Part III - Embodied Interaction

Summary

The locus for human action is not lodged within a particular modality, such as talk, or language. Instead, to build co-operative action participants create changing contextual configurations within which they attend as relevant to the detailed organization of emerging talk, the different kinds of displays made by each other’s bodies, and phenomena in the surround – here the grid on the ground that makes a game of hopscotch possible. Each semiotic field makes unique contributions to the organization of action. Unlike the evanescent flow of units in the stream of speech, the material properties of the hopscotch grid can support bodies jumping on it, and differentiate successful from unsuccessful moves. The varied locations of diverse semiotic fields render appropriate attention and mutual orientation (where to look now?) an ongoing co-operative accomplishment. The construction of action within situated interaction is accomplished through the temporally unfolding juxtaposition of quite different kinds of semiotic resources. Through this process the human body is made publicly visible as the site for a range of structurally different kinds of displays implicated in the constitution of the actions of the moment.

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