Therapeutic Ways with Words [Paperback]

Therapeutic Ways with Wordsprovides a unique glimpse into language use in psychotherapy, an important speech event which has previously been shrouded in mystery. This important book shows how both clients and therapists accomplish their aims through language, which, paradoxically, is both the method of diagnosis and the medium of treatment in this cultural practice. With a discourse analysis of tape recordings and transcripts of actual psychotherapy sessions enhanced by a variety of ethnographic observations, Kathleen Warden Ferrara explores the skillful and creative uses of language in the complicated speech event of psychotherapy. Shedding light on discourse practices such as retellings of personal experience narrative, jointly constructed sentences and metaphorical extensions, and strategic uses of repetition, the study emphasizes the interactive nature of all discourse and shows how language is mutually constructed as people interweave pieces of their own and others' sentences, metaphors, and narratives.

Ferrara's scholarship is not just sound, but creative; not just up-to-date, but up to the minute. She offers insightful treatments of data just begging for attention in light of recent developments in discourse analysis, and thus contributes cutting-edge results. Her work represents the kind of research we need much more of in linguistics today. --Neal Norrick,Northern Illinois University

A contribution to the field of sociolinguistics. --Language