Action in interaction is conduct under a description

Abstract

Requests, offers, invitations, complaints, and greetings are some of the many action types routinely invoked in the description and analysis of interaction. But what is the ontological status of, for instance, a request? In what follows I propose that action is conduct under a description. Thus, for the most part, interaction is organized independently of any action description or categorization of conduct into discrete action types. Instead, participants in interaction draw on the details of the situation in which they find themselves in order to produce conduct that others will recognize and to which they are able to respond in fitted ways. ‘Action’ still plays a key role in the organization of interaction, however, because accountability attaches not to raw conduct but only to conduct under some particular, action-formulating description. (Action, interaction, description, conversation analysis, Anscombe)*

Manipulation in Board Game Interactions: Being a Sporting Player

“…The category of “Jedi” suggests that Jack has especially strong abilities to manipulate (the Jedi being characters in the Star Wars film franchise capable of supernatural feats of mind control). Tim has made an alternate account of Jack's actions available (Sidnell ), in moving from “generous offer” to “manipulation.” These statements constitute the attribution of manipulation. Jack's turns contain design elements emphasizing the offering nature of his action: he offers to make it “easy” (L15) for Nancy, he explicitly categorizes the action as an “offer” (L22), and he does so “freely” (L22), suggesting he is being altruistic.…”

“…The category of "Jedi" suggests that Jack has especially strong abilities to manipulate (the Jedi being characters in the Star Wars film franchise capable of supernatural feats of mind control). Tim has made an alternate account of Jack's actions available (Sidnell 2017), in moving from "generous offer" to "manipulation." These statements constitute the attribution of manipulation.…”

“…We will show similar orientations in our data in this paper. However, our analysis looks at attributed intentions of players (i.e., the attribution is one description or version of understanding the action, among others, see Sidnell ), whereas Evans and Fitzgerald's players are less (if at all) concerned with matters of deceit. Outright deceit has also been ignored in EMCA studies, mostly due to its supposed unavailability (see below).…”

“…We agree that player intentions are not analyzable from recorded interaction, nor are they available to participants—but players (and everyday speakers) remain oriented to other people as goal‐oriented organisms (Sidnell and Enfield ). As such, they engage in attributing strategy, much as they engage in attributing action (see Sidnell ). These attributions have social contingencies that are analyzable, which is what this paper undertakes.…”

Assessing Answers: Action Ascription in Third Position

“…In line 1 Eline produces an itemized news inquiry (Button & Casey, 1985), inviting her friend Melanie to talk about her weekend by requesting an assessment with hoe was ("how was"). Melanie first deals with the format of the news inquiry, providing an assessment in line 3, before she begins telling about her weekend (Heritage, in press;Schegloff, 2007;Sidnell, 2017).…”