Giving advice through telling hypothetical stories in doctoral supervision meetings

Adopting a conversation analytical (CA) perspective, which views storytelling as an interactional resource for accomplishing social actions, this chapter examines how storytelling functions in the context of doctoral research supervision. The study draws on 25 h of video-recorded supervision meetings for analysis. Its particular focus is on episodes in which the supervisors tell hypothetical stories which portray the student as an expert or a knowledgeable person. These hypothetical stories are usually launched in an environment where supervisors give feedback on their students’ current work to advise how it can be further developed. Analysis shows that this storytelling practice functions to manage criticisms, exit disagreement and pre-empt disagreement. The hypotheticality of the stories allows supervisors to manage criticism and disagreement in a way that is not detrimental to social solidarity. Moreover, the invocation of student knowledge identity works to manage potential issues arising from the asymmetry of knowledge underlying advice-giving actions. These findings suggest that the power of storytelling lies in its potential to create hypothetical scenarios and mobilise the participants’ hypothetical identities. This chapter ends by discussing how hypothetical storytelling and the invoking of hypothetical identities may be useful for giving advice in doctoral supervision in particular, and in other learning contexts in general.