Scott and Lyman (1968):

Notes on justifications, excuses, and the negotiation of identities.
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Question (Hobbes): How is society possible?

1) "Talk, we hold, is the fundamental material of human relations"

2) "An account is a linguistic device employed whenever an action is subjected to evaluative inquiry... they prevent conflicts from arising [or smooth them out once they have arisen] by verbally bridging the gap between action and expectation [or, between action and puzzlement]."

3) "By an account, then, we mean a statement made by a social actor to explain unanticipated or untoward behavior - whether that behavior is his own or that or others, and whether the proximate cause for the statement arises from the actor himself or from someone else."

4) Accounts are situated or occasioned in that they vary according to i) the status of the interactants; ii) the domain of expectations (social group, sphere of activity); iii) the culture's "vocabulary of motives" (Mills).

5) Accounts do not so much describe a person's puzzling conduct, as formulate [new] 'reasons' for it - reasons that 'mediate' between it [or connect it] and its circumstances.

6) Routine behavior is unquestioned - properly socialized people 'monitor' their own behavior according to expectations.

[By "explanations," they mean 'scientific' explanations - we are uninterested here in such accounts.]

Accounts are important, for they reveal pre-existing, taken-for-granted, culture resources in terms of which we make sense of our own and others actions, i.e., ways of characterizing how we and our world works.

Justifications and excuses:

Two main types of account:

i) Justifications are where we accept that we are responsible for the act, but show that it is 'fitting' in the circumstances - we deny that it has any pejorative, i.e., 'bad' features.

ii) Excuses are where we admit that the action is bad, wrong, or inappropriate, but we try to say that we didn't really mean to do it - we try to deny, avoid, or mitigate responsibility for it.

1. Four main types or styles of excuse:

• -i) Accidents and mistakes: recognition that people are not all powerful and the world is very variable - but don't claim accident too often else you will be thought incompetent. Unforeseen consequences due to lack of knowledge, skill, character of environment, etc. [Austin] mistake when in control all the time; accident when briefly action goes out of control.
• -ii) Defeasibility (denial of agency): mistake - it happened, but I did not intend it. Disclaimer: "I didn't know that that would be the consequence." Or (joint agency): "Something just happened between us; they were a part of it too; it wasn't just me."

• -iii) Biological drives: "I couldn't help it; it just came over me. Men are like that - she shouldn't have dressed to kill."
• -iv) Scapegoating (blaming the victim): "In acting like that, they brought it on themselves." Men in rape cases; the poor, etc.

 

Four 'techniques of neutralization':

• -i) denial or wrong or injury: children continually say "I wasn't teasing her, I was only saying she smells, and she does," "I didn't take it, I just borrowed it a moment," "I wasn't shouting, I was just telling him his trousers have fallen down."
• -ii) denial of the victim (or object): persons a) they deserve it - enemies; b) deviants; c) stigmatized groups: minorities; and d) incumbents of dubious roles 'politicians'; objects a) dirty, torn; b) ambiguous; and c) polluted 'junk', 'kitch'.
• -iii) condemnation of the condemners: "the republicans when in office did even worse." "But I didn't hit you anywhere near as hard as you hit me."
• -iv) appeal to loyalties; "Well, I had to vote that way, I was committed to the party."

• -v) sad tales: a dismal past is used to 'explain' the individual's current state: "Well, you see, I had this mother who never let me.. " "Well, I just couldn't keep up with may school work as I was working in a full time job all the time."
• -vi) self-fulfillment: "You're meant to be happy, right?"

If an account is honored equilibrium is restored to the relationship, and the flow of exchange begins again.

• -i) social circle: friends, kin, etc., accept accounts that strangers do not. Delinquents, criminals, amongst themselves give accounts that others would not accept.
• -ii) 'what everyone knows': importance of 'background', sensed but unnoticed, expectations.
• -iii) unreasonable and illegitimate accounts: not honored when account does seem adequate to the gravity of the situation, to appeals to an unacceptable 'vocabulary of motives'.
• -iv) overriding the requirement for an account: sociability and 'getting information out of the person' can override the need for an account.

- intimate (family, marriage);
- casual (friends, personal);
- consultative (information, pupil-teacher);
- formal (speech); and frozen (when there is a [moral] barrier of some kind).

5. Strategies for avoiding an account:

- mystification (Sherlock Holmes with Watson: "Well you see Watson, it was like this"...);
- referral (Er, please see X for an explanation);
- identity switching

• -Where were you?
• -None of you're business, you're a wife.
• -What kind of father are you?
• -I'm a man - and you're a woman.

Why do people feel that there is something of a contest involved in the negotiation of one's identity? Because there is. "Every account is a manifestation of the underlying negotiation of identities."

"Accounts presuppose an identifiable speaker and audience. The particular identities of the interactants must be established as part of the encounter in which the account is presented. In other words, people generate role identities for one another in social situations. In an account giving situation, to cast alter in a particular role is to confer upon him the privilege of honoring a particular kind of account, the kind suitable to the role identity conferred and assumed at least for the period of the account. To assume an identity is to don the mantle appropriate to the account being offered."

Professor the campus cop: "I don't have to explain to you my presence here, this is my department." "Sir, I don't know you. You could be a burglar. I have my duty. Even you must admit that."

In hierarchical, or class, or caste societies, there are advantageous roles to be had, and stigmatized roles to be avoided:

- 'situated' identities: the negotiation of identities in an encounter (who gets to define who) - Fanon: "Please sit down... Sit here, boy..."
- altercasting - the assets and liabilities (disadvantages) of a role - identity switching
- speech communities: the tension between the need for others in order to be oneself, and, the tendency of others to usurp one's rights.