A Discourse Analysis of how Identity and Social Context are Talked About in Family Therapy

With increasing acknowledgement that families’ lives are embedded in wider societal, cultural and power contexts, therapists have been encouraged to attend to these contextual factors within the therapeutic interaction. The aim of the study was to analyse the transcripts from three audio-recorded family therapy sessions following a micro-macro analytic approach to discourse analysis. The findings of this discursive analysis highlighted three ‘topics of talk’ through which families discursively construct and enact their identities at multiple levels of social, cultural and political context. Analysis of the micro-features of the talk attended to the rhetorical strategies, such as interruptions and topic changes, that therapists and families use to construct discursive objects and positions. The macro-analysis highlighted the discursive reproduction of normative culturally and socially embedded assumptions and narratives, such as normative gender roles and individualising accounts of mental health difficulties. The analysis also offered a unique way of attending to how therapists’ positional power and therapeutic techniques can unknowingly shape the course of the discursive exchange and impact collaborative practice. Implications for clinical practice are considered, such as therapist reflexivity, and for training programmes and service development, particularly the value of discursive research in bringing a contextual consciousness to these areas.