Entering chair work in psychotherapy: An interactional structure for getting emotion-focused talk underway Peter Muntigl a,b, * , Lynda Chubak a , Lynne Angus c a Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6 b Department of Linguistics, Ghent University, Muinkkaai 42, B-9000, Belgium c Psychology Department, York University, Toronto, Canada Received 25 November 2016; received in revised form 22 May 2017; accepted 25 June 2017 Abstract This paper examines the interactional accomplishment of chair work, which is one type of therapeutic intervention for exploring client emotions in Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT). During this intervention, therapists guide clients to speak with either a conflicted aspect of self (two-chair work) or with a non-present significant other to address unresolved feelings or ‘unfinished business’ (empty-chair work). Using the methods of conversation analysis, we examine ten video-taped EFT sessions that incorporate chair work. It was found that chair work entry is regularly accomplished through four distinct interlocking interactional phases: 1) Formulating the client's trouble; 2) Recruiting participation in chair work; 3) Readjusting the participation frame; 4) Making contact. We will show how each phase orients to specific interactional concerns that often pertain to managing epistemic and/or deontic authority and also to accommodating the participants into entering a new participation frame. Although gaining client confirmation and compliance was at times promptly achieved within these phases, clients also regularly delayed their affiliative uptake of the therapist's prior action. We will show, in these cases, how therapists perform additional interactional work to get chair work entry back on track. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Chair work; Conversation analysis; Deontics; Emotions; Emotion-focused therapy; Epistemics; Participation framework 1. Introduction Person-centred therapies underscore the importance of being attuned to the clients’ ownership of personal knowledge and experience. Such therapies are inclined to be non-directive as they tend to follow the clients’ lead and offer validation and support to their emotional distress. Certain therapies within the person-centred paradigm such as Emotion-focused Therapy (EFT), however, make systematic use of different interactional styles (Greenberg, 2010). In the non-directive style, EFT therapists follow clients’ internal experiences by heightening awareness of and validating their emotions; they also make use of a more directive style, hence leading clients, by selecting and facilitating particular process-guiding interventions targeted to resolving an identified emotional processing difficulty in adaptive ways (Elliott and Greenberg, 2007; Goldman et al., 2006; Greenberg, 2014). One task that makes consistent use of these interventions within EFT is called chair work (Greenberg, 2002) and more recently chair task intervention (Angus and Greenberg, 2011). Here, therapists guide clients through a range of directive turns to speak with either a conflicted aspect of self or with a non-present significant other to address unresolved feelings or ‘unfinished business’. While chair task interventions are documented as having successful outcomes (Clarke and Greenberg, 1986; Elliott et al., 2004; Greenberg and Webster, 1982), there is scant research to date on the interactional intricacies of how chair work unfolds (see however Sutherland et al., 2014; Lepper and Mergenthaler, 2008). In this paper, we examine how clients and therapists enter chair work during EFT. Using the methods of conversation analysis, our examination reveals that chair work is regularly accomplished through four distinct interlocking interactional www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Journal of Pragmatics 117 (2017) 168--189 * Corresponding author at: Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6. E-mail address: peter.muntigl@ugent.be (P. Muntigl). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.06.016 0378-2166/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.