Constructing (in)competence

Disabling Evaluations in Clinical and Social interaction

Dana Kovarsky, Madeline Maxwell, Judith F. Duchan

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134804931
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Competence and incompetence are constructs that emerge in the social milieu of everyday life. Individuals are continually making and revising judgments about each other's abilities as they interact. The flexible, situated view of competence conveyed by the research of the authors in this volume is a departure from the way that competence is usually thought about in the fields of communication disabilities and education. In the social constructivist view, competence is not a fixed mass, residing within an individual, or a fixed judgment, defined externally. Rather, it is variable, sensitive to what is going on in the here and now, and coconstructed by those present. Constructions of competence are tied to evaluations implicit in the communication of the participants as well as to explicit evaluations of how things are going.

The authors address the social construction of competence in a variety of situations: engaging in therapy for communication and other disorders, working and living with people with disabilities, speaking a second language, living with deafness, and giving and receiving instruction. Their studies focus on adults and children, including those with disabilities (aphasia, traumatic brain injury, augmentative systems users), as they go about managing their lives and identities. They examine the all-important context in which participants make competence judgments, assess the impact of implicit judgments and formal diagnoses, and look at the types of evaluations made during interaction.

This book makes an argument all helping professionals need to hear: institutional, clinical, and social practices promoting judgments must be changed to practices that are more positive and empowering.

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1

Evaluating Competence in the Course of Everyday Interaction

Judith Duchan

State University of New York at Buffalo

Madeline Maxwell

University of Texas at Austin

Dana Kovarsky

University of Rhode Island

1. Mr. H: … I’ll take along a camera. Speech-Language Pathologist: Very good, Walter.

2. Pediatrician: Have you heard the term “cerebral palsy” before? Father: Cerebral … Pediatrician: Cerebral palsy. Father: Yeah. Mother: That’s what he has. Father: Oh, I know that—

3. My tall and graceful cypress. …

The boldfaced elements in the snippets of talk just presented can be interpreted as evaluative. The first example (from Kovarsky, Kimbarow, & Kastner, chap. 13, this volume) is an explicit evaluation of a client’s previous response. The issuer, a speech-language pathologist, intends the recipient, Mr. H., to interpret her expression as an evaluation of his response. The second example (from Barton, chap. 12, this volume) is a less direct one in which a pediatrician is revealing an evaluation by underestimating the knowledge of a family as she explains to them what they already know. The third evaluation is even less transparent. It was interpreted by the recipient as a validation of her competence in speaking Albanian—competence that had been previously placed in question (Trix, chap. 7, this volume). This is a book about ways that evaluations, such as the three just cited, are achieved. It is also about how evaluations can impact on one’s notions of competence (and incompetence) ¹ and ultimately how they affect an individual’s notions of self-identity.

This idea that one’s identity is tied directly to evaluative contexts experienced in everyday life differs from the more traditional view of identity as a single, fixed, encapsulated entity. The ideas and findings of the authors in this text support the conceptualization of identity as a flexible system that can include a multiplicity of selves, that can be brought to bear on the moment, and that can be influenced by what happens in the moment. Our view follows that of Kenneth Gergen (1994) in psychology and Donal Carbaugh (1988, 1994, 1996) in speech communication. Carbaugh (1996) commented: “Identities [are] something created and subjected to particular conversational dynamics. … From this vantage point the question ‘who am I?’ depends partly on ‘where I am,’ ‘with whom I am,’ and [material and symbolic] resources that are available to the people there” (pp. 213–214).

Support for the construction of a flexible, situated identity is provided by Trix (chap. 7, this volume) in her description of how her identity as a learner of Albanian was altered when native speakers of that language began to tease her about a language mistake she made. On one occasion a group of women laughed when Trix used the Albanian term long to refer to her height, rather than using the more appropriate term tall. It was the women’s reaction to that occasion that engendered in Trix feelings about her limitations as a speaker of Albanian. These feelings of incompetence increased throughout the day when the women continued to laugh among themselves at her “mistake.” Trix’s view of herself as incompetent was reversed later when her mentor referred to her as a tall and graceful cypress. Trix may well have experienced the different evaluations, one from the women and the other from her mentor, as both being valid views of her competence as a speaker of Albanian.

There are instances described in this volume in which acts of evaluation are closely tied to feelings of belongingness. Judgments of incompetence, in their most severe form, can lead to threats of expulsion from a social community. The subjects in Maxwell, Poeppelmeyer, and Polich’s study (chap. 6, this volume), who are deaf, commonly experience alienation in interactions with hearing peers. Similarly, the subjects in Higginbotham and Wilkins’ study (chap. 3, this volume), who use augmentative communicative systems, experience ostracism by partners because they are unable to meet the temporal or social demands expected by oral communicators. In these cases, the interactants who are ignored may view themselves as disabled (incompetent) communicators. Alternatively, those same interactants may view themselves as different, but competent, communicators and their partners as rude or ignorant about their differences. The choice is similar to that of a person from a different social or ethnic community who is treated as gauche or ignorant (see Maxwell et al., chap. 6, this volume, for a clear statement of how those who are deaf are faced with a choice of identity as disabled or as culturally different).

Even though the contributors to this volume hold various views of competence, they come to the same conclusion: Competence judgments pervade, influence, and grow out of ordinary social interactions. The studies presented here can be described together within a single multicomponential framework. The framework depicts evaluations of competence taking place as participants assume a particular, situated view of the interaction. Participants take a position, one of a situated self, from which they interpret what is going on and gauge how they and others are doing (see Carbaugh, 1988, 1993, 1994, 1996, for a detailed view of this position).

The research in this volume on the construction of competence builds on the findings of other researchers who have been working within a variety of theoretical frameworks and using a variety of methodologies. Ethnomethodologists have, for example, studied ways authors design their talk for their audiences (see discussions of “recipient design” in Maynard, 1992; Sacks & Schegloff, 1979; Schegloff, 1979). Cognitive scientists have investigated how one’s theory of another’s mind pervades social interaction (Astington, Harris, & Olson, 1988; Frye & Moore, 1991; Wellman, 1990), and systemic linguists have examined the communication resources available to language users to convey an “attitude” (Halliday, 1961, 1967–1968; Halliday, McIntosh, & Strevens, 1964) or “appraisal” (Eggins & Slade, 1997; Martin, 1992).

The situated viewpoint expressed in this book has perhaps the strongest affinity with that of Dell Hymes (1974) in his depiction of communicative competence. In Hymes’ view, a speaker draws on a variety of resources in deciding “when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, [and] in what manner” (p. 177). A speaker, as depicted by Hymes, is thereby seen as being situated and as drawing on a variety of resources in the course of communicating. Although Hymes did not focus directly on evaluation, his view of communication is easily extended to one laid out here—individuals, when evaluating others, use evaluative resources available in the language and cultural practices of their community.

These various scholarly approaches all lead to the view that participants in interactions are continually tracking what is going on. Those engaged in interactions convey their attitudes about their own and their partners’ contributions in a variety of ways—a raise of an eyebrow, a change in intonation or timing, an evaluative statement, even a nonresponse in contexts in which a response is required. In this situated view, competence judgments are continually being constructed and negotiated.

Evidence that tracking is ongoing and pervasive comes from studies and observations of people aligning with or making accommodations to one another as they interact (Coupland & Coupland, 1991; Giles & Coupland, 1991; Kendon, 1985). Communicators of all ages and abilities can be observed initiating activities to fit their view of their interactants. They may suggest activities through nonverbal means, or they may verbally raise different topics with different partners. Their initiations depend on judgments they make about their interactants’ knowledge and interests. Speakers’ initiations are responded to differently, depending on the recipients’ construal of their partners’ experiences, language background, or overall capability. When recipients show signs of incomprehension, speakers repeat themselves, simplify the original message, slow it down, and provide additional background, basing their repairs on judgments about what is causing their partners’ confusion. All of these activities are based on the results of tracking one another’s competence in the course of face-to-face interaction.

Competence judgments also occur in non-face-to-face contexts, such as when someone writes a report about a third party. The author of the report also takes on the perspective of a situated self, assuming a particular point of view, drawing from particular background knowledge, and constructing a view that becomes situated in the discourse of the report (Duchan, chap. 10, this volume; Ward & Duchan, 1996).

Many of the evaluations described in this book are part and parcel of the institutionalized practices between partners. Clinicians are socialized to evaluate the competence of their clients. Teachers assume the role of evaluator when they engage in teaching students. The evaluations of clinicians and teachers, whether positive or negative, can be empowering, resulting in a sense of self as competent; or evaluations, even if they are positive, can lead to the creation and maintenance of disabled identities—feelings of being sickly, deficient, incapable, powerless, incompetent.

This book, in sum, is designed to make a case that competence is created and evaluated in the course of situated interactions and that the evaluations are important in the construction of social identities. This chapter outlines a framework for examining how competence is socially constructed from everyday experiences. This framework also provides a way for us to present what the different authors in this book have to say about the effects of evaluations on the individuals’ emerging judgments of their own competence.

CONSTRUCTING COMPETENCE IN INTERACTION

Because social interactions are rich and complex, a framework for studying and thinking about how competence is constructed in the course of social interactions must be rich and complex. We offer the following multicomponential rendition of competence construction:

A situated self draws from a variety of communication resources to evaluate competence from some position, occasioned by something, about something, in comparison with a set of expectations, and with potentially long-lasting and profound effects.

The framework as just described contains six dynamic and highly interactive constructs:

1. Communication resources.

2. Evaluating competence from some position.

3. Occasioned by something.

4. About something.

5. In comparison with something.

6. With potentially long-lasting and profound effects.

Each contributes to our understanding of how competence gets constructed, and each is discussed in various ways by this volume’s authors.

Communication Resources for Expressing Evaluation

Evaluations in their most explicit form are conveyed in a statement such as that found in employee performance evaluations, in school lessons, or in therapy sessions: “You are doing a good job.” But evaluations do not always occur as overt speech acts; they may also be covert, as when someone arches an eyebrow or when someone passes up an obligatory turn at talk: “How do you like my new car?” (no response) (Pomerantz, 1988). Even when individuals are not part of an ongoing interaction, they can interpret their position as one in which they have been excluded or ostracized—and thus as a very strong negative evaluation (Higginbotham & Wilkins, chap. 3, this volume; Maxwell, Poeppelmeyer, & Polich, chap. 6, this volume).

One way to discover how evaluations get constructed is by looking at the evaluative tools available in the linguistic or semiotic system being used by the participants. These tools are the communication resources that comprise a person’s potential communication repertoire. Hymes used the term repertoire to describe resources that are used by members of a particular community and those that are used by particular speakers who participate in one or more “ways of speaking” (Hymes, 1974, p. 199). We examine some of the linguistic and nonlinguistic resources that are available to Americans communicating evaluations in English (see also Eggins & Slade, 1997).

Linguistic Elements Associated With Evaluation

Lexical Choices. One obvious way to convey evaluations is through the use of evaluative terms such as good–bad, lousy–fantastic, sloppy–careful, stellar–plebeian, a keeper–a loser, and so on. These lexical items may appear syntactically as nominals (nouns, noun phrases) or as modifiers (adjectives and adverbs). Epithets (nouns such as “brat” or “shithead”) are also primary candidates for evaluating others’ performances, along with interjections (“abso-fucking-lutely,” “run like shit”). Some less obvious lexical elements used for evaluations are general terms that serve to undercut straightforward descriptions and thereby show value-laden equivocation (“sort of responsive”; “pretty bright”), and nonliteral, metaphoric language used to understand and translate the effects of high-impact evaluative contexts (Mastergeorge, chap. 11, this volume).

One of the characteristics of evaluative terms is their implied dichotomous structure. Thus one can interpret assertions containing evaluative terms as implicatures (Grice, 1975). Calling one thing good may be heard as implying that another thing is bad. A compliment issued today may be heard as an indicator that criticism was withheld in bygone days.

Preposed adverbials not only take on meaning by virtue of the lexical interpretation, but also by their placement and pronunciation in a contrastive context (Biber & Finegan, 1988). The following phrase containing a preposed adverbial, “essentially,” can be read as a deprecating statement because of its placement at the beginning of a sentence, and even more so if there is extra stress placed on the second syllable: “Essentially it’s a review of old literature.” This is in contrast with the phrase: “It’s essentially a review of old literature,” which may be interpreted as describing a happy discovery after having looked for old literature. Other preposed adverbials such as “well,” “but,” and “actually” also can be interpreted as a signal for a negative evaluation when placed at the beginning of a conversational turn.

Evaluation can also be encoded through strategic use of verbs. “His proposal thrilled her” is rightfully interpretable as a positive evaluation since it is encoded in the verb as a positively valued emotional reaction.

Grammatical and Discourse Resources. Consider the parent who regards his or her child’s coloring and says: “Staying within the lines is really hard, isn’t it?” or “Try harder to stay inside the lines” or “You’re not supposed to color outside the lines” or “It looks messy when you go outside the lines” or even ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Hidden Factors Influencing Judgments of Competence
• Part III: Diagnosis as Situated Practice
• Part IV: Intervention as Situated Practice
• Author Index
• Subject Index