The co-operative, transformative organization of human action and knowledge
TL;DR: In this article, a range of features that are central to the constitution of human action are discussed, including language structure, prosody, and visible embodied displays, and the accumulation and differentiation through time within local co-operative transformation zones of dense substrates.
About: This article is published in Journal of Pragmatics.The article was published on 2013-01-01. It has received 479 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Action (philosophy).
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TL;DR: The authors argue that the lens of semiotic repertoires enables synergies to be identified and provides a holistic focus on action that is both multilingual and multimodal, and they discuss key assumptions and analytical developments that have shaped the sociolinguistic study of signed and spoken language multilingualism as separate from different strands of multimodality studies.
Abstract: This paper presents a critical examination of key concepts in the study of (signed and spoken) language and multimodality. It shows how shifts in conceptual understandings of language use, moving from bilingualism to multilingualism and (trans)languaging, have resulted in the revitalisation of the concept of language repertoires. We discuss key assumptions and analytical developments that have shaped the sociolinguistic study of signed and spoken language multilingualism as separate from different strands of multimodality studies. In most multimodality studies, researchers focus on participants using one named spoken language within broader embodied human action. Thus while attending to multimodal communication, they do not attend to multilingual communication. In translanguaging studies the opposite has happened: scholars have attended to multilingual communication without really paying attention to multimodality and simultaneity, and hierarchies within the simultaneous combination of resources. The (socio)linguistics of sign language has paid attention to multimodality but only very recently have started to focus on multilingual contexts where multiple sign and/or multiple spoken languages are used. There is currently little transaction between these areas of research. We argue that the lens of semiotic repertoires enables synergies to be identified and provides a holistic focus on action that is both multilingual and multimodal.
226 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, Chil and his resources are used to build complex meaning and action with a three word vocabulary: inhabiting and reshaping the actions of others through accumulative transformation.
Abstract: 1. Introduction Part I. Co-operative Accumulative Action: 2. Co-operative accumulation as a pervasive feature of the organization of action 3. The co-operative organization of emerging action 4. Chil and his resources 5. Building complex meaning and action with a three word vocabulary: inhabiting and reshaping the actions of others through accumulative transformation 6. The distributed speaker Part II. Intertwined Semiosis: 7. Intertwined knowing 8. Building action by combining different kinds of materials 9. Intertwined actors 10. Projection and the interactive organization of unfolding experience 11. Projecting upcoming events to accomplish co-operative action Part III. Embodied Interaction: 12. Action and co-operative embodiment in girls' hopscotch 13. Practices of color classification 14. Creating professional vision co-operatively 15. Environmentally coupled gestures Part IV. Co-operative Action with Predecessors: Sedimented Landscapes for Knowledge and Action: 16. Co-operative action with predecessors 17. The accumulation of diversity through co-operative action 18. Seeing in depth 19. Co-operative action as the source of, and solution to, the task faced by every community of creating new, culturally competent members with specific forms of knowledge and skill Part V. Professional Vision, Transforming Sensory Experience into Types, and the Creation of Competent Inhabitants: 20. The emergence of conventionalized signs within the natural world 21. Calibrating experience and knowledge by touching the world 22. The blackness of black: color categories as situated practice 23. Environmentally coupled gestures and the social calibration of professional vision 24. Professional vision 25. Conclusion.
221 citations
22 Oct 2012
TL;DR: A punctual perspective on action becomes more complex when action is seen to emerge within an unfolding mosaic of disparate materials and time frames which make possible not only systematic change, but also more enduring frameworks that provide crucial continuity.
Abstract: Human action is built by actively and simultaneously combining materials with intrinsically different properties into situated contextual configurations where they can mutually elaborate each other to create a whole that is both different from, and greater than, any of its constitutive parts. These resources include many different kinds of lexical and syntactic structures, prosody, gesture, embodied participation frameworks, sequential organization, and different kinds of materials in the environment, including tools created by others that structure local perception. The simultaneous use of different kinds of resources to build single actions has a number of consequences. First, different actors can contribute different kinds of materials that are implicated in the construction of a single action. For example embodied visual displays by hearers operate simultaneously on emerging talk by a speaker so that both the utterance and the turn have intrinsic organization that is both multi-party and multimodal. Someone with aphasia who is unable to produce lexical and syntactic structure can nonetheless contribute crucial prosodic and sequential materials to a local action, while appropriating the lexical contributions of others, and thus become a powerful speaker in conversation, despite catastrophically impoverished language. One effect of this simultaneous, distributed heterogeneity is that frequently the organization of action cannot be easily equated with the activities of single individuals, such as the person speaking at the moment, or with phenomena within a single medium such as talk. Second, subsequent action is frequently built through systematic transformations of the different kinds of materials provided by a prior action. In this process some elements of the prior contextual configuration, such as the encompassing participation framework, may remain unchanged, while others undergo significant modification. A punctual perspective on action, in which separate actions discretely follow one another, thus becomes more complex when action is seen to emerge within an unfolding mosaic of disparate materials and time frames which make possible not only systematic change, but also more enduring frameworks that provide crucial continuity. Third, the distributed, compositional structure of action provides a framework for developing the skills of newcomers within structured collaborative action. Fourth, human tools differ from the tools of other animals in that, like actions in talk, they are built by combining unlike materials into a whole not found in any of the individual parts (for example using a stone, a piece of wood and leather thongs to make an ax). This same combinatorial heterogeneity sits at the heart of human action in interaction, including language use. It creates within the unfolding organization of situated activity itself the distinctive forms of transformative collaborative action in the world, including socially organized perceptual and cognitive structures and the mutual alignment of bodies to each other, which constitutes us as humans.
182 citations
22 Jan 2016
159 citations
TL;DR: The authors report on the communicative practices of international STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) scholars and call for a fuller materialization, embodiment, and performativity in theorizing language competence than currently conceptualized in applied linguistics.
Abstract: Applied linguists have been exploring approaches to second language acquisition and competence that move beyond a prioritization of cognition and grammar that was derived from the foundational structuralist legacy in linguistics. Recently, for example, they have collaborated in putting together an integrated alternative model (Douglas Fir Group, 2016) to move theory and pedagogy forward. Shifting further yet toward the material locus and spatiotemporal conditioning of communication, this article reports on the communicative practices of international STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) scholars. Its data analysis uses a spatial orientation informed by schools such as new materialism, post‐humanism, and actor network theory, influenced largely by scholars in material and spatial sciences. The article calls for a fuller materialization, embodiment, and performativity in theorizing language competence than currently conceptualized in applied linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
156 citations
References
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01 Jan 1980
TL;DR: Bourdieu as mentioned in this paper develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood.
Abstract: Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.
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TL;DR: Turn-taking is used for the ordering of moves in games, for allocating political office, for regulating traffic at intersections, for the servicing of customers at business establishments, and for talking in interviews, meetings, debates, ceremonies, conversations.
Abstract: Publisher Summary Turn taking is used for the ordering of moves in games, for allocating political office, for regulating traffic at intersections, for the servicing of customers at business establishments, and for talking in interviews, meetings, debates, ceremonies, conversations. This chapter discusses the turn-taking system for conversation. On the basis of research using audio recordings of naturally occurring conversations, the chapter highlights the organization of turn taking for conversation and extracts some of the interest that organization has. The turn-taking system for conversation can be described in terms of two components and a set of rules. These two components are turn-constructional component and turn-constructional component. Turn-allocational techniques are distributed into two groups: (1) those in which next turn is allocated by current speaker selecting a next speaker and (2) those in which next turn is allocated by self-selection. The turn-taking rule-set provides for the localization of gap and overlap possibilities at transition-relevance places and their immediate environment, cleansing the rest of a turn's space of systematic bases for their possibility.
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TL;DR: In this article, a note on translation of Epic and Novel from the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse forms of time and of the Chronotope in the Novel Discourse in the novel glossary index is given.
Abstract: Acknowledgments A Note on Translation Introduction Epic and Novel From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel Discourse in the Novel Glossary Index
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01 Jan 1995TL;DR: Welcome aboard navigation as computation the implementation of contemporary pilotage the organization of team performances communication navigation as a context for learning learning in context organizational learning cultural cognition.
Abstract: Welcome aboard navigation as computation the implementation of contemporary pilotage the organization of team performances communication navigation as a context for learning learning in context organizational learning cultural cognition.
7,699 citations