Knowledge as an interactional tool in the management of client empowerment

To examine the way speaker and recipient knowledge is managed in interaction by a call taker at a mental-health information line, to achieve the institutional goals of information provision and client empowerment.

This study utilizes conversation analysis in the analysis of a single call to the line.

Analysis demonstrates the ways in which a call taker produces turns-at-talk that construct a caller as knowing what help they wanted prior to that moment in the interaction, and that invoke 'common' knowledge of sources of such help.

Talk that orients to knowledge is used as an interactional resource that allows the call taker to avoid talk that may be considered advice, and to be heard to achieve the goal of client empowerment. The asymmetric identities of help-seeker and help-provider are managed in this process.

Client empowerment can be seen as something interactionally achieved and managed in talk-in-interaction, while not necessarily objectively experienced by the client.