy for outcome/process research, since such methods and measurements have not been established in Japanese psychotherapy society so far.