Scenes of family life: complaining in everyday conversation

The purpose of this study is to characterize the complaint/complaint-response sequence in everyday conversations between people who are on intimate terms. More specifically. the intent is to examine the form taken by the complaint and the form of the response elicited from the hearer, and to bring out the relation between the complaint as an act and the argument as a genre of conversation, The complaints analyzed, taken from a corpus of family conversations recorded in Montreal, have preferential realization patterns that can be linked in part to the intimacy of the relationship between the interactants: In many ways, they are uttered without the special precautions generally associated with face-threatening acts. The complainees most often reject the blame leveled at them. But well characterized arguments are virtually absent from the corpus. The entry into the argument is negotiated in the speech turns that follow the complaint/response sequence, and the argument only breaks out if the complainer questions the value of the complainee's response. Both interactants use numerous strategies for avoiding an argument and, more often than not, they succeed. The strategies they use can be seen as indicators of the status of verbal confrontation in the Quebec community. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.