the postdoctoral fellow, who had joined the team only recently. His actual time col- lecting data, going through the many steps described above (Fig. 6.2), was much less than that of others; and so there were aspects of the research that he was unfa- miliar with and that therefore did not (yet) make sense. It thus is the sense (senses) of the body that goes with and comes from the involvement with all parts of the production that leads to the sense contexture that forms the body of sense; and this sense of the objects, production, and transformation of inscriptions is common to all those who are involved in the same experiment. It is this common sense that under- lies the feeling that the graph makes sense; and this feeling is deeper for the old timers on the team than for the relative newcomer. Indeed, it is in the course of the first year of this study that I also developed that sense – after having done all parts of the experiment myself.
statement about failing to understand why a graph has a particular shape is fol- lowed by an extended turn sequence providing a reason for it to be so.
Fragment 6.1
Grammatically speaking, an offering of a declarative statement of what is not understood (i.e. why the graph has a particular shape) opens the fragment; but it is treated as an invitation to provide the missing reason. The fragment as a whole thereby becomes an invitation–acceptance sequence. The point is not what an indi- vidual word, writing/drawing, or hand movement (gesture) “means”; and it is not even that there is an invitation–acceptance sequence. All of this unfolds in and con- stituting a phase of a research meeting in which the participants discuss next steps to be taken in their research and the variability within the data points that they col- lect. This phase has arisen from the preceding phase, and conditions the next
phase of the meeting that arises from it. That is, any statement makes sense within that continuously emerging and evolving field. With this statement, the postdoc makes available that he is missing some of the presupposed ground that appears to exist for to the others. He does not share in what otherwise is common sense, and, therefore, is not operating on the same ground. The statement marks the lack of the ground that allows the graph to make sense in the way it does to all other partici- pants in the meeting.
In this fragment, a statement here and also invites a reply as a result of which the lack of understanding has been removed (has been undone). The sensible field of the action (stating failure to understand) solicits another action (explication); it is designed to get another person to act not in any arbitrary way but to solicit a reply that resolves the lack of understanding. This future action is not caused by the one preceding it, for it is already beginning (as seen in Chap. 3) while the preceding action is in its course. Before that next statement occurs, this design and solicita- tion – from the perspective of the individual speaking – constitutes an in-order-to motive: but whether it will be realized remains open. This motive provides for one sense of the statement. As soon as the reply has provided for the missing back- ground, that same first statement may be used as a justification of the talk that fol- lowed: it has become a because motive. This motive provides for the sense of the talk (verbal actions) that follows the initial statement. In this situation, the “explica- tion” that unfolds over the course of the meeting fragment is not so much about something; it unfolds in order to provide whatever is required for the graph to make sense so that the meeting can go on. That is, the ground will have changed with the action; and that action will make sense with respect to the ground from which it arose and with respect to its effect on the field. This is what we have encountered in preceding chapters as the relational quality of talking.
Talking is also about the graph, what it stands for (that in turn stands for some- thing else) as much as the context together with which it makes a sensible field. But the function of the meeting fragment is the articulation of whatever is required for a common ground to exist so that the graph makes sense to all. The meeting fragment is not about the meaning making of the postdoc, or about PI1 scaffolding him into the making of meaning. The graph did not have another meaning; it always was taken to stand for and signify the number of cells for different A1/A2 ratios. Instead, the fragment depicts an occasion when and where heretofore non-articulated ground is brought into the accented visible. This event involves speaking, which extends the ground by accenting a relevant part and thus making it visible. This fragment thus is all about sense; and what did not make sense now makes sense. It is the graph that makes sense. In this way of phrasing what has occurred, we therefore also have a decentering of the subject, who has actively attended to and received an explication and therefore was both agent and patient in the coming of sense.
That the graph indeed makes sense to the postdoc after this exchange can be seen about 2 min later (after having talked about another possible graph) when he offers a prediction of how the distribution would look like when the young coho salmon (“they”) are “seawater-ready,” that is, when they have undergone complete physio- logical transformation for the life in the ocean where they will spend the next
2–4 years. According to the theory, the retinal rods would at that point contain mostly the vitamin A1-based rhodopsin leading to a mode of the distribution near 100% (there are still some rod-shaped cells that will not have all rhodopsin, leading to a tail of the distribution to the left). In the postdoc’s hand gesture, the change from the intermediate position is visible. The statements are twice confirmed, once associated with a short linear mark on the abscissa at 100% and a second time with a cross at about 90%.
Fragment 6.2
In this fragment, the exchange exhibits for everyone to see that the (shape of the) graph now also makes sense to the postdoc. But a closer look at the statement of the explication (i.e. the talk that provides the missing “why?”) shows that it too rests on the massive nature of common ground shared with the postdoc. For example, for the statement “this [red] line represents the same number of rods as this [blue] one” to make sense requires understanding that neither the line nor the individual points represent “the same number of rods.” Instead, the areas underneath of the curves each represent the same number of rods. Moreover, it requires as common ground the fact that each line represents a time point for the fish population, and that the blue line (i.e. the one higher on the right) is measured after the red line. It also requires as common ground everything else about the nature of the physiological changes generally and those related to A1/A2 rod composition specifically that those fishes undergo that migrate between freshwater and ocean. Thus, although the extended next turn has elaborated and explicated one part of what is common ground for everyone else, there is still a massive amount of non-explicated common ground.
Indeed, common ground always is required for any stretch of talk to make sense.
Even the coming-to-be-known absence of sense requires common ground, for otherwise it would be impossible to communicate that common ground does not exist. For us to know that the earth moves, it actually must not move, for it is only against a non-moving ground that any movement can be grasped (Husserl 1940).
This massive ground fundamentally exists in a common experience of the relevant segment of world. Common ground may be available indirectly, through the com- mon experiences that are the foundation of the metaphorical extension of experi- ences to other domains.
Different presuppositions (ground) may announce themselves in different appre- ciations. Different grounds give rise to different ways of describing the situation:
The change of context constitutes a change of contexture and, thus, to a different figure (text)/ground (context) configuration. In one instance in the laboratory, PI1
talked about the removal of a linear background signal, which made it appear as if the nearly Gaussian curve “sits on” a sloped line (Fig. 6.3a). PI1 suggested that the removal of the slope would move the maximum to the left while making a counter- clockwise hand movement as if he were turning the graph. However, PI2 and the research associate disagreed, saying that the peak would be moving to the right. For PI1, it did not make sense until his collaborators explained that the addition of a linear signal falling from top left to bottom right would add more to the left part of the Gaussian than to the right (Fig. 6.3b). The situation immediately makes sense to PI1. For the research associate and PI2, both trained in physics and both concerned with mathematical modeling, there was common ground. That sense might not have established itself had the two talked about it in terms of mathematical functions, where the maximum of the linear plus the Gaussian shifts with respect to the Gaussian, as seen from the derivative once the functions are written out.
Fig. 6.3 PI1 expects the removal of background signal to lead to a leftward movement of the maxi- mum, whereas the research associate and PI2 expect a rightward movement. (a) In the lab. (b) Model
Marking Common Ground
Common ground exists without having to be asserted or without participants actu- ally having to be aware of at the time. We are always living in a world shared with others, who, as we ourselves, are integral part of this world. This whole world makes for the common ground, which is taken for granted until possibly questioned. This ground allows words, statements, and actions to make (common) sense. Close atten- tion to the videotapes from the laboratory meeting shows that the taken-for-granted common ground also comes to be articulated on occasions when it is not problem- atic. Already in Fragment 6.2 there is an indication of the common ground for the doctoral student and PI1 when turn 19 anticipates (and perhaps provokes) the articu- lation of a particular graphical feature: the number of cells with A2 (turn 19), which in the case of the blue line (in the left-most graph of Fig. 6.1) decreases on the right hand side corresponding to an increase (as shown) in the number of rods containing a lot of rhodopsin (A1) (turns 21–25). The doctoral student articulates for all to hear what is to come next even before the current speaker (PI1) is saying it.
Fragment 6.3
Common ground may be marked after the fact such as in the fragment, which concerns the accuracy of the measurement with which the relative amount of A2
(A1) in any specific rod. The suggestion that each measurement is counted in a par- ticular bin arises from the description of the error. It is at that point that the state- ment – concerning some previously existing thought that the steps in the distribution graph represented bins (turn 9) – comes to be accepted in the next turn (PI1) fol- lowed by the drawing of two histogram bars for the beginning (first two steps of) the distribution (turn 10).
In this situation, the exchange makes visible to everyone that PI2 has been work- ing on the basis that the graph represented an ensemble of bins, a histogram. But this fact is unremarkable and goes without saying: it is common sense to take the step- like features of the line as the upper boundary of a histogram. We do not know whether PI1 actually has been aware of that at the time he was drawing the curve. It does indeed look like a linear function rather than a histogram. He has used the word histogram prior to getting to the chalkboard, where he then was drawing line graphs. Nor do we know whether the idea that there should be a series of bins/bars came to him during the exchange. Instead, the exchange has him confirm this form, followed by his drawing of two bars. The line as a representation of a sequence of bars now is the common ground, the shared sense of how the graph fits within their work. The research associate, too, confirms this sense, which was already articu- lated in the earlier description about the uncertainty of the median of the distribution.
Throughout the meeting, we observe instances in which the taken-for-granted common sense comes to be brought into the accented visible when required, here for understanding the differences between the two graphs. Once again, in the pro- duction of the context in the form of the specification of what precisely is measured, we observe the existence and marking of common ground. Just as the event has PI1
preparing to do the graph, after having drawn an abscissa and ordinate below what will have been the heading “Within Fish” (Fig. 6.1), he walks over to the other side of the board (around a desk blocking the direct path). There is a first specification of the “#” next to the first graph, “number of fish,” but the production comes to a halt, the “fish” comes to be wiped off (turn 2), and the unfinished statement “the number of ...” comes to be completed by the doctoral student (turn 3), immediately followed by the completing “rods” with greater than normal volume. The text then comes to be completed in the way it will stay therefore the remainder of the meeting.
Fragment 6.4
First, the text that now features below the earlier abscissa label literally consti- tutes the context – text that goes with other text – of the two curves (text) in this panel. It is an explicit articulation of the common ground against which to read these particular lines, indeed specifying what they stand for. Whereas the earlier
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.