‘If they say “there's a photo ban and any clothes you can forget about taking them”’: Interactional functions of hypothetical direct reported speech in adoption assessment interviews

This article examines the interactional functions of hypothetical direct reported speech (HDRS) in Swedish adoption assessment interviews. Drawing on 36 h of recorded conversations between social workers and prospective adoptive parents, the study uses conversation analysis to explore how HDRS is employed to accomplish institutional tasks. The analysis shows that both social workers and applicants use HDRS to navigate the moral, emotional, and relational complexities of the assessment process. Social workers use HDRS to challenge assumptions, introduce alternative perspectives, and mitigate the face-threatening nature of advice-giving. Applicants, in turn, use HDRS to construct parenting identities, demonstrate child-centered reasoning, and express emotional commitment. Rather than functioning merely as a rhetorical device, HDRS emerges as an interactional practice that enacts institutional expectations, facilitates perspective-taking, and renders parenting approaches evaluable. By performing rather than simply describing future actions, participants make their positions more vivid and credible. This study contributes to research on institutional interaction and reported speech by demonstrating how HDRS supports both evaluative and pedagogical goals in adoption interviews, thereby highlighting the hybrid nature of the activity. • HDRS enables strategic shift in conversational framing. • HDRS is used to indirectly challenge and guide prospective adoptive parents. • HDRS supports the balancing of power power dynamics between social workers and applicants. • HDRS serves to display alignment with institutional expectations.