Disclosure as Discourse

Abstract

Conventional frameworks conceptualizing children's disclosures of sexual abuse are helpful in drawing links between the dynamics of abuse and its subsequent reporting (e.g. Summit, 1983) and in articulating developmental impediments to disclosure (e.g. Bussey & Grimbeek, 1995). But these models underemphasize the discursive (and, hence, social) basis of children's reports in that patterns of disclosure are depicted as individualistic phenomena. This article proposes a discursive reformulation of children's reports of sexual abuse. The concept of co-construction is applied to the research traditions of conversation analysis (e.g. Nofsinger, 1991), the discourse action model (Edwards & Potter, 1992), narrative analysis (e.g. Bruner, 1991), positioning theory (e.g. Harré & van Langenhove, 1992) and cultural discourses (e.g. Burman, 1995) to theorize children's reports of sexual abuse as socially situated collaborations. The implications of a discursive approach for concerns of power and social justice are discussed.