Dr. Linda Coates is works in the department of Psychology at Okanagan College. She is a developer of Response-Based Practice and a co-founder of the Centre for Response-Based Practice. Her work emphasizes critical analysis and application. She has published and presented on topics related to violence, social interaction, and language.
Linda is particularly interested in social responses to violence and applying Response-Based ideas in a wide variety of settings including therapy, medicine, policing, criminal law, family law, education, and the media.
Linda has conducted studies in various settings (e.g., criminal law, the media, family law) which demonstrate how language can be used to conceal violence, mitigate perpetrators' responsibility, blame victims, and conceal victim resistance. She has also shown how language can be used to do the opposite: to reveal violence, clarify responsibility, uncover victim resistance, and undercut victim blaming. She pioneered the use of the term "unilateral" to describe violent interactions, and "mutualizing" to describe how those unilateral violent actions are misrepresented as mutual.
Linda has a particular interest in working in rural and farming communities.