Activity

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Activity
Author(s):	Aug Nishizaka (Chiba University, Japan) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2565-0934)
To cite:	Nishizaka, Aug. (2023). Activity. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/TF7SE

The term activity is used in an imprecise way but generally refers to a larger interactional unit within which an action performed by an individual is embedded (e.g., Goodwin & Goodwin 1987). It is a nameable unit, having an approximate beginning and end, and therefore it makes sense to talk about the transition between activities (e.g., Robinson & Stivers, 2001) and a multiactivity situation (Haddington, et al. 2014), although activities may not always be well bounded as units (see Sacks, et al. 1974).

Levinson (1992) introduced the notion of an activity type to explore the constraints of the structural properties of an activity on how utterances contribute to action formation and ascription. The appeal to activity types overcomes the inherent deficiencies in Grice’s (1975) notion of conversational implicatures and Searle’s (1975) account of indirect speech acts. For example, in a courtroom (one activity type), the Grician cooperative principle does not work.

In the following extract from the cross-examination of a rape victim by the defendant’s lawyer, the question in line 11, which elicits an answer and nothing more than an answer (line 12), nevertheless does not fit one of the preparatory conditions, the sincerity condition, or the essential condition for “real questions” (Levinson 1992: 94; cf. Searle 1969, for ‘felicity conditions’ for speech acts). The question is intelligible as discrediting the victim in reference to the ongoing courtroom activity.

(Levinson 1992: 83) [Note: Transcript presented as in original]

1   ...you have had sexual intercourse on a previous occasion
    haven’t you?
2   Yes.
3   On many previous occasions?
4   Not many.
5   Several?
6   Yes.
7   With several men?
8   No.
9   Just one.
10  Two.
11  Two. And you are seventeen and a half?
12  Yes.

One caution may be that we should not take a larger activity within which each action is embedded as something like a container (cf. Leont'ev 1981). Goffman (1963) distinguished between ‘situated’ and ‘occasioned’ activities. The term situated is used to refer to “any event occurring within the physical boundaries of a situation” (21), which “begins when mutual monitoring occurs” (18). Occasioned activities are those that “are intrinsically part of the occasion” (35), “bounded in regard to place and time and typically facilitated by fixed equipment” (18). Earlier, Goffman (1961) emphasized the importance of focusing on a ‘situated activity system’ for investigating system-related sociological concepts such as role. By focusing on a “somewhat closed, self-compensating, self-terminating circuit of interdependent actions” (85) within a situation with mutually perceptually accessible, co-present individuals, he was able to closely examine how the individuals manage all interactional contingencies to sustain their self-images, for instance, by distancing themselves from their officially allocated roles.

Goodwin (1995, 1997, 2000, 2003, among others) considered a situated activity system as the unit of analysis to respecify social science concepts (e.g., space, color, and gesture) as the participants’ resources with which they accomplish things in their joint distinct activity in which their actions are mutually perceptually accessible. Spaces are essentially embodied and are mutually interlocked by tools and documents. The color of a thing is organized according to the task at hand. Gestures are essentially embedded within the temporal and spatial arrangement of multiple bodies, rather than being an individual’s ways of expression.

One additional note on the difference between action and activity may be in order if an activity is not a container for actions. Many vernacular action verbs (such as promise, invite, discredit, report, and answer) do not signify processes but achievements or results (pace Ryle 1949)—namely, the relationship of rights and obligations established between the actor and the recipient by speaking (or other conduct) (Austin 1962). Actions, as results of speaking, do not have a beginning or end in time and space while the speaking does. The analytic task can be formulated as grounding the accomplishment of actions in the procedural and structural details of activities as processes of various scales (from speaking to courtroom) (Nishizaka 2006).

Additional Related Entries:

• Social action
• Project
• Multiactivity

Cited References:

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford University Press.

Goffman, E. (1961). Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Bobbs·Merrill.

Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in Public Places. Free Press.

Goodwin, C. (1995). Seeing in Depth. Social Studies of Science, 25, 237-74.

Goodwin, C. (1997). The Blackness of Black: Color Categories as Situated Practice. In L. Resnick, R. Säljö, C. Pontecorvo, & B. Burge (Eds.), Discourse, Tools and Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition (pp. 111-40). Springer.

Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and Embodiment Within Situated Human Interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1489-522.

Goodwin, C. (2003). Pointing as Situated Practice. In S. Kita (Ed.), Pointing: Where Language, Culture and Cognition Meet (pp. 217-41). Lawrence Erlbaum,.

Goodwin, C., & Goodwin, M. H. (1987). Concurrent Operations on Talk: Notes on the Interactive Organization of Assessments. IPrA Papers in Pragmatics, 1, 1–54.

Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics Volume 3: Speech Acts (pp. 41-58). Academic Press.

Haddington, P., Keisanen, T., Mondada, L., & Nevile, M. (Eds.) (2014). Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond Multitasking (pp. 3–32). John Benjamins.

Leont’ev, A. N. (1981). The Problem of Activity in Psychology. In J. V. Wertsch (Ed.), The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology (pp. 37–71). Routledge.

Levinson, S. C. (1992). Activity Types and Language. In P. Drew, & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings (pp. 66-100). Cambridge University Press.

Nishizaka, A. (2006). What to Learn: The Embodied Structure of the Environment. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 39(2), 119-154.

Robinson, J. D. & Stivers, T. (2001). Achieving Activity Transitions in Physician-Patient Encounters: From History Taking to Physical Examination. Human communication Research, 27(2), 253-298.

Ryle, G. (1949). Concept of Mind. Hutchinsons University Library.

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn Taking for Conversation. Language, 50(4), 696-735

Searle, J. R. (1975). Indirect Speech Acts. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics Volume 3: Speech Acts (pp. 59-82). Academic Press.

Additional References: