Accounts and Account Giving

Accounts help people explain or make sense of events when something out of the ordinary occurs. An account can range from a speech to a story to a single word or nonverbal expression. Much of the research in this area focuses on accounts as linguistic devices employed in response to evaluations by self or others; accounts are communicated following troublesome conduct in order to transform what might otherwise be viewed as offensive into something acceptable. Accounts perform what is called remedial work and are linked to theories of politeness, face, attribution, conflict escalation, and impression management.

Accounts are of particular relevance to communication researchers, not only because they are firmly grounded in spoken and written discourse, but because the entire accounting process both enables and constrains present and future communication possibilities. Accounts create and maintain social order, they are used by people to influence one another, and they help people make sense of communication situations in particular and life in general. We account for our own failure events, but we also spend a great deal of time collaboratively constructing events and meanings based on the accounts of others. Speculating as to why someone did something is a ubiquitous conversation activity, whether in romantic relationships, in work settings, or around the family dinner table. In a very applied sense, the study of accounts may help individuals actively create better relationships in personal and professional contexts and be both better understood and more understanding. In their 1968 work, Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman noted that the giving and receiving of accounts can potentially repair what is perceived to be broken and restore a relationship in the face of estrangement. Finally, people often focus on the construction of coherent identities and life stories in their narrative accounts when faced with traumatic losses and relational endings.

To fully appreciate the research on accounts, it is helpful to understand the background and history of research in accounts, to examine some of the empirical findings and typologies, and to look toward some of the promising new trends and directions in this line of inquiry.