Welcome to FA

Time to warmly welcome the newest member of the Formal Analysis technocracy. Put your hands together and give a cheer for:

Conversation Analysis.

We welcome the ascendancy of CA, given it seems to attract a higher grade of pedantic snob, and hope to continue efforts to close out real academic discourse in favor of closed-shop, shut-in glee-fests, where farrago barrages will occlude observations of any potential radical ideas.

As a famous (dead) sociologist once remarked, formal methods involve tearing down the walls of a building in order to see what holds the roof up. What CA now gives us is a formal method for tearing down the building so we can understand formal methods for tearing down buildings.

Consuming Content

Consuming content – the latest annoying phrase that seems to obscure rather than clarify what practices might actually be employed when someone “consumes content on an iPad” or “uses their Galaxy III for content consumption”.  Do people “consume” digital media, as cows might graze in a grassy field? Do cows reflect upon that which they chew?

It seems to me that the notion of “consuming content” involves some degree of passivity, as it is often contrasted with “content production”. Apparently smartphones or touch screen computers are ill suited for the task of “content production” but well suited for passive recipiency of content that has been produced.

Or, does “consuming content” actually involve something a little more like “analysis” on the part of the consumer?

Reality production devices

Consider formulations, or the practices of doing formulating (i.e., giving a description/explaination of something), when the objects of the formulation are 'psychological'. The objects of such formulations in interaction are of a fundamental importance as they involve the specification and respecification of the very things that may well underpin the machinery or apparatus involved in the future production of formulations of any kind. For example, telling someone that an utterance they have made concerning, say, feeling 'unhappy', is because they are 'depressed'. Such a formulation becomes for all-practical-purposes a kind of interactional reality production device, and should not be regarded as just mere description, a particular way of speaking, giving an opinion, or any other type of dead interactional thing. The formulation specifies relevant actions, and is accountable as a specification of such actions, and is indeed an action.

Meaning as retrospective accounting practice

So, what is the meaning of anything we do?

It would seem that the meaning of anything we have done requires an account, a retrospective telling, that firmly situates our descriptions in understandable forms.

So, to ascertain the meaning of anything you have done, simply provide an account.

But, what about the 'true' meaning, the 'real' meaning?

You will know what the true meaning is -- for all practical purposes. And giving an account of the meaning, well, isn't that as much a part of the meaning making as the action itself?

What about things we will do?

Provide an account.

The real test, of course, is in providing these accounts 'in public' and engaging in practices of 'meaning ratification'.

What one does not really want to do, is engage in these activities in isolation...

Domains of conduct

Domains of conduct -- the settings, places, environments that we traverse, cross, violate, transgress, produce and recognise.

Got interested in this idea when looking at an architectural account concerning 'gates' in traditional Chinese architecture. That is, communities, compounds, collections of dwelling spaces, that are noticable for the use of 'gates'.

My 'gate' (in the most coarse physicalist sense) in the dwelling in which I currently reside consists of two doors -- one that opens directly onto a street and one that is just behind this door. A common feature of English terraced dwellings I'd imagine.

I am quite taken with more contemporary Chinese dwellings -- which have a central courtyard (gated, of course). This allows for more transition space between domains of conduct (e.g., a public domain and a more private domain).

Perhaps I need to get a gated courtyard that I can carry around in public -- or is that what an ipod is for?