In “Intentional action and side-effects in ordinary language” (2003), Joshua Knobe reported an asymmetry in test subjects’ responses to a question about intentionality: subjects are more likely to judge that a side effect of an agent’s intended action is intentional if they think the side effect is morally bad than if they think it is morally good. This result has been taken to suggest that the concept of intentionality is an inherently moral concept. In this paper, we draw attention to (...) the fact that Knobe’s original interpretation of the results is based on an abstract rendering of the central scenario that is significantly different from the vignettes presented to the survey participants. In particular, the experimental vignettes involve temporal and social dimensions; they portray sequences of social actions involving an agent and an interlocutor, rather than a lone agent making a momentary decision in light of certain attitudes. Through textual analyses of a set of vignettes used to study the Knobe effect, drawing on ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and discursive psychology, we show that there are many differences between the experimental conditions besides the moral valence of the side effect. In light of our textual analyses, we discuss vignette methodology in experimental philosophy and suggest an alternative interpretation of Knobe’s original experimental results. We also argue that experimental philosophy could benefit from considering research on naturally occurring social interaction as an alternative source of empirical findings for discussions of folk-psychological concepts. (shrink)

Recently there has been interest in examining how language is involved in the phenomenon of ‘manipulation’. This paper suggests that investigators, rather than treating ‘manipulation’ as an entity, should examine how communicators might engage in discursive acts of manipulating. To this end a distinction is made between manipulating information and manipulating people. Examples of both types, taken from the Portuguese Parliamentary Celebration of the April Revolution of 2004, are examined in depth to show how acts of manipulating can be performed (...) in different ways. By focussing on acts, we show that supposed ‘cognitive control’ over the audience's minds is not necessarily involved in manipulating; it is shown how investigators can provide evidence that manipulators act ‘knowingly’ when they mislead. We argue that the study of manipulating, and the distinction between manipulating information and people, provides a critical approach to the topic of political oratory. (shrink)

This study is the first to address the ways in which male perpetrators of intimate partner violence talk about memory in their reports of their IPV and how these are used to manage their accountability for the violence. Drawing on and developing the discursive psychological literature on talk about memory, which highlights how such talk is used to perform practical actions within interactions, a discourse analysis is conducted on interviews with six male perpetrators of recent, multiple incidents of IPV who (...) were undergoing treatment. The analysis identified the varying ways in which memory was used: first, claims of forgetting were used to avoid answering difficult and potentially incriminating questions; second, claims of clear memories were used to position partners as problematic and responsible for violence; and third, claims about simultaneously remembering and forgetting were found. The implications of these strategies for managing identity and accountability are discussed. (shrink)

This study analyzes discussions from online language teacher education to understand how conversations between monolingual and bilingual preservice teachers (PSTs) in the US create and delimit structural constraints on teachers’ agency, (re)positioning teachers’ capacity to act in the instruction of emergent bilingual students (EBs). Employing positioning theory within a critical discursive psychology approach, findings demonstrate how bilingual PSTs pushed back on structural constraints introduced as potential barriers to achieving linguistic pluralism in monolingual teachers’ posts, asserting teachers’ agency by simultaneously positioning (...) themselves and others as capable and responsible for education of EBs. These findings inform theoretical understandings of agency as a discursive construct and offer insights for teacher educators as they conceptualize the role of discursive exchanges in developing PSTs’ understanding of structures and agentive possibilities regarding the equitable education of EBs. (shrink)

The present study provides an ethnomethodologically informed respecification of intention in the context of architectural education. The analyses focus on the ways in which participants deal with the relation between formulations of intention and designed objects. Claimed mismatches between stated intention and design make relevant instructional sequences elaborating alternative ways of understanding the design and possible routes by which articulated intentions could have been realized. The practice of topicalizing intentions appears to be a technique by which aspects of architectural competence (...) are made visible and instructed. In particular, the practice makes otherwise unattended aspects of the design process accountably available for assessment and remark. Furthermore, the complexities of architectural consequence in relation to individual design decisions are addressed as an instructional matter. The study expands existing work on intention ascription and avowal by examining a setting where participants deal with the intentional status of designed objects. It is argued that the analyzed assessment sequences are shaped and organized with reference to the particularities of architectural knowledge as well as to the educational character of the activity. Their basic logic, however, is grounded in ordinary understandings of action and intentionality. (shrink)

This article briefly considers the convergence and divergence between Discursive Psychology and Conversation Analysis, in relation to cognition in talk-in-interaction. It explores the possibilities for research that begins from, rather than argues for, a post-cognitive perspective. Drawing in particular on an analysis of a single fragment of conversation, I suggest three analytic areas for researchers concerned both with talk-in-interaction and with cognition: i) the social organization of cognitive displays and embodiments; ii) the production of taken-for-granted culture through ‘internalized social norms’; (...) iii) cognitions made manifest in interaction, as the cognitive infrastructure upon which talk-in-interaction depends. After post-cognitivism, research in these areas can contribute both to scholarly understanding of cognition, and to the emerging discipline of CA. (shrink)

L’analyse du discours est à la recherche d’un nouveau souffle théorique. De leur côté les sciences cognitives ont depuis les années 1980-1990 intégré les questions du contexte et de la culture et s’ancrent actuellement, en France tout du moins, dans une histoire intellectuelle qui reconnaît désormais la place faite aux activités mentales dans la modélisation de la production langagière. La rencontre semble inévitable et sur le terrain encore étroit et nouveau que constitue cette articulation, certaines recherches tentent de rendre compte (...) de la dimension cognitive dans le discursif et inversement. Plusieurs directions se dessinent en France actuellement, et parmi elles une articulation discours-cognition mettant à contribution la phénoménologie de la perception et la cognition sociale. L’analyse du discours connaît en effet actuellement un tournant cognitif reposant sur le réexamen de la question du contexte dans les disciplines texte-discours. L’appel aux données de la cognition, parce qu’il oblige le chercheur à repenser la notion de contexte, semble en effet à même de fournir des éléments et des regards nouveaux sur cette réalité complexe. Le domaine « discourse and cognition » est représenté par la théorie des « mental models » qui constitue une version faible de la cognition dans le cadre d’une « sociocognitive approach of discourse ». Nous proposons une version plus robuste s’inspirant des approches de la cognition sociale qui reposent sur des choix théoriques concernant la nature de l’esprit et la définition du contexte comme environnement matériel. Cette perspective est fondée sur l’idée d’une cognition externe, dans le cadre du paradigme externaliste, postulant l’extériorité de l’esprit, dont la version la plus séduisante pour notre propos est l’hypothèse de l’« active externalism » de Clark et Chalmers. Nous proposons à partir de là pour l’analyse du discours une conception du contexte comme continuum entre interne et externe : le contexte intègre les données environnementales qui se constituent à la fois de cadres internes eux-mêmes informés par les données externes, et des réalités extérieures de notre environnement matériel concret. Nous définissons, dans la perspective de la cognition sociale, les prédiscours comme des données propagées par une mémoire cognitivo-discursive, résultat d’un retravail du concept de « mémoire discursive » et distribuées par un certain nombre d’agents internes et externes comme les artefacts ou les technologies cognitives. Choisissant de parler de distribution plus que de partage, nous optons pour une version dynamique de la collectivité, où c’est l’individu lui-même qui est collectif, et qui appartient à un ensemble où s’articulent agents humains et non humains : c’est la mémoire du cockpit défendue par Hutchins. Dans le cadre d’une telle approche, relevant de la cognition distribuée, nous prenons en compte les éléments objectaux et techniques dans le processus de construction des discours. Nous proposons alors l’idée d’une technologie discursive pour désigner des techniques, artefacts ou objets qui configurent, formatent, et informent les prédiscours en vue de l’élaboration des discours. Outils linguistiques et discursifs constituent alors des contributeurs cognitifs au discours et doivent être pris en compte dans les théories méthodes d’analyse du discours. (shrink)

The aim of our study is to show the ways in which family members coordinate their minds, bodies and language in a functional and goal-oriented manner when they are jointly remembering shared events that they had experienced together as a group. So far, little attention has been paid to the influence that the interplay of multiple behavioral channels have in collaborative remembering in small groups. Our goal is to specifically examine the central role that direct questions have when they act (...) as embodied reminders through the interanimation of multiple behavioral channels in family interactions. The video data for analysis comes from an ongoing project on how collaborative remembering takes places among small groups of Argentinean Spanish speakers as each group recalls a vacation taken together several years ago. (shrink)

Psychologists have studied paranormal belief for over a century, but have been concerned with belief in the paranormal rather than disbelief. However, disbelief in the paranormal is a position in its own right and, for many, by no means a self-evident position. An avowal of disbelief is, therefore, a social phenomenon that may involve some interesting discursive work. This article examines the discourse of self-ascribed ‘sceptics’, and analyses how they warrant their expressed position when faced with an ostensibly paranormal event (...) for which they cannot provide a ‘normal’ explanation. We show how, for example, through the use of ‘definitely/something’ constructions, they appeal to an explanation that exists in principle, though the details are not available to them. Such devices can be seen as social and discursive forms of belief maintenance, in that they are designed to maintain a social position established through an avowal of belief. (shrink)