UCLA

This research explores collaborative discursive construction of individual and group identity within an institutional setting: male recovering heroin and opiate addicts in a publically-funded, open-door treatment facility. In examining the ways in which new members, and in turn, a new masculinity, are interactively and (con)textually constructed, this study elucidates the linguistic and narrative resources which are employed by new members and the ways these narratives are built vis-à-vis interlocutors and an institutionally-produced therapeutic text. These narratives are publically-available sense-making processes in which past actions are (re-) examined and new identities and agency are introduced, established and negotiated. Drawing from audio ethnographic data collected over a period of ten months, the talk is analyzed from conversation and discourse analytic perspectives. Prior research on addiction and recovery narratives has primarily focused on 12-step programs or one-on-one therapeutic sessions. This research differs from prior work as it focuses on narratives told within an institutional framework which approaches addiction as a moral issue concerning problematic masculine ideals, which results in the construction of collaborative accountability and morality in personal male-male interactions. It also adds to the growing body of literature focused on effective social addiction treatment methods while aiming to expand how talk therapy can be analyzed. Findings from this research include how the collective cooperative narrative process makes personal interpretations of experiences publically available as cultural artifacts. In turn, these cultural artifacts then become the objects upon which therapeutic work is accomplished. This research focuses on the micro-interactional processes and linguistic structures found in narratives, including the self-reflective space that shifts between generic and particular person reference deictics and the presentation of generic others creates. Participants co-construct a relevant recovery narrative across speakers through the incorporation and transformation of therapeutic text during talk-in-interaction, pointing to the importance of relevant therapeutic materials. The current analyses found that speakers work to create identifiable moral characters with whom they align and the group facilitator is tasked with calling this morality into question. The lived experiences of being addicted and being in recovery include many different orientations to being in the world and analysis of talk-in-interaction reveals some of these experiential stances. This research calls for further exploration of how social interactions and relationships may impact the recovery process vis-à-vis one’s narrative construction of self.