Reflexive audiencing practices for couple relationships-in-action

Talbot, Wendy

Reflexive audiencing practices for couple relationships-in-action

dc.contributor.advisor	Crocket, Kathie
dc.contributor.advisor	Kotzé, Elmarie
dc.contributor.author	Talbot, Wendy
dc.date.accessioned	2012-03-19T00:58:48Z
dc.date.available	2012-03-19T00:58:48Z
dc.date.issued	2012
dc.date.updated	2012-03-15T19:12:59Z
dc.description.abstract	This doctoral study offers couples opportunities to be audiences to their own lives as a couple. It does this on the premise that a reflexive, recursive, process of acting and reviewing and acting enhances relationship possibilities. The study researches what couples say about their experiences of the effects of a process that offers them opportunities to go beyond readily available, perhaps at times rather limited, understandings of coupledom. In going beyond what is readily available, the study investigates what couples’ value in the unique and original ways two people reflexively select to live out their lives and relationships. This study is located in poststructural and social constructionist theoretical landscapes. It constructs and then investigates reflexive audiencing practices. Reflexive audiencing draws from diverse but related theoretical perspectives such as narrative therapy, relational language-making conversations, positioning theory, deconstruction, reflexivity, performance and Appreciative Inquiry. Video, a facilitated process of preparation, and inquiry guides provide a scaffold for partners to take up and investigate relationship conversations as couples. The video/audio technology provides layers of positions from which to speak, view, re-view and review their relationship conversations as spect-actors – actors, audience and critics to their relationship performances. Through these reflexive audiencing processes, couples identify discursive practices that shape their relationships. They deconstruct these practices and reconstruct them on terms that take into account their preferences, purposes and unique relationship contexts. The thesis argues that through reflexive audiencing, couples can reposition themselves to look at, and hear, and speak their relationship conversations-in-action. It proposes that reflexive audiencing makes practices such as relations of gender/power, humour, meaning-making, and understanding, visible and audible in ways that extend couples’ discursive repertoires. It conceptualises these practices of couple relationship as complex, dynamic, situated and dialogic, and shows that reflexive audiencing practices have benefits for a couple’s conversations. The study also provides an illustration of researcher reflexive-practice-in-action and shows the work of reflexive audiencing processes unfold in a doctoral research supervision relationship. It argues that reflexive audiencing practices have possibilities for contexts outside coupledom, such as therapy, supervision and research.
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf
dc.identifier.citation	Talbot, W. (2012). Reflexive audiencing practices for couple relationships-in-action (Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10289/6100	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/10289/6100
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher	University of Waikato
dc.rights	All items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
dc.subject	Relationships
dc.subject	Couples
dc.subject	Reflexivity
dc.subject	Poststructural
dc.subject	Social construction
dc.subject	Performance
dc.subject	Narrative theory
dc.subject	Audiencing
dc.subject	Positioning
dc.subject	Discourse
dc.subject	Appreciative curiosity
dc.subject	Narrative therapy
dc.subject	Reflexive audiencing
dc.title	Reflexive audiencing practices for couple relationships-in-action	en
dc.type	Thesis
pubs.place-of-publication	Hamilton, New Zealand	en_NZ
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Waikato
thesis.degree.level	Doctoral
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)