TY - JOUR
T1 - Communicating a ‘Time-out’ in Parent-Child Conflict
T2 - Embodied Interaction, Domestic Space and Discipline in a Reality TV Parenting Programme
AU - McIlvenny, Paul
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - In 2003, a new reality TV genre appeared on British public television built on the spectacle of the parenting of so-called disturbed or problem children. This paper focuses on The House of Tiny Tearaways, a programme in which three families are invited to reside in a specially designed house together with a resident clinical psychologist. Such a programme allows us to explore a range of issues, including (a) how a family assembles itself spatially and coordinates its activities across the lived architectures of the home; and (b) how a child is disciplined in and through the embodied activities, spatial formations and talk of the parents. The paper draws upon mediated discourse analysis and conversation analysis – inflected by contemporary understandings of discipline, space and place – in order to analyse the phenomenon of the ‘time-out’, a generalised ‘technique’ of parentcraft that is used to discipline young children who are misbehaving. Rather than debate the merits of the ‘time-out’ as an appropriate disciplinary instrument, this paper explores the local, emergent and negotiated accomplishment of disciplinary practices of temporal and spatial restraint that involve embodied (inter)action, furniture, objects, and the lived architecture of the domestic sphere.
AB - In 2003, a new reality TV genre appeared on British public television built on the spectacle of the parenting of so-called disturbed or problem children. This paper focuses on The House of Tiny Tearaways, a programme in which three families are invited to reside in a specially designed house together with a resident clinical psychologist. Such a programme allows us to explore a range of issues, including (a) how a family assembles itself spatially and coordinates its activities across the lived architectures of the home; and (b) how a child is disciplined in and through the embodied activities, spatial formations and talk of the parents. The paper draws upon mediated discourse analysis and conversation analysis – inflected by contemporary understandings of discipline, space and place – in order to analyse the phenomenon of the ‘time-out’, a generalised ‘technique’ of parentcraft that is used to discipline young children who are misbehaving. Rather than debate the merits of the ‘time-out’ as an appropriate disciplinary instrument, this paper explores the local, emergent and negotiated accomplishment of disciplinary practices of temporal and spatial restraint that involve embodied (inter)action, furniture, objects, and the lived architecture of the domestic sphere.
KW - governance
KW - diskursstudier
KW - stedbundne aktiviteter
KW - rum
KW - konversationsanalyse
KW - mikro videoanalyse
KW - discipline
KW - governance
KW - discourse studies
KW - place bound activities
KW - space
KW - conversation analysis
KW - video micro analysis
KW - parenting competencies
KW - home
KW - reality television
U2 - 10.1016/j.pragma.2008.09.028
DO - 10.1016/j.pragma.2008.09.028
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0378-2166
VL - 41
SP - 2017
EP - 2032
JO - Journal of Pragmatics
JF - Journal of Pragmatics
IS - 10
ER -