Counsellors' interactional practices for facilitating group members' affiliative talk about personal experiences in group counselling

Abstract

Affiliative talk about personal experiences, that is, talk that supports the person's affective stance towards the experience, is important in all types of counselling. Often, however, this is not the only or even the main goal of the counselling. We investigate what interactional practices counsellors use to facilitate group members' affiliative talk about their personal experiences in a problem focused, health promotion group counselling. The findings are based on a conversation analysis of 23 video-recorded group counselling sessions. We present four interactional practices by counsellors for facilitating participants' talk about their personal experiences in relation to other group members' experiences. We demonstrate that each interactional practice sets up a different space for telling about one's experiences in an affiliative way. Loosely designed questions about group members' thoughts at the end of an assignment seem to engender stretches of affiliative talk about personal experiences very efficiently. We suggest that even if the counselling is focused on solving group members' problems, it should include time for loosely structured discussions among group members to support affiliative talk.