Accounts

An account is a piece of talk, a way of explaining the self or close others to another person. In an influential essay, sociologists Scott and Lyman (1968) highlighted how talk is the fundamental medium through which people manage relations with others: Offering accounts is how people remedy a problem with another or, more generally, make reasonable any action. Accounts include two main types: (a) accounts for action and (b) accounts of action.

An account for action is a statement offered to explain inappropriate conduct. The inappropriate behavior may be a small act, such as forgetting to make a promised telephone call, being late, or making an insensitive joke, or it may be a large transgression such as taking money without asking, having an affair, or lying about an important matter. Accounting is also done by one person for another, as when an employee seeks to excuse his boss's rude behavior by appealing to its unusualness. Accounts for questionable conduct are typically in the form of excuses or justifications. In giving an excuse, communicators accept that the act they did was wrong but deny that they had full responsibility. A student who tells her teacher, “I'm sorry this paper is late. My hard disk crashed yesterday,” is using an excuse. In justifications, in contrast, a speaker accepts full responsibility for an act but denies that the act was wrong. An example would be a teen who [Page 4]responded to his parent's reprimand about being late by saying, “I'm old enough to make my own decisions. You have no right to tell me what to do.” Excuses and justifications are alternative ways of accounting, but they may also be paired. A person may say to his partner, “I'm sorry I hollered. I've been under so much pressure lately, but what do you expect when I'm in the middle of a conference call?” This person is simultaneously excusing and justifying, as well as offering an apology (acknowledging an act's inappropriateness and expressing sorrow).

The second and broader type of account is an account of action. An account of action (reason giving) is a pervasive feature of communicative life. Whenever people give reasons for what they are doing, they are accounting. Accounting is occurring when a woman tells a friend why she married Tim, a coworker mentions why he is no longer eating red meat, or a husband explains to his wife why they should visit Portugal rather than Greece. Accounts of action are often in the form of descriptively detailed stories. One nonobvious feature of accounts, both for and of action, is what they tell us about a group or culture. When people give reasons for their actions (or thoughts), they are treating the actions as choices. Of note is that people do not account for what they regard as natural or inevitable. Accounts, then, are a window into a culture. A close look at who offers them, about what they are accounting for, and under which circumstances makes visible a culture's beliefs about what counts as reasonable conduct.

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