Symbolic Systems Forum - Herb Clark, Psychology Department

Herb Clark, Psychology Department, "How People Coordinate With Each

Other With and Without Language"

Abstract:

When people engage in joint activities--waltzing, playing tennis, planning

parties, negotiating contracts, or merely conversing--they have to

coordinate on what each of them is to do when and where. They achieve that

coordination not only by means of language, but by means of what I will call

material signals, signals in which they deploy material objects around them.

These actions include pointing at, placing, and exhibiting objects, but also

other actions on and with objects. I will describe when and how people use

both linguistic and material signals to coordinate in several joint activities.