32.1141, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Arundale (2020)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-32-1141. Tue Mar 30 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.1141, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Arundale (2020)

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Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2021 17:39:32
From: Stephanie Lerat [stephanie.lerat at univ-lorraine.fr]
Subject: Communicating & Relating

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36623037


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-605.html

AUTHOR: Robert B. Arundale
TITLE: Communicating & Relating
SUBTITLE: Constituting Face in Everyday Interacting
SERIES TITLE: Foundations of Human Interaction
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Stephanie Lerat, University of Lorraine

SUMMARY

Robert B. Arundale’s 400-page manuscript, Communicating & Relating:
Constituting Face in Everyday Interacting (C&R) deals with how we interact and
relate. The eleven chapters are divided into two main parts: Communicating,
dealing with the Conjoint Co-constituting Model of Communicating (Chapter 1-6)
and Relating covering Face Constituting Theory (Chapters 7-11). The first part
addresses the question “How do participants constitute turns, actions, and
meanings in everyday interacting?” The second part seeks to answer the
question “How do participants constitute relating in everyday interacting?”.

The introduction outlines the four ways in which Arundale’s account diverges
from traditional accounts, namely with respect to what constitutes human
communication, how human social systems are defined, what is social and what
is individual in communication and finally what compromises human relating.
The author’s stated intention is to encourage readers to explore the two
alternative frameworks presented, the Conjoint Co-Constituting Theory Model of
Communicating (CCMC) and Face Constituting Theory (FCT) and to consider them
with respect to other accounts.

The opening chapter, entitled “Two Projects”, gives a general overview of the
two conceptual frameworks, the CCMC and the FCT, thus preparing the reader for
the rest of the book. An emphasis is put on the divergences from traditional
approaches to communicating and relating. The choice of the terms
communicating and relating as opposed to communication and relationship is
discussed, foregrounding the dynamic nature of the processes. 

In the second chapter, “What is Social in Communicating?”, the first three of
nine assumptive commitments are introduced and explained. The Dialectical
Commitment accentuates the non-dualistic approach adopted. This commitment
holds that there is a link between what is social and what is individual in
communicating. The Social Systems Commitment states the non-additive nature of
social systems and that they are interactively organized. The Communicating
Commitment describes communicating as being sequential interaction yielding
non-additive interdependence between the participants. A consequence of this
commitment is that within the CCMC, the minimum unit for communicating is a
dyad.

Chapter 3, “The conjoint co-constituting model of communicating”, introduces
the fourth commitment, the Temporal Commitment, which states that interacting
is interactionally achieved in a sequential time frame. This leads to a
discussion of the core principle of the CCMC, the Adjacent Placement
Principle. This principle specifies that the sequential time frame of
communicating evolves with adjacent turn construction units. The distinction
between provisional (without knowledge of others’ interpretings, a term used
instead of interpretation to underline the dynamic nature of the process) and
operative interpretings (based on another participant’s display of
interpreting), central to the CCMC, is drawn in this chapter, underlining the
requirement of three adjacent utterances for operative interpreting. Two key
sets of processes are presented: the Sequential Interpreting Process (SIP) and
the Recipient Design Process (RDP). These distinctions are illustrated with an
extract of Marty and Loes’s conversation.

The fourth chapter, “What is individual in communicating?”, focuses on the
individual aspects of communicating and introduces the fifth and sixth
commitments. The Individual Resources Commitment holds that meaning at an
individual level is never accessible to anyone else. The Distinction/Relation
commitments underlines the requirement of establishing distinctions in order
to generate relationships. The SIP and RDP are developed further. An extract
of Curt, Mike and Phyllis’ conversation serves as a basis to illustrate these
principles.

The fifth chapter, “Conjointly Co-constituting the Social and the Individual
in Communicating” addresses the three final assumptive commitments. The
Conjoint Co-constituting/Individual Resources Commitment highlights the fact
that individual resources allow for conjoint co-constituting and vice-versa.
Commonality is discussed as a non-additive property distinct from common
knowledge, specifically insofar as it requires inter-action in order to be
established. The Conjoint Co-Constituting/Social Systems commitment affirms
that social systems are organized thanks to conjoint co-constituting and that
co-constituting requires stable social systems. The final commitment, the
Human Systems Commitment asserts that human systems are non-additive systems
which are constantly evolving through communicating. The key concepts from
this section are illustrated by an extract of Sissy and Gramma’s conversation.

In the last chapter of the first section, “Conjoint Co-Constituting
Implications”, the fact that within the CCMC sociality and individuality are
not separable is emphasized. The CCMC results in the new concept of
non-reductive interactionism, entailing that what is under study is not an
entity but dynamic processes. A number of key concepts are reviewed and
commonly held positions are compared to their conceptualization in C&R. The
chapter closes with a review of other existing models of human communication
and their incompatibility with the CCMC, such as Information Transmission
Models, Encoding/Decoding models, and Interactional achievement models.

In the opening chapter of the second part of the book, “Conjointly
Co-Constituting Relating”, the question of relating is explored beginning with
a consideration of Baxter & Montgomery’s (1996) account. C&R differs from
their account because the connection and separation dialectic is considered
the primary dialectic of relating. In the FCT, both connection and separation
are always present in some form. The chapter closes with an overview of
accounts which are not consistent with the FCT , such as those which consider
relating in terms of self and other, social cognitions/emotions, socially
oriented factors, power and distance, affiliation and disaffiliation.

The objective of Chapter 8, “Face Constituting Theory”, is to offer a formal
statement of the FCT. The four key assumptions of the FCT are outlined: 1) the
social/individual dialectic, 2) the primary role of the connection/separation,
3) Face, understood within the connection/separation dialectic as
culture-general and 4) interpretings of face as conjointly co-constituting
operative interpretings of connection/separation. Six alternative
non-compatible accounts of face are examined. The chapter closes by
considering how participants evaluate interpretings in general as well as with
respect to face threat and im/politeness which, although possibly examined
with the FCT, do not play a key role in its theorization.

In the ninth chapter, “Conjointly Co-Constituting Relating and Face in
Everyday Interacting”, the methodological requirements enabling an
observer/analyst to articulate interpretings are established and the
importance of drawing on available additional information is underlined. Three
detailed examples of such interpretings are proposed. For Marty and Loes, the
role of repair in relating is considered. For Curt and Mike, relating with
respect to tension is examined, and for Gramma and Sissy separation is
explored. 

Chapter 10 proposes an overview of different methodological considerations,
drawing on Krippendorff (1970) and considering the four procedures (observing,
generating data, producing evidence and interpreting results) with respect to
the CCMC and FCT. Seven requirements in methods which use the two
conceptualizations are outlined and different existing methods (discourse
analysis, ethnography of communication and membership categorization analysis)
are considered. Five types of data (aggregational data, network data,
elementary communication data, interactional achievement data and conjoint
co-constituting data) are examined to conclude that conjoint co-constituting
data, is the only data which can provide information regarding non-additive
properties and thus inform research within the CCMC and FCT.

The final chapter, “Conjoint Co-Constituting, Constituting Face and Future
Research”, is organized around four questions which can serve to compare
conceptual frameworks, and which are articulated with respect to C&R. The
response to the first question, “What is entirely new in C&R, with no
counterpart?”, is the dialectical commitment, the distinction between
provisional and operative interpretings in inter-action and the non-reductive
interactionism. As an answer to the second question, “What has been reframed
in C&R?”, the response is communication as the process of communicating and
the notion of face. For the third question, “What has been avoided or
eliminated in C&R?” the suggested response is avoiding a focus on only the
social or the individual, the absence of the participant’s perspective as well
as considering non-additive social systems as entities or forces. For the last
question, “What can be done from here using C&R?”, five themes for future
research are proposed.

EVALUATION

Arundale brilliantly achieves his stated two-fold goal of introducing the
reader to the CCMC and FCT and of encouraging the reader to compare them to
other accounts. The fact that throughout the book aspects of the CCMC and FCT
are compared with other conceptualizations helps the reader understand the
specificities of his account and allows the reader to formulate their own
judgements. This book outlines a radically different way of approaching the
concepts of communicating, relating and face than what is suggested in the
more traditional accounts. C&R is a clear, stand-alone discussion of the CCMC
and FCT. It does not assume familiarity with Arundale’s previous work nor
prior knowledge of the two conceptual frameworks. However, basic familiarity
with the other approaches described assists in understanding its departure
from these accounts.

Arundale’s work calls into question many other approaches--for example the
notion of face--and draws extensively on existent work. As he outlines in the
last chapter of his work, there are many avenues for future research, such as
developing first-order descriptions of face (culture-specific) which would
develop understanding surrounding communicating and relating. Arundale’s work
is dense and many examples are employed throughout the text. For the reader,
it would be helpful to have even more examples of analyses, beyond the three
in Chapter 9, carried out using CCMC and FCT-consistent methods to illustrate
even further the power of the conceptualizations in accounting for relating in
interacting.

This book would be a welcome addition to researchers and graduate students
interested in communication, conversational analysis and face. The writing
style and frequent use of examples makes the arguments easy to follow. For
those less familiar with conversational analysis, as it is what Arundale calls
“applied conversational analysis” the is slightly less accessible. 

Overall, Communicating & Relating is a clear argument for a revolutionary way
of considering human interaction with pertinent examples illustrating key
notions.

REFERENCES

Baxter, L. A., & Montgomery, B. M. (1996). Relating: Dialogues and Dialectics.
New York: Guilford.

Krippendorff, K. (1970). “On Generating Data in Communication Research.”
Journal of Communication 20 (3): 241–69.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Stephanie Lerat is an Assistant Professor at the ATILF Laboratory (Université
de Lorraine/CNRS). Her research interests include speech acts and hashtags in
English and French-language digitally-mediated communication and intercultural
communication.





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