Daring to taste: The organisation of children's tasting practices during preschool lunches

Tasting food is the first step toward diversifying eating habits, and studies with children have typically focused on their sensory education and willingness to try new foods. While very little is known about how children taste foods during everyday mealtimes, EMCA (ethnomethodological and conversation analytic) research on adult tasting in naturalistic settings has demonstrated regular organisational patterns. This paper brings these two research areas together, using the insights of EMCA research on adult tasting to inform our understanding of how young children taste food during preschool lunches. Data are taken from a large corpus of video-recorded lunches in Sweden, in which children (3- to 6-year-olds) were eating with staff members. Discursive Psychology and multimodal Conversation Analysis were used to analyse the data. The analysis demonstrates how the sequential organisation of child tasting is similar to adult tasting, and how tasting practices are a collaborative, multisensory activity involving various embodied practices: from the orientation to food as 'to be tasted', the withdrawal of mutual gaze and exaggerated mouth movements, to the re-establishment of gaze accompanying the food assessment. In contrast to adult tasting, however, tasting during preschool lunches is often framed in terms of personal development of the child and of the individualising of taste within the framework of the institution. The findings thus provide further support for EMCA research on sensory practices and contribute to psychological research on children's eating by evidencing the importance of the interactional and institutional context on tasting as a sensory practice.

"I *know* all the things I should be doing …": accounting for mental health and illness in an online mental health discussion forum during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

Mental health is highly correlated with a person's social and economic circumstances, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic made this connection uniquely visible. Yet a discourse of personal responsibility for mental health often dominates in mental health promotion campaigns, media coverage and lay understandings, contributing to the stigmatisation of mental ill-health.

METHODS

In this study, we analysed how the concept of 'mental health' was discursively constructed in an online mental health peer-support forum in Australia during 2020, the period of the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. An approach informed by Critical Discursive Psychology was employed to analyse all posts made to a discussion thread entitled "Coping during the coronavirus outbreak" in 2020, a total of 1,687 posts.

RESULTS

Two main interpretative repertoires concerning mental health were identified. Under the first repertoire, mental health was understood as resulting largely from the regular performance of a suite of self-care behaviours. Under the second repertoire, mental health was understood as resulting largely from external circumstances outside of the individual's control. The existence of two different repertoires of mental health created an ideological dilemma which posters negotiated when reporting mental ill-health. A recurring pattern of accounting for mental ill-health was noted in which posters employed a three-part concessive structure to concede Repertoire 1 amid assertions of Repertoire 2; and used disclaimers, justifications, and excuses to avoid negative typification of their identity as ignorant or irresponsible.

CONCLUSIONS

Mental ill-health was commonly oriented to by forum posters as an accountable or morally untoward state, indicating the societal pervasiveness of a discourse of personal responsibility for mental health. Such discourses are likely to contribute to the stigmatisation of those suffering from mental ill-health. There is a need therefore for future communications about mental health to be framed in a way that increases awareness of social determinants, as well as for policy responses to effect material change to social determinants of mental health.

Organizational logics in time of crises: How physicians narrate the healthcare response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Swedish hospitals

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged healthcare organizations and puts focus on risk management in many ways. Both medical staff and leaders at various levels have been forced to find solutions to problems they had not previously encountered. This study aimed to explore how physicians in Sweden narrated the changes in organizational logic in response to the Covid-19 pandemic using neo-institutional theory and discursive psychology. In specific, we aimed to explore how physicians articulated their understanding of if and, in that case, how the organizational logic has changed during this crisis response.

METHODS

The empirical material stems from interviews with 29 physicians in Sweden in the summer and autumn of 2020. They were asked to reflect on the organizational response to the pandemic focusing on leadership, support, working conditions, and patient care.

RESULTS

The analysis revealed that the organizational logic in Swedish healthcare changed and that the physicians came in troubled positions as leaders. With management, workload, and risk repertoires, the physicians expressed that the organizational logic, to a large extent, was changed based on local contextual circumstances in the 21 self-governing regions. The organizational logic was being altered based upon how the two powerbases (physicians and managers) were interacting over time.

CONCLUSIONS

Given that healthcare probably will deal with future unforeseen crises, it seems essential that healthcare leaders discuss what can be a sustainable organizational logic. There should be more explicit regulatory elements about who is responsible for what in similar situations. The normative elements have probably been stretched during the ongoing crisis, given that physicians have gained practical experience and that there is now also, at least some evidence-based knowledge about this particular pandemic. But the question is what knowledge they need in their education when it comes to dealing with new unknown risks.

To like or not to like: Negotiating food assessments of children from families with a low socioeconomic position

The present study explored how primary school-aged children from families with a low socioeconomic position produce 'likes' and 'dislikes' of foods during everyday family meals, and how these (dis)likes are understood and treated by their parents. It is crucial to understand how food preferences develop in the course of everyday life, as it is known that there are socioeconomic disparities in food preference and consumption, and that children from families with a low socioeconomic position have relatively poorer diets. Deploying an interactional approach to food preference, video recordings of 79 evening meals in families with a low socioeconomic position were analyzed using discursive psychology and conversation analysis. The analysis highlighted that children's food likes and dislikes were treated differently by their parents. While likes were routinely not responded to, agreed with or further elaborated, dislikes were predominantly oriented to as food refusals or treated as inappropriate, or non-genuine claims. Children's food assessments, i.e., likes and dislikes, were often disattended by parents when they appeared to be food preference displays. By contrast, assessments that accomplished social actions like refusals and complaints were more often responded to. The analysis also revealed the importance of distinguishing between assessments about food items in general, that were not currently being eaten, and assessments of food eaten here-and-now. All in all, the study evidences that and how assessment sequences open up interactional spaces where children and parents orient to and negotiate relative rights and responsibilities to know, to assess and to accomplish specific actions. Implications for food preference research are discussed.

Analyzing Discursive Constructions of Community in Newspaper Articles

The manner by which power is reified through newspaper reporting can assist community psychologists in getting a handle on the complex, often contradictory, ways by which ideology and power are constituted in relation to particular communities. Accordingly, the present study draws on discursive psychology to analyse how 377 newspaper articles construct the community of Thembelihle (a low-income community in South Africa) and how these constructions can inform counter-hegemonic strategy. Two discourses were identified in the analysis, Signifying Legitimacy and Containing the Protest Community. Where the Signifying Legitimacy discourse established a Statist legitimacy-illegitimacy binary against which Thembelihle was to be assessed, the Containing the Protest Community discourse constructed Thembelihle as a monolithic entity that enacted a wholly violent, and often directionless, mode of protest violence which was concerned with little more than 'service delivery'. Together, these discourses suggest to us the manner by which low-income communities are engaged by the State as well as how Statist representations function materially. Certainly, most newspaper articles relied on an interpretive frame whose hermeneutics were characterised primarily by violence and homogenously experienced suffering. Such representation, we argue, signifies the dominant discursive field and ideology against which counter-hegemonic strategy and (re)presentation must act.

"You are in Trouble!": A Discursive Psychological Analysis of Threatening Language in Chinese Cellphone Fraud Interactions

Currently cellphone fraudsters often use language to threaten and bully victims. From discursive psychological perspective, the present study applies conversation analysis to discuss fraudsters' threatening language in Chinese cellphone fraud conversations. The authentic data are collected from Chinese media which report legal news or conduct public legal education on the battle against cellphone frauds. Results of the study show that: (1) cellphone fraudsters construct their false identities through information gap and information sharing in their turn-taking designs, which brings victims into the threatening fraud interactions; (2) fraudsters use such conversational skills in a threatening tone as repetition, interruption, higher pitch, louder speech and so on to trigger victims' psychological panic; (3) fraudsters' discursive practices are situated for the threatening actions based on prepared and designed scripts. The findings of the study are expected to provide references for preventing cellphone fraud and fighting against fraudsters' threats and bullies.

Viewing assessments of patient-reported heath status as conversations: Implications for developing and evaluating patient-reported outcome measures

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are frequently used in research to reflect the patient's perspective. In this commentary, I argue that further improvements can be made in how we develop and evaluate PROMs by viewing assessment as a type of conversation. Philosophically speaking, a PROM assessment can be conceptualized as a formal conversation that serves as a model of an informal, longer, and more nuanced conversation with a research participant about their health experience. Psychologically speaking, evidence from research in survey methodology and discursive psychology shows that respondents to self-report measures behave in ways consistent with the idea that they are doing their best to participate in a conversation, albeit an unusual one. Several suggestions are offered for creating a better conversational context through study materials and PROM instructions, and by improving the yield of cognitive interviews. It is hoped that this commentary can stimulate further discussions in our field regarding how to integrate insights about the conversational nature of assessment from survey research and discursive psychology to better reflect the patient's voice in research.

"You Worry, 'cause You Want to Give a Reasonable Account of Yourself": Gender, Identity Management, and the Discursive Positioning of "Risk" in Men's and Women's Talk About Heterosexual Casual Sex

Heterosexual casual sex is routinely depicted as a physically, socially, and psychologically "risky" practice. This is the case in media accounts, psychological research, and other academic work. In this article, we examine 15 men's and 15 women's talk about casual sex from a discursive psychological stance to achieve two objectives. Firstly, we confirm the categories of risk typically associated with casual sex but expand these to include a domain of risks related to (gendered) identities and representation. Men's talk of risk centered on concerns about sexual performance, whereas women's talk centered on keeping safe from violence and sexual coercion. The notion of a sexual reputation was also identified as a risk and again manifested differently for men and women. While women were concerned about being deemed promiscuous, men displayed concern about the quality of their sexual performance. Secondly, within this talk about risks of casual sex, the participants' identities were identified as "at risk" and requiring careful management within the interview context. This was demonstrated by instances of: keeping masculinity intact in accounts of no erection, negotiating a responsible subject position, and crafting agency in accounts of sexual coercion-in the participants' talk. We argue that casual sex, as situated within dominant discourses of gendered heterosexuality, is a fraught practice for both men and women and subject to the demands of identity representation within co-present interactions.

Theorizing Language and Discourse for the Interactional Study of Identities

The following commentary critically reflects on the pragmatic and semiotic approach to language and identity articulated by Tapia, Rojas, and Picado (Culture & Psychology, Tapia et al. 2017). The following questions are central: 1) What theoretical position is (tacitly) being articulated regarding the nature of language and discourse? Although the authors admit that an explicit theorization of language and discourse is not their focus, the absence of a clear theoretical position is conspicuously problematic. And 2) is there an unintended cognitivism present in the way the authors formulate the relationship between language/discourse and identity? After discussing these questions, select parts of a radical interactional approach, grounded in discursive positioning, will be presented as an amendment to the present work, insofar as it attempts to both articulate a progressive theorization of language and discourse and avoid an unintended slide into cognitivism.