Vocabularies of Motive for Illicit Drug Use: An Application of the Accounts Framework

The importance of motives in the career of the user of illicit drugs has been stressed by researchers from the interactionist school. Users' “vocabularies of motive” or explanations for their behavior, however, were not systematically studied by the interactionists. Conversely, researchers who have studied drug motives systematically did not place their findings in an interactional context. The present report attempts to correct this imbalance. Data available in the literature on vocabularies of motive for illicit drug use were interpreted according to an interactionist framework—viz., Scott and Lyman's (1968) notion of “accounts,” the linguistic strategies adopted to explain deviance. The five major topics they covered are applied here to drug research data: (1) the different types of drug accounts users avow, (2) the situational contexts in which drug accounts are presented, (3) the strategies users employ to avoid giving accounts, (4) people's background expectancies for drugs and users, and their effect on account honoring, and (5) the negotiation of identities that occurs when users and nonusers exchange accounts. Several new lines for research within an accounts framework are suggested.