Coordinating talk and practical action

Abstract

Coordinating talk and practical action: The case of hair salon service assessmentsPost-print version of: Oshima, S. and Streeck, J. (2015). Coordinating talk and practical action: The case of hair salon service assessments. Pragmatics and Society 6(4): 538-564.Abstract: This paper investigates how talk and practical action are coordinated during one type of activity involving professional communication: the service-assessment sequence in hair salons. During this activity, a practical inspection of the haircut must be coupled with sequentially produced verbal acts. Our analysis of four examples reveals that there is no fixed relationship between the organization of talk and practical action. Instead, people manipulate this relationship on a moment-by-moment basis, often coordinating the two into a single, integral package, or relying on one stream of action to achieve progress in the other. These findings imply that some multimodal activities that are brought into alignment may have their own, separate and independent procedural logic and sequencing patterns and that these can be brought into play to create or deal with constraints in each other.

Video in Sociomaterial Investigations

“…For instance, these studies have unpacked the sociomaterial 'choreography' to call centre services (Whalen et al, 2002); the ways in which high value and multi-party economic transactions are coordinated through talk, gesture and gavel (Heath, 2012); the management of 'quality' service in beauty treatments (Nishizaka, 2015;Oshima and Streeck, 2015;Nizameddin, 2016); and so forth.…”

Embodied Action, Projection, and Institutional Action: The Exchange of Tools and Implements During Surgical Procedures

“…These studies have primarily addressed the character of projection in conversational interaction and make an important contribution to our understanding of the ways in which particular activities and their sequential organization, ranging from paired actions through to more extended packages of activity, are accomplished in and through talk and interaction (Dausendschoön-Gay & Krafft, 2009;Kendrick & Torreira, 2014;Kim & Cho, 2017;Luke et al, 2012). These studies are complemented by the long-standing interest in the ways in which visible conduct-including gesture, gaze, and comportment-can serve with, and alongside, matters of syntax, semantics, prosody, and the like to enable projection and the coordination of particular actions and sequences of action (see, for example, Debreslioska et al, 2013;Ford et al, 2012;Hanna & Brennan, 2007;Kidwell, 2009;Kinsbourne & Jordan, 2009;Oshima & Streeck, 2015;Roseano et al, 2016;Streeck, 1995;Streeck & Jordan, 2009). Projection and the coproduction of specialized forms of institutional activity-forms of activity that often rely on, if not primarily consist of, embodied action(s)-have received less attention, and yet the practices and procedures on which they rely are critical to the anticipation, preparation, and coordination of more specialized tasks and activities (see, for example, Goodwin, 2017;Heath & Luff, 2000;Llewellyn & Hindmarsh, 2010).…”

Strategy making as a communicative practice: the multimodal accomplishment of strategy roles

“…Bolden, 2003;Olsher, 2004;Mondada, 2007;Oloff, 2013) and how communicative action is coordinated with practical and instrumental acts (e.g. Greatbatch, 2006;Mondada, 2011;Oshima & Streeck, 2015). In the field of "workplace studies", the interest in the interrelation between material objects in the form of technology and interaction has increased considerably with scholars demonstrating how the social aspects of technology influence organizational members' daily work routines (Büscher, 2007;Büscher & Mogensen, 2007;Heath & vom Lehn, 2008).…”