Morality at dinnertime: The sense of the Other as a practical accomplishment in family interaction

Abstract

Since Garfinkel brought our attention to the moral order implied in everyday activities, studies on social interaction have described the practices through which members constitute the moral dimensions of everyday life. Drawing on Duranti’s notion of the ‘sense of the Other’, this article illustrates how mundane morality is presupposed and (re)constructed in the micro-order of everyday life. Examples of video-recorded family dinner interactions are discussed, adopting a conversation analytic approach. The analysis illustrates how the sense of the Other is made relevant by parents as an organizing principle of ongoing activities and ‘talked into being’ to manage ordinary tasks (e.g. pursuing synchronicity and distributing food). The analysis reveals that parents use siblings as a resource to embody the ‘generalized other’ and socialize children to take the other’s perspective. Our study contributes to demonstrating the relevance of looking at ordinary practices as powerful means through which members orient to a moral version of the world and treat it as a natural one.

Keywords

Conversation analysis family dinner interaction intersubjectivity Italian data language socialization morality sense of the Other siblings

Introduction

Goffman’s (1955, 1983) analysis of social order demonstrated that morality is a ubiquitous dimension of everyday life, even when it is not the main focus of social interaction. As Garfinkel (1967) and the more recent ethical turn in anthropology (Laidlaw, 2014; Lambek, 2010) noted, any natural fact of life is a moral fact, given that members constantly reassess whether or to what extent actions and stances are right or wrong. The activities of everyday life are precisely the locus where moral order is displayed, constituted and naturalized (Garfinkel, 1967)¹ so that it becomes a component of any ‘relative natural world-view’ (Scheler, 2013 [1926]), that is, the commonsensical basis of human practices where ‘everything is taken for granted or given without question’ (Frings, 2003: 49).² The practices through which members constitute the moral dimensions of everyday life imply and contribute to maintaining intersubjectivity (Husserl, 1960 [1931]; Schutz, 1967), that is the ‘very possibility of seeing the world from the point of view of an Other who, in turn, constitutes us as objects of his or her perception and evaluation’ (Duranti, 2015: 231).

Given this focus on morality as a constitutive dimension of social life, a substantive amount of research has been devoted to studying morality as an interactional achievement (Bergmann, 1998; Duranti, 1993; see Robles, 2015, for an overview). Rather than seeing morality as a set of abstract principles lodged in people’s minds and gathered through self-reports or decontextualized judgments on imaginary situations, contemporary research focuses on the moral order as embedded in everyday, mundane interactions (Cromdal and Tholander, 2015; Lambek, 2010).

There are several dimensions along which morality-in-interaction may be analyzed (Linell and Rommetveit, 1998). The first pertains to the interaction order per se (Bergmann, 1998; Heritage and Lindström, 1998): ‘who talks about what and when’ is an issue that depends on a set of more or less explicit, yet continuously under scrutiny and negotiation, institutionalized rights and duties (Heritage and Lindström, 1998: 397). The second dimension pertains to what participants are talking about: ‘the moral worlds evoked and made actionable by talk’ (Heritage and Lindström, 1998: 397). A third dimension pertains to the types of discursive activity accomplished in talk. Some are moral performances per se as they entail moral issues such as the display or the attribution of responsibility, agency and accountability (typical examples include complaints, judgments, accounts, excuses, justifications, praise and blame; see Aronsson and Osvaldsson, 2013; Sterponi, 2003, 2009; Stokoe and Edwards, 2015; Tracy, 2008). A fourth and less-visible dimension pertains to the management of epistemics in ordinary and institutional conversations (Heritage, 2012a, 2012b). As Stivers et al. (2011) illustrate, the management of knowledge always implies a pervasive and implicit reference to the right and responsibility to know and therefore entails social expectations and moral judgments.³

Given the pervasiveness of morality in discourse and interaction (Jayyusi, 1991; Robles, 2015), it is not surprising that recent research on children’s socialization focuses on adult–child interactions as a context for moral development (Ochs and Kremer-Sadlik, 2007; Wainryb and Recchia, 2014). Although peripheral with respect to mainstream psychological laboratory research or correlational studies on moral development (see, among others, Kochanska et al., 1997; Kochanska et al., 2010), recent studies on the socialization of children into moral worlds shed light on the social occasions and everyday practices in which morality is interactionally affirmed, challenged and/or transformed. Adding to this line of inquiry, this article focuses on family practices that address the ‘sense of the Other’ (Duranti, 2015), recalling it in terms of the duty that everyone has to be aware of the others’ perspective, needs and rights. Examples from video-recorded middle-class family dinners are discussed, adopting a conversation analytic approach which has proved to be well suited for analyzing how kinds of knowledge and moral orders are presupposed and constituted in everyday practices (Heritage and Lindström, 1998; Ochs and Kremer-Sadlik, 2007; Stivers et al., 2011). The analysis illustrates how – through local coordination of the main activity (eating together) and management of minor practical issues (e.g. who can/cannot eat what or leave the table and why) – parents evoke the crucial moral value of taking into account the perspective of the Other and attempt to socialize children to orient to the world as intrinsically moral.

Morality in everyday family life

In keeping with the language socialization paradigm (Duranti et al., 2012; Ochs, 1988; Schieffelin and Ochs, 1986), studies of everyday family life demonstrate the relevance of ordinary activities in children’s socialization to moral rules (Ochs and Izquierdo, 2009; Ochs and Kremer-Sadlik, 2007; Pontecorvo et al., 2001). In engaging in joint activities and talking to children, family members assume a moral stance (Du Bois, 2007) by positioning themselves in relation to ‘objects of discourse’ and situating them within a web of values. Normative stances are rarely stated as such, more often they are implied in the ways adults communicate with children. As practice-oriented studies on family socialization illustrate, children are introduced to culture-specific norms and values when they receive advice and instructions on how to use a tool or accomplish an activity (Craven and Potter, 2010; Goodwin, 2006; Ochs and Kremer-Sadlik, 2007), when they participate in storytelling (Ochs et al., 1992; Pontecorvo and Duranti, 1996), when they are involved in family interactions which display who is or is not entitled to do what and why (Ochs and Taylor, 1992, 1993), as well as when they are asked to provide accounts of their own or their siblings’ misconduct (Sterponi, 2003, 2009).

Ochs and Kremer-Sadlik (2007) maintain that everyday family life is, cross-culturally, a constant and pervasive ‘moral work’ (Drew, 1998). Whether or not family conversations explicitly focus on moral issues, they are ‘an essential vehicle through which the business of moral socialization is transacted’ (Wainryb and Recchia, 2014: 3). Comparing family practices in three different communities, Ochs and Izquierdo (2009) indicate how children’s engagement in family practices differentially socializes children into moral responsibility in ways that may conflict with ideologies: the practices of US middle-class parents, for example, promote dependence in contradiction to explicit ideological values of autonomy (see also Ochs and Kremer-Sadlik, 2007).⁴ Studying Italian dinner conversation, Sterponi (2003, 2009) sheds light on requests and deliveries of accounts as discursive practices ‘that entail individual and interpersonal positioning within moral boundaries’ (p. 442). When asked to provide an account for their misconduct, children are interactionally positioned as morally responsible for their actions. Similarly, as addressees of their parents’ or third parties’ accounts, children learn how to morally interpret events, how they are expected to behave and how they are expected to feel. Studying siblings’ interactional games, Aronsson and Gottzen (2011) demonstrate how children actively use ‘food morality’ (i.e. the family-specific ideology concerning what to eat, why and how) to strategically leave or take different generational positions. More recent socio-psychological studies (Wainryb and Recchia, 2014) have focused on everyday parent–child conversations concerning explicit, morally laden events (e.g. involuntary offenses as well as climate changes or gender policies). They show how these conversations are ubiquitous and ‘to a large extent constitutive of moral experience’ (Wainryb and Recchia, 2014: 3).

All these studies share the idea that moral conceptions are at the same time implied in and constituted through everyday practices.

Data and analytical procedures

This study is based on 28 videotaped family dinners. The six middle-class families involved in the project live in two different Italian regions and are composed of two working parents and at least two children, including at least one aged 2–5 years. The families were recruited through personal and work connections and were first contacted by e-mail to explore their willingness to participate in the study. To reduce as much as possible the researcher’s and the video-recording tools’ potential impact (Caronia, 2015), the videotape recording was self-administered by parents. In the first meeting, the researcher summarized the research aims and scope and the video-recording requirements: minimizing variations in the household setting and maximizing the number of the family members involved. Families were asked to turn on the camera when someone started setting the table and turn it off when everyone had left the table. Camera position was chosen in agreement with the parents. The participants’ consent was obtained according to Italian law no. 196/2003, which establishes the norms concerning the handling of personal and sensitive data. The participants’ names and other identifying details have been removed or changed. The excerpts presented here have been transcribed using the conversation analytic transcription conventions developed by Jefferson (2004), enriched with notation for gestures, gaze, movements and body orientation when relevant for understanding the unfolding activity.

We first scrutinized data according to a broad definition of moral talk, selecting any instance where ‘implicit and explicit messages about right and wrong, better and worse, rules, norms, obligations, duties, etiquette’ (Ochs and Kremer-Sadlik, 2007: 5) were either implied or clearly stated. We then identified and restricted the focus to two types of moral talk: first, the contributions implying a reference to the other as the benchmark for the shaping of personal conduct (‘you have to wait for your sister to finish before leaving the table’); second, the contributions in which general principles are explicitly stated or implied through the sanctioning of children’s behaviors (e.g. ‘water should be preserved’ and ‘don’t waste food’). Using empirical, post hoc categorization, we coded and analyzed 15 sequences where occurrences of one or both types of moral discourse occurred. Although types 1 and 2 are sometimes intertwined (e.g. food should not be contaminated so that it is available for other people), for the purposes of this article we focus on occurrences of the first type. Specifically, the analysis shows how moral principles are made relevant by participants when they accomplish two activities typically occurring during family meals: pursuing synchronicity in eating the dinner meal together and sharing food.

Pursuing synchronicity: Siblings as the benchmark for individual pace

Within family life, mealtime interactions can be idealized as practices of constituting togetherness, that is, enhancing the family solidarity (Lauries and Wiggins, 2011) and family members’ well-being (Graesch, 2013). In some social groups, spatial and temporal boundaries for mealtimes are established to preserve dinnertime as a collective activity. Indeed, cross-cultural research on family mealtimes indicates that certain families do a consistent amount of interactional work to make mealtimes into ‘family moments’ (Aronsson, 2006; Blum-Kulka, 2012 [1997]; Ochs et al., 1996). At the same time, in these families, transgressions to this ideal of family meals are ubiquitous.

The following excerpts illustrate how middle-class parents in this study evoke children’s attention to the Other as a benchmark for personal conduct in order to achieve synchronicity in eating the dinner meal together. As the excerpts illustrate, parents ask children to adjust their own eating pace to the sibling’s pace.

In excerpt 1, Leo (aged 3 years) starts to leave the table to go and watch TV while all family members are still at the table eating their dinner:

Ex. 1

‘Wait a second for Giulia’ F5C1 (23.27-25.10)⁵

M = Mother; F = Father; G = Giulia (5 years); L = Leo (3 years); A = Agnese (1 year)

1 M >dove vai Leo↑ <= >dove vai ↑<

>where are yu going Leo ↑ < = >where are you going ↑ <

2 L il = car-tone

the = car-toon

3 ((gets down from the chair))

4 M [mmm

[mmm

5 F [no:::

[no:::

6 M prima finiamo la pappa*

first let’s finish din-dins

7 F finiamo di mangiare [dai

let’s finish eating [come on

8 L ((resumes eating his meal))

9 M [dai

[come on

10 L (no::: m::) dai::

(no::: m::)come on::

11 M dai

come on

12 F aspetta un attimo la Giulia

wait a second for Giulia

13 (2.0)

14 lei ti aspetta quando tu sei in ritardo

she waits for you when you are late

*‘Pappa’ is an Italian term for children’s meal; it is mostly used when talking to children.

Immediately after Leo starts to leave the table (line 1), mother admonishes him (Hepburn, 2015) by emphasizing and repeating the question (‘where are you going Leo? where are you going?’, line 1). The admonishment conveys to the child the sense that something in his conduct (leaving the table) is problematic and should be corrected or stopped, although avoids saying what it is. Leo treats mother’s turn as a ‘mere’ question concerning where he is going and provides the requested information saying ‘cartoon’ (line 2), which metonymically stands for the TV set as his destination. Father’s elongated rejection (‘no::’, line 5) projects the relevance of a motivation, which mother indirectly provides by issuing a first person plural, coercive but intimate directive (‘first let’s finish din-dins’, line 6) that implies ‘we need to finish eating “la pappa” before you leave the table’). Together the parental turns indicate not only that the two activities (leaving the table and watching a cartoon) are inappropriate, but also why: before (leaving the table to watch the cartoon) the family members have to finish eating (line 6). The rule is repeated by father in line 7, although in a different form (‘let’s finish eating’), followed by the exhortation ‘come on’. The parents’ exhortations (recycled between lines 7 and 11) exhibit alignment in their evaluation of the child’s activity as a transgression (see Wingard, 2007). In using the first person plural (lines 6 and 7), the parents treat the meal consumption as a collective activity with spatial and temporal boundaries that all family members should respect.

When Leo refuses to comply and asks again for permission to leave the table (line 10), father turns the initial exhortations ‘let’s finish’ in lines 6 and 7 into a second person imperative that imposes an action on Leo and that specifies his obligation toward his sister Giulia (‘wait a second for Giulia’, line 12), who has not finished eating yet. In so doing, the father overtly exercises power over Leo and uses the sibling’s state of eating to instantiate dinnertime moral expectations.

After a pause, father further morally motivates his imperative to wait for Giulia by introducing a micro-narrative in which Giulia is depicted as habitually waiting for her brother when he is slow in eating (line 14). Through this narrativized behavior, father points toward the moral expectation of reciprocity, according to which Leo should wait for his sister before leaving the table, like his sister ‘usually’ does. The very issue at stake is not to eat faster or slower, but to adjust individual behavior to someone else’s according to the principle of reciprocity.

Instead of stating the general moral expectation, parents use a sibling’s behavior as an immediately available resource to instantiate it. This participatory configuration is rather frequent in the corpus of dinnertime interactions. Siblings are evoked as embodied occurrences of the generalized other (see Mead, 1967 [1934]) and used as a resource to instantiate the moral responsibility to adapt one’s own behavior to the other family members’ behavior (for an analysis of siblings’ role in the socialization of children see, among others, Dunn, 1989; Schieffelin, 1990; Weisner and Gallimore, 1977).

The following episode is taken from a different dinner of the same family, and further illustrates how parents socialize children to the primacy of the Other over the self by requesting them to coordinate their eating pace to that of the sibling:

Ex. 2

‘He has been waiting a half an hour for you’ F5C2 (35.00-36.23)

M = Mother; F = Father; G = Giulia (5 years old); L = Leo (3 years old); A = Agnese (one year old).

All family members are sitting at the table. Only G is still eating, whereas L has already finished.

1 L ma^mma mi puo:i farmi guardar la = Peppa

mu^mmy can you please let me watch = Peppa

2 L ^((takes his pacifier out))

3 F sì adesso c- aspetta un attimo ^(.)°digli° GIULIA

yes now c- wait a moment ^(.)°tell her° GIULIA

4 F ^((looks at G))

5 G [( )

6 M [se la Giulia si muove[sse

[if only Giulia would hurry up

7 F [puoi finire↑

[can you finish↑

8 G ce l’ho pochi:ssima

I have only a little of

9 F [eh devi finirla

[eh you must finish it

10 M [bevila bevila bevila

[drink it drink it drink it

11 G ma io la voglio mangiare

but I want to eat it

12 M ( ) però

( ) but

13 F eh ho capito ma povero Leo è da mezz’ora che ti aspetta

eh I understand but poor Leo he has been waiting a half an hour for you

In contrast with extract 1, in which Leo inappropriately took for granted that he could leave the table and go watch TV, in this case, he asks his mother for permission to watch Peppa Pig, a cartoon for very young children (line 1). By asking permission, Leo displays his knowledge of the norm that regulates the order of the two activities involved – participating at family dinner then watching TV, re-instantiates the validity of such a norm and shows that he knows he is asking for a nonconforming behavior. Furthermore, he displays his knowledge of the distribution of rights and duties among family members by taking on the role of the one who has to ask for permission and by giving his mother the authoritative role of according or denying it.

In line 3, it is father who answers the child with an initial granting token (‘ yes’, line 3), followed by a deferment (Wootton, 1981; ‘wait a moment’), which allows him to mitigate the rejection and ‘to maximize the possibility of a granting in some form’ (p. 62).

After a pause, father prompts his son to address his sister (‘tell her’, line 3). Addressing Giulia with both words and gaze, father animates his son’s words (‘Giulia can you finish?’, lines 3 and 7) producing a kind of triadic scold, that is ‘a scold coming through a sibling, which is thought to be milder than if it comes directly from the parent’ (Gegeo and Gegeo, 1989: 63; Schieffelin, 1990).

Mother totally aligns with father’s trajectory by indirectly summoning Giulia to hurry up (‘if only Giulia would hurry up’, line 6). Both parents contribute to orienting their children to perform in a mutually coordinated way where each one shapes her or his personal behavior (here, eating pace) according to the contingencies of the other’s.

Giulia replies declaring that she has a very small quantity of food remaining (line 8). This statement seems to be treated by father as an indirect request to leave it as he replies that she has to finish it (line 9).⁶ Mother intervenes with a scaffolding contribution (Galatolo et al., 2015) that suggests a practical way to cope with two apparently incompatible prescriptions: finish eating and hurry up. She suggests drinking what remains in her plate (a kind of soup) and – by repeating the directive (‘drink it drink it drink it’) with the same intonation (see the emphasis on the first syllable of each occurrence of “drink it”) – she verbally and prosodically conveys the sense of urgency with which the action of drinking the soup should be accomplished. When Giulia refuses to comply by advancing her personal will to eat the soup (i.e. not drinking it, line 11), mother replies with an adversative (‘but’, line 12) which projects strong disagreement with what Giulia seems to imply by declaring that she wants to eat the soup, that is, that she is taking her time to finish what she still has on the plate.

Father aligns with mother and, after an initial granting component (‘I understand’, line 13), he counters Giulia’s claim to eat the soup by holding her accountable for the fact that it is now ‘half an hour’ that her brother has been waiting for her (line 13). The hyperbolic formulation (Pomerantz, 1986) of the amount of Leo’s waiting time (‘half an hour’, line 13) and the affective stance marked by the adjective ‘poor’ (‘poor Leo’, line 13) display father’s positioning toward Giulia’s request (eating the soup, which implies taking her time, line 11) and – by evoking the sibling – reaffirm the moral principle of being attentive to others’ needs and rights.

The next example, which is taken from another family meal, illustrates the same phenomenon: the general moral expectation of the primacy of the other over oneself is introduced by parents – here mostly the mother – to pursue synchronicity among family members and is used as the guiding principle of participation:

Ex. 3

‘A peeled apple’ F1C2 (42.28-43.12)

M = Mother, F = Father, G = Giacomo (6 years old); N = Nicola (4 years old); D = Davide (18 months)

All the members of the family are sitting at their place, except Davide who is in his mother’s arms. Parents have finished and are waiting for Nicola and Giacomo to finish.

1 F chie- chiedi alla mamma una mela pelata

as- ask mum for a peeled apple

2 N PELATA

PEELED

3 N ((gets down and moves to M on the opposite side of the table))

4 M no no Nicola

no no Nicola

5 M ((raises her hand making the emblem of stop))

6 N va bene

7 M Nicola

Nicola

8 N pelata

peeled

9 N ((approaches M))

10 F no [ascolta cosa dice la mamma

no [ listen to what mum is saying

11 M [fermo fermo finisci il finocchio

[stay there stay there finish the fennel

12 stiamo aspettando Giacomo

we are waiting for Giacomo

13 N ma gliela do:::

but I’ll give it to him

14 M no aspetti (.) papà aspetta per la frutta

no you wait (.) dad waits for the fruit

15 ^finisci l- la carne Giacomo

^ finish t- the meat Giacomo

16 N ^((comes back to his place))

17 M e tu il finocchio forza veloci

and you the fennel, come on quick

The sequence starts with father suggesting that Nicola ask mother for a peeled apple.⁷ Nicola follows father’s instructions and moves toward mother (line 3), whose words and gesture (‘no no Nicola’, plus the gesture to stop him, line 5) display her rejection of Nicola’s request. Father intervenes, aligning with mother, and telling Nicola to listen to her (line 10). In doing so, he creates an opportunity for her to justify her previous refusal to give Nicola (and his father) the apple. Indeed, in lines 11 and 12, mother provides two reasons: Nicola has to finish the fennel and they are all waiting for Giacomo. Through this formulation of what is going on (Garfinkel and Sacks, 1970), mother categorizes the ongoing activity as being morally organized: family members are not coincidentally there, merely involved in accomplishing individual activities, they are all waiting for Giacomo. In doing so, she orients her son (as well as the other participants who overhear the exchange) to the moral scene at hand: family members are pursuing mealtime synchronicity, and they do so by taking into account the slower family member participant, Giacomo.

Nicola justifies his request, saying that he will give the apple to father (see the use of the adversative ‘but’ at the beginning of the turn).⁸ Mother replies with a strong opposition (‘no’, line 14) followed by an order (‘you wait’) and the declarative ‘dad waits for the fruit’.⁹ In this way, she reaffirms the priority of eating synchronically, which has been violated first by father’s request and later by Nicola’s aligned behavior.

Mother closes the sequence by exhorting both sons to finish, respectively, the meat and the fennel (lines 15 and 17).

The previous examples illustrate how family dinner interactions may function as a moral arena, and particularly how children are socialized to the notion that personal will or behavior should be adjusted to a choreography involving others’ behavior. As we have seen, parents encourage their children to adopt two basic practices in participating in family dinners: to orient to the mutual coordination of individuals’ eating pace and to respect mealtime boundary markers. Accordingly, being ahead and leaving the table before all members have finished (extract 1), being late and making others wait (extract 2), as well as prematurely skipping to the next course (fruit, extract 3) are all sanctionable behaviors in that they do not take into account the other’s perspective. The timing (pace, rhythm) of the other(s) is the benchmark to which children have to adjust their idiosyncratic time.

It is worth noting that in all the examples, parents use co-present siblings as a resource to accomplish moral work locally: they turn them into an embodied occurrence of the ‘generalized other’ to which the target child is called to adapt his/her behavior. Whether children are the addressed recipients, are referred to in the exchanges or are simply overhearers (Goffman, 1979), they are socialized to the ‘sense of the Other’ as part of the expected and preferred modes governing the specific social situation they are involved in.

In the following sections, we show how parents socialize children to the same moral principle when distributing food.

Distributive justice at dinnertime: the Other as a constraint on personal will

Since Mary Douglas’s (2003 [1973]) study on social uses of food, anthropological research on food and eating have demonstrated that food distribution within communities is a culturally saturated activity as it entails the sharing of common resources among individuals (see Kaplan and Gurven, 2005, for a review). It raises political issues (e.g. who has the right to have how much, when and why) as well as a moral dilemma (individual interest vs common good). Therefore, in many social groups, good manners and etiquette rules have been implemented to govern this activity in order to prevent and repair potential offenses (see Bourdieu, 1984 [1979]; Cooper, 1986; Elias, 2000 [1939]; Ochs et al., 1996).

The following extracts illustrate how distributive justice is locally made actionable through talk in food distribution during family meals and contributes to socializing children to the sense of the Other as a constraint of personal will.

In the following excerpt, father manages to respond to his son’s request for another banana:

Ex. 4

‘Another banana’ F2C4 (39.00-39.29)

M = Mother; F = Father; C = Carlo (3 years); L = Laura (years 6)

Carlo is finishing his banana, Father is looking at his mobile phone. Mother and Laura are leafing through a toy catalogue and talking together. Their side talk is not transcribed.

1 C ^ un’altra banana

^ another banana

2 C ^((stands up pointing to the banana on the table and ^looks at F))

3 F ((^looks at C))

4 F ((takes the banana, cuts it in the middle and gives it to C))

5 C ((takes one half))

6 F dada* non ne vuoi più di banana↑

darling don’t you want some more banana ↑

((addressing L who is leafing through the magazine))

7 (L) (e: = no)

(e: = no)

8 F ^tò

^keep

9 F ^((starts passing the piece of banana to L))

10 C ^NO mio

^ NO (it’s) mine

11 C ^((pointing at the piece of banana))

12 L ((looks at the piece of banana and shakes her hand meaning no))

13 F e vabbé ^te l’ho data te- ne hai mangiata più di metà te

and so = ^I gave it to you, you- you ate more than a half, you

14 L ^((takes the piece of banana))

15 F non = far = (il) = furbo

don’t = be = smart

*‘dada’ is an Italian feminine gender term of affection.

Father’s gestural reply (line 4) to Carlo’s request to have the banana (line 1) – cutting it and giving him half – is a weak rejection (Wootton, 1981)¹⁰ implying a negotiation of the terms of the request. Father’s cutting the banana establishes the right amount of food (banana) to which Carlo is entitled and treats his request as unsuitable. Carlo aligns with his father and takes the piece of fruit (line 5). Father thus offers the other half-banana to his daughter (line 6) and gives it to her (line 8), despite her refusal (line 7). It is at this point that Carlo claims that second piece of banana for himself (line 10). Whether he does so because he thought that both pieces of banana were for him (although provided in two instances) or because he noticed his sister’s denial, father treats his claim as inappropriate because he already gave him some and it was even more than half (line 13). In line 13, father’s repetition of the pronoun ‘you’ four times evokes the opposition between Carlo and somebody else who, in these circumstances, can only be the sister. Hence, father addresses Carlo as a member of the sibling couple and alludes to their symmetrical rights in terms of food distribution. While father explains to Carlo the reasons for his (weak) rejection, Laura picks up the piece of banana and father closes the sequence by sanctioning the boy’s behavior with the moral claim of having been ‘smart’ (line 15), that is having intentionally tried to bypass the rule.

The following example further illustrates how food distribution occasions moral work. It shows how a child skillfully evokes the basic principle of distributive justice in negotiating what he will have to eat and how much:¹¹

Ex. 5

‘I want the skewers’ F1C5 (9.37-10.05)

M = Mother; G = Giacomo (6 years)

The father and the children are sitting at the table and have finished the first course. The mother stands in front of the stove. In one hand she holds the pan with the meat and in the other a large spoon-like tool: she is ostensibly there to distribute the main course which is constituted of two kinds of meat: skewers and hamburgers.

1 M ^°vieni qua° ((addressing G))

^°come here°

2 M ^(( makes an iconic gesture signaling to approach her))

3 G ((approaches the stove and hands his plate to the mother))

4 G voglio (.) [gli spiedini

I want (.) [the skewers

5 M [vuoi l’hamburger °o:°

[do you want the hamburger°or:°

6 G gli spiedini e dopo se ci sono anche gli hamburger

the skewers and then if there are any also the hamburgers

7 G ((looks at M))

8 M (sicuramente)

(sure)

9 M ((nods looking at G))

10 allora ti metto due spiedini e un hamburger

so I’ll put two skewers and a hamburger for you

11 poi se vuoi dell’altro vediamo

then if you want something else we’ll see

12 ((gives the plate back to G))

13 G degli altri spiedini voglio

I want some more skewers

14 G ((comes back to his place))

15 M vediamo ( ) devono prendere anche gli altri

we’ll see ( ) the others have to have some too

16 G ahah

In line 1, mother asks Giacomo to join her and reinforces the request with a gesture (line 2). Giacomo joins her, handing out his plate and asking for skewers (line 4). Mother takes the turn right in overlap and asks him what he prefers, proposing the hamburger as the first choice (see the incomplete turn at line 5, in which the alternative is projected by the “or”). Giacomo replies, repeating that he wants the skewers ‘and then if there are any the hamburgers’ (line 6). The first component of Giacomo’s turn is a conforming reply to the mother’s ‘either/or’ offer, while the second part is an expansion (Galatolo and Drew, 2006; Labov and Fanshel, 1977; Schegloff, 2007) through which he projects an alternative development of the activity (with respect to those projected by mother’s turn at line 5), namely is eating skewers first and hamburger later, if still available. Through this expansion, Giacomo shows he has taken into account mother’s displayed preference concerning hamburgers (named in first position at line 5), refers to them as his second choice and displays his orientation to the other family members’ needs and choices as a constraint on what will be available for him. With his final addendum (‘and then if there are any also the hamburgers’, line 6), Giacomo skillfully uses the moral principle according to which personal food desires need to be constrained by the anticipated desires of others, as a means to avoid or procrastinate eating what he evidently does not prefer.

Mother resumes and concludes the negotiation by offering him two skewers and one hamburger (lines 8–10), and displays her orientation to her son’s previous turn where he anticipated a further serving (line 6) by stating that this possibility would be considered later on (“we’ll see”, line 11). Her giving him back the plate closes the sequence (line 12). Immediately after, Giacomo reopens the negotiation and asks for more skewers (line 13), leaving ambiguous whether he wants them right now or – as proposed in line 11 by mother – later on. In line 15, mother replies to the child’s request by a deferment (Wootton, 1981) that suspends the granting of his request (‘we’ll see’). This mitigated form of refusal is followed by an account (‘ the others have to have some too’, line 15). Mother’s moral argument echoes the one already evoked by Giacomo in line 6: individual behavior and preferences (what to eat and how much) should be shaped taking into account that of the others. By referring to the others to be served and by using this principle to regulate the ongoing activity (eating skewers now and hamburgers later) or to justify a (weak) refusal, the child and the mother make relevant and ratify the basic principle of distributive justice.

Conclusion

As Garfinkel (1967) noted, intrinsically moral and taken-for-granted premises orient everyday social practices; reflexively, these same premises are ordinarily created, maintained and (re)instantiated for ‘another next first time’ (Garfinkel, 2002: 92; Garfinkel and Wieder, 1992: 186) each time the individuals enact them to make sense of their surrounding world. In line with this theoretical perspective and the renewed attention to mundane morality (Lambek, 2010), this article illustrates how the macro-order of moral principles and the micro-order of everyday interactions are strongly intertwined. In particular, we illustrate how a moral orientation as crucial to human sociality as the sense of the Other is (re)constituted through the micro-ordering of everyday family life ‘one interaction at a time’ (Garfinkel, 1967, 2002; Sacks, 1984).

Examining video-recorded family dinner interactions, we show how family members ostensibly orient their behavior to this moral value and treat it as a “naturally” entitled to regulate their everyday activities (e.g. family mealtime). At the same time, it is precisely because members make the ‘sense of the Other’ actionable through talk and practically use it to manage local tasks that this value acquires social existence.

The analysis of our data shows that parents systematically prompt their children to locally take into account the perspective of the other, being his/her current actions (still finishing eating, extract 1;‘waiting . . . for you’, extract 2) or his/her needs and wishes (needing skewers, extract 5; desiring a piece of banana, extract 4), as a constraint of their own behavior. Our analysis reveals that siblings’ behavior is the interactional resource mostly used by parents to accomplish this moral work. In transforming the sibling into an embodied occurrence of the ‘generalized other’ (Mead, 1967 [1934]), parents and children constitute everyday family life as a morally tractable object. Practices of situated morality become therefore loci of moral apprenticeship.

In directing the child to take the perspective of the sibling in the context of the practice of dinnertime, parents promote intersubjectivity: the Other is similar to me and experiences the ‘same’ world as me (Duranti, 2010, 2015; Mead, 1967 [1934]; Schutz, 1967; Schutz and Luckmann, 1989). This basic axiom of human sociality, rather than being a topic of family talk - a ‘line of thought’ (Wittgenstein, 1969: 103) - is often co-enacted by parents and children in an attempt ‘to order their affairs’ (Sacks, 1984: 24) on a mundane basis.

In showing how the moral dimensions of the social life are made relevant in the management of mundane activities (e.g. family dinners), this study further indicates that studying ordinary practices may significantly contribute to the understanding of how people construct their moral worlds as relative natural ones, and transform what is theoretically questionable (e.g. values, stances and world views) into ‘something taken for granted’ (Schutz and Luckmann, 1973: 8) across generations.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors are particularly grateful to Erika Vassallo (PhD) for her contribution in data collection and for her inspired insights in interpreting the data.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biographies

Renata Galatolo, PhD, is Associate Professor in Psychology at the Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna. Her main research interests include discursive psychology and conversation analysis applied to institutional and ordinary interaction. Her current research activity focuses on doctor–patient interaction and family interaction. Her recent publications include ‘Parasitic Apologies’ in Discourse Processes (with Ursi and Bongelli); ‘Territories of knowledge, professional identities and patients’ participation in specialized visits with a team of practitioners’ in Patient Education and Counseling (with Piera Margutti); and ‘Reporting Talk when Testifying: Intertextuality, Consistency and Transformation in Witnesses Use of Direct Reported Speech’ in B. Dupret, M. Lynch and T. Berard (eds) Law at Work: Studies in Legal Ethnomethods (2015, Oxford University Press).

Letizia Caronia, PhD, is Full Professor at the Department of Education (University of Bologna). Her research deals with the communicative constitution of knowledge in institutional, scientific and ordinary interaction, and the role of things as communicative agents in social contexts. Her current projects concern the epistemics of research interaction, interprofessional interaction in medical settings, family interaction and parent-teacher interaction. Her recent publications include: ‘Totem and taboo: the embarrassing epistemic work of things in the research setting’ in Qualitative Research; ‘Assembling (non)treatable cases: The communicative constitution of medical object in doctor–doctor interaction’ in Discourse Studies (with Arturo Chieregato and Marzia Saglietti) and ‘The fabric of certainty: Ignoring interactional details as an epistemic resource in research interviews, in A. Zuczkowsky et al. (Eds.) Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific Contexts. John Benjamins.

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