Discursive Acts: Language, Signs, and Selves (Communication & Social Order) - Softcover

Perinbanayagam, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0202363538 ISBN 13: 9780202363530

Publisher: Routledge, 2010

Synopsis

Language, Signs and Selves applies conversational analysis to the discourse of everyday life and its roles in social behavior. The explanation offered of the complex elements and processes of language use is theoretically and empirically grounded, synthesizing European post structuralist theory and semiotics with American pragmatist currents.

This book parallels work done under other rubrics sociolinguistics, conversation and discourse analysis, and ethnomethodology. This work, however, presents the same matter from a different standpoint. While enthnomethodology and sociolinguistics focus on certain formal properties of conversations, they have pursued the quest for these properties with great methodological rigor, while avoiding questions about intentions. In their work, as in that of many structuralists, discourse has become depersonalized, with the linguistic form itself becoming an independent entity sealed from the world of selves, interaction, conflict, and suffering. Perinbanayagam's interest is in displaying the dialogic properties of such discourses, conceiving each element in them as pragmatic and directed.

In many ways Language, Signs and Selves is an enlargement and exemplification of themes discussed in the analysis of language, interactions, and social relationships. The author takes dialogue to be the central event of human being and doing and argues that it is the defining principle of all actions and interactions. Drawing from a variety of sources, he seeks to construct a theory of interaction between humans that is dialectical in all senses of the word; that is to say, a theory concerned with dialects and double processes, as well as with speaking and the logic of relational processes.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Perinbanayagam is professor of sociology (emeritus) at Hunter College, City University of New York. He is recipient of the G. H. Mead Award and the C. H. Cooley Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, and the award from the theory section of the American Sociological Association. 

Review

“Perinbanayagam builds a strong case for taking on language as a topic that is of core importance to the sociology, and he provides some intriguing examples of just what this import might be.”

—John F. Manzo, Social Forces

“Discursive Acts is a thoughtful, engaging, and important book. It combines synthetically-oriented theorizing with nuanced and thick interpretations of everyday discourse... I highly recommend this book to those concerned with the nature of meaning, mind, action, and self.”

—Paul Colomy, Contemporary Sociology

“This is a beautiful work, poetic, musical, hauntingly brilliant as it seeks to catch and capture those elusively recurrent and obdurate processes which give everyday life its structured regularity. Lovingly detailed, this book is dramatism’s answer to those poststructuralists who would reduce the figure of the human being to what Foucault calls “a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.””

—Norman K. Denzin, Symbolic Interaction

“This is a sophisticated book... embodying a broad range of humanistic scholarship.”

—John Heritage, American Journal of Sociology

"Discursive Acts is a penetrating examination of relationships annong language use, social interaction, and self-concept. The distinctive feature of the book is the appreciation its author shows of the nuances, subtleties, and tones in conversational interaction. The book moves away from mechanistic explanations of conversational achievements, thereby highlighting the rhetorical artistry in everyday talk."

—Edward Lee Lamoureux, Communication Quarterly

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0202363538
• ISBN 13: 9780202363530
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 264