<b>‘My colleague’: Third party and generalization of referents in reports involving unprotected sexual activities

Abstract

In this article, by means of the Conversation Analytical perspective (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974), we analyze phone calls initiated by female callers to a toll free, government-run health helpline that offers information about transmission, symptoms and prevention of diseases, and referrals to health centers. The paper aims at analyzing how the participants (callers and call takers) refer to the beneficiary of the requested information. Some callers, despite being informed that all calls are anonymous, avoid revealing that they themselves are the beneficiary of the information, and thus attribute to third parties the need for the information, a phenomenon we call here ‘third party referencing’. Other callers refer to the beneficiary of the information as ‘women’, ‘people’, ‘someone’ etc., a phenomenon we call here as ‘generalization’. When making use of third party referencing or of generalizations to talk about the beneficiary of the information, callers exempt themselves of the responsibility for something that might be seen as ‘morally questionable’ (Bergmann, 1992), e.g., having unprotected sexual intercourse. An analysis of how such negotiation unfolds becomes particularly relevant for the context investigated here, as the existence of an actual beneficiary for the information reveals itself as decisive for referrals to health centers to happen.