McLean, David (2015) Motivational Interviewing: Discursive Analysis. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Motivational interviewing is a collaborative form of counselling that is popular in the field of addictions. It aims to help enhance a client’s motivation for change. This study broadly explored resistance to change. It focused on how descriptions of previous therapy are introduced and managed during a motivational interviewing session. A case study method was used to identify, collect, and analyse talk about previous addiction therapy that was raised in a current therapy session. How previous therapy was introduced and managed by the client and therapist was examined using a discursive analysis. This analysis then located the set of terms, tropes, and metaphor used to build these accounts. These three resources were then compared with the social resources used to constitute two previously identified interpretative repertoires to assess their fit and suitability as a starting point for understanding the form of these accounts. The four main findings were (a) the client introduces the topic of previous therapy but the therapist doesn’t pursue it, (b) the client uses terms like ‘I was told this’ and “I learned that’ to construct a dichotomy of views about his previous addiction treatments, (c) the client and the therapist use the tropes, ‘one size fits all’ and ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ and a ‘fit’ metaphor to summarise contrasting positions on the addictiontreatment relationship, and (d) Gilbert and Mulkay’s (1984) empiricist and contingent interpretative repertoires appeared to adequately summarise how these accounts of previous therapy are built by the client and his therapist. In summary, these repertoires appear to offer a reasonable starting point for identifying the social language units used by clients to describe their previous experiences in addiction therapy. Future research should replicate this study in another motivational interviewing session to begin to understand the form of this talk before examining the function and problems that are thrown up by its existence.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology and Counselling (1 Jan 2015 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Steven Christensen |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) |
| Date Deposited: | 04 Sep 2025 01:33 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Sep 2025 01:33 |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52564 |
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