From mundane acts like lending a hand to high-stakes incidents like calling an ambulance, help is a ubiquitous part of the human experience. Social relations shape who we help and how. This paper presents a discursive psychology study of an understudied form of help – seeking help for others. Drawing on a corpus of recorded calls to a victim support helpline, I analysed how social relations were demonstrably relevant when callers sought help for others. I used membership categorization analysis and sequential conversation analysis to document how participants used categories to build and interpret requests for help on behalf of others. Categorical relationships between help-seekers, help-recipients, and potential help-providers were consequential in determining whether callers’ requests were justified and if help could be provided. The findings show that different categorical relationships configured seeking help for others as a matter of entitlement, obligation, or opportunity. Analysing the categories participants use in naturally occurring social interaction provides an emic perspective on seeking help for others. This kind of help-seeking offers a fruitful area for discursive psychology to develop new conceptualizations of help and social relations.

中文翻译：

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“我正在为我儿子打电话”：为他人寻求帮助的权利、义务和机会

从像伸出援手这样的平凡行为到像叫救护车这样的高风险事件，帮助是人类体验中无处不在的一部分。社会关系塑造了我们帮助谁以及如何帮助。本文对一种未被充分研究的帮助形式——为他人寻求帮助——进行了话语心理学研究。通过对受害者支持热线电话的录音，我分析了当来电者为他人寻求帮助时，社会关系是如何明显相关的。我使用成员分类分析和顺序对话分析来记录参与者如何使用类别来构建和解释代表他人的帮助请求。寻求帮助者、接受帮助者和潜在帮助提供者之间的分类关系对于确定呼叫者的请求是否合理以及是否可以提供帮助具有重要意义。研究结果表明，不同的分类关系将帮助他人视为权利、义务或机会。分析参与者在自然发生的社交互动中使用的类别提供了寻求他人帮助的主位视角。这种寻求帮助为话语心理学提供了一个富有成效的领域，以发展帮助和社会关系的新概念。