9 - Intertwined Actors

Summary

Separate actors, frequently occupying diverse dissimilar positions, can contribute different parts to the same action. Thus Chil can delaminate an utterance created by another speaker and replace her prosody with his own. In doing this he is able to inflect the description created through her complex language with his own stance, and thus transform what she has said into an action of his own, one that shapes the trajectory of what happens next. As an actor uses expressive prosody to speak a line written by Shakespeare that reveals something not present in the words alone, a single action is created through the separate contributions of parties living four hundred years apart. A laugh can be simultaneously performed through the voice of one party and the precisely timed facial expressions of another. The ability of individuals and social groups dispersed in space and time to contribute different parts to the same tool, from stone axes to iPhones, provides the co-operative infrastructure for human social and economic exchanges.

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