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Cited by 278

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 33 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

When Words Fail: A Single Case Analysis

Whalen, Jack, Zimmerman, Don H., Whalen, Marilyn R.·1988·Social Problems

Abstract

This paper reports on research into the social organization of citizen phone calls to emergency service agencies, focusing on the constitutive function of talk in the activity of “calling for help.” We explore how these occasions of talk can themselves become problematic events for members. Our report centers on the detailed analysis of a single, very fateful conversation, showing how a seemingly aberrant event can be understood in terms of the natural language practices involved in its orderly, joint production by the actual parties to the call. This single case analysis also reveals when and how words can “fail”: it is the sequential context within which words are produced and the interactional treatment they thereby receive that is crucial for whatever status and consequences they come to have.

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Metadata

Authors
Whalen, J., Zimmerman, D. H., & Whalen, M. R.
Venue
Social Problems
Published
1988-10
Volume
35
Issue
4
Pages
335-362
ISSN
  • 0037-7791 (ISSN-L)
  • 1533-8533
OpenAlex
W1989896385
Cited by
278
References
33
FWCI
18.55
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: When Words Fail: A Single Case Analysis. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/800591
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Whalen, J., Zimmerman, D. H., & Whalen, M. R. (1988). When Words Fail: A Single Case Analysis. Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.2307/800591

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.