Complaint

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Complaint
Author(s):	Klara Skogmyr Marian (Stockholm University, Sweden & University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1396-009X)
To cite:	Skogmyr Marian, Klara. (2023). Complaint. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/SFWT2

A complaint is a social action – or activity (see below) – in which one or several speakers express a negative stance about a person, object, or situation. In the CA literature, the term complaint has been used to designate rather different types of interactional phenomena. Most complaints can be considered either ‘direct’ or ‘indirect’ complaints depending on whether the recipient is the one who is accused of having caused the negative situation (direct complaints) or if a third party/entity is held responsible (indirect complaints). Sometimes this distinction is not as clear, however (Skogmyr Marian, et al. 2023). What all complaints have in common is that they include expressions of negative stance about something (the ‘complainable’, Schegloff 2005) that the speaker claims has affected him/her negatively in an unfair or unreasonable manner. Complaints are moral and accountable acts (Drew 1998) and typically oriented to as delicate (Edwards 2005; Ruusuvuori, et al. 2019; Skogmyr Marian 2021b).

In direct complaints, the ‘complainant’ (the person complaining, Drew 1998) thus expresses dissatisfaction with and holds the recipient responsible for the complainable (Dersley & Wootton 2000; Laforest 2009; Schegloff 2005, among others). According to Schegloff (2005), such complaints are typically produced as the first pair part of an adjacency pair sequence. It projects a reply in the form of an apology, remedy, rejection, etc., and it is often followed by the acceptance/rejection of the reply. Although direct complaints may serve various interactional purposes, speakers often use them to improve the complainable situation in some way. For example, a customer might address a complaint to a repair service to attempt to speed up the repair process (Kevoe-Feldman 2018); see particularly line 7:

[Kevoe-Feldman 2018: 105]

01          ((Ring))
02  Rep:    Jack Camera. Sara speaking.
03          May I help you?
04  Cus:    .hh Yes indee:d, ((throat clear)) .hh
05          I=uh: sent my camera in:=uh you got it on
06          thuh thirtieth of last month an' (.) .hh
07       -> ((throat clear)) I still don’t ha:ve it
08          an’ I:’ve called a couple a ti:mes an:d
09          uh:m in: to it. (.) An:d I should
10          check back on thuh web=hh an: I see
11          no changes.
12          (.)
13  Rep:    What’s thuh repair number?

The doubled-barreled nature (Schegloff 2007) of the customer’s action as both a complaint and a request for speedy service can be seen in the service representative’s response, as he orients to the institutional task rather than, for example, apologizing or rejecting the grounds for the complaint (see also Fox & Heinemann 2021, on how trouble reports are treated in service settings).

Indirect complaints, in contrast, involve the expression of negative stance about a (typically non-present) third party or situation. In these cases, the recipient is thus not held responsible for the complainable, and the ‘interactional project’ (Levinson 2013) embodied through such complaints is normally not to change the complainable situation, but rather to seek affiliation and/or sympathy from the recipients (Drew 1998; Drew & Holt 1988; Holt 2012). In the following excerpt, D complains to K that she got an excessively expensive bill for renting a gym despite having received an assurance from the head of the school of PE (‘he’) that it would not be the case (lines 1-4). K responds with a high-grade negative assessment (line 5) that displays her affiliation with D.

(Holt 2000: 446)

01  D:    no (.) so I went over to him and I said er you
02        know last night after Richard’s gym I says I’ve
03        just got a bill here for fifty quid he says ↑Oh
04        I’m sorry it’s nought to do with me.
05  K:    Oh:: the [rat
06  D:             [I know ↑O::h I was absolutely furious
07  K:    can’t you cancel it?
08  D:    well I’ve told her now what can I do I’ve told
09        her you know you’re having your party here.

If affiliative responses are not (immediately) forthcoming, the complainant tends to extend the sequence to underline the complaint-worthy nature of the situation and seek stronger displays of affiliation (Traverso 2009). Because of this, most indirect complaints take the form of a larger conversational activity rather than a single turn in an adjacency pair structure (Heinemann & Traverso 2009). Very strong displays of affiliation from coparticipants may lead to joint complaining (Drew & Walker 2009; Heinemann 2009; Rääbis, et al. 2019). Speakers’ orientations to affiliative exchanges and the co-constructed nature of indirect complaints show the interpersonal dimensions of the activity (Günthner 1997; Hanna 1981; Skogmyr Marian 2022).

CA research has documented the diverse interactional resources speakers deploy to show (affective) negative stance and account for their complaints. Although expressions of negative stance sometimes are subtle (Ruusuvuori, et al. 2019), in many cases complainants assemble diverse interactional means to clearly index the unreasonable nature of the situation and show affective involvement (Drew 1998; Günthner 1997; Selting 2012). Detailed reports and tellings are often deployed to account for and provide ‘evidence’ for the complaint (Drew 1998; Drew & Holt 1988; Günthner 1995; Selting 2012). In Excerpt 2, the speakers used direct-reported speech (lines 1-4, 8-9; Holt 2000), extreme-case formulations (line 6, Pomerantz 1986), and marked prosody (lines 3-6; Couper-Kuhlen 2012) to construct and respond to the complaint. Non-lexical vocalizations and embodied conduct expressing negative stance are also recurrent resources for complaining (e.g., Selting 2012; Skogmyr Marian 2021a).

Additional Related Entries:

• Assessment
• Object-side assessment
• Preference
• Storytelling
• Subject-side assessment

Cited References:

Couper-Kuhlen, E. (2012). Exploring affiliation in the reception of conversational complaint stories. In A. Peräkylä & M.-L. Sorjonen (Eds.), Emotion in Interaction (pp. 113–146). Oxford University Press.

Dersley, I., & Wootton, A. (2000). Complaint sequences within antagonistic argument. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33(4), 375–406.

Drew, P. (1998). Complaints about transgressions and misconduct. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 31(3–4), 295–325.

Drew, P., & Holt, E. (1988). Complainable matters: The use of idiomatic expressions in making complaints. Social Problems, 35, 398–417.

Drew, P., & Walker, T. (2009). Going too far: Complaining, escalating and disaffiliation. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(12), 2400–2414.

Edwards, D. (2005). Moaning, whinging and laughing: The subjective side of complaints. Discourse Studies, 7(1), 5–29.

Fox, B. A., & Heinemann, T. (2021). Are they requests? An exploration of declaratives of trouble in service encounters. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 54(1), 20–38.

Günthner, S. (1995). Exemplary stories. The cooperative construction of moral indignation. VERSUS 70/71, 145–176.

Günthner, S. (1997). Complaint Stories – constructing emotional reciprocity among women. In H. Kotthoff & R. Wodak (Eds.), Communicating Gender in Context (pp. 179–218). John Benjamins.

Hanna, C. F. (1981). Complaint as a form of association. Qualitative Sociology, 4, 298–311.

Heinemann, T. (2009). Participation and exclusion in third party complaints. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(12), 2435–2451.

Heinemann, T., & Traverso, V. (2009). Complaining in interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(12), 2381–2384.

Holt, E. (2000). Reporting and reacting: Concurrent responses to reported speech. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33(4), 425–454.

Holt, E. (2012). Using laugh responses to defuse complaints. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(4), 430–448.

Kevoe-Feldman, H. (2018). The interactional work of suppressing complaints in customer service encounters. Journal of Pragmatics, 123, 102–112.

Laforest, M. (2009). Complaining in front of a witness: Aspects of blaming others for their behaviour in multi-party family interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(12), 2452–2464.

Levinson, S. C. (2013). Action formation and ascription. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 103–130). Wiley-Blackwell.

Pomerantz, A. (1986). Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims. Human Studies, 9, 219–229.

Rääbis, A., Hennoste, T., Rumm, A., & Laanesoo, K. (2019). They are so stupid, so stupid. Emotional affect in Estonian school-related complaints. Journal of Pragmatics, 153, 20–33.

Ruusuvuori, J., Asmuß, B., Henttonen, P., & Ravaja, N. (2019). Complaining about others at work. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 52(1), 41–62.

Schegloff, E. A. (2005). On complainability. Social Problems, 52(4), 449–476.

Schegloff, E. A. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.

Selting, M. (2012). Complaint stories and subsequent complaint stories with affect displays. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 387–415.

Skogmyr Marian, K. (2021a). Assessing without words: Verbally incomplete utterances in complaints. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 689443.

Skogmyr Marian, K. (2021b). Initiating a complaint: Change over time in French L2 speakers’ practices. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 54(2), 163–182.

Skogmyr Marian, K. (2022). The Development of L2 Interactional Competence: A Multimodal Study of Complaining in L2 French Interactions. Routledge.

Skogmyr Marian, K., Nilsson, J., Norrby, C., Lindström, J., & Wide, C. (2023). On the verge of (in)directness: Managing complaints in service interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 213, 126–144.

Traverso, V. (2009). The dilemmas of third-party complaints in conversation between friends. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(12), 2385–2399.

Additional References:

Heinemann, T., & Traverso, V. (2009). Complaining in interaction. Special issue of Journal of Pragmatics, 41(12).

Jefferson, G. (2015). Talking about Troubles in Conversation. Oxford University Press.