Vocabularies of happiness [Full text]
Roxana Bratu [1]
| Abstract: This paper seeks to explore through interviews the vocabularies of happiness that interviewees invoke in face-to-face interactions to account for their happiness or lack thereof and, especially, for the (un)happiness of others. In other words, how do respondents present their own or others’ happiness – be they close or distant acquaintances, or people in general, in an interview conversation? Also, what understanding of others do these accounts make visible? This work embraces a discursive psychological (DP) perspective, focusing on how different versions of happiness are being put together by respondents presenting themselves as competent and credible individuals, while at the same time positioning themselves in a moral order of happiness. Keywords: Experience, subjectivity, representation, materiality |
[1] Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest, Romania, roxana.bratu@sas.unibuc.ro