Caronia-Cooren2014

Caronia-Cooren2014
BibType	ARTICLE
Key	Caronia-Cooren2014
Author(s)	Letizia Caronia, François Cooren, A. Virginia Acuña Ferreira
Title	Decentering our analytical position: The dialogicity of things
Editor(s)
Tag(s)	EMCA, Actor-Network Theory, artifacts, doctor–nurse communication, embodied interaction, health care practices, interaction analysis, material agency, materiality, repair, responsibility, speech acts, ventriloquism, workplace studies
Publisher
Year	2014
Language
City
Month
Journal	Discourse & Communication
Volume	8
Number	1
Pages	41–61
URL	Link
DOI	10.1177/1750481313503226
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

Download BibTex

Abstract

Analyses of embodied interaction still appear to explicitly or implicitly defend a human-centered approach to language and body in the material world. In this article, we propose to decenter our analytical position by acknowledging what artifacts, tools and architectural elements contribute to human activities and practices. Starting from a ‘ventriloqual’ perspective on communication, we demonstrate that the accountable character of people’s activities presupposes a form of material agency that tends to be neglected in our analyses. Far from neglecting human beings’ contributions to their own activities, we show that this approach allows us to acknowledge their capacity to skillfully react and respond to what things indicate, say, or tell them to do. It is, we contend, in this back-and-forth process of actions and reactions that a certain dialogicity of things can be recognized. Decentering the analytical position by focusing on how things traceably contribute to shaping human interactions has, we contend, dramatic theoretical and methodological consequences. In the discussion we argue that resistance in taking a ventriloqual perspective to analyze the social life of things partially depends on its impact on the sensitive notion of responsibility.

Notes