000			04681nam a22003137a 4500
999			_c6498 _d6498
005			20250625151520.0
008			200121s2019 -nz||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
040			_aAFVC
100			_aTennent, Emma G. _98806
245			_aIdentity and help in calls to Victim Support _cEmma Gabrielle Tennent
246			_aA thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington
260			_c2019
300			_aelectronic document (201 pages) ; PDF file
500			_aPhD thesis (Victoria University of Wellington)
520			_aThe link between identity and action is a fundamental topic across the social sciences. A key site to investigate this relationship is social interaction, where identities and social relations are built and used to accomplish action. In this thesis, I used discursive psychology to analyse the relationship between identity and the action of help in recorded calls to a victim support helpline. Victim is a contentious identity, with feminists and other critical scholars pointing to the politics involved when certain people are categorised as victims and others are overlooked. The name of the organisation that was the setting for my research, ‘Victim Support,’ explicitly links a victim identity with rights to access the help the service offers. Drawing on concepts in discursive psychology and using conversation analysis and membership categorisation analysis, I examined how participants oriented to the contentious questions of who victims are and how they should be helped. Drawing on contemporary interactional research which theorises the epistemic, deontic, and affective basis of human social relations, I examined how participants used self-other relations as a resource to build and interpret actions as help. The findings provide evidence for the mutually constitutive relationship between identity and action. Counter-intuitively, most callers did not explicitly categorise themselves as victims when asking for help. My analyses show how call-takers understood callers’ identities as victims even when they did not say so directly. The act of asking for help from Victim Support constituted callers’ identities as victims; and their identities rendered their requests accountable. Call-takers on the victim helpline act as gate-keepers, determining callers’ eligibility before providing help. I analysed how call-takers denied callers’ requests by implicitly or explicitly disavowing their identities as victims. Conversely, I showed that offers of help constituted callers as legitimate victims. Yet even once participants had accomplished joint understanding of callers as victims, they negotiated their respective epistemic and deontic rights to determine what help was needed and how it should be provided. The negotiation of how victims should be helped was particularly salient when callers sought help on behalf of others. Participants negotiated whether the moral obligation to help victims was associated with friends and family members, or institutions. The emotional support and practical advice offered by Victim Support is delivered by volunteer support workers, reflecting a common-sense assumption that these forms of help are normatively available to any competent person. My analyses attend to the dilemmas involved when callers sought help for others rather than providing it themselves. The findings contribute to three main areas of research: conversation analytic study of help as social action; membership categorisation analysis research on categorically organised rights and obligations; and the re-specification of psychological phenomenon as interactional objects within discursive psychology. The mutually constitutive link between identity and help is consequential, as the provision or withholding support can have material effects when callers are highly distressed or in fear for their lives. Thus, studying real-life interaction demonstrates the practical ways identity matters for seeking help. (Author's abstract). Record #6498
610		0	_98588 _aVictim Support New Zealand
650			_aATTITUDES _970
650			_aDOMESTIC VIOLENCE _9203
650			_aHELP SEEKING _95453
650		0	_97329 _aHELPLINES
650			_aINTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE _9431
650			_aTHESES _9606
650		4	_aVICTIMS OF CRIMES _9623
650		4	_aVICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE _9624
651		4	_aNEW ZEALAND _92588
856			_uhttp://hdl.handle.net/10063/8262
856			_uhttps://www.wgtn.ac.nz/news/2020/01/victimhood-language-services _zRead media release
942			_2ddc _cTHESIS