Interaction analysis of ticket-purchasing activity by a wheelchair user : Practical problems surrounding the progressivity of activity and assistance

Abstract

This paper, based on the methodological frameworks of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) and interaction analysis, looks at four video-recorded service encounters where a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy attempts to buy a ticket at a train station in Japan. During the encounters, the three parties—train station attendants, the wheelchair user, and her care professionals—face a practical problem of whether special assistance should be provided to the wheelchair user. Such assistance would facilitate the progressivity of their ticket-purchasing activity. Alternatively, not offering such assistance would maintain the participation status of the care professionals, which relates to the autonomy of the wheelchair user. The present analysis reveals that in general, the train station attendants and care professionals both orient to maintaining the unaddressed recipient status of the care professionals. Even when the possibility arises that progressivity in the ongoing interaction may become inhibited, the train station attendants explore the possibilities of selecting the wheelchair user as next speaker, and of trying to delay the selection of the care professionals as much as possible. Further,even in the moment when the care professionals are selected as next speaker, they behave so as not to highlight this fact or their involvement in the interaction. The participants thus navigate through their practical problems, not with an either-or approach, but by simultaneously addressing the progressivity of their activity and avoiding the involvement of care professionals. This is made possible by their meticulous attention to the other participants' behavior and development of the activity, as well as by their own careful, coordinated participation in the interaction. Finally, the participants' problems are embedded within their socially organized practice. Their behavior in the encounters itself constitutes their morality, as well as their methods for living life in reality.