Enfield-Sidnell2017
| Enfield-Sidnell2017 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | BOOK |
| Key | Enfield-Sidnell2017 |
| Author(s) | N. J. Enfield, Jack Sidnell |
| Title | The Concept of Action |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Linguistic Anthropology, Action |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Year | 2017 |
| Language | English |
| City | Cambridge |
| Month | |
| Journal | |
| Volume | |
| Number | |
| Pages | 242 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | |
| ISBN | 9780521895286 |
| Organization | |
| Institution | |
| School | |
| Type | |
| Edition | |
| Series | New Departures in Anthropology |
| Howpublished | |
| Book title | |
| Chapter | |
Abstract
When people do things with words, how do we know what they are doing? Many scholars have assumed a category of things called actions: 'requests', 'proposals', 'complaints', 'excuses'. The idea is both convenient and intuitive, but as this book argues, it is a spurious concept of action. In interaction, a person's primary task is to decide how to respond, not to label what someone just did. The labeling of actions is a meta-level process, appropriate only when we wish to draw attention to others' behaviors in order to quiz, sanction, praise, blame, or otherwise hold them to account. This book develops a new account of action grounded in certain fundamental ideas about the nature of human sociality: that social conduct is naturally interpreted as purposeful; that human behavior is shaped under a tyranny of social accountability; and that language is our central resource for social action and reaction.
Proposes a view of social action with unprecedented commitment to empirical data, allowing readers to evaluate current views of action based on how language is actually used
Presents a new theory of social action through language, challenging long-held ideas of the nature of speech acts
Notes
