Abstract
This chapter delves into the theoretical underpinnings of praxeological and dialogical research on the emergence of opportunities for learning in teacher–student interactivities. First, I introduce the emergence of objects of learning as a social phenomenon; then I argue for the intersubjective–intercorporeal understanding of those objects as emergent learnables in classroom talk in their immediate contextual and interactional environments. Two sequences of classroom activities in a Swedish as a second language classroom are presented and analyzed from a phenomenological–sociological view on intersubjectivity. The analysis highlights the significance of a dialogical and praxeological approach to the study of learning/teaching activities, and underscores that attending to intersubjectivity includes paying attention to corporeal acts in the procedure of orienting to, and showing understanding about, learnables. The chapter concludes that, in order to understand teaching/learning behaviors, a detailed analysis of participants’ actions in their interactivities is necessary. More specifically, in all talk-in-interaction (and particularly in classroom talk, with which this study is specifically concerned), the objective reality of linguistic expressions – their forms, and their functions – is accomplished, situated and embodied, and is thus reflexive and indexical in nature. This may suggest that researchers abstain from the dichotomy of the subjective–objective reality of a learnable in favor of the possibility of considering the intersubjective objectivity of a learnable as what is accomplished in real time in a social activity.
I would like to thank the editors of the book, particularly Numa Markee for his detailed comments on this chapter and also for allowing me to use his own data to write the practical implications for the chapter. I am also indebted to Per Linell, Mathias Broth and Charlotta Plejert for their comments on the earlier version of the manuscript.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Durkheim in his seminal work Suicide (1897/1951, p. 37) states: “Sociological method as we practice it rests wholly on the basic principle that social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the individual.”
- 2.
This falls within the discussion of representational modifications of objects in Husserl’s account of perception (Husserl 1983, pp. 90–91; cf. Duranti 2009, p. 206, who explains it as aspects of attention in the process of learning and socialization). Husserl (1983, p. 91) explains that the sense of anything that appears to us or presented in the world would rely on our standpoint and orientation to it because “[it] can ‘appear’ only in a certain ‘orientation’, which necessarily predelineates a system of possible new orientations each of which, in turn, corresponds to a certain ‘mode of appearance’ which we can express, say, givenness from such and such a ‘side’, and so forth.” (emphasis in original).
References
Anderson, J. R. (1995). Learning and memory: An integrated approach. Chichester: Wiley.
Andrén, M. (2010). Children’s gestures from 18–30 months Doctoral dissertation, Lund University.
Anward, J. (2004). Lexeme recycled: How categories emerge from interaction. Logos and Language, V(2), 31–46.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). In M. Holquist (Ed.), The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1986). In C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.), Speech, genre, and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas.
Bühler, K. (2011). Theory of language: The representational function of language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (Original work published 1934).
Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). Extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19.
Csordas, T. J. (2008). Intersubjectivity and intercorporeality. Subjectivity, 22, 110–121.
Duranti, A. (2009). The relevance of Husserl’s theory to language socialization. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 19(2), 205–226.
Durkheim, E. (1951). In G. Simpson (Ed.), Suicide. A study in sociology. Glencoe: The Free Press. (Original work published 1897).
Durkheim, E. (1976). The elementary forms of the religious life (J. W. Swain, Trans.). New York/London: George Allen and Unwin. (Original work published 1915).
Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, S. C. (2006). Roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition and interaction. Oxford: Wenner–Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
Enfield, N. J., Kita, S., & de Ruiter, J. P. (2007). Primary and secondary pragmatic functions of pointing gestures. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 1722–1741.
Eskildsen, S. W., & Markee, N. (2018). L2 talk as social accomplishment. AILA Applied Linguistics series, 17, 69–104.
Firth, A., & Wagner, J. (1997). On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal, 81(3), 285–300.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice–Hall.
Garfinkel, H. (2002). In A. W. Rawls (Ed.), Ethnomethodology’s program. Working out Durkheim’s aphorism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Garfinkel, H. (2007). Lebenswelt origins of the sciences: Working out Durkheim’s aphorism. Book two: Workplace and documentary diversity of ethnomethodological studies of work and sciences by ethnomethodology’s authors: What did we do? What did we learn? Human Studies, 30(3), 9–56.
Garfinkel, H., & Sacks, H. (1986). On formal structures of practical actions. In H. Garfinkel (Ed.), Ethnomethodological studies of work (pp. 160–193). London/New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1970).
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in public places. New York: Free Press.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interactional ritual. Essays on face-to-face behavior. New York: Pantheon Books.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. An essay on the organization of experience. Boston, Mass: Northeastern University Press.
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Goodwin, C. (2003). The body in action. In J. Coupland & R. Gwyn (Eds.), Discourse, the body and identity (pp. 19–42). New York: Palgrave/Macmillan.
Goodwin, C. (2007). Environmentally coupled gestures. In S. D. Duncan, J. Cassell, & E. T. Levy (Eds.), Gesture and the dynamic dimension of language (pp. 195–212). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Goodwin, C. (2013). The co-operative, transformative organization of human action and knowledge. Journal of Pragmatics, 46, 8–23.
Goodwin, C. (2017). Co-operative action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, C., & Duranti, A. (1992). Rethinking context: An introduction. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context. Language as an interactive phenomenon (pp. 1–42). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, C., & Salomon, R. (2019). Not being bound by what you can see now. Charles Goodwin in conversation with René Salomon [32 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 20(2), Art. 11. https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-20.2.3271.
Gross, R. (2010). Psychology. The science of mind and behavior (6th ed.). Abington: Hodder Education.
Hanks, W. (1990). Language and lived space among the Maya. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Heidegger, M. (1967). What is a thing? (W. B. Barton, Jr. & V. Deutsch, Trans.). South Bend: Gateway Editions.
Heritage, J. (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structure of social action (pp. 229–345). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heritage, J. (1987). Ethnomethodology. In A. Giddens & J. Turner (Eds.), Social theory today (pp. 224–272). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hindmarsh, J., Reynolds, P., & Dunne, S. (2011). Exhibiting understanding: The body in apprenticeship. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 489–503.
Husserl, E. (1969). Formal and transcendental logic (D. Cairns, Trans.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. (Original work published 1929).
Husserl, E. (1983). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. First book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology (F. Kersten, Trans.). Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy. In Second book: Studies on the phenomenology of constitution (R. Rojcevicz & A. Schuwer, Trans.). Kluwer Academic Publishers. (Original work published 1952).
Husserl, E. (2001). Logical investigation (Vol. 2). New York: Routledge. (Original work 1900–1).
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Ingold, T. (2007). Lines. A brief history. Oxon/New York: Routledge.
Jefferson, G. (1979). A technique for inviting laughter and its subsequent acceptance declination. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 79–96). New York: Irvington Publishers.
Jefferson, G. (1987). On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and social organization (pp. 86–100). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Kääntä, L. (this volume). Multimodal perspective into teachers’ definitional practices: Comparing subject-specific language in physics and history lessons. In S. Kunitz, N. Markee, & O. Sert (Eds.), Classroom-based conversation analytic research: Theoretical and applied perspectives on pedagogy. Cham: Springer.
Koschmann, T., LeBaron, C., Goodwin, C., Zemel, A., & Dunnington, G. (2007). Formulating the triangle of doom. Gesture, 7(1), 97–118.
Koschmann, T., LeBaron, C., Goodwin, C., & Feltovich, P. (2011). ‘Can you see the cystic artery yet?’ A simple matter of trust. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 521–541.
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Levinson, S. (1992). Activity types and language. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work (pp. 66–100). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Levinson, S. (2013). Action formation and ascription. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation analysis (pp. 103–130). Malden/Oxford: Wiley–Blackwell.
Lindwall, O., & Lymer, G. (2008). The dark matter of lab work: Illuminating the negotiation of disciplined perception in mechanics. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 17(2), 180–224.
Linell, P. (2009). Rethinking language, mind, and world dialogically. Interactional and contextual theories of human sense-making. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
Linell, P. (2014). Interactivities, intersubjectivities, and language: On dialogism and phenomenology. Language and Dialogue, 4(2), 165–193.
Macbeth, D. (1996). The discovery of situated worlds: Analytic commitments, or moral orders? Human Studies, 19, 267–287.
Macbeth, D. (2000). Classrooms as installations. Direct instruction in the early grades. In S. Hester & D. Francis (Eds.), Local educational order. Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Malafouris, L., & Renfrew, C. (2010). The cognitive life of things: Recasting the boundaries of the mind. Cambridge: McDonald institute for archeological research.
Markee, N. (1994). Toward and ethnomethodological respecification of second-language acquisition studies. In E. E. Tarone, S. M. Gass, & A. D. Cohen (Eds.), Research methodology in second-language acquisition (pp. 89–116). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Markee, N. (2007). Conversation analysis for second language acquisition. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (pp. 355–374). New York/London: Routledge.
Markee, N. (2008). Toward a learning behavior tracking methodology for CA-for-SLA. Applied Lingusitics, 29, 404–427.
Merleau–Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). London/New York: Routledge. (Original work published 1945).
Mondada, L., & Pekarek Doehler, S. (2004). Second language acquisition as situated practice: Task accomplishment in the French second language classroom. The Modern Language Journal, 88, 501–518.
Pike, K. L. (1954). Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior. Glendale: Summer Institutes of Linguistics.
Sacks, H. (1984a). Notes on methodology. In M. J. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 21–27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sacks, H. (1984b). On doing ‘being ordinary. In M. J. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 413–429). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures on conversation (Vol. 1 & 2). Oxford: Blackwell.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735.
Schutz, A. (1967). The phenomenology of the social world. Chicago: Northwestern University Press. (Original work published 1932).
Schutz, A. (1973). Collected papers I. the problem of social reality. The Hage: Martinus Nijhoff.
Schutz, A. (1975). In I. Schutz (Ed.), Collected papers III. Studies in phenomenological philosophy. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Streeck, J., & Jordan, J. S. (2009). Communication as a dynamic self-sustained system: The importance of time-scales and nested context. Communication Theory, 19, 445–464.
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wittgenstein. (2009). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, & J. Schulte, Trans.). Malden/Oxford: Wiley–Blackwell. (Original work published, 1953).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Conventions for Transcribing Embodied Conduct
Conventions for Transcribing Embodied Conduct
# | hashtag: the position of an image within a turn at talk |
dotted square bracket: aligning the position of an image with its nonverbal description and a turn at talk |
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Majlesi, A.R. (2021). The Intersubjective Objectivity of Learnables. In: Kunitz, S., Markee, N., Sert, O. (eds) Classroom-based Conversation Analytic Research. Educational Linguistics, vol 46. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52193-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52193-6_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-52192-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-52193-6
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)