Antropologicheskij forum, 2019, no. 42

A Review of CHARLES GOODWIN, CO-OPERATIVE ACTION. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 521 pp.

Dmitry Kolyadov
European University at St Petersburg
6/1А Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
9 Tuchkov Lane, St Petersburg, Russia
dkoliadov()eu.spb.ru

Abstract: In Co-Operative Action, Charles Goodwin has made an attempt to summarize the results of his previous studies of face-to-face interaction in diverse settings. In order to accomplish this task, he proposed the framework of co-operative action—the reuse with transformations of any sign complex (e.g. a previous utterance, material artefacts, a hopscotch grid, etc.) left by present coparticipants or absent predecessors. Goodwin argued that cooperative action lies at the heart of not only small interactional episodes, but of culture as a whole. He has demonstrated how meaning and action at the microlevel is built co-operatively and, on the basis of microanalysis, proposed explanations and hypotheses concerning more general phenomena: the emergence of conventional signs, the production of and transmission of knowledge, and the organization of cognition.

Keywords: theory of meaning and action, indexicality, semiosis, practice, multimodality, distributed cognition, intersubjectivity.

To cite: Kolyadov D., ‘A Review of Charles Goodwin, Co-Operative Action. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 521 pp.’, Antropologicheskij forum, 2019, no. 42, pp. 231–241.

doi: 10.31250/1815-8870-2019-15-42-231-241

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/042/kolyadov_2.pdf