Enfield-Sidnell2017

Enfield-Sidnell2017
BibType	BOOK
Key	Enfield-Sidnell2017
Author(s)	N. J. Enfield, Jack Sidnell
Title	The Concept of Action
Editor(s)
Tag(s)	EMCA, Linguistic Anthropology, Action
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year	2017
Language	English
City	Cambridge
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages	242
URL	Link
DOI
ISBN	9780521895286
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series	New Departures in Anthropology
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

When people do things with words, how do we know what they are doing? Many scholars have assumed a category of things called actions: 'requests', 'proposals', 'complaints', 'excuses'. The idea is both convenient and intuitive, but as this book argues, it is a spurious concept of action. In interaction, a person's primary task is to decide how to respond, not to label what someone just did. The labeling of actions is a meta-level process, appropriate only when we wish to draw attention to others' behaviors in order to quiz, sanction, praise, blame, or otherwise hold them to account. This book develops a new account of action grounded in certain fundamental ideas about the nature of human sociality: that social conduct is naturally interpreted as purposeful; that human behavior is shaped under a tyranny of social accountability; and that language is our central resource for social action and reaction.

       Proposes a view of social action with unprecedented commitment to empirical data, allowing readers to evaluate current views of action based on how language is actually used
       Presents a new theory of social action through language, challenging long-held ideas of the nature of speech acts

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