First draft of a paper for the Symposium: ACreating Actionable Knowledge@, at the Academy of Management Conference in New Orleans, 21st August 2004

 

 

EXPRESSING AND LEGITIMATING >ACTIONABLE KNOWLEDGE=

FROM WITHIN >THE MOMENT OF ACTING=

 

                                                                                             John Shotter

 

 

ABSTRACT: As living, embodied beings, we cannot not be responsive in some fashion to the expressions of others (spoken, written, or otherwise), and to other kinds of events, occurring in our immediate surroundings. Communication begins in, and continues with, our living, spontaneous, expressive-responsive (gestural), bodily activities that occur in the meetings between ourselves and the others and othenesses around us. It is by our 1st-person expressions that we influence the actions of others. Our tellings are much more important that our reportings. Thus, as I see it, abstract and general theories are of little help to each of us in the unique living of our unique lives together, either as ordinary people, or as professional practitioners, or as action researchers. While the specific words of another person, uttered as a >reminder= at a timely moment as to the character of our next step within an ongoing practical activity, can be a crucial influence in its development and refinement B a point of central relevance for action research. Thus in this paper, I outline a distinction between >withness-> and >aboutness-talk/writing=: Aboutness (monologic)-talk, however, is unresponsive to another=s expressions; it works simply in terms of a thinker=s >theoretical pictures= B but, even when we >get the picture=, we still have to interpret it, and to decide, intellectually, on a right course of action. While withness (dialogic)-talk is a form of reflective interaction that involves coming into living contact with an other=s living being, with their utterances, their bodily expressions, their words, their >works=. It gives rise, not to a >seeing=, for what is >sensed= is invisible; nor to an interpretation, for our responses occur spontaneously and directly in our living encounters with an other=s expressions; but to a >shaped= and >vectored= sense of our moment-by-moment changing placement in our current surroundings B engendering in us both unique anticipations as to what-next might happen along with, so to speak, >action-guiding advisories= as to what-next we might do.

 

Keywords: Action research, expression, responsiveness, dialogue, >withness=-talk, practitioners. 

 

A(If I had to say what is the main mistake made by philosophers, including Moore, I would say that it is when language is looked at, what is looked at is a form of words and not the use made of the form of words)@ (Wittgenstein,1966, p.2, my emphases).

 

ACan only logical analysis explain what we mean by the propositions of ordinary language? Moore is inclined to think so. Are people therefore ignorant of what they mean when they say >Today the sky is clearer than yesterday=? Do we have to wait for logical analysis here? What a hellish idea!@ (Waismann, 1979, pp. 129-130).

 

There are a number of interlinked topics I want to discuss in relation to the production of Aactionable knowledge:@ In particular, I want to discuss what we might call the inner, psychological dynamics of two quite different styles of talking and writing, what I will call for short >withness=(dialogical)-talk and >aboutness=(monological)-talk B that is, I want to discuss the influence of these two styles of writing and talk in terms, not of the information they provide, but of their influence in orienting us toward taking certain lines of action, in generating a certain attitude of mind within us to do with how we organize or >orchestrate= our ways of relating ourselves to our surroundings. In other words, I want to discuss the difference between talk that >moves= us, and talk that leaves us >unmoved=. This discussion, however, entails the discussion of a number of other general issues. I will list them in turn: The issue of how we can create between us, in our dialogical or conversational involvements both with each other and with our surrounding circumstances, a shared >terrain=, >landscape=, or >inner world= of practical understandings that will enable us, in practice B knowing how we are >placed= in such a world in relation to everything around us B to interact with each other and with our circumstances in a flowing, unconfused, and unproblematic manner. There is also the issue of how, in the creation of such shared >worlds=, everyone=s voice can play a part, can count; that is, how can the >world= created in our dialogical exchanges be accounted by everyone within it as >my world=, the >world-I-am-at-home-in=, rather than as an alien world, the world of >those others=. To this we must add the issue of how we can give voice to these issues B and in particular, of the part played by our responsiveness to other peoples= envoiced activities within them B in such a way that we do so simply as just one of the envoiced bodies participating in such a shared world, without tending to privatize or to appropriate its resources to our own ends. While finally, with regard to action research, and the use of various, linguistically expressed claims within it, I want to discuss how people making such claims can be responsibly accountable for their actions to the others around them, that is, how they can justify their intellectual legitimacy B for, as I see it, what is distinctive about action research is, that it must deal with the particular circumstances in which it is situated, not in terms of its similarity to other situations, but in terms of its uniqueness. As Palshaugen (2001) puts it, in action research, researchers have to express their understandings and knowledge Aby entering into the language games of the practitioners... This is not simply a question of >simplifying= or >popularising=. It also requires the  linguistic competence to recreate the researcher=s knowledge in a way which >makes it work at work= B that is, in a way that make it useful to the practitioners@ (p.209). The solutions to action research problems are to be found in particular concrete details, not abstract generalities.

 

                                                                                    Two example accounts

 

Let me begin straightaway with an example of two quite different styles of talk/writing. Almost everyone is familiar with Oliver Sacks=s (1985) account of Dr P. B the man who mistook his wife for a hat. Sacks has developed a quite distinctive style of speaking/writing, not unconnected with science fiction, in an attempt to express the uniqueness of the afflicted people he depicts. About them he says: AWe may say they are travelers to unimaginable lands B lands of which otherwise we would have no conception. This why their lives and journeys seem to me to have a quality of the fabulous... [and] I feel compelled to speak of tales and fables as well as cases. The scientific and romantic in such realms cry out to come together B [and my friend] Luria liked to speak here of >romantic science=@ (Sacks, 1985, p.xi). So this is Sacks=s task in his writing: not only to depict >unimaginable lands B lands of which we otherwise have no conception=, but to do it in such a way that we ourselves can get a sense of what it would be like for us to inhabit such a land. Wow! What a task! Yet, to an extent, as those who have read his work I=m sure will agree, he succeeds in doing it. How? Before I turn to my two examples, let me set the scene: Dr P. was a musician of distinction. He came to visit Sacks, however, as he began to make odd visual mistakes, for example, not recognizing students by their face, but only by their voice. After his initial consultation with Sacks, Sacks went to visit Dr P. in his home, taking with him a collection of test materials, among them, the Platonic solids. Dr P. had no visual trouble with them at all: a cube, a dodecahedron, and Adon=t bother with the others,@ he said, AI=ll get the eikosihedron too=. The Sacks then presented him with a rose. Here is one account (of my devising) of what happened next:

 

I had a rose in my buttonhole, so I now removed it, and gave it to him to study.

Dr P. described the flower in geometric, abstract terms.

I asked him to tell me what it was, and he said that he found it difficult to say.

He made some rather off-target suggestions which, when I asked him to confirm them, he did.

I asked him to smell it, and then he said that it was a rose.

I concluded that he was visually deficient in perceiving shapes other than geometrical forms.

 

Here is Sacks=s (1985) account:

 

AI had stopped at a florist on my way to his (Dr P.=s) apartment and bought myself an extravagant rose for my buttonhole. Now I removed this and handed it to him. He took it like a botanist or morphologist given a specimen, not like a person given a flower.

>About six inches in length=, he commented, >A convoluted red form with linear green attachment=.

>Yes= I said encouragingly, and what do you think it is, Dr P.?=

>Not easy to say=. He seemed perplexed. >It lacks the simple symmetry of the Platonic solids, although it may have a higher symmetry of its own... I think is could be an infloresence or flower.=

>Could be?= I queried.

>Could be,= he confirmed.

>Smell it,= I suggested, and again he looked somewhat puzzled, as if I has asked him to smell a higher symmetry. But he complied courteously, and took it to his nose. Now, suddenly, he came to life.

>Beautiful!= he exclaimed. >An early rose. What a heavenly smell!= He started to hum >Die rose, die Lille...= Reality, it seemed, might by conveyed by smell, not by sight... Visually, he was lost in a world of lifeless abstractions... He could speak about things, but did not see them face-to-face@ (pp.12-13).

 

What=s the difference? Well, at the purely surface level (I will introduce a much >deeper= level in a moment), Sacks=s account is longer; it contains many more (irrelevant?) scene-setting details; more metaphorical talk (of >like= and >as if=); more evaluative talk (>extravagant=; >perplexed=, >courteously=, etc.); more >possibility=-talk (>it seemed=, >might=, etc.); more direct speech and dialogical exchanges. It makes clear that he is issuing requests and invitations to Dr P., not commands. Furthermore, Sacks expresses his evaluative judgments in relation to Dr P., i.e., how he stands in relation to Dr P.=s responses, in a metaphorical, poetic fashion B >he was was lost in a world of visual abstractions... he did not see [things] face-to-face=. And at a perhaps less obvious level B when compared with my account, in which I present a sequence of facts like >beads on a string= B his account has a rhythm to it, its is >paced=, it gives rise to emphases and pauses B in short, as we read each utterance within it, a fairly specific expectation is responsively aroused in us as to what might happen next (Tannen, 1989)[i]. Whereas, with my contrived account, while we might, so to speak, >get the picture= quite accurately, it arouses very few such specific directional expectations. In short, my account is essentially a 3rd-person report, while Sacks=s is a 1st-person telling.

 

But what is the functional or operative difference between these two ways of talking/writing? How is it that Sacks, by the use of allusive, evocative, gestural, and emotionally expressive forms of talk and text, achieves (at least in my opinion) a greater intellectually legitimate account of Dr P.=s >reality= than I do? B a legitimacy present in the way it provides us with Aactionable knowledge,@ i.e., orients or directs us toward the next >right step= to take in practice in Dr P.=s treatment, in a way that my account does not. 

 

To emphasize this last point, consider voicing the utterance: AThe cat sat on the mat, the mat was red, the cat was black.@ Again, we can get the picture quite clearly, but B ASo what?@ How might we act in relation to such an account? If it arouses any expectations at all, they are so vague and non-specific that they lack any action-guiding force. But if the utterance is voiced in the following manner: AThe cat...(pause)... sat... (pause)... on the mat,... (pause)... the mat... (pause)... was RED!? (emphatic intonation)...(pause)... the cat was (...) BLACK!@ Then, is it the beginning of a ghost story, or of a murder story, or of a mystery to do with black cats and red mats? Whatever it is the beginning of, we feel it is the beginning of something we might like to follow further, we feel engaged by it, >arrested= or >struck= by it.

 

At the end of the consultation at Dr P.=s home, Dr P. said to Sacks:@Well, Dr Sacks... Can you tell me what you find wrong, make recommendations?@ AI can=t tell you what I find wrong,@ Sacks replied, Abut I=ll say what I find right. You are a wonderful musician, and music is your life. What I would prescribe, in a case sch as yours, is a life which consists entirely of music. Music must become the center, make it the whole, of your life@ (p.17). Sacks=s thought in relation to Dr P. was this: AVisually, he was lost in a world of lifeless abstractions. Indeed he did not have areal visual world, as he did not have a real visual self. He could speak about things, but he did not see them face-to-face@ (p.13, my emphasis). In other words, Dr P. had lost that capacity to respond to living movement expectantly, i.e., in terms of expectations of what should come next. The visual flow of things thus expressed nothing to him. Instead of in terms of visual anticipations and expectations, he held the flow of his life together musically, in terms of a rhythmic flow of sound.

 

This failure of Dr P. suggests a distinction to us, a distinction between >withness-> and >aboutness-thinking/talking/writing=: Withness (dialogic)-thinking is a form of reflective interaction that involves coming into living contact with an other=s living being, with their utterances, their bodily expressions, their words, their >works=. It gives rise, not to a >seeing=, for what is >sensed= is invisible; nor to an interpretation, for our responses occur spontaneously and directly in our living encounters with an other=s expressions; but to a >shaped= and >vectored= sense of our moment-by-moment changing placement in our current surroundings B engendering in us both unique anticipations as to what-next might happen along with, so to speak, >action-guiding advisories= as to what-next we might do. While aboutness (monologic)-thinking, however, is unresponsive to another=s expressions; it works simply in terms of a thinker=s >theoretical pictures= B but, even when we >get the picture=, we still have to interpret it, and to decide, intellectually, on a right course of action.

 

About this kind of writing, Palshaugen (2001) very correctly notes: Ait might seem that the activity of writing has this inherent tendency towards generalisation, while the spoken word B the >living word= B is inherently specific and anchored in the practical. This is indeed a too hasty conclusion. The point is rather that the process of writing makes it particularly clear to us that when the words used are not about that practical context within which the linguistic expressions are made, the meaning of the words becomes >theoretical=.  In other words, the meaning of the words used derives from some other phenomenon than the practical context in which the words are being used. The meaning is so to speak created >out of context=. In contrast, a language game which takes place within the very same practical situation as that language game is about, gains B by dint of the very interplay between the actors use of words and the practical circumstances B a kind of specificity  which a language game >out of context= is not capable. In this sense, there seems to be a kind of inherent force towards generality B towards theory B in writing, in the written word@ (p.210).

 

It is in being able to >move= us, to elicit from us, creatively, responses not previously expressed, that >withness= styles or forms of talk/writing can do what >aboutness= styles cannot. They can work both to >deconstruct=-in-practice our current practices, and enable us to re-construct them selectively. And they can do this by guiding us toward eliminating previously unnoticed misleading tendencies, and by directing our attention toward ones of a more enhancing kind. To repeat: their force in practice, is that they can bring previously unnoticed, alternative, intrinsic possibilities to our attention. As George Steiner (1989) puts it:AThe authentic experience of understanding, when we are spoken to by another or by a poem, is one of responding responsibility. We are answerable to the text... morally, spiritually, and psychologically (a threefold accountability)... those who are not executants can be respondents: answers in action... all new possibilities are in their creation in a sense implicitly critical: they say that things might have been otherwise... they are also critical in the sense that, in being articulated the writer, painter, musician selects and rejects possible forms of expression, measuring them up against an inner, felt sense of a >something= that is there needing expression... they are also critical in the sense that in their formation the writer brings their the >real presence= of their other >textual friends= to bear in such articulations... in their practice, they reject, alter, omit, elaborate aspects of their >friends= work... we read each other through the rival refractions of both others and our own inventions... the critical motion or movement in one=s practice...@ (pp.6-11, my emphases). In short, what the voices of others can do for us that we cannot do for ourselves, is that their A>otherness= which enters into us makes us other@ (p.188) B they can arouse a dialogically-structured response in us, they can create possibilities for change within us that we cannot create within ourselves alone.

 

But how is this possible? Sacks=s practical recommendation to Dr P., one that Dr P. could put into the practice of his everyday life, clearly arose as a result of Sacks=s >withness=-thinking, and relied on the >withness=-thinking still available to Dr P. in the musical sphere for Dr P. to grasp how to apply it. But how did Sacks know that this was the right thing to say to Dr P.?[ii]

 

 

                                                                                Bakhtin and the dialogical

It is at this point, that I must turn toward issues of a more general kind: Especially crucial to the routine, taken-for-granted flow of our everyday activities is our immediate and spontaneous understanding of the meanings of other people=s utterances within that ongoing flow of activity. The work of two people in particular is relevant to our gaining an understanding of how our use of language works within this flow, and the part played in it by our spontaneous, living, expressive and responsive, bodily activities: those two are Wittgenstein and Bakhtin, although many others B e.g., Garfinkel, Goffman, Mead, and Merleau-Ponty B are of great importance also.

 

To turn to Bakhtin=s (1986) contribution first: He introduces us to the idea of a previously unnoticed kind of understanding spontaneously occurring within our ongoing involvements in our ordinary, everyday, practical activities, a relationally-responsive understanding, that can contrasted with the representational-referential forms currently more familiar to us. As he puts it: AAll real and integral understanding is actively responsive, and constitutes nothing more than the initial preparatory stage of a response... And the speaker himself is oriented precisely toward such an actively responsive understanding. He does not expect passive understanding that, so to speak, only duplicates his or her own idea in someone else=s mind (as in Saussure=s model of linguistic communication...). Rather, the speaker talks with an expectation of a response, agreement, sympathy, objection, execution, and so forth (with various speech genres presupposing various integral orientations and speech plans on the part of speakers or writers)@ (p.69, my emphasis). In other words, what Bakhtin is emphasizing here, is our Aactionable= understanding of another=s speech. Saussure=s passive account in terms of inner mental representations, in terms of >getting the picture=, is no use to us in guiding us, say, toward an appropriate answer to a question.

 

Bakhtin=s (1986) focus on what is presupposed in the various speech genres open to us in our daily exchanges with those around us, and the dialogically-structured character of those exchanges, confront us with some very tricky epistemological problems, if we are asked to characterize what it is that people must know if they are to perform skillfully and unproblematically in the many everyday settings in which they live out their lives. For, to be an autonomous agent, able to act freely in accord with one=s needs and desires in a person=s society, the person must be able if challenged to give good reasons for their actions, they must be able to account for them within the Avocabulary of motives@ that currently has >currency= within their society (Mills, 1940; Scott and Lyman, 1968). As Garfinkel (1967) puts it, people=s everyday activities reflexively contain within themselves methods (ethno-methods) for making those selfsame activities Avisibly-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-purposes, i.e., >accountable=, as organizations of commonplace everyday activities@ (p.vii), and a part of what it is for children to grow into the social life of those around them, is to gain both as sense of the relevant norms, and the ethno-methods by which they instantiate them in their conduct.

 

We ask a child: ADo you know your name?@ The child answers: AYes.@ AThat=s not what I meant,@ we say, ACan you tell me it?@ AYes,@ the child answers again. Exasperated, we say: AWill you tell me your name?@ ANo,@ the child says. Finally, we command him to tell us: ATell me your name.@ AJohn,@ he says. There is, of course, an implicit ethics at work in our questioning, and we usually phrase them in terms of requests and invitations rather than commands as we do not want to violate a person=s right to privacy and autonomy. Indeed, in presenting a request, speakers/actors give up their autonomy, while recipients of the request retain their=s in being given the opportunity to grant or refuse the request (see Goffman, 1972). I raise these issues here, not because I particularly want to go into ethical details, but just to show in general the nature of the detailed complexity waiting in the background to be exhibited in misunderstanding and confusion in even the simplest of exchanges, if one does not respond to them in normally expected ways. What is wrong with the child=s responses here, is that he is not responding accountably, he is not responding, so to speak, with any Asense of occasion.@ He lacks the orientational understanding that could give him a sense of his place in a larger scheme of things.

 

It is this vast background of ceaselessly ongoing, spontaneously expressive and responsive, living bodily activity B the background against which all our more self-conscious and deliberately conducted activity takes place and is made sense of and judged B that has until recently gone unnoticed in all our previous philosophies. Descartes (1637/1968), for instance, completely ignored it. Following Galilieo=s claim B that the book of Nature Ais written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it@ B he suggested that our thinking was merely a matter of calculating: AThere can be nothing so distant that one does not reach it eventually, or so hidden that one cannot discover it by those long chains of reason­ings, quite simple and easy, which geometers are accustomed to using to teach their most difficult demonstrations@ (p.41). To such a calculating-agent, our surroundings are completely action-neutral, so to speak; we must first do our inner calculations on the basis of certain assumptions B some perhaps ethical and political, as well as others of a more factual kind B and then act according to the results we obtain. But, as Wittgenstein(1981) notes B and here I suggest you imagine yourself driving at speech along a multi-lane interstate highway B AWhat determines our judgment, our concepts and reactions, is not what one man is doing now, an individual action, but the whole hurly-burly of human actions, the background against which we see an action@ (no.567). For, whatever it is that we do to cope with driving in such conditions, the one thing we don=t do, is to turn our attention away from the road while we think what next to do; we peer even more intently ahead (and into the rearview mirror), and as we peer this way and that, we judgmentally evaluate the options available to us for >going on= with our journey B a relational-dynamics, so to speak, is at work in helping us gain a sense, while in motion, of where to go next.

 

To put this issue B to do with the kind of thinking (and knowing) involved in judging and evaluating while in motion the best movements next to make B into the context of our language intertwined exchanges with others, we can return to Bakhtin. Let us take two utterances, Bakhtin (1984) takes the two utterances: >Life is good=, >Life is not good=. About them, he remarks: ABetween these two judgements there exists a specific logical relation: one is the negation of the other. But between them there are not and cannot be any dialogical relationships; they do not argue with one another in any way... Both these judgments must become embodied, if any dialogic relation is to arise between them and toward them..@ (p.184). He then goes on to take two identical utterances: >Life is good=. >Life is good=. Here, he notes, that if they might be Aone singular judgment written (or pronounced) by us twice... But if this judgment is expressed in two utterances by two different subjects, then dialogic relationships arise between them (agreement, affirmation)" (p.184).

 

But what is a dialogic relationship compared with all the other kinds of relationship already familiar to us. Bakhtin (1984) insists that dialogic relationships exist only between utterances of different voices, that is, in the unfolding activity of responsive speaking; they Aare reducible neither to logical relationships nor to relationships oriented semantically toward their referential object... They must clothe themselves in discourse, become utterances, become positions of various subjects expressed in discourse, in order that dialogic relations might arise among them@ (p.183). Thus, we might say, following Bakhtin (1984), just as Alanguage lives only in the dialogical interaction of those who make use of it@ (p.183), and does not have (pace Linguistics) a separate, self-contained existence as an intellectual object outside of it, so we might also say that Adialogic relations live only in the unique unfolding of unique verbally informed interactions as they occur, in time,@ and they also cannot be classified in static, pre-established categories at all.

 

 

                                                                      Living movements and living relations

 

In other words, we are beginning here to limn out a novel account of thinking, a kind of thinking that takes place, not like geometric reasoning, not in episodic moments in terms of static, spatially arrayed shapes and forms, not in terms of measuring spatial like up against spatial like to achieve a correspondence or not B a style of thought that, metaphorically, is not best described as a kind of >seeing=. But a style of thought that only takes place in motion, that works in terms of felt, living, inner, expressive-responsive >movements= unfolding in time B abobe, I have called it >withness=-thinking to contrast it with our more usual style of >aboutness=-thinking. Clearly, Steiner=s (1989) account above articulates something of this sense when he notes that Athe writer, painter, musician selects and rejects possible forms of expression, measuring them up against an inner, felt sense of a >something= that is there needing expression... [and] in their practice, [people] reject, alter, omit, elaborate aspects of their >friends= work... we read each other through the rival refractions of both others and our own inventions... [these are] the critical motion or movement in one=s practice@ (p.11).

 

But if we are to understand what Steiner is gesturing toward here in more than a superficial, metaphorical fashion, we must delve more deeply into the nature of living movement and change. The kinds of changes available in and to dead mechanisms are all simply either what might be called locomotive changes, i.e., changes of place or position in space, or configurational changes, i.e., changes of rearrangement among a constant set of self-contained components. While the kinds of changes relevant to living, growing, and developing beings are quite different. First, it is important to note that even the most complex of >man-made= mechanisms, computers, for instance, are constructed piece by piece from objective parts; that is, from parts which retain their character unchanged irrespective of whether they are parts of the system or not. In other words, all such assemblages are sustained as unified structures by all the parts being joined by third entities (such as glue, nails, etc.) into unified structures B just as an automobile is welded or nut and bolted together. We can say that the parts in all such structures are externally related. But living beings are certainly not constructed piece by piece in this way. On the contrary, they grow into existence as third forms of life from, initially, a special kind of meeting between two other such forms. And they then develop from simple individuals into richly structured ones in such a way that their >parts= at any one moment in time owe not just their character, but their very existence both to one another and to their dynamic relations with the >parts= of the system at some earlier point in time B that is, their directional history is just as important as the >logic= of their relations in their growth. Because of this, it is impossible to picture, i.e., represent, living wholes in terms of spatial diagrams, for such wholes contemplated at a given moment are always incomplete. They are always on the way to being other than they are. In other words, they necessarily have both a temporal as well as a spatial aspect and thus, by their very nature, >point= both from a past and toward a possible future (see Shotter, 1984, pp.42-43). We can call the >parts= in such dynamically related structures participant parts; and unlike the self-contained parts of mechanical systems, they exist only in terms of the internal relations between themselves and other participant parts.

 

But, as if this was not complicated enough, we must say more about the nature of living growth and change. For it is important to accept that there is always a kind of developmental continuity involved in the unfolding of all living activities, such that earlier phases of the activity are indicative of at least the style of what is to come later. In other words, all living activities, it seems, give rise to what we might call identity preserving changes or deformations. Just as acorns only grow into oak trees and not rose bushes, and eggs only produce chickens and not rabbits, so there is a characteristic >style= to every aspect of their unfolding in time B indeed, their possible ends are already >there= in their beginnings. In other words, as Wittgenstein (1953) puts it, Ameaning is a physiognomy@ (no.568). That is, not only are the changes signifying meaning dispersed throughout a dynamic whole, in its total aspect, not centered in any particular part of it, but to the extent that meaning is signified in the >look= of things, on their >face=, we can look to what the look is looking at, what it is being responsive to, what it is expressive of, what it is related to, and so on. Thus, in having internal rather than external relations to their surrounding circumstances like this, they have an indicative or mimetic, i.e., a gestural, relation to them (even if their surroundings are invisible to those witnessing only the activities) B in other words, rather than simply an >add-on= extra, they are always participant parts in a larger whole. This is a point of paramount importance. For it means that meaning as such is always immanent in all such relations. For all our spontaneous, expressive-responsive bodily activities, including our words in our uttering of them, >point beyond= themselves, both toward events or aspects in their surroundings, and toward a limited set of possibilities in the future.

 

However, all such immanent meanings are only realized in the meetings between two or more living beings. As Mead (1934) puts it: AThe mechanism of meaning is present in the social act before the emergence of consciousness or awareness of meaning occurs. The act or adjustive response of the second organism gives to the gesture of the first organism the meaning it has@ (pp 77-78). But consider the special nature of the inter-activity in such meetings. In being spontaneously responsive to each other in such meetings, instead of one person first acting individually and independently of an other, and then a second  replying by also acting individually and independently of the first, we act jointly, as a collective-we. In being responsive while speaking to their listener=s facial expressions, intakes of breath, and other signs of understanding or not, they act also as co-listeners, while in issuing these expressions of understanding listeners act as co-speakers. And we do this bodily, spontaneously, in a >living= way, without having first >to work out= how to respond to each other. But this means that when someone acts, their activity cannot be accounted as wholly their own activity B for a person=s acts are partly >shaped= by the acts of all the others around them. Thus, because the overall outcome of any exchange cannot be traced back to the intentions of any of the individuals involved it, the >dialogical reality or space= constructed between them is experienced as an >external reality=, a >third agency= (an >it=, a >something=) with its own (ethical) demands and requirements: AThe word is a drama in which three characters participate (it is not a duet, but a trio)@ (Bakhtin, 1986, p.122) B in other words, it is as if this third agency, this something, has a >voice= of its own to which dialogue participants must also respond. This is where all the strangeness of the dialogical begins[iii].

 

Let us explore this strangeness further: Firstly, we perhaps need to note that such inter-activity cannot be simply described as a sequence of actions (for it is not done by individuals; and cannot be explained by giving people=s reasons), nor can it be simply described as behavior (as it cannot be explained in terms of causal principles either); it constitutes a distinct, third sphere of dynamically intertwined activity, sui generis, with its own distinctive properties. It involves a special kind of nonrepresentational, sensuous or embodied form of practical-moral (Bernstein, 1983) understanding, which, in being constitutive of people=s social and personal identities, is prior to and determines all the other ways of knowing available to us. What is produced in such dialogical exchanges is a very complex >orchestration= of not wholly reconcilable influences B as Bakhtin (1981) remarks, both >centripetal= tendencies inward toward order and unity at the center, as well as >centrifugal= ones outward toward diversity and difference on the borders or margins. Their complex intertwined nature makes it very difficult for us to characterize them: they have neither a fully orderly nor a fully disorderly structure, neither a completely stable nor an easily changed organization, neither a fully subjective nor fully objective character. As a complex dynamic >orchestration= of many different kinds of influences, they lack specificity, they are only partially determined: they are just as much material as mental; just as much felt as thought; in being >spread out= amongst all those participating in them, they are >non-locatable=; they are neither >inside= people, but nor are they >outside= them; they are located in a >dialogical space= where >inside= and >outside= are, seemingly paradoxically, one. Due to their living continuity, they do not allow for the spatialization of time into a sequence of events each with a separate >before= and >after= (Bergson), nor do they allow for separable agencies or effects; they consist only in meaningful wholes which cannot divide themselves into separable parts.

 

Indeed, it is precisely their lack of any pre-determined order, and thus their openness to being specified or determined by those participating within in them in practice (while usually remaining quite unaware of having done so), that is their central defining feature. And this, I suggest, is the nature of our everyday social realities. They have, as Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger all say, a primordial nature, where by that they mean, not that we must orient ourselves toward primitive times back in history to understand human communication aright, but that, Merleau-Ponty (1968) puts it, Aphilosophy... must recommence everything, reject the instruments reflection and intuition had provided themselves, and install itself in a locus where they have not yet been distin­guished, in experiences that have not yet been >worked over=, that offer us all at once, pell-mell, both >subject= and >object=, both existence and essence, and hence give philosophy resources to redefine them. Seeing, speaking, even thinking (with certain reservations, for as soon as we distinguish thought from speak­ing absolutely we are already in the order of reflection), are experiences of this kind, both irrecusable and enigmatic... the insistent reminder of a mystery as familiar as it is unex­plained, of a light which, illuminating the rest, remains at its source in obscurity@ (p.130)[iv]. And this is precisely what makes this sphere of activity interesting to us, for at least the two following reasons: 1) to do with in situ practical investigations, i.e., action research, into how people actually do in fact manage to >work things out= effectively between themselves, and the part played by the ways of talking/writing we interweave into them in so doing; but also 2) for how we might refine and elaborate these spheres of talk intertwined activity, and how by an appropriate use of such talk, we might extend them into novel spheres as yet unknown to us. I can now usefully turn to a discussion of action research and the nature of actionable knowledge.

 

 

                                                      Action research and the nature of actionable knowledge

 

I began with a comparison of two styles of writing: 3rd-person reportings and 1st-person tellings, a comparison between talk/writing that leaves us >unmoved= with that which >moves= us. I then went on to discuss the nature of our living relations to each other in an effort to illuminate the reasons for the differences between these two styles. Let me now turn to action research, and to the relation of these two styles of expression to the question of the creation of Aactionable knowledge:@ While objective, reporting-style of writing may serve an important authoritative function in setting the outside limits, so to speak, within which an institution must function. To the extent that action research has to operate within the ordinary, ongoing, everyday life activities of organizations, institutions, businesses, and all the other everyday spheres of worklife, each unique in its own way, it is the second telling-style that will give rise to actionable knowledge. While the first style attempts to capture the nature of life in another world independent of us, it is the second that enables us to enter into another world, with a life of its own, not independent of us, but in relation to us B thus to gain a sense of its movements relative to our=s.

 

While 3rd-person reports of research, represent important regularities and de-contextualized universals, i.e., facts, about the groups in question researched into by outsiders to the groups, 1st-person tellings work in a different way. They are related to the experiences of insiders to those groups, and they work so that in their telling they >move= listeners into paying attention to previously unnoticed particularities within the >world= of the insiders B and it is in this way, in making the unnoticed noticeable, that, although the cases described might seem to be utterly unique and particular, they can in their telling give rise, nonetheless, to transferrable or actionable knowledge.

 

Let me now turn to a more detailed account of these two styles. Following Tannen (1989), we can call the first style, an uninvolved or disengaged style of writing, while we can call the second style, Sacks=s style, an involved or engaged style. With Merleau-Ponty=s remark above in mind B about installing ourselves in a locus where our experiences have not yet been >worked over= B we can note that an uninvolved style of talk/writing works in terms of finished and fixed categories, and that, furthermore, it does not >look for= any special response from its recipients B it is in the closed style of >the cat sat on the mat=. We get the picture, but the picture still requires an interpretation if we are to act upon it. While Sacks=s account works in terms of unfinished, fluid or flexible varieties of possibilities. And while he leaves it open as to how Dr P. might respond B for he issues invitations not commands B it is the relation of Dr P.=s unique responses to Sacks=s invitations, that are revealing of the unique nature of Dr P.=s >world=. Furthermore, in engaging us, Sacks=s style of writing is >moving=, we are >moved= by it in the sense that provides us with a shaped and vectored sense of Dr P.=s >world=, i.e., a sense of how, practically, to find out >way about= within it, thus to >go on= with him in practical ways that make sense to him (Wittgenstein, 1953).

 

But we can give an even more detailed account of their in fact very distinctive natures, an account that brings out into the open their ethics and politics. Let me turn toward this task by first giving the two styles even more extensive names. I will call the first style, uninvolved style, a monological-retrospective-objective style of writing, and the other, involved style, a dialogical-prospective-relational style of writing (Shotter, 1996).         

 

In monological-retrospective-objective writing, our official, academic style, we are talking/writing to other fellow professional academics, about what happened earlier, when we were involved with those whose activity is now the topic of our talk. Our task is to provide our fellows with a linguistic representation of the nature of that activity, but now from outside that involvement, looking back upon it as a completed process. In separating the activity from the people whose activity it is, and from its surrounding circumstances, we would be separating it from the practical part it played in their lives, its point from them. But this is not our concern. Our concern is with what logically >can be said= about the patterning or form of that activity, for our search is for an order that we can claim to have >discovered= in it[v]. The force of what we say or write in such a style is located in our professional relationships, and is directed toward identifying that to which we all, as professionals with a certain set of methodological commitments, should attend. It is aimed at producing decontextualized explanatory theories, i.e., representations of states of affairs that enable those in possession of them to predict and control the events they represent. As Descartes (1968) put it in outlining methods of Aproperly conducting one=s reason in the science,@ the purpose (telos) implicit in these methods, is to Amake ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature@ (p.78).

 

In dialogical-prospective-relational styles of writing, however, we would be talking/writing to our readers of the character of our ongoing involvements with certain other people, as if from within that involvement B while both looking back on what had been achieved so far, and forward prospectively, toward the possibilities open to us for our next >steps=. Our concern in such talk/writing would be with attempting to >show= or >make manifest= to readers (metaphorically) how they might, justifiably, be able to make sense of the character of such involvements. What I say or write originates in the interactive relationships from within which I speak, and is directed toward instructing readers, as ordinary everyday persons now engaged or involved in the relationship in some way (perhaps watching a videotape of it, or reading a transcript, or whatever), in noticing and making within in similar such connections and distinctions as I made originally as a participant researcher within it. Where, quite other than my individual mastery and possession of the topic of my research, the telos in such activity is directed toward all engaged with it becoming simply participants with a more fully articulated sensibility B able both to notice what others let pass them by, and to express both what they notice and its (relational) role in our practices.

 

Let me now turn to the issue of action research in the light of these two styles of expression: Our first monological-retrospective-objective style of writing may serve an important authoritative function in setting the outside limits, so to speak, within which the institutions we want, in action research to study, must function. It clearly links in with >aboutness=-thinking discussed above. However, to the extent that action research has to operate within the ordinary, ongoing, everyday life activities of organizations, institutions, businesses, and all the other everyday spheres of worklife, each unique in its own way, it is the second that will give rise to actionable knowledge, i.e., to knowledge as to how, in the course of our particular movements, in the course of our particular actions within such institutions, a shaped and vectored sense of where next we might move. While the first style attempts to capture the nature of another life in another world independent of us, it is the second that enables us to enter into another=s world, and to get the sense of a >something= with a life of its own, not independent of us, but in relation to us B that is, to get to know >it= in its own terms rather than in our terms, to let >its voice= be heard speaking within us. Indeed, as Steiner (1989) outlines above, it is the >real presence= within us of others=s >voices= that enables us to undertake certain critical motions or movements in our own practices, i.e., to undertake with the help of these voices, >with=-ness thinking. But how can we establish such relations within ourselves, how can we elicit such >moving= expressions from the others and othernesses around us? This is where Wittgenstein=s (1953) philosophy plays a crucial role.

 

 

                                   The role of Wittgenstein=s (1953) philosophical writings in action research.

 

While modern philosophy has seen itself as the handmaiden or under-labourer (John Locke) to science, and by the use of reason and argument, sought to provide the >foundations= for our further inquiries in a particular field, Wittgenstein=s (1953) later philosophical writings have a quite different set of aims: He wants to inquire into the range of possible ways of making sense open to us in the many different practical activities we share in our everyday lives together. Indeed, in so doing, he makes use of many of the self-same methods available to us in daily life for developing and creating our own ways of doing things. But he writes of these methods in such a way as to lead us, when in fact involved in the practices he depicts, to attend to what usually passes us by unnoticed, to attend, we might say, to what is in fact visible to us, but usually unremarked on explicitly. He thus describes the nature of his philosophical investigations as follows: AWhat we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings; we are not contributing curiosities however, but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes@ (no.415).

 

And he calls the remarks he uses to draw our attention to what is, in fact, already known to us, >reminders=. For, as he says: ASomething that we know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are supposed to give an account of it [cf. Augustine], is something we need to remind ourselves of@ (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.89)[vi]. His philosophy, then, is of a practical-descriptive kind. It is a philosophy without a particular subject-matter, aimed outwards toward helping us to become more actively related to subtle, previously unnoticed aspects of our surroundings in the present moment, rather than inwards toward thinking, prior to any action, as what features we should approach or address in our inquiries. This, clearly is a very different kind of goal from the theoretical goals pursued in the classical, metaphysical philosophies of the past. Instead of providing preliminary theories or models as to the nature of the world around us and our knowledge of it, his aim is to alert us to what in actual fact is occurring in our own involvements with each other, and with our surroundings, which make such theorizing possible. Thus his kind of philosophy Asimply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. B Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us. One might give the name >philosophy= to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions@ (no.126).

 

But where and how can Wittgenstein=s new philosophy find its purchase on practical affairs? Consider in actual practice, a project manager talking to a foreman on the shop floor: AWhat we need to do is to move those machines over there (gestures, looks to see if the manager is looking in the same direction), to here (gestures). Then that (gestures, looks, etc.) process will be more directly connected to this one (gestures, looks, etc.). Is that OK? (expectation of a nod, or >uh, uh=)@ It is in the interweaving of their talk and their pointing and gesturing, that speakers engage their audience in an imagined undertaking, in something not yet achieved, and enlist them in validating it as a feasible undertaking. It is the (gestural) power of people=s embodied living expressions to >call out= embodied responses from those around them, and in so doing, begin a new style of relationship, inaugurate a new language-game, that we have failed to take proper account of previously. Wittgenstein (1980) draws our attention to this issue thus: AThe origin and primitive form of the language-game is a reaction; only from this can more complicated forms develop. Language B I want to say B is a refinement, >in the beginning was the deed= [quoting Goethe]@ (p.31, my addition). AThe primitive reaction may have been a glance or a gesture, but it may also have been a word,@ he notes (Wittgenstein, 1953, p.218). ABut what is the word >primitive= meant to say here?@ he asks, (Wittgenstein, 1981). APresumably that this sort of behavior is pre-linguistic: that a language-game is based on it, that it is the prototype of a way of thinking and not the result of thought@ (no.541)[vii].

 

And his Areminders@ can serve just this function in our practices, by leading us to focus on novelties, on new but previously unnoticed possibilities for >going on= available to us in our present circumstances, but present to us only in fleeting moments (see also Palshaugen, 2001, on the important function of >reminers=). If we can allow ourselves to be >struck by= these novelties, then we can often go on, not to solve what had been seen as a problem, but to develop new ways forward in which the old problems become irrelevant. Thus their main point is to do with how we might institute, within our already existing work practices, new (dialogical or conversational) practices leading to our own increased awareness or mindfulness of the details of these practices, thus to elaborate or refine them. The value of his results is to be found in our being able to conduct our practices B both our everyday practices and those of an academic kind B in a less confused and misleading manner. This is where Wittgenstein=s comments quoted above B concerning the crucial, prototypical role of our expressive-responsive, bodily reactions to events B are central. For it is not in repetitions or regularities that we can find the source of change in our daily affairs, but in Aonce-occurrent events of being@ (Bakhtin, 1993).

 

Indeed, it is only in our 1st-person expressions, in our tellings, that we can teach a practice, can communicate the nature of a practice to another person. Practices cannot be taught by drilling other people in the rote learning of rule statements. It is a question of whether our 1st-person expressions are accurately linked to a mysterious realm of the speaker=s >mental states=, but the fact that they tell us in their expression what the speakers anticipations anticipations and expectations are as to how we should >go on= in the current situation, how we respond. We cannot this kind of teaching by stating rules and principles to each other, Aif a person has not yet got the concepts, [we] teach him to use the words by means of examples and by practice. B ... I do it, he does it after me; and I influence him by expressions of agreement, rejection, expectation, encouragement. I let him go his way, or hold him back; and so on,@ says Wittgenstein (1953, no.208). ANot only rules, but also examples are needed for establishing a practice. Our rules leave loop-holes open, and the practice has to speak for itself@ (Wittgenstein, 1969, no.139) B for it is in >calling out= particular spontaneous bodily responses from us to, that they can exert a constitutive influence on us, and >tell= us of the kind of anticipations regulated by the rules.

 

Thus, in teaching someone (a child or an adult) a number series, we say such things as AHere, >this= is the >right continuation=, and here >this=, and so-on and such-and-such. But Awhat >such-and-such= is I can only show in examples. That is, I teach him to continue a series..., without using any expression of the >law of the series=; rather, I am forming a substratum [i.e., background] for the meaning of algebraic rules or what is like them. [And within this substratum or background] he must go on like this without a reason. Not, however, because he cannot yet grasp the reason but because B in this system B there is no reason. (>The chain of reasons comes to an end=) And the like this (in >go on like this=) is signified by a number, a value. For at this level the expression of the rule is explained by the value, not the value by the rule. For just where one says >But don=t you see...? the rule is no use, it is what is explained, not what does the explaining@ (Wittgenstein, 1981, nos.300, 301, 302). In other words, just as a sport=s coach, piano teacher, or craft skills instructor succeeds in teaching their pupils a practice, by the use of appropriate comments or remarks at crucial moments in their pupil=s activity B >Not like THAT, but like THIS! B so Wittgenstein tries to teach us his philosophical practice, in his style of writing. For crucial in his writing is his appeal to our capacity to imagine ourselves acting from within various everyday circumstances. Almost every remark contains the phrase: AImagine a language...,@ AImagine someone...,@ AImagine how one might...,@ or talk of an Aimage@ of some kind. In other words, his writing is evocative, allusive, or suggestive. As in the involved style of writing I outlined above, it is expressive of, or gestures toward, either in an indicative or mimetic way, something other than or beyond itself.

 

While we may >feel at home=, so to speak, in talking this way amongst friends and family members, when we must speak in >official= contexts amongst strangers, in contexts where we cannot assume a taken-for-granted background of spontaneously responsive understandings, we find it difficult to talk in this way. As Palshaugen (2001) notes: APractitioners will over and over again find themselves in a situation where they in practice perform a >theoretical= kind of discourse, even though their theoretical understanding of themselves as practitioners, makes them blind too see this (theoretical) point@ (p.210). Indeed, after groups within an enterprise had spent time on discussions of what problems they faced, and deciding priorities and writing down how each problem might be solved, and who should be responsible and what should be the time limits. They were very surprised when told by Palshaugen and his group that this very practically oriented process, although it Aliterally made a good show on paper, it was nevertheless a very >theoretical= approach to practical problem-solving@ (p.211). It did not orient them toward, i.e., remind them, of what in their current practices they already knew and did well.

 

 

                                     Conclusions: the legitimation of action research >in the moment of acting=

 

To relate all of this to action research and to its legitimation as a >research science=, we can raise the following question: With what kind of science should it be contrasted? Hanson (1958) distinguishes between classical, finished sciences and research sciences. Unlike our everyday life activities, finished sciences can be conducted wholly within a disciplinary discourse that can be set out in terms of a theoretical system consisting in a single system of ordered statements representing changes in an idealized Asubject matter@ in terms of momentary configurations. That is, they can be represented in a stable, pictorial manner in an uninvolved and un-involving style of writing. Research sciences, however, are more like our everyday activities; they cannot be conducted within such a strict disciplinary discourse. Speakers do not >regiment= or sanction each other=s utterances in a research conversation in terms of a limited set of foundational metaphors or >grammatical pictures=. To inquire into possibilities not yet actualized, research sciences must be conducted conversationally.

 

But this does not mean that just >anything goes=. What can be said at any one moment in such conversations cannot be arbitrary. As with sport=s coaches and music teachers, as with managers and shop floor foreman, the moment of utterance, or Ainteractive moment,@ is crucial. For everyone=s utterances must be responsive utterances: they must be responsive to things and events in the speakers=s surrounding; but they must also be responsive to the utterances of pervious speakers, and be answerable for, and to, a speaker=s present position, as well as being addressed to particular listeners. Only if researchers can participate in a shared, dynamic grammar of felt, moment by moment changing expectations, that they can >go on= with each other in unconfused ways in researching into what they nave not yet fully discovered. For, what is possible in researcher=s conversation (open dialogic) entwined activities, is precluded within a disciplinary discourse B the exploration of the multidimensional and detailed richness of uniquely new >things= or >events=.

 

In this respect, not only is it more accurate to compare action research with research sciences than with classical sciences, but action research finds its legitimacy in the same sphere of human conduct as all the rest of the sciences B in people being responsibly accountable for their own actions to the others around them. This is because, prior to, and during the conduct their experimental manipulations and the making of their observations, a community of scientific researchers must all be able to communicate amongst themselves in nonmisleading, unconfusing ways about uniquely new possibilities not yet actualized; and to do this, they need ways of checking out each other=s claims then-and-there, in the ongoing context of their employment. Just as in everyday life situations, scientists also must be able to distinguish between that for which they are responsible, and that which merely happens, irrespective of their agency. For, only if they can sense, when acting in accord with their theories of what the world might be like, whether the results of their actions accords with, or depart from, the expectations engendered by their theories, can they ever put such theories to empirical test. People=s sense of their own responsibility for their actions is, then, at the very basis of science itself. Scientists lacking any sense of their own participation in events occurring around them would be unable to do experiments. In other words, scientists in natural scientific research face communication problems not unlike those faced in action research. So, although Sacks=s style of writing may seem >anecdotal=, may seem to be merely about single, peculiar particularities, it is an unavoidable style of communication that all scientists must indulge in, if they are to instruct one another in how the categories of their theories should be used and applied B for the categories of such un-involving, such >non-moving= forms of talk, do not apply themselves.­

 

References:

 

Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogical Imagination. Edited by M. Holquist, trans. by C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin, Tx: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Edited and trans. by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. by Vern W. McGee. Austin, Tx: University of Texas Press.

Bernstein, R.J. (1983) Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. Oxford: Blackwell.

Descartes, R. (1968) Discourse on Method and Other Writings. Trans. with introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Goffman, E. (1967) Remedial work. In Interaction Ritual. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp.138-149.

Goffman, E. (1972) Alienation from interaction. In Relations in Public. Harmondsworth: Penguin, p.113-136.

Hanson, N.R. (1958) Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McGuiness, B.F. (Ed.) (1979) Ludwig Witttgenstein and the Vienna Circle: Conversations Recorded by Friederich Waismann. Oxford: Blackwell.

Mead, G.H. (1934) Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Merleau‑Ponty, M. (1968) The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press.

Mills, C.W. (1940) Situated actions and vocabularies of motive. American Sociological Review, 5, pp.439‑452.

Palshaugen, O. (2001) The use of words: improving enterprises by improving their conversations. In Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (Eds.) The Handbook of Action Research. London: Sage Publications, pp.209‑218.

Sacks, O. (1986) The man who mistook his wife for a hat. London: Duckworth.

Scott, M.D. & Lyman, S. (1968) Accounts. American Sociological Review, 33, 46‑62.

Shotter, J. (1984) Social Accountability and Selfhood. Oxford: Blackwell.

Shotter, J. (1998)  Telling of (not about) other voices: >real presences= within a text. Concepts and Transformations, 3, pp.77-96.

Shotter, J. (2001) Wittgenstein and his philosophy of beginnings and beginnings and beginnings. Concepts and Transformations, pp.349-362.

Steiner, G. (1989) Real Presences. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Tannen, D. (1989) Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, L. (1966) Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, L. (1969) On Certainty. Edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, translated by Dennis Paul and G.E.M Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, L. (1980) Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, vols. 1 and 2. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, L. (1980) Culture and Value, introduction by G. Von Wright, and translated by P. Winch. Oxford: Blackwell.

Wittgenstein, L. (1981) Zettel, (2nd. Ed.), G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H.V. Wright (Eds.). Oxford: Blackwell.

 

Notes:

 

 


[i]. I need to emphasize here that I am drawing more extensively than is obvious from Tannen=s (1989) book, in which she outlines the most important concept of what she calls Ainvolvement strategies@ in our speaking and writing. See also in this connection, Goffman=s (1967, pp.113-136) discussion of Ainvolvement obligations.@

[ii]. And we might add here, how could Sacks definitely justify to us, if challenged, that he did the right thing?

[iii]. See accounts of Ajoint action@ in Shotter (1980, 1984, 1993a and b).

[iv]. Wittgenstein (1980) articulates a similar thought in his remark: AWhen you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there@ (p.65).

 

[v]. It is worth noting here, is the relation between this style of writing, and the account in Marx and Engels=s (1970), The German Ideology, of the fact that Athe whole trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit in history (as Stirner calls it) is thus confined to the following three efforts. No.1.... separating the ideas of those ruling [from the empirical conditions in their surroundings]... No.2... bringing an order into this rule of ideas, prove a mystical connection among the successive ruling ideas...[this to make the ideas Aself-determining]... No.3. To remove the mystical appearance of this >self-determining concept= it is changed into a person or persons]... >thinkers=, >philosophers=, the ideologists... Thus the whole body of materialistic elements has been removed from history and now full rein can be given to the speculative steed@ (p.67).

[vi]. AThe work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose@ (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.127).

[vii]. For an account of this aspect of Wittgenstein=s (1953) later philosophy and his focus on the importance of unique, first-time events, see Shotter (2001).