label “#“was what counted – which, in part, was at the origin of the exchange with the postdoctoral fellow – the nature of the signified now is explicitly articulated and thus has become figure. What heretofore was part of the tacit common ground now has become explicit. This elaborated ground then also allows a distinction with the next graph to be drawn, the production of which was aborted, and then is resumed.
When its extended abscissa label has been produced, more of the heretofore- presupposed ground is made visible; and the contrast between the two graphs also is apparent and intelligible (makes sense).
In the hesitation and self-correction, we also see that the PI1 did not have the details of the graph worked out, fully represented in his mind, as standard psycho- logical approaches (constructivism) would suggest. Instead, the precise nature of the signified of each point on the line was unspecified in the way most aspects of our everyday lives are unspecified. The specification here takes work, which is exhib- ited in a first production, its removal, and then, jointly produced with the doctoral student, a second production that then comes to be further elaborated – again in joint labor with the doctoral student (i.e. turn 6).
In this fragment, we also observe the existence of common ground. Thus, the doctoral student twice articulates verbally what PI1 will write on the board (number of rods, date); and the former does so precisely at the point when the offered phrase fits into the existing and still unfolding inscription. In one way of looking at the situ- ation, the two work out together what heretofore was the trace of a thought, which is a living idea now further along the way to its completion in a finished verbal formulation (i.e. the Said). Not only does the Saying make sense, but, as seen in the joint contributions, it already was part of their common sense. But this common sense was not explicitly articulated before and therefore was not part of the accented visible. The special feature of common sense is that it makes for the phenomenon of indexicality.
more families of events (people) have in common. An expression makes sense if it has a place within a sensible field; understanding presupposes this field, which con- stitutes the common ground equally given to the senses of all interlocutors. This given common ground is a field of events that constitutes the ground for (verbal) expression events and thus is the basis of common sense (Scheler 1923). The object of every demonstrative pronoun (“this,” “there,” “that”) is a function of the common ground: it is indexical, referring to events somewhere within reach. That common ground continuously shifts (a “there” appearing in the same phrases may point to different places), and evolves with emergent features. Personal pronouns also are indexical, as are temporal adverbs, including now, yesterday, tomorrow, after, and so on. In every practical situation, “a member must at the outset ‘know’ the settings in which he is to operate if his practices are to serve as measures to bring particular, located features of these settings to recognizable account” (Garfinkel 1967, 8). In the case of any situationally determined need (e.g. when there is a breakdown of some form), the taken-for-granted may itself be turned into something problemati- cal and thereby become the topic for the joint work at hand. This section exemplifies why indexical pointing or words are indeed only part of an encompassing signing event and thus require (presuppose) the other part to be anything at all.
Body Configurations Treated as Pointing
Words tend to be taken as signifiers for something else, including sensuous things and super-sensuous (ideal) meanings. In this same take, certain hand/arm/finger configurations (e.g. Fig. 6.4) are taken to be indexical (pointing) signifiers – and this is so irrespective of what there might be (or not be) in the prolongation of the con- figuration. The sign – a term frequently used inappropriately in lieu of signifier – actually is a relation between two parts of the material continuum, one part serving as a signifying event and the other as the signified event (see Chap. 5). Consistently, it has been suggested that pointing is constituted by the mutual contextualization of a body seen as pointing and some property of the surrounding space that can be seen as the target of the pointing. Thus, a body is pointing only when there is something pointed to (out); and there is something pointed to (out) only when there is a body pointing. That is, a particular arm/hand/finger configuration (Fig. 6.4) at best is a signifying event. To be part of an indexical signing (that has a function in the meet- ing generally and the resolution of the query–reply sequence specifically), there needs to be another part serving as its signified part of the world in flux. The hand/
arm movement is a pointing gesture when the intended recipients can see or find something that could serve as the signified event; and it is the possibly signified event that can be seen as motivating the hand movement.
In the depicted duration (Fig. 6.4), the other team members can find something in the extension of the hand/arm/finger configurations; and the verbal part of the expressive movement, though fragmentary, is consistent with the gestural part. Each provides the context for the other, thus contributing to the overall sense of the nature
of what is heard/treated as a query. Here we observe that there is a relation between what we generally might refer to as a form of text (any form of signifier, expression) and context. The indexical properties here mean that the relations constitute sense.
Text and context together thus form a contexture, which lends itself to different figure/ground configurations. A text, here a pointing gesture, makes sense when the appropriate context exists; if not, the movement may be taken as irrelevant to the situation (e.g. when it is treated as a grooming gesture). We cannot therefore speak of the meaning of a pointing gesture, for the pointing itself is a pragmatic reality only in the relation between body configuration and thing. This relation between recurrences, the sign proper, exists within the larger frame of what the exchange treats as a question; and indeed, it is within this larger frame of the field as a whole that the pointing event as such exists. The pointing is constitutive of the questioning, and the questioning motivates the pointing that is orienting participants in specious present in a particular way: here, first to the “higher numbers in the low percent- ages” and then to the “lower numbers.” The context for the “lower numbers” exists in the relation between the trajectory of pointing and what can be found to be hap- pening in its extension: the high percentages. Although the high percentages are not
Fig. 6.4 The body (sound, orientation, configuration) as expression of thought
articulated, there is a sufficient common history within the group that recipients can be assumed to fill in what is missing: the complement in the comparison. Thus, higher numbers are to low percentages as lower numbers are to high percentages.
This contrast is available in the change of body position, where the first pointing movement is inviting the intended recipients to orient up and left on the graph and the second movement invites orienting down and right.
Body Movements Treated as Iconic Reference
Consistent with the preceding subsection, a body movement is an iconic gesture symbolizing something else only when that symbolized something already exists for the recipient. Saying that a body movement is an iconic gesture presupposes a common ground where the original form can be seen to exist. Thus, for example,
“This line” (turn 9, Fragment 6.1) might be produced together with a pointing ges- ture. If the postdoc had been saying this while moving the bodily as he did, the nature of the line could have been ambiguous because there are two lines on the chalkboard, one in red, the other one in blue. Rather than or in addition to pointing, the person’s hand (or other body part) may move in a way that an iconic relation can be seen with a feature in the environment (Fig. 6.5). When a hand follows a line drawn on the chalkboard while the person says “this line,” then the index (pointing) exists not only punctually but also over an ensemble of pointing movements. The
“iconic elaboration” is not related to speech but to the ground (i.e. the lines on the chalkboard) over and against which the movement occurs. The continuity of the
Fig. 6.5 Indexical properties of an iconic hand movement perceived as a symbolic gesture
pointing, also existing in the continuity of the hand movement, decreases any pos- sible ambiguity. Not only are there many pointing events (a relation) but also the form of the movement has a (literal) parallel in the form of the movement trajectory (Fig. 6.5). Indeed, the pointing (symbolic) movement reproduces the movement that led to the production of the line in the first place; and the recipients of the expres- sion, to see hand and chalk line, have to have their eyes moving accordingly (see Chap. 2). This is the basis of the common sense: the sensation associated with the movement of the eyes along a particular trajectory. The iconic relation is the result of the similarity in the two movements, the one perceiving the line and the other one perceiving the hand moving along the line. That event of movement is common to the participants, it is common to their senses; and it thus contributes to the constitu- tion of a common sense. This is also what allows the contexture of “it pops up the right” and “the slope’s this way now,” the hand movements produced at the same time, and the chalkboard display (left graph, Fig. 6.1) to make sense.
“This line” and the hand movement let the curve be seen; and “this line” and the hand movement exist because of the curve. Even if the hand does not move to the line, as it does here, the similarities in shape between the trajectory of the hand and the curve brings the graph into the accented visible. But the point is not the line in itself. Instead, as the phrase describes, the line represents a number of retinal rods from which measurements were taken, and this number is the same as that repre- sented by the other curve. That is, the curve does not merely represent a distribution of the measurements on the rods but also a total number of measurements. The line together with that total number – which is also the total number of rods that the scientists making the measurement will have looked at and taken measurements from on a particular day – make for the signing event. That signing event (i.e. rela- tion) makes sense because of its place in the work as a whole, which is one of con- tinuous transformations. All of this work constitutes the contexture, wherein the graph serves as a text to relate to some other part of the research, and that relation itself being integral to and constitutive of the research.
In this example, the form already exists – though the event has PI1 drawing it visible to all. But the event of drawing, a work-related movement, may leave as its trace an index and simultaneously be a symbolic gesture. Thus, for example, subse- quent to the exchange with the postdoc, a further elaboration of the common ground comes to be produced and inscribed by means of an arrow (Fig. 6.6). The arrow, the trace and result of a movement, shows the direction of the movement that has occurred between the two data collection sessions but also takes the preceding exchanges as its ground, which thereby is further elaborated. The drawing of the arrow makes sense, even if little is said, because of what its production and percep- tion presupposes. More importantly, it is an elaboration of what was presupposed, the unarticulated ground against which the graph was to be read and now can be read. In this, drawing the arrow also constitutes a gesture; it is doing the work that could have been done by means of gesturing. The two movements are the same, only that in the case of the chalk line, there is an additional pressure forcing the chalk against the board. The context for the phrase is the contrast between the two graphs, each standing for the totality of hypothesized measurements of the relative
amount of (vitamin A1-based) rhodopsin that would been observed in the fish retinas in different phases of this meeting. Here, the drawing of the arrow functions like a gesture; it is the fixation of the hand movement that is producing it. It is the end result of the movement that has produced it; and it stands for the movement as a whole in a synecdochical relation – part of something that stands for the whole including the something. The arrow points to an increase; and that increase is visible in the contrast of the two graphs that is pointed to and constituted on the right-hand side of the graph (Fig. 6.6). That index is not outside of the graph but integral part thereof.
Indexical Properties of Verbal Expressions
It is quite apparent that for any talk to make sense some minimal practical under- standing of the immediate context is required. In particular, an expression – a word, phrase, or statement – makes sense in the context of what it signifies: together, the word, phrase, or statement and its signified event forms a sensible field. Whereas much of the research on the construction and negotiation of meaning inherently presupposes the absence of the latter, it is suggested here that without an already existing meaning, the sound is not a word (sign). About 5 min into the meeting, PI1
makes the following statement about the speed with which the measurements have to be conducted are the core issue.
Fragment 6.5
Yeah, weekly if not, you know like measurements every three or four days, like–
You take– what George did is a recapitulation of what’s been done historically, okay. That’s fine. What we’re after here is something that advances the area. Okay?
I wanna know in great detail what happens in that swing period. I wanna know, you know in … I wanna be able to measure the slope of that change, okay, so, um, that’s why, I am not completely satisfied that we went with two-week intervals this, this
Fig. 6.6 Pointing, diagramming, and elaborating the presupposed ground
year. But I mean we are stuck with that, we couldn’t go any more quickly then that, because we are just there are constraints we were– we are just ready too really tackle this.
It might be assumed that the talk that has occurred so far provides sufficient con- text for understanding what is happening here. But even observing the meeting from the beginning does not provide what it takes for the statement to make sense. Any person watching the videotape from the beginning will not understand (a) what the measurements are about, (b) what is being measured, what the significance of the measurement is, who “George” is, (c) what George has done, how the results of George’s doing are relevant in the present context (other than that the team wants to advance over what George has done), (d) what “the swing period” is, (e) how the fact that the swing period simultaneously refers to the physiological changes in the young anadromous fishes in advance of their ocean migration and the swing in the anticipated graph featuring the amount of porphyropsin in the rod-shaped retinal cells, (f) why the slope of the former is referred to in the next part of the statement (rather than the slope of any of the many other graphs that the lab produces), or (g) the fact that “George” did measure the porphyropsin levels weekly. Indeed, previous research shows that each elaboration itself requires a common ground the elabora- tion and explication of which may be queried ad infinitum.
For any saying to make sense, its content (the Said) has to be part of the common ground. This is so because the sound-word itself is not the signing event. Instead, and in analogy with the pointing gesture above, signing consists of the sound-word, functioning as a signifying event, together with its signified event. Thus, for exam- ple, “the slope of that change” and a graph structured such that a “slope” can be found (Fig. 6.2f) together constitute relevant text, the context of which includes the theoretical graph, the one that “George” had measured and published, the physio- logical changes in the fishes, the opening of the gates in the fish hatchery that releases the juvenile salmon, and so forth. The saying of “George” presupposes what it makes visible. In analogy with indexical pointing and iconic gesturing, this counterpart (context) to the word (text) already has to exist – that is, a relation between two events has to exist for the word to make sense in the occasion. This reading is consistent with the suggestion also quoted in Chap. 5 that “‘meaning’ is no more inherent in things as ‘objects’ in independence of human ways of behaving that it is inherent in the sounds and marks that are upon occasion surrogates for things in human behavior when the things are not directly present” (Dewey 2008, 305). That is, the signifying event, text-in-context, is getting something done. The phrase, “what George did is a recapitulation of what’s been done” brings into the accented visible that the results of an existing study is aligned with what has been done historically, including the Nobel Prize winning theory (Fig. 6.2f). In this func- tion, the phrase is part of the first type of the six sensible contextures: it is a signify- ing event. But the work it does is different. It is part of a sequence of phrases that together constitute the in-order-to motive for the work to come: advancing the field over and above what has been done in the past (exemplified in “George’s” work).
This issue then constitutes the current research in a particular way; and it contrib-
utes to creating the sense that everyone is participating in advancing a field. It is also part of another contexture: why this phrase is unfolding now, here, and thus. The two-week interval (the one also used in “George’s” research) is unsatisfactory, and, to advance the field, PI1 phrase is articulating the intention (the in-order-to motive) for the team to conduct “measurements every three or four days.” The phrase about George is a phase in a sequence of phrases that constitute the urgency of sampling frequently, for “almost instantaneous data analyses” and “for off-line modules to analyze data.”
Nothing Never Happens
The ideas of sensible fields and the associated unnoticed background expectancies essentially refer to {figure|ground} phenomena. This figure-ground hypothesis also means: nothing never happens (Bateson 1996, 51). When an expression does not make apparent sense, participants may reconsider the ground such that the expres- sion will make sense. Just as it may be significant that a possible signifying event is not cogredient in the present duration, some event actually present may not be sig- nificant. Whether some present event contributes to the dynamic of sense is a func- tion of that dynamic – the field in its unfolding. Thus, a sound, even if it does not appear in standard or alternative dictionaries, may have a function because it has a place in a sensible contexture. In this way, every act of preparing and producing a signifying event is a special aspect of the sensible field: in that sign-use is an expres- sive event. Everything a person is saying and doing potentially is significant, because for each member to the setting, the body movements of other persons are symptoms of their thoughts. Consider the opening of the fragment in Fig. 6.7, where we see a complex organization of talking, pointing, and corporeal moving. As the next para- graph shows, it exemplifies that for any participant the other’s body and any of its multifarious expressions may be a manifestation of a thought.
While the postdoc articulates that he does not quite understand something while simultaneously pointing to the chalkboard, PI1 is still oriented to the graph that he
Fig. 6.7 Even a non-word (“wa”), the possible beginning of a word may be indicative of an action to come