meaning & intention

[Cecilia E. Ford]

In addition to looking at Du Bois' work, I would urge scholars of meaning
and intention to look at the ambiguities that follow from Charles Goodwin's
observations regarding the organization of perturbations in the flow of
speech and the gaze behavior or potential recipient/addressees of that
speech.  One thing that follows is that although sound perturbations and
cut-offs of sound production may occur without intention, they can also be
"deployed" to interactional ends.  Now this has to do with the purposeful
(though not  premeditated or self-conscious) organization of the joint
social action in and around which language functions (overwhelmingly, if
one takes the ontogenetic or phylogenetic perspective).

Charles Goodwin  1981  Conversational organization: Interaction between
speakers and hearers.  Academic Press.

-Ceci



Cecilia E. Ford
Department of English
600 N. Park St.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison  WI 53706    USA

ceford at facstaff.wisc.edu