Troubles-Complaints and the Overall Structural Organization of Troubles-Remedy Sequences

ABSTRACT

Reporting troubles can be used as a vehicle for accomplishing many different kinds of actions. In some cases, troubles may be raised to engender practical courses of action—that is, to mobilize some form of remedy or assistance from the recipient to deal with those troubles. In this article, we focus on instances of troubles reports in institutional encounters that are hearable as delivering troubles-complaints. We illustrate how the extended troubles-remedy sequences through which these troubles-complaints are implemented are designed to mobilize an offer of some form of practical action to remedy or assist with those troubles. We propose that although the troubles-remedy sequences are locally produced and involve different situated contingencies, they exhibit a recurrent overall structural organization that arises through sequence expansions of those troubles-complaints, which orients to resolving practical or material troubles, as well as institutional resistance to doing just that. Data are in English.

When we encounter (inter)personal or material problems or troubles that we are not able to resolve of our own accord, or at least not to our satisfaction, one of the options available is to raise those troubles with others. However, one practical question facing interactants when troubles are raised is what is being interactionally accomplished through doing so? Raising or reporting troubles can be used as a vehicle for accomplishing many different sorts of actions, which can, in turn, engender various different kinds of responses. In some cases, the reporting of troubles can mobilize a display of empathy by the recipient with those troubles (Jefferson, 1988). Reporting troubles may also prompt the recipient to proffer advice or information that enables the speaker to (start to) address the troubles themselves (Bloch & Leydon, 2019). In other cases, troubles mobilize redress—in the form of apologies, accounts or corrective action—from the recipient (Dersley & Wootton, 2000), or agreement and affiliation when those troubles involve some kind of complainable transgression by an absent third party (Drew & Holt, 1988). In yet other cases, troubles may engender practical courses of action—that is, an offer of some kind of remedy or assistance from the recipient in order to resolve those troubles (Schegloff, 2005; Zimmerman, 1984).

The mobilization of assistance from others to remedy troubles is generally studied in the context of requests and offers (Clayman & Heritage, 2014; Schegloff, 2007). It has been observed, for instance, that reporting or displaying a problem, trouble, or need establishes the relevance of solutions and routinely occasions offers of assistance (Curl, 2006; Kendrick & Drew, 2016). These troubles can be “given explicit formulation in language” thereby “cast[ing them] into the public domain” as an complaints (Drew & Holt, 1988, p. 399), or they may remain as complainables—that is, “as-yet-unarticulated aspect of what may or may not come to overt expression in a complaint” (Schegloff, 2005, p. 451). Thus, as Schegloff (1988, 2005) and others have pointed out, a complaint or the mention-of-a-complainable may also be responded to by the recipient doing or offering a remedy (from among a range of different possible responses) in a similar way to troubles reports. In those cases, then, the troubles report or complaint is being treated, in effect, as a request for assistance to remedy the troubles in question. Mobilizing assistance through troubles reports or complaints thus provides a systematic alternative to the mobilization of assistance through requests, as, although troubles reports or complaints make relevant the provision of remedies or solutions, they do not specify a particular solution or remedy (Kendrick & Drew, 2016); nor do they necessarily specify who is responsible for providing that remedy in the way that a request generally does. In other words, mobilizing assistance through troubles reports or complaints affords the negotiation of potential remedies for those troubles or complaints, including who is held responsible for proffering that remedy.

Consider Excerpt 1 from our corpus, taken from a longer encounter in which a tenant has called the property manager to complain about the amount of electricity the air conditioner in his apartment is consuming.

Extract 1. TRS18 [Unbelievable power bill].

In this sequence, the reporting of troubles (lines 43–44) is followed by a move toward proffering some sort of troubles-remedy. The remedy offered by the property manager involves calling the caretaker, Ron, to investigate the problem (lines 46–47), an offer that is accepted by the tenant (line 49). Notably, this troubles report not only implements an informing but is also hearable as implementing a complaint, as the tenant makes reference to a negative state of affairs (line 44; Schegloff, 1988), using an extreme case formulation (line 43; Pomerantz, 1986). In short, this is a troubles report about a complainable state of affairs, or what we here term a “troubles-complaint.” The troubles-complaint in question thus appears to be implementing the “canonical trajectory” of a complaint sequence: “[1] a complaint or a mention-of-a-complainable by the ‘aggrieved party,’ followed by [2] some second pair part that is responsive to it—apology, reply (remedy or offer of remedy, denial, rejection, account, excuse, etc.), and ordinarily [3] some uptake of that response” (Schegloff, 2005, p. 465).

Complaints are broadly characterized as “express[ing] feelings of discontent about some state of affair, for which responsibility can be attributed to ‘someone’ (to some person, organisation or the like)” (Heinemann & Traverso, 2009, p. 2,381). In the case of indirect complaints (i.e., about an absent party) this involves “a display of hurt (related to the impact of the complained-of-events) and a blaming (attributing responsibility to an absent party)” (Pino, 2022, p. 260, emphasis added), whereas direct complaints (i.e., about an addressed recipient) involve “expressing a grievance about some state-of-affairs” and “holding them morally accountable for [that] transgression” (Pillet-Shore, 2015, p. 187, emphasis added). Direct complaints thus make relevant responses that address either the culpability of the recipient for those troubles or their responsibility to remedy those troubles, or both.

In the case of troubles-complaints, however, the reporting of a complainable state of affairs is arguably not designed to hold the recipient (or the parties he or she represents) necessarily culpable for those troubles, although the recipient may well be in some cases, but rather to mobilize assistance by holding the recipient responsible for remedying those troubles (either personally or by recruiting someone else to do so) through expressing discontent about the troubles in question. To that end, troubles-complaints are formulated in ways that avoid imputations of blame being directed at either the troubles-speaker or troubles-recipient, but nevertheless hold the latter responsible for remedying those troubles. A troubles-complaint is thus a composite social action (Rossi, 2018), in which a troubles report is a vehicle for implementing both an informing about a complainable state of affairs and a request to remedy those troubles.

Upon closer examination of the broader sequential environment in which troubles-complaints arise in institutional talk, we can observe how they shape the troubles-remedy sequences they inhabit. Notably, these troubles-remedy sequences not only involve extended sequences (Lee, 2009; Psathas, 1992), they also invariably consist of a complex series of sequences in pursuit of the larger project at hand (Raymond & Zimmerman, 2016; Robinson, 2003)—namely, to mobilize assistance to remedy some kind of troubles. One of the questions raised when we consider these larger sequential environments or the “big packages” in which assistance is mobilized is the nature of their overall structural organization (Drew et al., 2015; Jefferson, 1988; Robinson, 2013). Although the ways in which the participants approach and work up the mobilization of assistance to remedy their troubles is “locally produced on a case-by-case basis” (Whalen & Zimmerman, 1990, p. 468), we can observe that the series of actions through which troubles-remedy sequences are recurrently accomplished, and the overall sequential organization of that series of (extended) sequences, is regularly ordered in roughly similar ways across different cases of troubles-complaints.

In this article, our aim is to describe the overall structural organization of troubles-remedy sequences in institutional talk, and to argue that this overall structural organization involves various locally occasioned sequence expansions of a specific instantiation of the canonical three-turn trajectory of complaints more generally: namely, (1) troubles-complaint, (2) (offer of) remedy (or alternative), and (3) acceptance (or not). We suggest that such sequences are organized around mobilizing an offer of some form of action to remedy or assist with those troubles, even in cases when these attempts to mobilize assistance are resisted by the recipient.

We begin by briefly outlining prior research on how assistance is mobilized in institutional encounters, before going on to describe the data and methods that underpin our analysis of troubles-remedy sequences. We then examine in more detail the troubles-complaints that underpin troubles-remedy sequences, before going on to analyze the overall structural organization of troubles-remedy sequences, including the various expansions and extensions of the three-turn trajectory of the troubles-complaints that underpin them. We conclude by considering the implications of this analysis for advancing our understanding of the role played by complaints and complainables in seeking and proffering assistance in institutional encounters, and the interplay of local sequence organization and overall structural organization in such projects more broadly.

Mobilizing assistance in institutional encounters

A growing body of research has focused on the ways in which assistance may be mobilized in institutional encounters. Much of this work has focused on requests and offers of assistance. Requests are actions through which we seek assistance from others, and make the granting (or not) of that assistance conditionally relevant, whereas offers of assistance make acceptance (or not) of that assistance conditionally relevant (Sacks, 1992; Schegloff, 2007). A growing body of work in CA has examined the various practices by which requests and offers are accomplished in both mundane and institutional settings (Clayman & Heritage, 2014; Curl & Drew, 2008). In previous studies, it has been empirically demonstrated that the practices by which assistance is mobilized systematically varies according to whether it involves immediate or deferred/remote assistance (Lindström, 2017); whether the assistance is responsive to problems that are overtly presented or are educed from talk (Curl, 2006); the moral contingencies invoked by requests for assistance, including deontic (Heinemann, 2006; Lindström, 2005) and benefactive (Clayman & Heritage, 2014) entitlements, along with spatio-temporal contingencies, such as whether the assistance is low-cost or high-cost (Rossi, 2012).

Much of the work on requesting assistance in institutional talk has focused on how assistance can be requested through imperatives, interrogatives, and desiderative declaratives (Kidwell, 2000; Lindström, 2005; Vinkhuyzen & Szymanski, 2005) and, as Fox and Heinemann (2021) have recently argued, through declaratives more generally. A notable finding that has emerged from such studies is that although requesting assistance can involve extended request sequences (Lee, 2009), these extended sequences are recurrently built around various kinds of expansions of an underlying request-response adjacency pair (Merritt, 1976; Robinson, 2003). This adjacency pair is embedded in the opening and closing of an overall institutional encounter, and regularly extended through an (optional) interrogative series that typically occurs following a request, but prior to a granting/declining response to that request, as first outlined by Zimmerman (1984, p. 214; Table 1).

Table 1 Configuration of Actions in Calls to Emergency Services

1. Opening/Identification

2. Complaint/Request

3. Interrogative Series (optional)

4. Remedy/Response

5. Closing

Following this seminal work, a number of studies have examined the overall structural organization of the mobilization of assistance in response to troubles reports in institutional encounters (Kevoe-Feldman, 2015; Whalen & Zimmerman, 1987; Zimmerman, 1984, 1992a). These studies have illuminated the practices by which particular components of sequences within that overall structural organization are accomplished, including openings (Whalen & Zimmerman, 1987; Zimmerman, 1992b), requests for service (Kidwell, 2000; Whalen & Zimmerman, 1990; Zimmerman, 1992a), service responses (Kevoe-Feldman, 2018; Márquez Reiter, 2005; Whalen et al., 1988), and closings (Raymond & Zimmerman, 2016), and how the rights and responsibilities of the parties concerned are interactionally accomplished through such encounters (Raymond & Zimmerman, 2007).

Prior studies of the mobilization of assistance through reporting troubles have also demonstrated the ways in which institutional settings can afford and constrain how troubles are raised and responded to in extended sequences of talk. Although in some institutional contexts, the reporting of troubles is taken to constitute a request for practical assistance and responded to accordingly (Fox & Heinemann, 2021; Raymond & Zimmerman, 2007, 2016; Whalen & Zimmerman, 1987; Zimmerman, 1984, 1992a), the reporting of troubles may also be a vehicle for negotiating assistance (Ekström et al., 2013), especially in situations when the normative obligations (of recipients) or entitlements (of speakers) with respect to providing the assistance in question are less clear-cut. Indeed, in some cases institutional representatives have to “scaffold” the party raising troubles into institutionally “allowable” ways of reporting and responding to those troubles (Tracy, 1997; Whalen & Zimmerman, 1990).

Various studies have highlighted the methods by which requests for assistance to remedy troubles can be accomplished in institutional talk. These include troubles-reports (e.g., “there is an X at Y”; Raymond & Zimmerman, 2007) or declaratives of trouble (Fox & Heinemann, 2021), troubles accounts or narratives (Raymond & Zimmerman, 2016; Zimmerman, 1992a), need- or want-statements (e.g., “I need X”) and requests for permission (e.g., “Can I X?”; see Fox & Heinemann, 2016; Kidwell, 2000), and complaints or complainables (Kidwell, 2000; Márquez Reiter, 2005; Zimmerman, 1984). A notable characteristic of cases in which assistance is mobilized through complaints or complainables is that they can be understood both as requests to remedy the troubles-complaint and as passing a moral judgment about the recipient or some other party he or she is taken to be representing (Márquez Reiter, 2005). However, as Kevoe-Feldman (2018) has demonstrated in her study of calls to a customer service helpline, in cases in which customers are “voic[ing] a possible complaint about a service problem that requires some form of remedy” (p. 103), the service providers recurrently engage in interactional work to head off those complainable matters developing into overt complaints.

Finally, studies of requests for assistance in institutional talk have demonstrated that mobilizing assistance through troubles reports or complaints is arguably constituted through a minimum of three actions: (1) troubles report/complaint, (2) (offer of) remedy, (3) acceptance (or not) of remedy (see Schegloff, 2005, p. 465). As Kevoe-Feldman (Kevoe-Feldman, 2015, p. 49) pointed out in her study of requests for assistance in customer service encounters, for instance, acceptance by customers is “treated as relevantly due” after a service response to the customer’s request. Raymond and Zimmerman (2016) reached a similar conclusion in arguing that, in seeking and providing help in calls to emergency services, the participants orient to “mutually ratified project completion” (p. 723). Notably, each of these three actions provide for the possibility of being extended through various forms of pre-, insert, and post-expansion of the base sequence by which assistance is mobilized.

In the remainder of this article, we move to consider instances of trouble reports that are hearable as complaints, which we term here troubles-complaints, and to consider the overall structural organization of the troubles-remedy sequences in which these troubles-complaints recurrently occur in institutional talk. We now move to describe the dataset along with the analytical framework that motivates our study.

Data and methods

Our analysis is based primarily on a dataset of 20 recordings of interactions between co-participants across different institutional settings in which one of the participants reports some kind of troubles that he or she not able to resolve of their own accord, and are therefore seeking assistance of some kind from the co-participant to remedy those troubles.

The data were collected as part of a larger project on the experiences of Saudi international postgraduate students (all male, for cultural reasons) when interacting with local Australians in order to better understand some of the challenges faced by Saudis when studying overseas.¹ The recordings were made by students who volunteered to act as delegated participant-recruiters following an invitation by the first author to members of the Saudi Student Associations at universities in three large cities in Australia. The participant-recruiters who agreed to be involved were asked to carefully read and sign informed consent forms prior to the commencement of individual information sessions on the ethics of data collection arranged by the first author. These sessions included instructions about ethical considerations when collecting data, including the need to gain informed consent from their co-participants prior to making the recordings. Written consent was sought prior to making any recordings, and no recordings were made without the explicit knowledge and consent of co-participants. The first author remained in contact with the participant-recruiters throughout the data-collection process to provide one-on-one support, assistance, and guidance. The participant-recruiters were asked to record interactions in which they were seeking assistance of some kind.²

An overall corpus of 40 recordings was collected by 18 Saudi international postgraduate students over a period of 10 months from October 2016 to August 2017, using recording devices owned by those students, primarily their mobile phones. Although it was not specified to the student volunteers that the interactions should occur in institutional settings, almost all of the recordings involved some form of institutional talk (39/40). Following careful examination of the overall corpus or recordings, 20 encounters in which troubles were raised were identified.³ The troubles that were reported in those encounters ranged from problems with faulty products, excessive noise, and dirty or untidy rentals through to difficulties with lease renewals, securing refunds, or dealing with fines. A notable feature of all of these instances of troubles was that that it was either not obvious (to at least one of the co-participants) what specific assistance might be requested to remedy those troubles, or unclear whether the recipient was necessarily responsible for provision of a troubles-remedy, or both. The co-participants in our collection of troubles-remedy sequences included retail assistants, university administration officers and supervisors, rental property managers, travel agents, and customer service agents. It is these 20 cases that constitute our dataset of troubles-remedy sequences.

The 20 recordings of troubles-remedy sequences ranged in length from 45 seconds to eight minutes and 20 seconds, totaling approximately one hour and six minutes overall. The entire recordings of the 20 encounters were transcribed in full using Jeffersonian transcription conventions and analyzed in their entirety using CA methods. Notably, whereas six of the troubles-remedy sequences occurred in encounters on the phone, the remaining 14 involved co-present encounters. All encounters were audio-recorded, as the Saudi students preferred not to be filmed, and in an earlier pilot study by the first author it was found that institutional co-participants were also generally not willing to be video-recorded. All the analytic observations we make in the course of examining this dataset thus take this limitation into account. Only claims that can be grounded in the available data are made.

Our analysis was initially motivated by our empirical observation that, across these 20 different encounters in which troubles of some kind are raised, those troubles reports are recurrently treated as requests for assistance. It was also observed that the troubles raised in all 20 encounters are also hearable as complaints or complainables (Schegloff, 2005). They are thus termed troubles-complaints in this study. We subsequently noticed that these troubles-complaints were responded to, in turn, with either offers of assistance to remedy the troubles in question (n = 13) or denials of culpability for the troubles or deflections of responsibility for providing a remedy, and accounts as to why an offer of a troubles-remedy would not be forthcoming (n = 5). In those cases, extended sequences in which speakers pursue a troubles-remedy subsequently ensued. In the remaining two cases, advice was offered as to how the speaker could independently resolve the troubles himself without assistance from the recipient.⁴

Building on our initial analysis of these troubles-complaints, and responses to them, we then began to examine the larger sequential projects in which they occurred, which are here termed troubles-remedy sequences. We examined the different ways in which the troubles-complaints themselves were accomplished, as well as expanded through various kinds of pre-, insert, and post-expansion sequences across these 20 troubles-remedy sequences. It emerged from this analysis that troubles-remedy sequences recurrently consist of a roughly ordered series of actions, some of which are invariably accomplished in the course of a troubles-remedy sequence, and some of which appeared to be occasioned in response to particular local contingencies.

In the next section, we analyze the troubles-complaints that underpin these troubles-remedy sequences. We then analyze the series of actions that emerge through sequential extensions and expansions of these troubles-complaints, and exemplify the recurrent overall structural organization of the series of actions by which assistance to remedy troubles is mobilized or pursued across these encounters.

Mobilizing assistance through troubles-complaints

Troubles-complaints in institutional encounters encompass instances in which expressing discontent about the troubles in question is designed not only to mobilize assistance but to also hold the recipient responsible for remedying those troubles (either themselves or recruiting someone else to do so). This assistance can come in either the form of proceeding to do a remedy or more commonly offering a remedy, usually in the form of a “promise” or commitment from the recipient to proffer a troubles-remedy themselves or to recruit someone else to do so. In the case of troubles-complaints, then, whether the recipient is being held culpable for those troubles—that is, whether the troubles arose due to some fault or wrongdoing on the part of the recipient (or the institutional party he or she is representing)—is treated as a distinct and separate matter by the co-participants through formulating those troubles-complaints in ways that forestall or obviate imputations of culpability (Turowetz & Maynard, 2010).⁵

Troubles-complaints were found to be delivered in our collection of troubles-remedy sequences through negative observations (Excerpts 2–4), and criticisms (Excerpt 4). In a smaller number of cases (n = 3), the troubles in question are raised more implicitly through raising a complainable matter (Excerpt 5). However, in the latter cases it was clear from the subsequent responses of the recipients that the possibility of a complaint emerging was nevertheless informing the trajectory of those encounters (Schegloff, 2005), as the recipients either deflected responsibility for providing a remedy through accounts or denials of culpability, or preemptively fomulated a complaint (Excerpt 6).

Negative observations involve formulating some kind of failure (i.e., something is wrong, broken, faulty), or registering that something has not happened as expected (Schegloff, 1988) through agentless factual declarative formats (Rossi, 2018) that report the troubles as arising in “events that have happened,” rather than being due to “actions performed by actor-agents” (Pomerantz, 1978, p. 117). In Excerpt 2, for instance, the customer implements a troubles-complaint to the sales assistant through negative observations that the television he bought is “faulty” (line 8) and “doesn’t work” (line 13). The troubles-complaint is delivered as part of a descriptive narrative in which he attempts to deflect imputations of culpability for these troubles through the use of agentless formats (“it was faulty,” line 8), and epistemic disclaimers (“I do not know what’s happen,” line 11).

Extract 2. TRS04 [Faulty television].

The troubles-complaint then occasions an offer to seek assistance from the store manager (line 15). This offer is subsequently accepted by the customer (line 17). This then leads into an extended sequence in which the store manager first works up a diagnosis of the troubles in question (i.e., that the television is indeed faulty and it is not that the customer is unable to operate it correctly), and then proposes a troubles-remedy (i.e., that he will get the repair team to inspect the television to confirm that it is faulty and then process either replacement of the television or a refund) (data not shown).

We can observe a similar pattern in Excerpt 3, in which a postgraduate student reports to a school administration officer that he does not have access to secure storage at the new desk he has been allocated (lines 24–25). The student registers that something has not happened as expected through a factual declarative (“I have no access to storage”; lines 24–25), although he elides any reference to how this situation has come about. He does orient to the complainability of those troubles, however, through framing them as a “concern” (line 24), and contrasting that “concern” with his otherwise evident satisfaction with his new desk (e.g., “I love it there”; line 19).

Extract 3. TRS07 [Inaccessible filing cabinet].

In this case, following an acknowledgment continuer from the administration officer in line 27, the upshot of the troubles-complaint is left hearably attenuated through a standalone “so” (Raymond, 2004), leaving it to the recipient to formulate what is required to remedy those troubles. The secretary then formulates a possible solution to the student’s troubles—namely, getting access to a filing cabinet (lines 30–31), which the student confirms (line 32), although he does not specify how that favorable state of affairs would be brought about. This is subsequently followed by an extended sequence in which the participants first diagnoses the nature of the trouble (i.e., that the previous occupant left the filing cabinet locked and failed to return its key), and the secretary then offers a series of suggestions as to how the student might gain access to the filing cabinet (which the student rejects in turn), before finally landing on an offer to call security in order to ask for assistance, a troubles-remedy, which the student accepts (data not shown).

In other cases, the troubles-complaint is delivered not only through a negative observation but also through a criticism in which the speaker expresses disapproval of the recipient or someone from their institution (Pillet-Shore, 2016; Pino, 2016) for not having done something as expected. In Excerpt 4, for instance, a tenant has called the property manager about his prior request to get a wall fixed in the house he is renting. He launches the troubles-complaint in his call to the rental agency receptionist through a negative observation formatted, once again, as an agentless factual declarative that there is “a problem” with one of the walls in the rental (line 11). However, he then upgrades this to a criticism that the property manager has not yet delivered on her promise to “fix” the wall (line 14), following the maintenance inspection during which she acknowledged “the problem” (line 13). Through this criticism, then, the tenant holds the property manager responsible for providing the promised troubles-remedy.

Extract 4. TRS08 [Damaged wall].

Following an offer to follow up with the property manager about the problem when she gets back to the office (line 23), the receptionist goes on to implement this assistance by inquiring about the tenant’s name (line 25). This is subsequently followed by an extended sequence in which the tenant confirms the property manager still has a copy of the inspection report, followed by an inquiry that the problem will be fixed, in response to which the receptionist reiterates that she will ask the property manager (data not shown).

A troubles-complaint can also be implied through mention of a complainable matter. In Excerpt 5, a tenant, who has only just moved in, is telling the property manager that he had the garden in the rental tidied up by Robert (a handyman who regularly helps tenants with the gardening at their rentals; see lines 63–69). The tenant then goes on to specify the amount of time it took Robert to complete the work (line 70), and how much it cost him (line 73).

Extract 5. TRS20 [Untidy garden].

That this potential complainable matter is being treated as a troubles-complaint is apparent from the property manager’s subsequent response, in which she offers an account as to why it took that long and cost that amount to get the garden tided (lines 74–78). The tenant subsequently goes on to pursue a remedy to address his complaint (i.e., that he was forced to pay to tidy the garden when he had only just moved in), albeit ultimately ununsuccessfully (data not shown).

Although troubles-complaints are delivered, for the most part, by the participant reporting the troubles in question, in two cases it is the troubles-recipient who preemptively formulates the troubles report as a complaint. In Excerpt 6, for example, a tenant outlines issues he has had with the aircon (air-conditioning) unit in his apartment in a call with the property manager. The tenant explains at length how he tried to test how much electricity the aircon has been using (lines 1–18).

Extract 6. TRS18 [Unbelievable power bill].

The tenant offers this as an extended justification for his claim that the difference between having the aircon on or off is “huge” (line 5), thereby alluding to the consumption of electricity as a complainable matter (Schegloff, 2005). However, it is the property manager who subsequently preemptively formulates this complainable state of affairs as a troubles-complaint that the aircon is using a lot of electricity (i.e., more than would normally be expected; lines 19–21). This complaint is confirmed (line 22), and then upgraded by the tenant through his subsequent assessment of it being an “extraordinary” amount (lines 22–23). Following an extended sequence in which the tenant reports that he contacted the caretaker, Ron, to check out the problem, he then reiterates his troubles-complaint, and an offer of assistance is subsequently made (see Excerpt 1).

Overall, then, it is apparent that while troubles reports can be used to implement a range of different actions in institutional settings, when they are used to deliver troubles-complaints they constitute a means by which assistance can be mobilized in institutional encounters. Troubles-complaints can thus be characterized as a composite social action (Rossi, 2018), in which a troubles report implements both an informing about a complainable state of affairs and a request to remedy those troubles. In discussing the different methods by which these troubles-complaints are delivered, we have briefly touched on the way in which they can subsequently occasion extended sequences in which the co-participants jointly diagnose the troubles that have led to the troubles at issue, and work up potential troubles-remedies, before an offer of assistance is made and accepted. However, in closely examining the broader sequential environment in which troubles-complaints arise it also becomes apparent that there is additional interactional work undertaken in order to prepare for the delivery of troubles-complaints, and that following acceptance of an offer of assistance, there is also subsequent interactional work undertaken to ensure provision of that assistance and appreciations which close out the interactional project that constitutes the reason for that encounter (cf., Schegloff, 1979). In the following section, we outline the overall structural organization of these troubles-remedy sequences.

Overall structural organization of troubles-remedy sequences

Prior work on requests for assistance in institutional settings, such as calls to emergency call centers, has established that such requests are inevitably preceded by opening and identification sequences, and are frequently followed by an interrogative series prior to assistance or remedy being offered (Whalen & Zimmerman, 1987; Zimmerman, 1984, 1992a). In subsequent studies of mobilizing assistance in institutional talk, a more finely nuanced account of these sequences has emerged. Keveo-Feldman (2015) and Raymond and Zimmerman (2016) have demonstrated that service providers orient to acceptance of the assistance or remedy by the party seeking to mobilize assistance before closing the sequence in question, and then proceeding to close the overall encounter. Building on Zimmerman’s (1984, 1992a) account, then, the overall structural organization of sequences in which assistance is mobilized through requests in institutional talk might be summarized in the following way (Table 2).

Table 2 Configuration of Actions in Request Sequences

1. Opening/Identification

2. Request for Service

3. Interrogative Series (optional)

4. Service Response

5. Acceptance of Service Response

6. Closing

In a similar way, troubles-remedy sequences also arise through various kinds of sequence expansion (Robinson, 2003) of the underlying three-turn trajectory that is initiated through troubles-complaints. Following the opening and identification sequence in which co-participants set up their pre-alignment as service seeker-service provider (Jefferson & Lee, 1981; Raymond & Zimmerman, 2016), the service seeker initiates a troubles-premonitory topic nomination that projects some kind of troubles, before going on to deliver the troubles-complaint itself, thereby establishing a more specific footing as a troubles-remedy seeker. Prior to the offer of remedy being made and accepted by the troubles-remedy seeker, the co-participants sometimes also engage in an optional series of interrogatives or tellings to establish more specifically what the troubles involve (troubles diagnosis), and/or to propose possible remedies to address those troubles (remedy proposal). Following acceptance of the proposed remedy, there is an additional sequence in which details required for provision of the accepted troubles-remedy are worked through. The troubles-remedy sequence is then closed through appreciations, before the overall encounter is closed. The overall structural organization of troubles-remedy sequences is summarized in Table 3.

Table 3 Configuration of Actions in Troubles-Remedy Sequences

1. Opening/Identification
2. Troubles-Premonitory Topic Nomination		pre-expansion
3. Troubles-Complaint	[1]
4. Troubles Diagnosis (optional)		insert-expansion
5. Remedy Proposal (optional)	[2]
6. (Offer of) Remedy
7. Acceptance of Remedy	[3]
8. Provision of Remedy		post-expansion
9. Appreciations
10. Closing

However, just as has been found in the case of (extended) request sequences that are occasioned through troubles reports more generally, the series of actions outlined here “do not function as a template but are rather resources that may be modified, augmented, used repetitively or not at all because the contingencies to which these components are responsive are altered, unusual, recurrent or absent” (Zimmerman, 1992a, p. 461).⁶

We will now briefly characterize some of the key actions we have observed in our collection of troubles-remedy sequences and the methods by which they are recurrently accomplished.

Troubles-premonitory topic nomination

Following the opening of these encounters and identification of co-participants, which occur in similar ways to other request sequences in institutional settings (Whalen & Zimmerman, 1987; Zimmerman, 1992b), the participant who has initiated that encounter then moves to launch the business-at-hand (Button & Casey, 1988/89) through a troubles-premonitory topic nomination. Notably, this topic nomination is hearable, and subsequently oriented to, as complainable (Schegloff, 2005) or an “unhappy matter” (Pomerantz, 1978).

The first method by which the speakers prepare the way for a troubles-complaint in a troubles-remedy sequence is through informing the recipient that the purpose of the call or encounter (Schegloff, 1979) is to “call,” “ask,” “talk” and so on about some matter, which is thus hearable as foreshadowing a potential complainable, as exemplified in Excerpts 7 and 8.⁷

Extract 7. TRS17 [Security door installation].

In Excerpt 7, a renter nominates talking about the installation of a security door with the property manager as the purpose of his call (lines 7–8). This is followed by a troubles-complaint in which the renter expresses his dissatisfaction (“seriously disappointed,”) through a negative observation (“nothing happened,” line 13), which also implements a criticism of the property manager, given their prior agreement (lines 12–13).

Extract 8. TRS07 [Inaccessible filing cabinet].

In Excerpt 8, a postgraduate student nominates asking the school administration officer about “the issue of storage” as the purpose of the encounter. This leads into a subsequent troubles-complaint, as we have already observed in Excerpt 3. In both these cases it is also evident that the speaker and recipient are pre-aligned as help seeker-help provider (Raymond & Zimmerman, 2016).

Notably, in cases in which speakers nominate the topic of the call or encounter in this way, recipients frequently orient to these as troubles-premonitory, as exemplified in the continuation of the latter encounter in Excerpt (9). Here, the administration officer orients to potential troubles with the student’s workstation (line 16), following nomination of the purpose of the encounter.

Extract 9. TRS07 [Inaccessible filing cabinet].

The second method by which speakers nominate a troubles-premonitory topic and project a forthcoming troubles-complaint is through recalling some kind of past encounter, thereby alluding to potential troubles. In some cases, this is done through asking whether the recipient remembers the matter in question. This is exemplified in Excerpts 10 and 11.

Extract 10. TRS10 [Keyboard lump].

In Excerpt 10, a customer is talking with the sales assistant about a computer keyboard that he previously had repaired, while in Excerpt 11, a customer calls up a travel agent about flights he purchased some months back. Notably, in such instances, recalling a past matter or encounter is recurrently followed by the troubles-remedy seeker either directly launching into a troubles-complaint or working up further background detail about the troubles at issue. In Excerpt 10, for instance, the customer goes on to implement the troubles-complaint through a negative observation (“not properly attached,” line 8). In Excerpt 11, in contrast, the customer goes on to lament that he forgot his passport when he went to check into his flight and so missed his flight, and the troubles he has had since then in trying to secure a refund of that ticket (data not shown).⁸

Extract 11. TRS05 [Flights refund]

Trouble premonitory responses from recipients are also occasioned by the recalling of a past encounter, as exemplified in Excerpt 12.

Extract 12. TRS14 [Car leaking oil]

Following the recalling of the prior purchase by the car-buyer (lines 9–10), the car-seller asks about the condition or performance of the car (line 11), which occasions the delivery of the projected troubles-complaint through a negative observation that the car is “not good now” (line 12).

While in the openings of encounters in which troubles-remedy sequences are interactionally accomplished participants recurrently orient to prior familiarity with each other, thereby contributing to their pre-alignment as help seeker-help provider, it is through subsequent troubles-premonitory topic nominations that they take up a more specific footing as a troubles-remedy seeker. As we have seen, these topic nominations not only are hearable as foreshadowing upcoming troubles-complaints but may also be oriented to as such by recipients through trouble-premonitory responses. It is through nominating topics in this way, then, that troubles-remedy sequences are initiated.

Troubles diagnosis and remedy proposal sequences

Following troubles-premonitory topic nominations, speakers recurrently deliver troubles-complaints. As we have already discussed, although troubles-complaints recurrently occasion offers of assistance, such offers (and acceptance of them) may be preceded by or interpolated with troubles diagnosis and remedy proposal sequences.⁹

A troubles diagnosis sequence typically involves an extended series of interrogatives in which the co-participants work toward accomplishing a joint understanding of the nature of the troubles in question. In Excerpt 13, for example, a trouble-complaint is followed by an interrogative troubles diagnosis series.

Extract 13. TRS14 [Car leaking oil].

The car seller’s question, in line 14, following the car buyer’s troubles-complaint—which is delivered through a negative observation that the car he purchased from her is “not good now” (line 12), thereby implying that there is a problem with it—launches a troubles diagnosis sequence in which they establish that the problem is the car he recently bought from her is leaking oil. Notably, the car seller’s second interrogative (line 21), while in the form of an other-initiated repair, is hearable as a pre-challenge, as it is implemented through other-repetition of the car buyer’s prior factual declarative with rising intonation (Rossi, 2020). She subsequently goes on to deny those troubles were occurring at the time the car sold to him (lines 26–27), thereby contesting the car buyer’s presupposition—implemented through his troubles-complaint—that she is responsible for offering a troubles-remedy. The car buyer, however, pursues the troubles-complaint and eventually she offers to pay for a mechanic to check the car (data not shown).

A troubles-remedy proposal sequence involves a suggestion, or series of suggestions of potential remedies to address or resolve the troubles-complaint. In some cases, this can involve extended negotiation of that troubles-remedy. In Excerpt 14, following a troubles diagnosis sequence in which they have established that the postgraduate student does not have keys to the filing cabinet that goes along with the new desk he has been allocated (data not shown), the administration officer launches an extended troubles-remedy proposal sequence in which a series of suggestions as to how the student can remedy the issue himself is rejected each in turn. Just prior to this excerpt the administration officer has speculated whether security may have keys to the filing cabinet.

Extract 14. TRS07 [Inaccessible filing cabinet].

Notably, the administration officer’s proposed remedy in line 79 initially appears to be an offer that she will call security on his behalf (i.e., offer of an other-initiated troubles-remedy), but this is sequentially deleted in favor of a proposal of joint action (“we”) that leaves it ambiguous as to who will make the call. It is evident from the student’s response that he takes this to be a proposal that he call security for assistance (i.e., she is advising him of a potential self-initiated troubles-remedy), which he rejects, saying he has already done so but nothing has happened as of yet (lines 82–89). The administration officer then proposes the student approach the former occupant of the desk (line 93), but this suggestion is also rejected (lines 94–97). After further proposals, the administration officer eventually offers to call security on behalf of the student, an offer that is accepted with appreciations by the student (data not shown).

These optional troubles diagnosis and troubles-remedy proposal sequences are recurrently followed by an offer of assistance to remedy the troubles-complaint, which, if accepted, then occasions a sequence in which details required for provision of remedy are worked out. Making arrangements for the provision of assistance involves reiterating the steps that need to be taken in order to for the proposed troubles-remedy to be implemented (see, for instance, Excerpt 4). As noted in previous studies, making arrangements is a closing-relevant action (Button, 1987; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), including in cases in which the purpose of the encounter is to negotiate offers of assistance (Curl, 2006). However, provision of remedy does not itself close out the speaker’s interactional project. In the final subsection, we outline how troubles-remedy sequences are regularly closed through appreciations.

Appreciations and closing

The way in which troubles-complaints are evidently designed to mobilize (offers of) assistance is apparent from the fact that participants only proceed to close troubles-remedy sequences when a troubles-remedy has been accepted, and the practicalities of provisioning that remedy have been worked through. In some cases however, the service provider offers an extended account, either immediately following the troubles-complaint, or subsequent to a troubles diagnosis or remedy prognosis sequence, thereby declining to offer assistance to remedy the troubles-complaint. In such cases, the troubles-remedy seeker nevertheless pursues the troubles-complaint, although, perhaps inevitably, such pursuits rarely result in an offer of a remedy. However, whether an offer of assistance is ultimately proffered and accepted, or an account for not making such an offer is accepted, troubles-remedy sequences are regularly closed through appreciations.

Although we observed two cases in which the troubles-remedy seeker makes light of their troubles when an offer of assistance was not forthcoming, the primary method by which troubles-remedy sequences are closed is through appreciations. It has been demonstrated that in addition to displaying “the benefactor-beneficiary relationship that results from the service performed or projected” (deSouza et al., 2021, p. 4), appreciations are recurrently used in pre-closing or closing sequences in institutional contexts when assistance is being sought (Raymond & Zimmerman, 2016). A notable feature of the use of appreciations troubles-remedy sequences, however, is that they may also feature apologies in some instances, as exemplified in Excerpt 15, in which the car-seller has offered to pay for an oil leak to be examined and then repaired.

Extract 15. TRS14 [Car leaking oil].

Following confirmation of the proposed arrangements (lines 188–190), the car-buyer expresses gratitude (line 191), to which the car-seller responds by reciprocating appreciation and then issuing an apology (line 193). The car-buyer responds, in turn, to the apology with a rejection (line 194) and an absolution (line 196), before going on in lines 196–197 to reciprocate with an apology of his own for the imposition (Heritage et al., 2019). A reciprocal appreciation sequence then follows (lines 199–201), before the participants terminate the call (lines 202–204). Notably, the way in which appreciations close out troubles-remedy sequences aligns with their use in other kinds of request sequences in which thanking is used to construe the assistance as going beyond what might be taken for granted (Zinken et al., 2020), thereby treating the troubles in question as having been satisfactorily remedied.

Concluding remarks

Although it has long been noted that both troubles reports and complaints can be responded to by either doing or offering a remedy (among other responses), the role that troubles reports and complaints play in seeking and proffering assistance to remedy troubles in institutional encounters has yet to be fully explored. In this study, we have focused on cases of troubles reports that are used as a vehicle for a implementing a composite social action (Rossi, 2018) that consists of an informing about a complainable state of affairs, and a request to remedy those troubles, or what we have here termed troubles-complaints. Similar to the canonical trajectory of complaints more generally (Schegloff, 2005), troubles-complaints are regularly accomplished through a three-turn sequence of actions: (1) troubles-complaint, (2) (offer of) remedy, and (3) acceptance. We have argued that troubles-complaints not only mobilize offers of assistance from recipients to remedy those troubles in institutional encounters by expressing discontent about the troubles in question, but also hold the recipient responsible for remedying those troubles (either themselves or recruiting someone else to do so).

We have also examined how troubles-complaints are accomplished in the course of more extended troubles-remedy sequences in order to explore the interplay of local sequence organization and overall structural organization of interactional projects in which assistance is being mobilized. We have argued that the overall structural organization of troubles-remedy sequences emerges through sequence expansions of troubles-complaints. Some of these expansions recurrently occur in troubles-remedy sequences (e.g., troubles-premonitory topic nominations, provision of troubles remedy, appreciations), whereas others are only occasioned to in order to address particular local contingencies and are thus optional (e.g., troubles diagnosis, remedy proposal). The assemblage of different recurrent and optional components of troubles-remedy sequences emerges locally as the co-participants jointly work toward mobilizing (or not) an offer of some form of assistance to remedy those troubles.

Our account of the overall structural organization of troubles-remedy sequences builds on and extends prior work on the configuration of request sequences in calls to emergency services, and in service encounters more broadly, to illustrate a practice by which co-participants manage to occasion assistance to remedy troubles through troubles-complaints. What drives the recurrent overall structural organization of troubles-remedy sequences is the interactional accomplishment of a joint focus on resolving practical or material troubles, as well as institutional resistance in some cases to doing just that. There are some affinities between troubles-remedy sequences and the complex “big packages” through which troubles talk is accomplished (Jefferson, 1988). However, the account of the overall structural of troubles-remedy sequences that has emerged in the course of our analysis is arguably closer to the kinds of extended request sequences described in service encounters, in spite of our shared focus on troubles reports and how recipients deal with those tellings.

The extent to which our account of troubles-remedy sequences can be extended to other types of actions that are implemented through troubles reports, or to other contexts, of course, remains to be seen. We found no evidence in the course of our analysis that the participants oriented to putative cultural or linguistic differences between the participants, and so no evidence that it had any discernible impact on the overall structural organization of those sequences, although further studies of troubles-complaints in other institutional and everyday contexts are clearly warranted. Our overall aim here has been to draw attention to the role that troubles-complaints can play in seeking and proffering assistance, and the importance of considering the interplay between local sequence organization and overall structural organization when examining the mobilization of assistance in institutional encounters. The results of this study indicate that we should place a greater premium on elucidating the overall structural organization of the sequences by which we mobilize assistance in advancing our understanding of those actions and the practices by which they are implemented.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Although the specific participants involved in the interactions we collected necessarily limit the potential generalizability of our findings, we found little evidence, if any, of an orientation to cultural difference or grammatical infelicities on the part of the co-participants, perhaps because the focus of the encounters we examined was on resolving real-world troubles. Interestingly, grammatical (and possible pragmatic) infelicities were not limited to the Saudi EAL speakers, but were also produced by their Australian co-participants. In a small number of cases, these grammatical and potential pragmatic infelicities appeared to impact the local organization of particular sequences within those encounters. However, further consideration of these cases lies outside of the scope this article.

² Ethical clearance from the University of Queensland for this data collection was obtained on October 11, 2016.

³ The remaining 20 recordings involved requests for advice or information, including inquiries about internet plans, electricity, phone or gas bill charges, medical information concerning the side effects of vaccinations and following up on blood test results, and the working hours of staff members, along with attempts to book appointments.

⁴ Although troubles-complaints might also conceivably occasion apologies, displays of empathy and agreement, counter-complaints, or attempts to circumvent or suppress those complaints, we did not observe any such responses in our dataset.

⁵ Co-participants only pursue culpability for the troubles in cases when the troubles-recipient denies responsibility for remedying those troubles. Detailed consideration of this issue, however, lies outside of the scope of this article.

⁶ Of course, not all troubles-complaints necessarily bring about offers of assistance, a point we will address when discussing how troubles-remedy sequences are closed in cases when recipients decline to proffer assistance through denials, accounts or offers of advice.

⁷ We have just two cases in our collection in which the troubles-remedy seeker explicitly announces the purpose of their approach is to make a complaint.

⁸ The assistance the customer is attempting to mobilize is for the travel agent to approach the airline about the matter. Whether he has sufficient grounds to be expecting such a refund is something that is worked through in the course of this troubles-remedy sequence.

⁹ These will only be briefly discussed here due to limitations of space.