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Embodied Activities

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Embodied Activities in Face-to-face and Mediated Settings

Abstract

In this introductory chapter, we propose embodied activities as coherent courses of actions in which participants engage in social interaction. After tracing the advent of key notions and concepts in linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology, the focus of the theoretical background to this volume lies on empirical studies on embodied activities in Conversation Analysis. The introduction finishes with an overview of the papers in this volume.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    However, the examples Wittgenstein gives following this quote, for the most part, do not represent activities for us. His list seems to comprise actions or practices or speech acts rather than activities. Devoid of the context of use, their exact nature is impossible to determine though.

    Giving orders, and obeying them-

    Describing the appearance of an object , or giving its measurements-

    Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)-

    Reporting an event-

    Speculating about an event-

    Forming and testing a hypothesis-

    Presenting the results of tables and diagrams-

    Making up a story; and reading it-

    Play-acting-

    Singing catches-

    Guessing riddles-

    Making a joke; telling it-

    Solving a problem in practical arithmetic-

    Translating from one language to another-

    Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. (Wittgenstein 1958: 11–12)

  2. 2.

    The years of publication both of Wittgenstein’s (1953 for the first (bilingual) edition) and Austin’s (1962) works may be misleading. Wittgenstein finished the first part from which we quote here in 1945 (Wittgenstein 1958: vi–vii) and Austin lectured in 1955 (cf. the subtitle The William James Lectures delivered in Harvard University in 1955).

  3. 3.

    People do this rather than, for example, just changing their behaviour because of someone’s presence, which represents unfocused interaction.

  4. 4.

    This point was raised by Harrie Mazeland.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Cornelia Gerhardt

  2. University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Elisabeth Reber

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  1. Cornelia Gerhardt
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  2. Elisabeth Reber
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Correspondence to Cornelia Gerhardt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of New Philologies, Modern Languages, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Elisabeth Reber

  2. Department of English, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Cornelia Gerhardt

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Gerhardt, C., Reber, E. (2019). Embodied Activities. In: Reber, E., Gerhardt, C. (eds) Embodied Activities in Face-to-face and Mediated Settings. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97325-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97325-8_1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97325-8

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