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Managing agency and urgency

Student injury incident reports in Chinese teacher-parent communication

ORCiD logo with link | Ocean University of China
 | Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
Published online: 23 March 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.24085.wan
Abstract
Student injury incidents serve as institutional nexuses where health emergencies intersect with peer conflicts, requiring teachers to negotiate the competing demands of medical immediacy and moral culpability. Drawing on conversation analysis of audio-recorded student incident calls between teachers and parents, this study investigates how teachers navigate these challenging scenarios through the systematic management of agency and urgency. Analysis reveals two distinct yet interrelated patterns in teachers’ reporting practices. First, teachers treat agency (injurer) and urgency (injured student) as discrete components linked to responsibility attribution; they systematically background both elements when reporting to injured students’ parents while foregrounding them in communications with injurers’ parents. Second, the initial attenuation of urgency, while serving to mitigate conflict, necessitates subsequent upgrades to secure immediate involvement from injured students’ parents. These findings illuminate how teachers’ institutional practices systematically prioritize conflict mediation over medical urgency.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Teacher-parent communication and reports in social interaction
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Urgency and agency in incident reports
    • 4.1Urgency in health incident reports
    • 4.2Agency in conflict incident reports
  • 5.Managing agency and urgency in injury incidents: Patterns and priorities
    • 5.1Contrastive management patterns in unilateral reports
      • 5.1.1Foregrounding agency and urgency: Reports to injurers’ parents
      • 5.1.2Backgrounding agency and urgency: Reports to injured students’ parents
    • 5.2Further evidence: Management in bilateral reports
  • 6.Conclusions
  • References
References (51)
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