Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Kitchen Cabinet, National Security Advisors, big donors, mystery guys. The kitchen cabinet does not speak out loud, but does huddle briefly under a cone of silence right before ‘The President’ makes his final decisions and presents to an adoring throng

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: This study was designed to explore how older sisters and younger sisters enact sibling role relationships in everyday, ordinary conversation. Three sister dyads and one sister triad audio-taped naturally-occurring interaction during the Big Sisters’ visits home on weekends or college breaks. Segments of conversation which appeared relevant to sibling “role” enactment were identified and transcribed according to Jefferson’s (1984) transcript notation system. Analysis of the transcripts initially appeared to support the literature on Older Siblings “exerting influence” in interaction with Younger Siblings through the issuing of multiple claims of authority. However, Little Sisters quite often failed to respond to those claims with the “deference” the traditional literature on family and interpersonal communication suggests they do. Rather, these Little Sisters often resisted their Big Sisters’ claims of authority by 1) directly disagreeing, 2) addressing a different aspect of the interaction such that the trajectory of the conversation shifted, or 3) not addressing the claim at all. Consequently, enacting Big Sister and Lil’ Sister “roles” appears to include interactionally pursuing and defending claims of authority by the former and interactionally resisting such claims by the latter. This study contributes to our understandings of family/interpersonal communication by 1) explicating the conversational practices siblings use in enacting their family “roles,” and 2) demonstrating that theory and research based primarily upon self-report data and lacking close analysis of family members’ actual talk may tell us more about what theorists, researchers, and ordinary folks think they’re doing in conversation than it does about what they are doing in their everyday talk.