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Language in Society 19, 465-492. Printed in the United States of America

Describing trouble:Practical epistemology in citizen calls to the police1

MARILYN R. WHALEN

Department of PsychiatryUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison

DON H. ZIMMERMAN

Department of SociologyUniversity of California, Santa Barbara

ABSTRACT

In this article, we examine the way citizens' descriptions of troublesomeoccurrences in reports to emergency dispatch personnel are vulnerableto suspicion and doubt. The vulnerability of description in these casesinvolves callers' categorization of, visual or aural access to, and involve-ment in the reported "trouble." It is through displays of what we termpractical epistemology - displays of how one has come to know abouta particular event - that these vulnerabilities emerge and are tested andnegotiated in the request for and dispatch of emergency assistance.(Conversation analysis, language in institutional settings, pragmatics)

It is common for members of society to speak of events they have witnessedor have been involved in, happenings that often occur at some remove in timeand space from the occasion of their telling. Sacks (19723:329-32) arguedthat there are systematic resources for producing and recognizing the depic-tion of an activity or occurrence as a "possible description," a portrayal ofa real event that can be appreciated by recipients without first-handknowledge.

Descriptions achieve their currency by depicting matters that, given theplace of their occurrence and the categories of persons involved in their pro-duction, could have occurred in the manner described. In the absence of rea-son to doubt, everyday descriptions are usually accepted as veridical for thepurposes at hand.

Not every candidate description is accepted on its face, however. Doubtscan emerge and, depending on the practical issues at stake, the offered ac-count may be subject to review and assessment and pressed for clarification,elaboration, or reformulation. Moreover, such issues are not solely the off-

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MARILYN R. WHALEN AND DON H. ZIMMERMAN

spring of doubt; descriptions play different roles in various social circum-stances and are therefore subject to shifting requirements for completeness,detail, and supporting evidence (Pomerantz 1983). We refer to the assortmentof demands encountered by descriptions across settings as vulnerabilities, in-tending by that term to collect for study the desiderata of the members' ac-tivity of doing description. We are concerned here with the investigation ofthe vulnerabilities of a particular class of descriptions, those involved inreporting troublesome occurrences to the police - descriptions that necessarilyraise issues of categorization, visual and/or aural access to the event, and in-volvement in the reported trouble. We argue that in response to these issuesparticipants orient to displays of a practical epistemology - just how, on thisoccasion, one has come to know about this particular event.

Displays of practical epistemology are assemblies of various features of theproblematic event: what one has actually seen or heard (the empirical ma-terials of the event), the "definition" or categorization of the event as a par-ticular kind of problem or trouble (e.g., as a "fight," "murder," "break-in,"and so on), and the status of caller vis-a-vis the event (e.g., as a witness, vic-tim, or intercessory third party).2 Our concern in this article is with the in-teractional accomplishment of epistemological displays - what we termcallers' stance toward the troubles they report.

METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Our analysis relies on tapes and transcripts of 200 citizen calls to a policeemergency number in "Mid-City," a large midwestern city.3 This corpus rep-resents all the telephone transactions of four of the eight civilian personnel- called "complaint-takers" - staffing the emergency line for a 2-hour periodlate on a weekend evening.4

It is important to emphasize here that although we have also collectedsome limited information concerning the system used in taking and process-ing calls (as well as the requirements for employment as a complaint-takerand the training received), our analysis is derived primarily from the conver-sational data themselves. It is there that we can eavesdrop on callers andcomplaint-takers as they deal with the practical epistemology of reports overa variety of incidents, and identify the specific social practices they em-ployed.5 Moreover, regardless of the organizational structures or biographi-cal experiences surrounding these encounters, the actual course of theconversations must be treated as an emergent and fundamentally interac-tional achievement (cf. Schegloff 1987b: 101-03).

Although these tapes do not allow us to identify participants' race, socialclass, or age with any certainty, we recognize that citizen descriptions andpolice responses (and here we refer not only to conversational responses butto actual outcomes with respect to police action) could very well vary by these

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PRACTICAL EPISTEMOLOGY IN CALLS TO THE POLICE

factors. However, our present concern is not with such variation but ratherwith how "generic" interactional organization is used to build a contextwithin which descriptions are offered and, as the case may be, tested.

Our analysis thus entails an application of the concepts and findings ofconversation analysis to one circumscribed aspect of "institutional" (in con-trast to "mundane") talk-in-interaction (Heritage 1984; Heritage & Great-batch, in press; Schegloff 1987a, in press; Wilson, in press; Zimmerman &Boden, in press). The major focus of conversation analysis has, of course,been on talk-in-interaction as an analytically autonomous domain of socialaction.6 Within this domain, the sequential environment of talk provides theindispensable context for participants' understanding, appreciation, and useof what is being said, meant, and, most importantly, done in and throughthe talk (Schegloff & Sacks 1973).7 The varieties of sequential organization(e.g., speech exchange systems, adjacency pairs, repair, openings, closings,and the like) thus provide the fundamental resources for structuring mun-dane conversational encounters, as well as functioning to "enable" patternsof institutional action (Schegloff 1987a).

In moving from casual or mundane interaction to more "formal" or "in-stitutional" interactions such as calls to the police we can inquire how the or-ganization of ordinary conversation is adapted to the tasks of providingemergency assistance (or any other service) over the telephone. Other re-search has demonstrated how speech exchange systems (Sacks, Schegloff, &Jefferson 1974) can be configured to produce distinctive types of institutionaltalk-in-interaction, for example, televised news interviews (Clayman 1987;Greatbatch 1988; Heritage 1985a; Heritage & Greatbatch, in press). In ad-dition to the conventional modification of the parameters of turn-taking inordinary conversation, the "machinery" of conversation can be deployed in"reduced" or "specialized" form (cf. Heritage 1984; Heritage & Greatbatchin press). For example, Whalen and Zimmerman (1987) observed that thefour-part opening sequence found in mundane telephone calls (Schegloff1986) is "reduced" in a way that adapts the organization of telephone callopenings to the special requirements of emergency calls.

In this article, we rely on existing work on the organization of conversa-tional interaction and previous studies of emergency calls (Meehan 1983,1984; Sharrock & Turner 1978; Whalen & Zimmerman 1987; Whalen, Zim-merman, & Whalen 1988; Zimmerman 1984) to develop the sequential frame-work within which the work of displaying practical epistemology isaccomplished. This article is thus an investigation of how very orderly andvery ordinary forms of talk are pressed into the service of more formal andspecialized encounters (cf. Atkinson 1982) in which callers seek help for trou-bles for which they must provide a credible account. We turn, then, to a con-sideration of the social organization of calls for help within which callers andcomplaint-takers deal with the description of trouble.

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THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF CALLS FOR HELP

Mid-City callers recurrently portrayed events or activities that they had ex-perienced, witnessed, or discovered - events that spanned a range of urgencyfrom someone locked out of their car to a rape in progress. In order to un-derstand the situated character and import of the descriptions provided bythese callers and to approach the issue of the particular vulnerabilities towhich they are subject, we need to consider first the overall structure and or-ganization of calls to the police. This structure provides the frameworkwithin which callers' descriptions occur, that is to say, their placement in thediscourse is relative to other features of the call such as a formulation of thelocation of the event, their occasion, and their consequentiality.

The following conversation displays the achieved organization (Zimmer-man 1984) of calls that is typical of our corpus. By achieved organization wemean to argue that the orderliness and structure we observe in these calls isa product of the concerted, collaborative work of the participants. Whateverregularity is exhibited, then, is locally produced on a case by case basis. Inthis example, the caller is requesting assistance for a 45-year-old woman whohas lost consciousness at a private residence (see the Appendix for the tran-scription conventions).

(1) [MCE/2O-7a/i9i]1. CT: Mid-City police and fire2. C: Yes kin ya get uh kin ya get somebody over here right away we've got uh

gal that's just .hh ready tuh pass out. She's hh oh: (i.o) she's passed out,okay

3. CT: Okay what address?4. C: Okay thirty thirteen Sixteenth Avenue an hurry, she's passed right out,

she's forty five years ol:d an=5. CT: =(thirty) what?6. C: Okay, three zero one three

Sixteenth Avenue South7. CT: Sixteenth Avenue South, iz that uh

single familry home?8. C: L Yes yes yes. We'll be watchin for um.9. CT: You don't know what's wrong with her though=

10. C: =1 have no idea, she justgot dizzy, an gotup tuh get air anpassed right out.

11. CT: Okay we'll get somebody over there=12. C: =Hurry13. CT: Mnhm ((click))

There are five major components, or clusters of activity, in example (1)and, indeed, in virtually all the completed calls from citizens seeking assis-tance in our corpus. The gross structure of these calls has been discussed ingreater detail elsewhere (Whalen & Zimmerman 1987; Whalen, Zimmerman,& Whalen 1988; Zimmerman 1984) and is detectable in transcript data foundin other work on police calls (Meehan 1983; Sharrock & Turner 1978). It

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suffices for present purposes to note that these calls can be characterized bythe following components:

OPENING/IDENTIFICATION/ACKNOWLEDGMENTREQUEST

INTERROGATIVE SERIESRESPONSE

CLOSING

The OPENING/IDENTIFICATION/ACKNOWLEDGMENT sequence (turn i and theinitial component of 2 in example [1]) employs a categorical self-identifica-tion on the part of complaint-taker ("Mid-City police and fire") and an ac-knowledgment ("yes") from caller. Callers representing some establishmentalso categorically identify themselves, the import of which is discussed later.We simply assert here that this exchange is a means of aligning the situatedidentities of parties to the call and projecting the "type of call" about to un-fold (Whalen & Zimmerman 1987; cf. Schegloff 1979). Various issues con-cerning the appropriateness of the alignment - for example (and as a gloss),"the police" and "citizen complainant" - can and do occur in this openingsequence, and are dealt with before proceeding further in the call.

The REQUEST segment (turn 2: "kin ya get . . . ") is ordinarily the nextcomponent following the acknowledgment that completes the OPENING se-quence. Although the example provided displays a "single utterance format"(Sharrock & Turner 1978:180), the complaint can also be delivered in a "mul-tiple utterance format," comprised of several turn constructional units oreven developed over several turns if the caller requests assistance withoutspecifying the problem (Zimmerman 1984). What we wish to notice here isthat the report or description of a trouble occurring in the slot or conversa-tional space just after the opening sequence is hearable as a matter requir-ing response, that is, as projecting a specific type of next action bycomplaint-taker (Whalen & Zimmerman 1987). Consequently, the descrip-tions or accounts that callers provide are not idle portrayals of some happen-ing but, in being delivered to a representative of "the police," constitute arequest for assistance, a first pair-part of an adjacency pair organization.8

The place to look, then, for the occurrence of a response is ordinarily in thenext or adjacent turn. However, in example (1), the next turn is occupiedwith another first pair-part question, "Okay what address," and inspectionof other calls in the corpus yields similar occurrences.

The relevance of, say, providing an answer to a question or a response toa request can be preserved while nevertheless deferring the answer while at-tending to the contingencies of providing it. Thus, in the following segment,a caller questions the necessity of an answer before providing it (Qb and Abrefer to base question and base answer respectively; Qi and Ai refer to firstinsertion between Qb and Ab; see Schegloff 1972):9

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[MCE:22-24:i66A]Qb: CT: Could I have the address please?Qi: C: uh: do I have to give that?Ai: CT: We need a complainant ma'amAb: C: .hh sixty: nineteen.

In that callers' reports or descriptions (as well as explicit requests for help)project a mobilization of police effort, a number of contingencies must beresolved before such a response can be given, including, in some cases, thatof the adequacy of callers' descriptions of trouble.

As demonstrated and discussed elsewhere (Schegloff 1972:77-78, 109-10;see also Levinson 1984; Maynard & Wilson 1980:301-05; Zimmerman 1984),a second pair-part need not invariably occur adjacent to a first if the inter-vening insertion sequence preserves the relevance of a response through ac-tivity that addresses issues involved with providing it. In our corpus, the nextmajor component following the request is what has been termed an INTER-ROGATIVE SERIES, initiated by a question concerning the nature of the prob-lem or its location (the interrogative series is offset for expositionalconvenience in example [1]). We suggest that the interrogative series func-tions as an insertion sequence that provides a canonical procedure for deal-ing with matters that are preliminary to (and conditional for) an emergencyresponse.

The interrogative series can provide the testing ground for callers' descrip-tion of the trouble. This is not to say that it is exclusively dedicated to sucha test. Indeed, much of the information elicited is devoted to fixing a loca-tion to which police or paramedics will be dispatched and assembling detailsof the incident (e.g., presence of weapons, number of individuals involved,descriptions of suspects, seriousness of the illness, etc.) thought to preparepatrol officers to cope with the incident. We can see that in example (1) thedescription of someone having passed out, although accepted as an event re-quiring emergency assistance, is nevertheless probed for more detail withcomplaint-taker's question in turn 9, "You don't know what's wrong with herthough."

The interrogative series is thus the discourse solution to the contingenciesof response, that is, to the satisfaction of questions that are conditional forthe provision of assistance. The vulnerabilities of a given description emergefrom - or are settled - as the contingencies of response are managed.

The fourth segment of the call is the RESPONSE move by complaint-taker.Note that complaint-taker is not delivering the actual "remedy" but rather"promising" to provide it (turn 11: "Okay we'll get somebody over there").Utterances of this general format following the interrogative series are heara-ble as the response to the initial complaint. The participants themselves treatthe promise of assistance in this way because the reason for the call is firstand foremost a request for emergency services (see Whalen & Zimmerman

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[1987] for a detailed analysis of this issue). In addition, this promise to sendassistance is adjacent to the closing sequence and can also be analyzed as apreclosing move (Schegloff & Sacks 1974; Zimmerman 1984). Its role as aninitiator of closing - particularly the closing of a telephone call - furnishesa powerful structural motive to withhold it until the information deemed nec-essary for the police is elicited.10

Upon receiving the promise of assistance, callers typically provide someform of acknowledgment." In example (1), however, caller does not uttera direct acknowledgment (e.g., "thank you"); instead, she indirectly acknowl-edges complaint-taker's promise of assistance by urging that this assistancebe delivered swiftly ("hurry"). The promise of assistance furnishes both theresponse to caller's complaint and initiates a preclosing move that is com-pleted by caller's acknowledgment. Upon the execution of this pivotal se-quence, a terminal exchange (Schegloff & Sacks 1974:256) ensues by whichthe call is brought to a fairly rapid conclusion. Note, however, that whereaswe often observe exchanges of "Mnhm" and "bye," in example (1) complaint-taker's "Mnhm" is met only by the hanging up of the phone by caller. Callscan and do terminate quickly once the promise of assistance is given.

DOUBT

As we have observed, the organization of the call as an occasion for com-plaint delivery provides for the production of the complaint about or a re-port of a problem in caller's first turn of talk, just after the completion ofthe opening alignment of identities.12 We consider again our openingexample:

(1) [MCE:20-7a:i9i]C: . . . we've got uh gal that's just .hh ready tuh pass out . . .

As a description delivered to the police, the request for emergency medicalhelp is a known and nameable event and a commonplace for police as an oc-cupational specialty responsible for dealing with such occurrences. Moreover,the reported occurrence of illness is heard as a request eliciting a specific re-sponse (in the present case, the dispatch of a paramedic unit). Further, thetelling of such troubles, and the interrogative series thereby occasioned'; isconstrained within the dialogic exchange, there usually being no independentsource of verification.13

Thus, the occasion of calling the police is one in which reports deliveredby usually anonymous callers must be assessed and responded to by policepersonnel as descriptions, that is, in the terms in which they are delivered orinto which they are recast over the course of the call. This fact naturally moti-vates the question of how a report - or some interactional^ achieved versionof it - must be assembled in order to be treated as a basis for police action

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as it is presented.14 The absence of such a felicitous assembly - the failureto build a description which by dint of artifact or inference exhibits the war-rant for response - is, of course, the description's vulnerability in this par-ticular context.

One type of vulnerability to which descriptions in general may be thoughtsubject is doubt. In regard to the circumstances fostering doubt, Sacks (1971)suggested that it may arise from two sources:

1. Descriptions may be subject to doubt if they are heard equivocally -that is to say, "heard in a way that leads to a questioning or doubt-ing . . . (in terms of motives or reasons . . .) of the version the tellergives" (Sacks 1971; emphasis added).

2. Depending on the experience from which it was formed, any descrip-tion may be fragile or weak.

The notion of doubt merits at least brief examination here as it bears uponreports of trouble to the police. The issue at stake is less philosophical thanorganizational and interactional. How must callers present their "experi-ences" to the police in order to elicit a response to the reported trouble ratherthan to the report of trouble? For example, the questioning initiated bycomplaint-taker in the interrogative series often addresses the clarification,elaboration, or even reformulation of the complained about matter ratherthan just the ancillary detail necessary to the dispatch of a car. In the con-text of calling the police, doubting's organizational face is a press for addi-tional information on or interpretation of a trouble and can, we suggest, begrounded in the uncertainties surrounding the equivocally policeable natureof a trouble as much as in mistrust or suspicion, although the latter stancesmay be involved (see Sharrock & Turner [1978] for a detailed analysis of po-lice mistrust of callers' motives).15

What engages our interest here is the fact that descriptions are located insome set of social circumstances and addressed to some particular audience.With variation in location and audience, there is variation in the requirementsof adequate description. Troubles told to the police are situated within a callorganization that provides the "conversational workspace" for the police toprocess the call in terms relevant to the police as an agency for the mainte-nance of public order and for law enforcement.16 The course of this workmay develop features of the original report that pose problems for its in-tegrity as a depiction of a policeable matter. The description may have to beelaborated, amended, or reformulated in the course of its conversationalcareer through the structure of the call. The motives of the caller are not ir-relevant to this process, but they are not the only element. The vulnerabil-ity of a description can also lie in the nature of the caller's experience of theproblem - that is, how and why he or she came to know the trouble andknow it as a trouble - in relationship to the concerns of the police who mustrespond, confront, and deal with the reported incident. It is, therefore, the

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practical epistemology of the report that occupies our attention in the bal-ance of this article.

PRACTICAL EPISTEMOLOGY

Let us now examine the following call for help, attending particularly to howthe way in which the event came to be known is displayed by caller anddemonstrably assessed by complaint-taker.

(2) [MCE/21-21/269-279]1. CT: Mid-City emergency2. C: Would you send thuh police to eleven ((keyboard sounds begin)) six oh

Arvin Avenue north?3. CT: Eleven six oh Arving Avenue north?4. C: Yes there's been raping goin' on5. CT: WHERE6. C: Eleven sirx oh7. CT: I-Inside ur outside?8. C: Inside thee house.9. CT: There's somebody being RAPED?

10. C: Yup=11. CT: =How do you know this?12. C: I live next door. Two ladies bein raped, eleven six oh=13. CT: = Di- How do you

know they're BEing raped inside that house.14. C: Because they wuz shoutin. They wuz shoutin "rape." They wuz shoutin

"help."15. CT: What iz yur address16. C: ((background noise)) What?17. CT: WHAT IS YUR ADDRESS?18. C: Eleven sixty two, Arvin' Avenue north.19. CT: ((clears throat)) ( ) Okay wull get somebody over there.20. C: But Eleven six oh?21. CT: Right. Is that uh house ur uh DUplex ur what22. C: ( ) They're having uh party an some man tries tuh rape, some man tries

tuh rape um two ladies over there.23. CT: Okay wull get som re=24. C: I They were shoutin "rape" (.) and "fire, help"25. CT: Da you know- are you sure they're not just playing around?26. C: No I-1-1- know, they're cryin27. CT: O:kay, wull get somebody there. Thank you for calling.

The call begins routinely enough: caller reports that a rape is in progressat a specified address and requests that police respond. However, when it isrevealed that the reported assault is taking place inside another building,caller's knowledge of what is actually happening "in there" becomes a mat-ter that is opened to scrutiny: "How do you know this?" (turn 11). And al-though caller explains that she lives right next door (turn 12), this isapparently not sufficient evidence of her ability to know, for complaint-takeronce again asks caller how she could know that a rape was taking place "in-side that house" (turn 13). Only when caller reports that she could hear

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women shouting "rape" and "help" (turn 14) does complaint-taker appear totreat caller's knowledge as sufficient (perhaps because sounds indexing "rape"have spilled over into the public domain, and the women inside that housewere themselves "shouting 'rape' "); after asking for caller's address,complaint-taker provides a promise of assistance in turn 19, projecting thecall's termination.

Matters are not yet settled, however. Caller, after checking to see if the po-lice have the right address (possibly since they just asked for her address, shewants assurance that they are going to respond to the address where the crimeis taking place), and without any prompting, goes on to remark that thereis a party going on at the house in question (turn 22). She also notes that thewomen are shouting "fire" in addition to "rape" and "help" (turn 24). Thisvolunteered information appears to raise additional questions. When thewomen are portrayed as crying out for help, the report can be interpreted aspossibly accurate, but when the cries include "fire" and occur in the contextof a party, other versions of the reported event are possible. Complaint-takerthen suggests that the alleged victims might simply be "playing around" (turn25). Caller has an explanation, however, one that is again grounded in whatshe has in fact heard: she "knows" it is really a rape because "they're cryin"(turn 26), apparently trading on the contrast between "crying" and "playingaround" as two incompatible behaviors. At this point, the call is finallyresolved.

The vulnerabilities of caller's report of a rape in progress in this call, al-though ultimately stabilized for the purposes of dispatching a car, are occa-sioned by the issue of how caller, given the circumstances reported or elicitedin the call, could indeed "know" or be reasonably certain that a rape (pos-sibly a multiple rape) was occurring. An important analytic problem, then,is how callers construct their reports so as to display, or render salient, thecircumstantial basis of adequate knowledge.

Another way of putting this question is to ask how callers, in their report-ing, situate or align themselves with regard to the trouble in a manner thatlends at least initial credibility to their description. We term such alignmentsthe caller's stance and suggest that it involves at least three components: (a)a categorization of the trouble (sometimes using nomenclature similar to thatused regularly by police such as "domestic argument" or "break-in," althoughsuch usage by no means guarantees uncritical acceptance); (b) an "epistemo-logical display," that is, a demonstration in their talk of how they came toknow of the trouble and categorize it as they have; and (c) the closely relatedmatter of a display of their "relationship" to the event (e.g., is it "their" trou-ble or some else's?).

We reserve for another article a full discussion of the issue of callers' andcomplaint-takers' categorizations of trouble, except where reference to it isnecessary to discuss displays of practical epistemology - the exhibition of the

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features of the originating experience upon which the report of trouble isfounded - and ownership of the problem. It is to an examination of the lattertwo concerns that we now turn.

DISPLAYING STANCE

Obviously, whether the trouble is indeed the type of trouble it is claimed tobe is an important issue. In this regard, whether complaint-takers will acceptcallers' categorization of the trouble is intricately bound up with the waycallers talk about how they have come to know about the trouble. Do callersdisplay that they indeed possess enough knowledge of the event in order tomake a plausible categorization of it? And what is presented concerning thebasis and social entitlement of their knowledge? For example, complaint-taker's willingness to accept caller's interpretation of the event in the "rapecall" (example [2]) is linked to the access caller had to features of the eventupon which her interpretation is based. Thus, it is through presentation ofhow one has "come to know" about a particular trouble and on whose be-half one is placing the call that complaint-taker may assess caller's descrip-tion of it. Consider examples (3) and (4), the first of which reports a"disturbance."

(3) [MCE/21-1/1]1. CT: Mid-City emergency2. C: Yes I'd like to report uh disturbance, in an alleywa:y? Behind our building?3. CT: An:d what's thuh address there?4. C: Well, my building is thirty ((keyboard sounds begin)) three oh: one .h

Pillsbury.5. CT: Mnhm6. C: .hh and it's thuh building ((keyboard sounds begin)) (.) right next to ours

(.) ah: (.) that would be (.) north of our building (.) or thuhbuilding north of our building .hh and thuh disturbance is uh: in the- atthuh carriage house area of that building (.) in the (.) at thuh garage (.)area (.) carriage house, garage area r .hh

7. CT: Lumhm8. C: What iz happening is that a woman has been

screaming for thuh last twenty five, thirty minutes "give me my money,give me my money" heh! .hh and uh (.) it's just kept up too long and uhthey're- they're assaulting each other physically and uh:, I don't know whatthuh problem is there.

9. CT: Okay, we'll get somebody there=10. C: ='kay thank you ma'amn . CT: Umhm. Bye.

We begin with turn 2, "I'd like to report uh disturbance, in an alleywa:y?Behind our building?" Following his categorization of this trouble as a "dis-turbance," caller provides a formulation of the location of the disturbancethat also situates the trouble's "relationship" to caller (Schegloff 1972). Thereare two particular features of this brief account that display this relationship.First, the disturbance is not happening in just "any" alleyway but in an al-

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leyway "behind our building." Presumably, not only do people have the rightto complain to authorities about disturbances behind their buildings, but theyare probably in a position to know what is actually happening with regardto such events. Second, this problem is happening to someone else - it is re-ported by caller in such a way as to make it clear that it is "external" to him(he is in his building and the problem is outside).

At this point, we can note that caller has initiated a partial formulationof stance in turn i with his report, providing a categorization of the trou-ble, indicating that he is not personally involved, and displaying that he hasnot only a geographical vantage point, but, as a resident, a specially entitledposition to know both the place and what has been going on (and is still go-ing on right then) in that place. However, simply defining an incident as rep-resentative of a particular class of policeable events (e.g., a "disturbance")may not, in and of itself, be sufficient. Although complaint-taker does notdirect any questions to caller in this regard, her continuer "umhm" (Schegloff1981) serves as an invitation to continue and, presumably, provide more in-formation. The caller in this case goes on in turn 8 to provide further detailsof the disturbance, offering a much more specific report on just what it ishe has seen or heard. Most importantly, these details are the kinds of thingsthat a person in a fairly close geographic proximity to the event - a proximitycaller has already established - could have seen or heard. It is after this pre-sentation of the details of the event that complaint-taker offers the promiseof assistance.

We can now contrast this call to the call reporting a rape in progress (ex-ample [2]), where the trouble is occurring inside a building and wherecomplaint-taker appears to question whether a citizen in a different build-ing could have precise knowledge regarding what is actually happening in thatother dwelling. The caller in example (3), however, is in a position where itis quite possible for him to have adequate knowledge of the disturbance and,as we have observed, his position is displayed in great detail in his openingremarks.

Consider next another domestic argument call that provides some pointsof contrast to the disturbance call.

(4) [MCE/21-23/49]1. CT: Mid-City emergency2. C: Uh yes I'd like tuh report a domestic argument .hh on: thee fi:rst floor: (.)

of thuh hou:se at thuh corner of uh: let me see uh twunty seventh avenueand thirty fifth stree:t (.) it's thee Northeast wait uh second (1.8) Southeastcorner of thee intersection.

3. CT: What color is it, do you know?(1.0)

4. C: What color is what?5. CT: Thuh house6. C: Oh thuh house is yellow.

(2.6)

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7. CT: Okay (.) uh you can hear- can you hear noises coming from thuhhouse?=

8. C: =( ) yes, they are arguing and screaming out on thuh sidewalk9. CT: Oh they're on thuh sidewalk

(•)10. C: Yes.

(2.8)11. CT: Okay, we'll get somebody over there12. C: thank you13. CT: mnhm bye14. C: bye bye.

Similar to example (3), caller categorizes his complaint. This time the trou-ble is described as a domestic argument. There is an important difference,however, between examples (3) and (4). There is no display of stance embed-ded in present caller's description; the traces of the experience from whichit was constructed are not evident. Thus, complaint-taker makes a candidateselection of possible traces in turn 7: ". . . you hear noises coming from thuhhouse?" (see Schegloff 1972). As domestic arguments typically occur in ornear the domicile, this question from complaint-taker may be not only a re-quest for information regarding caller's specific status as a witness (what hehas seen or heard) but also may serve as a check on caller's initial categori-zation of this trouble.

Here we can note that whereas the disturbance call is in one sense one ofthe most "trouble-free" complaint deliveries in our corpus, it provides lessthan precise locational and trouble-type information. For example, we do notknow until much later in the call if the disturbance in the alleyway is a fightinvolving two women or a "domestic" involving a man and a woman. Whatthe caller in example (3) does precisely formulate, however (and what theother callers may not do until asked by complaint-taker), is a display of theepistemology of the event in question. It appears, then, that a display ofstance is an expected feature of reports of trouble to the police. If such a dis-play is not provided by caller, it will be requested by complaint-taker.17

Moreover, callers are themselves sensitive to the stance they take vis-a-visa particular complaint. With respect to one aspect of this issue, on whose be-half the call is being made, consider the following call, which illustrates howvery particular callers can be about the stance they take regarding the trou-ble being reported:

(5) [MCE/21-22/29]1. CT: .hh Mid-City emergency2. C: Yes urn I would like to (.) uh report uh (.) .hh break in?3. CT: Tuh your home?4. C: Yeah (.) well we're babysitting

In turn 2, caller complains of a "break-in." However, since there is no in-dication in this straightforward categorization of the trouble of caller's re-lationship to it, we again see (as we did in example [4]) complaint-taker

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offering a candidate selection of such a relationship in turn 3 ("Tuh yourhome?"). This question appears to be problematic for caller in that, althoughshe affirms this selection of a stance in relation to the problem in turn 4("Yeah"), she pauses and then qualifies her response: "well we're babysit-ting." Thus, caller is trying to make clear that it is not her home, and we cansee that she is somewhat unclear about on whose behalf she is, or should be,calling. As she is complaining about a "break-in" (potential break-in, as be-comes evident later in the call) to another family's house and she is merelythe babysitter, this is in one sense an event that is happening or "belongs"to someone else, part of someone else's problem. In another sense, however,she is the person who is actually experiencing the event, that is, she is there.Further evidence of the babysitter's "dilemma" can be found in turns 13-16of this call:

13. CT: An what's thuh last name there?14. C: It's um ((to some other party at her location))

what's their la rst name i ?15. CT: Iwhat ih-J what is ^ur last name.16. C: Sawyers but we're babysitting17. CT: That's okay (.) did you just come home and discover it?

When complaint-taker asks, "what's thuh last name there?" (turn 13),caller selects a reply that once again displays her orientation toward present-ing this event as standing in some kind of relationship to someone else. Sheattempts to report her employer's last name. Complaint-taker rejects thisselection, however, by requesting "yur last name." Although the babysittercomplies, it is not without again noting her mediated relationship to theevent: "Sawyers but we're babysitting."

Although this caller's concern over clarifying her stance can be seen as col-liding with complaint-taker's notion of what is relevant to the reporting ofthe trouble, it illustrates the possible delicacy of reporting a problem to thepolice when one is doing it on behalf of someone else who otherwise wouldproperly be the complainant, this despite the fact that the babysitter is im-mediately and personally involved in the situation. Nevertheless, she is in-tent on being quite clear that she is not the owner of the premises, that it isnot her house, and that she is there in a special capacity.

This call suggests that the issue of access to an event - the experiencing ofit - involves not simply being near enough to see it or hear it or feel it, butbeing socially positioned with regard to it as well. To be sure, the break-inat issue in this call is actionable from the point of view of the police quiteapart from the matter of whose house it is. The point, however, is that stanceas a member's exhibited alignment with a trouble is sensitive to one's socialas well as physical relation to it.

To further pursue this issue, let us consider the following two calls that il-

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lustrate this sensitivity to one's social positioning vis-a-vis the trouble, albeitin a more muted fashion than in example (5):

(6) [MCE/17-7/108]2. C: Uh: yes uh (.) could you have thuh police come out tuh thirty three forty

nine Columbia Avenue Sou:th?3. CT: What's thuh matter?4. C: Thuh front door is open an I don' wanna go in thuh house.

(7) [MCE/22-3a/i36]2. C: Yes (.) This is Marian Snowpeck (.) .hh an I live at five eight one four

Mercy Avenue South .hh I'm sorry I'm a little shaken, there's been anaccident (.) uh uh car is overturned across thuh street.

These callers exhibit a stance relevant not only to their experience of theevent but also to the issue of "who am I to be making this call?" They arereporting a trouble either concerning their residence ("thuh house" beinghearable as "my house") or occurring very near their residence ("across thuhstreet" being hearable as "in front of my house"). The social relationship tothe problem, the entitlement to be making the report, is embedded in thedescription and is hearable as "I live here." We note in passing that socialpositioning, or entitlement in relation to a trouble, confers a situated iden-tity on the caller (e.g., as "homeowner" or "resident") that contributes to thesense of certain troubles. Whereas anyone can report an automobile accident,an open door, even at night, may be far more ambiguous if phoned in by apasserby.

ENTITLEMENTS

The foregoing suggests a further question: how do callers' social position-ings - which we refer to as entitlements - come into play? That is, if callersare variously situated with respect to their involvement with and responsi-bility for dealing with a problem, how does such a difference work itself outin a call? To approach this question, we consider several calls that are madefrom business establishments to illustrate how the descriptions found in thesetypes of calls differ from those found in calls from individual citizens. Asa preliminary to the analysis of this issue, however, we first examine one wayin which complaint-takers ask for locational information in calls of a par-ticular type - calls dealing with events that do not appear to be directly locat-able via the address of a specific house or business, such as motor vehicleaccidents, that take place in the street or in places other than in or arounda specific dwelling. In these kinds of calls, complaint-takers' request for lo-cation routinely takes the form "Where to?" or some close version of this ut-terance ("to where?" "where is it?" etc.) rather than the "what's the address?"form we have seen in the previous calls. Some examples:

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(8) [MCE/17-2/99]2. C: Hi I want tuh report an accident3. CT: Where?

(9) [MCE/21-17/23]2. C: .hh unh wanna make a call fur uh hit n' run?3. CT: Where is it?

(10) [MCE/2i-24a/33]2. C: (yeah we'd like ya tuh send an ambulance out)? hh3. CT: Whereto?

(n) [MCE/21-31/46]2. C: Yes, I need un ambulance3. CT: Tuh where?

Nevertheless, complaint-taker will in some cases request a specific address:

(12) [MCE/20-7a/i9i]2. C: Yes kin ya get uh kin ya get somebody over here right away we've got uh

gal that's just .hh ready tuh pass out. She's hh oh: (1.0) she's passed out,okay.

3. CT: Okay what address?(13) [MCE/i8-23a/244]

2. C: This iz thuh Maplegrove Care Ho:me (.) uh we- we've gotuh man here,who we believe iz having uh seizure ur something. He's kinduh ( r )-

3. CT: I What'syur address.

In example (12), caller, through her description of trouble, displays thatthe victim is at the place where the call is being made and in fact is "passingout" right then and there. Telephones are generally located within buildingsthat have addresses, even if people collapsing in public places do not neces-sarily find themselves nearby a readily available one. Thus, it is throughcaller's provision of the detail of the reported event that complaint-taker caninfer that it can be specifically located by requesting an address. In exam-ple (13), caller categorically self-identifies herself, using the name of an es-tablishment, "This iz thuh Maplegrove Care Home." Identifications such asthese are routinely used by members of establishments when calling the po-lice, and since establishments have addresses, the locational request bycomplaint-taker is for this address.

In short, complaint-takers' requests for location are closely fitted to callers'descriptions of trouble. If there appears to be a specific address available,the locational request will be something like "what's the address?" Similarly,if it appears that there is no specific address for the trouble, the locationalrequest will reflect this feature of the reported event by a more openformulation.

However, there is another aspect of callers' descriptions in these twogroups that is of interest. Given that, from the report, complaint-taker canknow something of the experiences that have motivated a citizen to call, shecan infer where the trouble is possibly happening. Here, we focus on the use

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of the formulation "we have" to see what kind of institutional order - andhence, social positioning - may be displayed through their use. Consider thefollowing call:

(14) [MCE/21-48/4]1. CT: Mid-City emergency2. C: Yes, uh I need thuh paramedics please?3. CT: Where to?4. C: .hh uh:m Lake and Shikaka?5. CT: What's thuh problum? ((keyboard sounds begin))6. C: Uh:: one minute please.

(9-6)((various sounds, including hissing, keyboard, and voices, can be heard))

7. CT: Ye:s? (3.1) Hello? (1.6) Hello? (.) What's thuh problum?8. C: We have an unconscious, uh, diabetic.

(2.8)9. CT: Are they inside of uh building?

This caller begins with a request for assistance: "I need thuh paramedicsplease?" (turn 2). Complaint-taker asks "where to" (turn 3) and caller reportsan intersection, followed by complaint-taker's query concerning the natureof the problem and the commencement of keyboard sounds, indicating thatthe intersection is being entered in the computer. It appears that such a loca-tional formulation is not only adequate but, in fact, expected in calls of thisapparent type, that is, a request for paramedic services. However, after noiseinterferences and repeated requests for the nature of the trouble fromcomplaint-taker, caller replies: "We have an unconscious, uh, diabetic" (turn8). Complaint-taker then makes what turns out to be a very informative selec-tion in turn 9: "Are they inside of uh building?" Caller then verifies this selec-tion and reports that the diabetic is in the adult bookstore.

10. C: Yes they are.11. CT: What building is it?12. C: It's thuh adult bookstore.

(2.8)13. CT: We'll get somebody there right away.

It appears, then, that complaint-taker is orienting to "we have" as a par-ticular type stance by caller, one that displays that caller is a representativeof some establishment, reporting on its behalf an event within its social andspatial boundaries. This despite the fact that caller has provided an intersec-tion as the location of the trouble and has failed to provide the categoricalself-identification that characterizes the establishment calls in our corpus (seeWhalen & Zimmerman [1987] for details). With respect to this issue, recallour earlier example:

(13) [MCE/i8-23a/244]2. C: This iz thuh Maplegrove Care Ho:me (.) uh we- we've gotuh man here . . .

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and others:(15) [MCE/21-6/7]

2. C: uh:this iz uh:da g .h Knightsuv Columbus Hall. . . .hh we had some uhwomen's purses uh stolen . . .

(16) [MCE/21-20/27]2. C: uh: t- hi we gotuh this is security at thuh bus depot, Greyhound bus

depot?3. CT: Yes sir?4. C: An we gotuh guy down here that's uh (.) overintoxicated

In each of these illustrations, callers make use of a categorical self-identifi-cation and embed their entitlements to make these calls in the phrase "wehave" (or "we got") thus displaying to complaint-takers the stance they havetaken: "I am an agent of a particular establishment doing what an agentshould do in such circumstances."

Further support for the argument that "we have" or similar possessive con-structions represent a particular type of stance or entitlement can be seen inthe following example:

(17) [MCE/21-27/39]2. C: Yes sir uh I go' uh couple gu:ys over here mam they thin' they bunch uh

wi:se- ((background noise))3. CT: Are they in yur house? or is this uh business.4. C: They're over here ah Quick Shop (.) they fuckin' come over here an' pulled

up at thuh Quick Shop slammin' their doors intuh my truck.5. CT: Quick Shop?6. C: Yeah.7. CT: Okay uh- were you uh customer at that store?8. C: Yeah

Caller prefaces his complaint with, " . . . I go' uh couple of gu:ys over here."However, note that despite his use of "I go' uh," displaying some kind of"ownership" of the problem, just "who" the caller is remains unclear. Thus,complaint-taker wants to know if "the wiseguys" are "in yur house? or is thisuh business." Depending on whether it is caller's house or his business, the"type of problem this is" could presumably change - is it a public or a pri-vate trouble? Although caller indicates that it is happening at a business,complaint-taker, possibly because of caller's use of "I" in his initial com-plaint, proposes a possible stance for him - "Okay uh- were you uh customerat that store?" - a selection that caller confirms in turn 8.

Often in analysis of interaction, the occurrences that are slightly problem-atic for participants are the instances that serve to reveal some hidden fea-ture of interactional order. Similar to the babysitter call that displayed thedelicacy invoked in formulating an appropriate entitlement when complain-ing to the police as an individual, this man at the Quick Shop has renderedavailable one way in which establishment call may be heard as a call "frommy organization to your organization."

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Whereas establishments may have a particular status when making com-plaints to the police, there is still a sense that some accounting is expectedof the details of how one has come to know about the event being reported.This is generally displayed through a possessive formulation, a specific ver-sion of what we have termed entitlement. If a representative from an estab-lishment reports that "we have" a particular trouble, indicating that she orhe has appropriated or assumed some responsibility for this trouble,complaint-taker can then assume that the establishment (or at least its agent)must be in a position to accurately assess the nature of the trouble. Thus, dis-plays of practical epistemology are evident in establishment calls, albeit witha different shape, in that they locate a "trouble" embedded in a presumablywell-monitored field of activity within the jurisdiction of the organization andits agents. For example:

(18) [MCE/21-20/27]1. CT: .hh Mid-City emergency2. C: uh t hi we gotuh this is security at thuh bus depot, Greyhound bus depot?3. CT: Yes sir4. C: An we gotuh guy down here that's uh (.) overintoxicated .hh ( ) he's passed

out (.) and uh we'd uh (have 'im taken) outuh here if we can.

The report of trouble is presented on behalf of the organization ("we got-uh guy down here that's uh (.) overintoxicated") from a particular arm ofthe organization ("this is security") about something going on within itsprecincts ("he's passed out"). This account of an experience is robust ratherthan fragile, made so by the organizational arrangements that routinely al-low security personnel and drunks to cross paths in particular settings (seeZimmerman 1969a). The weight of organizational routine on the scales bywhich descriptions are assessed is evident in the following call:

(19) [MCE/21-14/019]1. CT: Emergensee:2. C: Hi .hh This iz General - there's been an over dose (.) twenty six twenty-six

.hh Columbia: hh upstairs apartment num:::ber two: .hh3. CT: O:kay thank you4. C: umhm bye

We should note here that due to the inaudibility of the opening, this callwas originally transcribed as "listen" instead of "this is General." As a re-sult, it was considered an exception to our argument, in that whereas it ap-peared to be a call from an individual, there were no displays of caller'sstance in relation to the problem. How could such a detached statement ofthe trouble stand as actionable? It was only after repeated listening that wediscovered that the opening was a categorical self-identification ("General,"an adumbration, perhaps, of "General Hospital"). However, even with suchan identification, this call proceeds with remarkable ease. In fact, even

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though General Hospital is not part of the police organization, this call isquite similar to what we have termed the "internal calls" of the police depart-ment (e.g., calls from complaint-taker to ambulance dispatch).

(20) [MCE/2i-24b/34]1. A: Ambulance2. CT: We have another Pee eye3. A: Mnhm.4. CT: Twunty ninth an:d fifty sixth street5. C: Twenty ninth Avenue and fifty sixth street.6. CT: yes si:r7. C: Okay bye

(21) [MCE/2i-i6b/22]1. A: Ambulance2. CT: Yes sir we have uh P. I.:, Fifth Avenue southeast and University3. A: Fifth Avenue Southeast an University4. CT: Yes sir5. A: Okay bye.

Calls to complaint-takers from other precincts have the same "objective,""with ease" quality:

(22) [MCE/i7-6a/io6]1. CT: Mid-City police an Fire2. C: Fourth precinct calling. We have un accident on uh Bowry an3. CT: Mnhm4. C: Aldridge with injuries5. CT: Bowry and Aldridge and its a P.I. huh?6. C: Right7. CT: O:kay:8. C: Thank you9. CT: Bye:

Calls from organizations other than branches of the police department,such as General Hospital, are not subject to the type of interactional workthat we have argued individual citizens, and to some extent even establish-ment callers, must do in order to deal with the vulnerabilities of descriptionto which they are subject in this setting. Thus, the descriptions of trouble thatmembers of some organizations offer to police complaint-takers have, in asense, been "cleared" from assessment "before the fact," in that organiza-tional routine and the competence of employees stand as the warrant fordepicted events.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Persons describe events and activities to one another all the time. Among suchdescriptions are those about which something might or must be done. Thework of description can thus be integral to another task, namely, complain-ing. If this complaining ought to summon forth a remedy, or alternatively,some counter to the complaint, either of these might involve questioning thedepicted problem itself. In regard to the latter, it may be observed that boththe nature of the remedy and the speed with which the remedy is offered are

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often conditional on the outcome of such questioning, that is, on the surviv-ing shape of the complained about matter.

Thus, in citizen calls to the police, where the description of some troubleby its very delivery assumes the status of a complaint, the vulnerability ofdescription is occasioned by the contingency of police response. Whereascitizens may know how to voice a complaint - how to "call the cops" - theymay be differentially aware of those features of descriptions, often made con-spicuous by their absence, attended to by complaint-takers. As we have seen,these features include what we have glossed here as the practical epistemol-ogy of report of trouble: whether caller can hear or see the event in questionand, given such access, whether what was heard or seen stands up as groundsfor asserting that a trouble of some type is occurring. Along with the indi-cation of "on whose behalf" the description cum complaint is delivered, thedisplay of the see-ability and hear-ability of the trouble is what we havetermed the caller's stance, and how it is managed in the call can increase orreduce the vulnerability of description.

The practical epistemology of the call is not, of course, merely a philosoph-ical issue. At stake is the callers' ability to adequately describe the trouble,which in turn implicates participants' practical understanding of the natureand organization of public and private places, the social identities at playwithin them, the courses of activity such places shelter, and the ways in whichthe ordinary affairs of citizens are managed within their boundaries. Suchunderstandings include a sense of what sorts of behaviors are out of place,as well as what sorts of places and what sorts of persons are likely to be up-set by such occurrences.

Reports of trouble, then, are socially located complaints about activitieswhose problematic features are dependent on where they are occurring, whois reporting them, and what their import is, given who it is that is calling.Thus, for example, categorically identified callers - those calling on behalfof some organization - present a stance that typically contains some recog-nizable appropriation of, or responsibility toward, troublesome events thatare in some way connected to their establishments.

It is important to note that the achieved organization of the call both de-rives from and contributes to the interactional delivery and development ofthe report or description of trouble. The organization of the call (consistingOf the OPENINO/lDENTmCATION/ACKNOWLEDGMENT, REQUEST, INTERROGATIVE

SERIES, RESPONSE, and CLOSING segments) emerges from the application ofgeneral interactional skills to the local issues occasioned by calling the po-lice for assistance. The detailed work involved in each segment develops thefeatures of the particular call, including the relative identities of the partic-ipants, their relationship to the problem, a negotiated characterization of thetrouble, and a workable formulation of its location, all of which figure inthe adequacy of the description for the practical purposes at hand.

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The alignment of identities achieved in the opening of calls to the police,for example, projects a subsequent structure within which a description oftrouble attains the status of a complaint and with it, whatever vulnerabili-ties a description of that type acquires in such a setting. Moreover, the po-lice response to the complaint is conditional on the police-relevant featuresof the trouble, and the ensuing interrogative series furnishes a means withinthe discourse to dialogically develop the description (and other aspects of thecomplaint, such as the location of the problem) in order to determine the ur-gency and nature of the trouble. Both the opening alignment of identities andthe opportunity to respond to police questioning affords the caller the meansto display and negotiate a stance and allows the complaint-taker to elicit,challenge, reformulate (see Meehan 1983, 1989), and confirm the informa-tion provided. Finally, the status of the interrogative series as an insertionsequence between the complaint and the promise of the remedy provides astructural means of coping with an important contingency of telephone con-tact, namely, the possibility that the caller will hang up prior to providingthe necessary information (see Frankel 1989). The occurrence of the prom-ise of assistance - the remedy - proposes that the description of the trouble(and the complaint) has been accepted and action predicated upon it will beforthcoming.

While the offering of description removed from the means of its timely in-dependent verification is, then, patently commonplace, the acceptability of thedescription - its face validity - is intimately tied to the circumstances of itsproduction and the uses to which it is to be put. The vulnerability of descrip-tion is a local issue, for which local remedies are applied, although it appearsto be the case that the interactional framework within which these issues areworked out are rather general in scope and application.

NOTES

1. The research reported in this article was supported by the Center for the Study of Vio-lence and Anti-Social Behavior (Grant No. 34616-03). An earlier version was presented at theannual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Detroit, August 1983. The au-thors would like to acknowledge that the present article has benefited from work undertakenin a series of seminars at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and to thank DonileneLoseke, Lynda Aimes, Terri Cook, Deborah Umansky, Audry Rice, and Dorothy Smith. NancyBlum transcribed the tapes from Mid-City. Thanks are due to Jay Meehan and Rich Frankelfor their reading of an earlier version of the manuscript, and to Deirdre Boden, Douglas May-nard, and especially Jack Whalen for helpful comments on the present version.2. Consider, for example, this fictional conversation (adapted from Le Carre 1962) betweenBritish intelligence officer George Smiley and his superior, Maston, concerning a recent death:

GS: . . . I think [Fennan] was murdered . . .M: Murdered? Why?

GS: Well, Fennan wrote his [suicide] letter at 10:30 last night, if we are to accept thetime on his letter as correct.

M: Well?

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GS: Well, at 7:55 he rang up the exchange and asked to be called at 8:30 the nextmorning.

-» M: How on earth do you know that?GS: I was there [at Fennan's house] this morning when the exchange rang. I took the

call thinking it might be from the Department.-> M: How can you possibly say it was Fennan who ordered the call?

GS: I had enquiries made. The girl at the exchange knew Fennan's voice well; she wassure it was he, and that he rang at five to eight last night.

3. Although this number is used for police, fire, and medical emergencies, there are no reportsof fire in our sample and only a few medical calls; for convenience, then, we shall refer to "police"emergency services in the remainder of the article.4. The emergency center routinely records all incoming and outgoing calls.5. We came into possession of these data fortuitously when a colleague working on a sepa-rate project made copies of the tapes for us while visiting the center. During this one-day visit,information concerning the requirements for employment as a complaint-taker and the train-ing received, as well as a cursory description of the system used in taking and transmitting calls,was collected.

Briefly, the requirements for being employed as a complaint-taker are simply to have a goodtelephone voice and to enjoy working with people. The job responsibilities of complaint-takerare quite distinct from the uniformed personnel who function as the emergency center's offi-cial communicative link to police units in the field. Job training for the position of complaint-taker is therefore very minimal.

With respect to the call-handling procedure, all incoming calls are distributed to complaint-takers via a rotary system, with "the next call up" sent to the next available complaint-taker,who enters the necessary information regarding the emergency into a remote-computer termi-nal. Next, this information is transmitted electronically to police dispatchers across the room,who are then responsible for dispatching police units to the scene. One additional data sourceavailable to us was photocopies of printouts of the "dispatch package" (Mellinger 1986; Zim-merman, in press; cf. Meehan [1989] on the "complaint package") created by complaint-takersas they enter information into Mid-City's computer-aided dispatch system. The dispatch packagecontains the time of dispatch, the location of the incident, a code for the type of trouble in-volved, and a very brief summary of caller's report and other information (e.g., descriptionsof suspects), if available.6. For a review and bibliography of work in conversation analysis, see Heritage (1985b). At-kinson and Heritage (1984), Button and Lee (1987), Heritage (1984), Levinson (1984), West andZimmerman (1982), and Zimmerman (1988) provide overviews of this approach. Two forth-coming collections, edited by Boden and Zimmerman (in press) and by Drew and Heritage (inpress), focus on the issue of talk in institutional settings.7. For a contrastive view on the relevance of the external context of interaction, see Cicourel(1987). Moerman (1988) argued that conversation analytic work needs to be "culturally contexted"in order to adequately analyze social life.8. In discussing adjacency pair organization, Schegloff (1972:77) suggested that the absenceof the occurrence of a second pair-part after a first pair-part (as in the answer to a question)is noticeable, and repairable. Such absences also permit warranted inferences regarding a con-versationalist's "ignorance, evasiveness, reticence or 'covering up'."9. Schegloff (1972:79) noted that multiple insertions with this type of embedded (or nested)structure are empirically rare, this does not preclude the extension of the notion of insertionsequence to include the achievement of a series of adjacency pairs serving a similar "preserv-ing and deferring" function between the action of requesting assistance and the projected re-sponse to that action.10. In this regard, Frankel (1989), in his investigation of the effect of record keeping on com-municative interaction in a poison control center, noticed that while it might be expected thatthe problem presented by callers and the delivery of treatment instructions by center staff shouldstand not only in close but adjacent sequential relationship to one another, this treatment in-struction is routinely and designedly placed as the last topic of conversation to the close of thecall. Frankel's use of the term "designedly" is quite intentional, as he further noted that callers

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who report poisonings that may require immediate action become noticeably upset when thedelivery of the remedy is delayed. Frankel suggests that both the system of record-keeping em-ployed by the center and administrative mandates to complete the form for each call accountfor these delays. The staff withholds sought-after information until the required informationis collected, in order to be assured of acquiring it before caller hangs up.n . With regard to the promise of assistance and the acknowledgment that follows, we wishto note that the suggestion that complaint-takers and callers are oriented to this type of utter-ance as a response to the complaint (and hence as the occasion to terminate the call) is indicatedby the fact that complaint-takers will abort its production by an abrupt cut-off followed quicklyby the reinstitution of questioning if they are uncertain of some item, as in the following:

[MCE/2i-i6a/2i-22]13. CT: We'll get sombod- are you SURE it's Southeast and not Northeast?

Likewise, callers will withhold acknowledgment of the promise of assistance at that point topursue some feature of the complaint presumably not dealt with to their satisfaction, as in thefollowing call in which caller has been reporting an open door to a local business:

[MCE/21-7/8-9]9. CT: We'll get somebody there.

10. C: We do not have thuh own:er so: you must have it on file at thuhNorthside station.

As in the case of casual telephone calls and, perhaps, conversational encounters in general(Schegloff & Sacks 1974), the closing of the interaction involves a foreshadowing of the upcomingend of talk and provides a definite place for the initiation of further talk that defers closure.If a caller reinstitutes talk in response to complaint-taker's preclosing action announcement, theultimate closing will typically be initiated by reissuance of the action announcement, that is, bya second production of an utterance of the shape, "We'll get someone there."12. Its absence there, as in the case where a request for assistance occurs instead, is a sub-ject for a rather routine remedy, a request for a statement of the problem:

[MCE/21-21/28]1. CT: Mid-City emergen°see°2. C: ye:s (if ya gotuh) squad car could ya send one over tuh Blake Street

an Calhoun Avenue.(•)

3. CT: What's thuh problem there.

13. In the case of particular classes of trouble - reports of automobile accidents and "loudparties" - multiple calls are often received, affording both a measure of independent verifica-tion of the event's occurrence and the opportunity to press for further details from possibly moreknowledgeable callers (e.g., whether or not there have been injuries in an accident).14. This concern is not particularly surprising, given that agencies such as the police who re-ceive and respond to a large volume of citizen complaints routinely find that many reports oftrouble turn out to be something other than originally portrayed. Sacks (1972b) made a simi-lar point in his study of a suicide prevention center. When a suicidal person calls the center forhelp, the assertion "I am suicidal" is not an adequate basis for the request for help. Sacks(1972^57-58) argued that an account, or an explanation, is relevant. "Either it is offered orits absence is noticeable, and on not being offered it may be requested." When the provisionof help is conditional upon the provider being informed of a state of affairs that she or he cannotindependently determine to be either present or correct, providers "take it that they may be placedin a situation where the request is made without proper basis" (Sacks 1972^55). Therefore, muchlike the point made regarding our corpus of calls for help, there exists a warrant for "testing"requests through the descriptions and accounts callers proffer for the circumstances at hand.In the Mid-City materials, the test is conducted through the invocation of the interrogative se-ries; in the suicide prevention materials, the test is conducted through a "search procedure" forthe relevant categories of persons in the suicidal member's life. If those categories have no in-

488


cumbents, then the suicidal member may literally be found to have "no one to turn to," andan adequate account may thus be established.15. The focus on the report itself can be somewhat more subtle, for example, through withheldresponses by complaint-taker that generate silences, with such absences of turn transition per-haps marking the up-to-now less than complete or compelling status of caller's description, asin the following:

[MCE/17-4/65]4. C: Yeah uh I live at twunty seven: (. twenty five Albert? south, and .hh uh there's

uh car sittin across from here .hh kinduh sus:picious? it's sitting with itsheadlights on an: everything else an I don't know if anybody if they forgotuhturn um o:ff or if somebody jus sittin there watchin thuh house ur what, but it'smakin me nervous .hh(1.0)

5. CT: How long has it been there?6. C: O:h it's been there fu:r uh lo- uh short time only (.) hh I didn't see who it wuz

that got out it's white with with uh black top=7. CT: = Thuh car is white with uh

black top?=8. C: =right (2.0) I wuz just kind of wonderin. . . .

16. We wish to emphasize that whatever organizational rules or procedures complaint-takersmight be expected to follow in processing callers' complaints, the question at issue here is howcomplaint-takers demonstrably assess these accounts/descriptions so that the "fit" with officialcriteria can even be determined. And note that it is in the responses of complaint-takers to callers'reports of trouble, in the questioning and scrutiny these complaints occasion, that the practi-cal, organizational reasoning and "stock of knowledge" (both general-cultural and occupational)of complaint-takers that underlie their uncertainties and "doubts" are quite publicly demon-strated/displayed (both to callers' and overhearing analysts). Indeed, it could be said that it isfundamentally in these conversational exchanges that the "police organization" and its require-ments and rules of procedures achieve social facticity (again, see Schegloff [in press] and Wil-son [in press] for additional and much more detailed discussion of this ethnomethodologicalapproach).17. Related to this, Mellinger (1986), drawing on these same Mid-City materials, comparedthe tapes and transcripts of calls where callers' stance was at issue (as displayed in complaint-takers' questioned) with the computer-generated dispatch package (see note 5) that is used tomake dispatch decisions (e.g., the level of urgency of the call) and to provide units in the fieldwith information concerning the trouble. Mellinger found that the dispatch package generatedby complaint-takers virtually always indicated that callers' descriptions were problematic in someway, usually by attributing the report to the caller ("She says" or "He claims") instead of sim-ply indicating that some trouble has occurred, which was the procedure for calls in which stancedid not arise as an issue.

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APPENDIX

Transcription conventionsThe notational conventions employed in the transcripts are taken from a setdeveloped by Gail Jefferson. This orthography tries to capture how the par-ticipants actually talked, without rendering the transcripts unreadable. Themost recent comprehensive presentation of these conventions may be foundon pages ix-xvi of Structures of Social Action, edited by J. Maxwell Atkin-son and John Heritage (Cambridge University Press, 1984). The conventionsmost relevant to the present analysis are as follows:

(word) Parentheses surrounding a word indicates uncertainty about transcription.

( ) Parentheses that enclose a space mark that talk occurred in the space but was

indecipherable.

(0.5) Parentheses around a number indicates silence, in seconds and tenths of seconds.

(.) A period inserted within parentheses indicates a very short (probably one-tenthof a second or less) untimed silence.

((click)) Double parentheses are used to enclose a description of some phenomenon with

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which the transcriptionist does not want to wrestle (e.g., vocalizations and othersounds that are not spelled gracefully or recognizably) or to provide explanatoryremarks about the activity on the tape or other details of the conversational scene.

Stress Underlining indicates emphasis.LOUD Capital letters indicate speech that is much louder than accompanying talk.°quiet° Degree signs are used to indicate a passage of talk that is much quieter than the

surrounding talk.:: Colons mark the prolongation of the preceding sound; the more colons, the

greater the prolongation.= Equal signs come in pairs, at the end of one line or utterance, and at the start

of a subsequent one; the talk linked by equal signs (whether by different speakersor same speaker) is contiguous and is not interrupted by any silence or break.

[ ] A left-hand bracket indicates the onset of simultaneous talk between the linkedutterances; a right-hand bracket indicates the ending of simultaneous talk betweenthe linked utterances.

hhh .hhh Audible aspirations (hhh) and inhalations (.hhh) are inserted in the speech wherethey occur.

A period indicates a stopping fall in tone, not necessarily the end of a sentence., A comma indicates a continuing intonation, not necessarily between clauses of

sentences.

? A question mark indicates a rising inflection, not necessarily a question.

! An exclamation point indicates an animated tone, not necessarily an exclamation.A single dash indicates a halting, abrupt cut-off, or, when multiple dashes hy-phenate the syllables of words, the stream of talk so marked has a stammeringquality.

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