Att koka ihop ett beslut : En multimodal interaktionsanalys av gemensamt beslutsfattande i vardagen

Abstract

This study explores the social organization and the necessary involvement in accomplishing sharedness in joint decision-making, by adopting a members' perspective on food preparation. Prior research on joint decision-making has mostly focused on verbal analysis of institutional interactions, e.g. medical encounters. In contrast, the current study carries out a multimodal interaction analysis of joint decision-making in everyday informal cooking among friends. The analysis demonstrates a crucial function of embodied actions, such as bodily stance, eye gaze and manipulation of objects, in organizing and coordinating decision-making sequences. Since the decisions in this particular setting often are based on a multisensory access to the objects of decision, establishing and displaying epistemic access comprise a constitutive part of joint decision-making. In line with this, we show that not allowing for an epistemically equal point of departure, the participants may be sanctioned when not accessing the empirical object of decision, e.g., not tasting the sauce. In addition to shedding light on the temporal organization of actions and the epistemic access central to organizing joint decision-making, the study offers an understanding of how participants as social actors constitute themselves as friends and family by means of making decisions shared in the midst of a mundane activity that constitutes daily life.