A Pragmatic Study Of Therapists’ Speech Event Of Disagreement In Cognitive Therapy For Depression

This paper examines the disagreement practices of the therapist in the context of Chinese psychotherapeutic discourse,specifically in cognitive behavior therapy for depression.In this setting,disagreement is defined as a goal-oriented speech event in which the therapist directly or indirectly expresses different opinions on the distortionsrelated problem descriptions of the client.All together 55 instances of therapist’s disagreement events are identified based on 45 sessions of audio-recorded psychotherapeutic for depression.Based on these linguistic data,this study is oriented to explore the linguistic realizations,functions as well as the underlying mechanism of disagreement in this special context by answering the following three research questions:(1)What are the linguistic realizations of therapists’ disagreement in cognitive therapy for depression?(2)What are the pragmatic functions of therapists’ disagreement in cognitive therapy for depression?(3)What is the underlying mechanism of therapists’ disagreement in cognitive therapy for depression?An incorporated theoretical framework is adopted in answer the three research questions.Examination of the linguistic realizations of therapists’ disagreement is based on the impoliteness framework proposed by Culpeper(1996)and Bousfield(2008)as well as mitigated disagreement strategies identified by Locher(2004).Investigation of the functions of disagreement draws upon the framework of common ground construction(Kecskes & Zhang 2009)and cognitive restructuring(Clark 2014).Based on the qualitative data analysis,the major findings of the present study can be summarized as follows.First,two types of disagreement are identified in this study,i.e.,confrontational disagreement and non-confrontational disagreement.The confrontational disagreement is mainly represented in seven forms,including disagreements marked with positive impoliteness strategies,i.e.,disassociating,criticizing,asking challenging questions,commonsense reasoning,and disagreements marked with negative impoliteness strategies,i.e.,frightening,giving critical advice,hindering or blocking.The nonconfrontational disagreement in the present study is mainly realized in six forms,i.e.,using hedges,giving personally or emotionally colored reasons,asking inquiring questions,partially agreeing,giving tentative advice,and using humor or banter.On this basis,three basic forms of disagreement are further uncovered,i.e.,questioning,reasoning,and advising.Second,therapists’ disagreement mainly serves two major functions in the present study,i.e.,common ground construction and cognitive restructuring.Therapists’ disagreement contributes to common ground construction mainly in three ways,i.e.,activating core common ground,seeking emergent common ground,and creating emergent common ground.In this process,therapists’ disagreement further facilitated the therapeutic project of cognitive restructuring,i.e.,the identification,evaluation,and substitution of the cognitive distortions or maladaptive beliefs of the client that caused the depressive symptoms.Third,a typical pattern of therapist’s disagreement is disclosed in the present study by examining the correlation between linguistic forms and pragmatic functions of disagreement.It is found that the three basic forms of disagreement roughly correspond to the three ways of common ground construction and the three phases of cognitive restructuring.This pattern is observed to be employed effectively and frequently by the therapist in many successful disagreement cases in the present study.Finally,the underlying mechanism of therapists’ disagreement is schematically presented in this study.It is argued that the unique feature of therapists’ disagreement could be attributed to the delicate tradeoff of the epistemic and deontic authority between the therapist and the client in Chinese psychotherapeutic discourse.The significance of the present study is mainly embodied in the following three aspects.Foremost,the present study makes a groundbreaking multidisciplinary exploration of the disagreement practices in Chinese psychotherapeutic counseling discourse,which opens new research space for future studies of disagreement in clinical linguistic studies.Secondly,this study adds to the literature the positive functions of therapists’ disagreement in psychotherapeutic discourse,which were rarely discussed in previous literature.The confrontational linguistic realizations and positive functions of the therapist’s disagreement validate the asymmetry in linguistic forms and pragmatic functions in a specific context,which further shed light on a reexamination of the socalled inherent impoliteness phenomenon.Finally,this study is of great social and medical value,for it can provide beneficial implications for psychotherapists to reflect and improve their linguistic practices in treatments and interventions of mental disorders like depression.