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

Abstract

There has been a long-standing interest in projection and the resources on which participants rely to produce and recognize the import and organization of turns at talk. Less attention has been paid to the character of the activity in which utterances form part and the ways in which embodied action enables the intelligibility, coordination, and in some cases, coproduction, of particular actions. In this article, we focus on specialized forms of embodied, institutional activity and focus in particular on simultaneity and the ways in which bodily action enables the progressive formation and reformation of an activity in the light of the (co)participants' emerging contributions. We address how the routine structure of particular tasks enables participants to anticipate, prepare for, and even initiate actions in advance of the relevant activity and in turn, how participants may seek to ameliorate the interactional import of potentially premature action. The articles explores the interplay of technical practice and interactional organization and points to the distinctive character of embodied action in understanding anticipation and coordination in complex forms of institutional interaction.

Showing and telling—How directors combine embodied demonstrations and verbal descriptions to instruct in theater rehearsals

“…The use of demonstrations for instructional purposes has been investigated in a variety of different settings in which teaching, learning and developing bodily skills are in focus, e.g., in music and singing (Weeks, 1985(Weeks, , 1996Haviland, 2007;Szczepek Reed et al, 2013;Tolins, 2013;Reed and Szczepek Reed, 2014;Emerson et al, 2017Emerson et al, , 2019Szczepek Reed, 2021), dance (Keevallik, 2013(Keevallik, , 2015Broth and Keevallik, 2014;Albert, 2015;Ehmer, 2021), theater and opera (Hazel, 2015(Hazel, , 2018Lefebvre, 2018;Schmidt, 2018;Norrthon, 2019Norrthon, , 2021Löfgren and Hofstetter, 2021), sports (Evans and Reynolds, 2016;Råman and Haddington, 2018;Råman, 2019;Evans and Lindwall, 2020), cooking (Mondada, 2014a), handy craft Lindwall, 2012, 2014), driving/flying lessons (Melander and Sahlström, 2009;De Stefani and Gazin, 2012;Deppermann, 2018) as well as medical training and surgery (Hindmarsh et al, 2011;Mondada, 2011aMondada, , 2014bZemel and Koschmann, 2014;Heath and Luff, 2021). In instructional activities, knowledge is not just conveyed monologically (as in manuals or lectures, for example), but developed dialogically in pairs of instructions and instructed actions (Arnold, 2012;Mondada, 2014b;Stukenbrock, 2014).…”

Working beside/s words: A case study in the partiality and provinciality of language

“…11. The operating theatre is the kind of high-status "embodied action" (not manual labor) which ethnomethodologists seem to be finding more worthy of attention (e.g., Heath and Luff, 2021). See also Bezemer et al (2011) who usefully deploy Goffman's (1971)…”

“…However, Garfinkel ultimately prioritizes "accountability" -the sense in which actions are communicated, narrated, and otherwise discursively framed. [Note 5] It is this priority which seems to have had a lasting impact on conversation analysis which, for all its multimodality (e.g., Heath and Luff, 2021;Mondada, 2011), is typically more concerned with documenting the way language organizes and structures work, rather than the other way round. Once again, therefore, it is talk (and texts) which are given priority and prominence, even if there are many settings where the machinery is overbearing and where mechanisms dictate the flow of work.…”

“…11.The operating theatre is the kind of high-status “embodied action” (not manual labor) which ethnomethodologists seem to be finding more worthy of attention (e.g., Heath and Luff, 2021). See also Bezemer et al (2011) who usefully deploy Goffman’s (1971) notion of “body gloss” to account for the use on nonverbal cues for expressing interactional meanings – and for organizing tasks – in the absence of talk.…”