| dc.description.abstract | This study is associated to a larger research project interested in understanding how morality and delicacy emerge and are dealt with in and through interaction. In the current study, we analyze recorded interactions at a Brazilian governmental toll free health helpline: Disque Saúde. The data analyzed consist specifically of calls made by females whose questions revolve around Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The data was transcribed according to the conventions proposed by Jefferson (1984) and analyzed by means of Conversation Analysis (SACKS, 1992) and Membership Categorization Analysis (SACKS, 1992; KITZINGER, 2011) approaches. We analyze when and how the callers account for their actions, in particular, when they offer call takers justifications. We propose a new classification for the study of this phenomenon in sequentially relevant and non-sequentially relevant. Even though both types of justifications seem to be related to morality, they perform different actions in the interactions. Whereas the sequentially relevant justifications mostly account for: 1) the reason(s) for the call; 2) doubts; and 3) refusals to information offers made by the call takers, the non-sequentially relevant justifications account for: 1) callers’s means of contamination with HIV virus or exposure to risk factors of contamination; and 2) callers’ sexually related behavior. The nonsequentially relevantant justifications point to morality issues that cannot be explained by the sequential analysis proposed by conversational analytic methods; it also suggests “moral work” (DREW, 1998), as well as a negotiation of belonging to categories such as mother and wife, and the association with predicates which are usually associated to those categories. Our data indicate that the vulnerability of females to HIV is not only biological (as the infection of females by males is more probable than the opposite), but also social. Although AIDS has affected all social classes, the poorest females are those who have less conditions of changing the situations which put them at risk of contamination. | en |
