Agency as an interactive achievement

Abstract

This study explores how agency emerges and is negotiated moment by moment in interaction by applying Erving Goffman's notion of production format to an extended sequence of discourse that revolves around accomplishing a conjoint action: the rewriting of an offi cial letter. Deconstructing the participants into the social roles they undertake in accomplishing this task illustrates what is involved in exercising agency: interactively negotiating production format roles and footing shifts through several linguistic strategies aimed at either claiming, ratifying, or rejecting the participants' agency. These include providing options, negotiating production format roles, asking questions, speaking for another, questioning and asserting expertise, providing counter-arguments, and asserting past agentive selves. This study, thus, contributes to an understanding of agency as co-constructed, mediated, and continually negotiated, while also identifying specifi c linguistic strategies through which agency is negotiated in interaction. (Agency, disability, production format, social actor, conjoint action, linguistic strategies) * I n t r o d u c t i o nThe concept of human agency is fundamental to our understanding of social interaction of all types; yet discourse analytic studies that have considered the concept have focused primarily on the discursive assignment and the linguistic realization of personal agency in narrative discourse (e.g.). As a result, they do not explain how agency emerges and is negotiated moment by moment in conversational interaction. In this article, I aim to fi ll this gap by exploring what is discursively involved when social actors take action. I do so by applying Goffman's ( 1981) notion of production format to an extended sequence of discourse that was captured on audio tape as part of an ethnographic case study of the everyday experiences of Yahya, a quadriplegic man from the Islamic Arab country of Oman. Specifi cally, to examine how agency is negotiated in discourse, I deconstruct into production NA J M A A L Z I D JA LY Language in Society 38 :2 (2009) 178format roles the social actors engaged in one activity involving Yahya and two other participants: rewriting an offi cial letter. This deconstruction illustrates what is involved in accomplishing a conjoint action: the interactive negotiation of production format roles and footing shifts through several linguistic strategies aimed at either claiming, ratifying, or rejecting the participants' (especially Yahya's) agency. These include providing options, setting and negotiating production format roles, asking questions, speaking for another, questioning and asserting expertise, providing counter-arguments, and asserting past agentive selves. The analysis thus demonstrates a powerful way of conceptualizing agency as collaborative and interactive -exercising agency as a mediated, collective process of negotiating alignments, tasks, and roles -while also outlining specifi c linguistic strategies used to do so.The organization of the article is ...

‘Cheaters and Stalkers’: Accusations in a classroom

“…Promotion of agency is regarded as the basic foundation for learning and wellbeing outcomes from both an educational and human rights perspective (e.g., Bandura, 2001;Corsaro, 2005;Hutcby & Moran-Ellis, 1998;Macfarlane & Cartmel, 2008;Valentine, 2011). While there is wide general acceptance of the importance of agency, the concept is only vaguely understood, especially with respect to how it emerges or is constructed in moment by moment interaction (see Al Zidjaly, 2009). Agency has been referred to as quality which enables a person to initiate intentional action and achieve personal and interpersonal goals (e.g.…”

“…Although the concept of agency is multidisciplinary and used for many purposes, it can be generally understood as concerning how people act in intentionally and socially appropriate ways in order to set and achieve personal and interpersonal goals (e.g. Al Zidjaly, 2009;Davies, 1991;Rogoff, 2003;Valentine, 2011). On one hand, agency relates to a person's ability to act independently, and on the other hand, it can be seen as arising through intersubjectivity, because intersubjectivity enables the actor to gain perspective of others and beyond the immediate situation (Gillespie & Cornish, 2010).…”

Narrative co-construction in the medical consultation: How agency and control affect the diagnosis

“…The differences encountered in the studies detailed above demonstrate the need to consider that agency is an interactive achievement (Ahearn 2001; Al Zidjaly 2009). In the medical consultation, then, patient agency is co-constructed through interaction between the medical provider and the patient.…”

Review of Second language socialization and learner agency: Adoptive family talk; Author: Lyn Wright Fogle; Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 2012; ISBN: 9781847697851; Pages: 203

“…With this purpose on mind, it presents an in-depth analysis of language samples of adoptive families, which are examined from the perspective of learners' agency (cf. Ahearn, 2001;Al Zidjaly, 2009). More specifically, the main emphasis is placed on the role of children themselves in the process of socialization, which refers both to their own language socialization in the new cultural and linguistic context as well as to their parents, who need to embrace the process of becoming the members of a bilingual family.…”