About you: Empathy, objectivity and authority

This article considers the patterns of usage of generalized you w thin a corpus of interviews with women who had undergone mastectomies, mostly following diagnosis of breast cancer. To date, descriptions of the meanings and functions of generalized you have focused on the classificatory rather than the contextual. Our analysis of discursive shifts between you and other forms of reference within one case study interview demonstrates the benefits of microcosmic, interactional analysis for an understanding of both the functions of you and the dynamics of the interaction. We consider two main uses of you. Ir the first, we survey a range of instances where generalized you occurs in 'structural knowledge descriptions,' and illustrate how these function differently in the interactive context depending upon the contextually delimited membership category at issue. In the second, we consider cases where segues between use of you and use of l occur in the description of privileged personal experience by the speaker, and, in particular, instances where false starts and repairs suggest negotiation of choice between generic and specific frames for the account. We conclude by reviewing three potentially concurrent interactional functions of generalized you, and propose that in our data, generalized you has the effect of allowing objectivity with potential interactional benefits to both participants in the interview. Crown Copyright (c) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.