1. Objectifs

Intentions :
« More specifically, the intent is:
1. to examine the more or less direct form taken by the complaint and the form of the response elicited from the complainee;
2. to evaluate the impact of the complaint on the conversation, i.e., the possible discursive continuations of the complaint/complaint-response sequence, which will make it possible to bring out the relation between the complaint as an act and the scene or argument as a type of consversation. » (p. 1596)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
« The data for this study are taken from the Montréal 1995 corpus, which consists of about 50 hours of family conversations recorded at home by four French-speaking Montréal families. [...]
Only complaints addressed by a speaker to a peer (by a member of a couple to his/her partner, in the vast majority of cases, or by an individual to his/her brother or sister) were taken into consideration. The complaints exchanged between people who are not peers (parents and children notably) were eliminated in order to neutralize the factor of variation introduced by a difference in hierarchical position between interactants.
The number of occurences gathered — 50 — is relatively small for such a large quantity of data, and in comparison with other studies on the subject, which most often have used different data-gathering methodologies. But the complaints in this study appeared « Naturally'', so to speak, not being the result of an imposed situation [...]. » (p. 1598)

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu

3. Résumé

« 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 Montréal, 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 Québec community. » (p. 1595)