Script Formulations

A qualitative analysis of conversational extracts is presented, in which participants formulate the nature of actions and events as "scripted" (typical or routine) or exceptional. Such formulations are shown to be interactionally occasioned and rhetorically oriented constructions of events. The perceptual-realist assumptions of cognitive script theory are questioned. Discourse theory ispreferredfor its capacity to acknowledge thepsychological reality of script-based understandings, while dealing with the empirical details of spontaneous event descriptions. Events may be descriptively offered as singular items, as instances of general patterns, as exceptions, or as generalized patterns themselves. Formulating events as instances of, or exceptions to, scripted patterns attends to issues of accountability and is used to construct the dispositional character of actors. The analysis focuses on the precise event details invoked in spontaneous talk, the construction of events as scripted or otherwise, and the ways in which such event reportings perform actions in their own right.

[1]  J. Lave.  Cognition in Practice: Outdoors: a social anthropology of cognition in practice , 1988 .

[2]  D. Edwards.  Categories Are for Talking , 1991 .

[3]  J. M. Atkinson.  Structures of Social Action: Contents , 1985 .

[4]  Michael J. Reddy.  Metaphor and Thought: The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language , 1993 .

[5]  R. Abelson.  Script processing in attitude formation and decision making. , 1976 .

[6]  L. Barsalou.  Cognitive Psychology: An Overview for Cognitive Scientists , 1992 .

[7]  Michael Billig,et al.  Prejudice, categorization and particularization: from a perceptual to a rhetorical approach , 1985 .

[8]  F. Bartlett,et al.  Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology , 1932 .

[9]  Michael Billig,et al.  Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology , 1987 .

[10]  R. Wyer,et al.  Social Cognition, Inference, and Attribution , 1979 .

[11]  Jim Schenkein.  Studies in the organization of conversational interaction , 1978 .

[12]  Derek Edwards,et al.  Language and causation : a discursive action model of description and attribution , 1993 .

[13]  Harry M. Collins,et al.  Artificial experts - social knowledge and intelligent machines , 1990, Inside technology.

[14]  K. Nelson,et al.  Event knowledge : structure and function in development , 1986 .

[15]  P. Drew,et al.  Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. , 1994 .

[16]  C. Mills.  Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive , 1940 .

[17]  D. Norman.  The psychology of everyday things , 1990 .

[18]  Derek Edwards,et al.  Joint remembering: Constructing an account of shared experience through conversational discourse , 1986 .

[19]  E. Tiryakian,et al.  Studies in social interaction , 1972 .

[20]  B. Dresher,et al.  On some supposed contributions of artificial intelligence to the scientific study of language , 1976, Cognition.

[21]  Anita M. Pomerantz.  Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims , 1986, Asking and Telling in Conversation.

[22]  Andrew Chitty,et al.  Quantification Rhetoric—cancer on Television , 1991 .

[23]  Lucy Suchman.  Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication , 1987 .

[24]  John H. Flavell,et al.  Social cognitive development : frontiers and possible futures , 1981 .

[25]  Michael Billig,et al.  Ideological Dilemmas: A Social Psychology of Everyday Thinking , 1988 .

[26]  R. Abelson.  Psychological status of the script concept. , 1981 .

[27]  D. Smith.  `K is Mentally Ill' the Anatomy of a Factual Account , 1978 .

[28]  M. S. Mayzner,et al.  Cognition And Reality , 1976 .

[29]  Roger C. Schank,et al.  SCRIPTS, PLANS, GOALS, AND UNDERSTANDING , 1988 .

[30]  P. Drew,et al.  Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings , 1995 .

[31]  John B. Black,et al.  Scripts in memory for text , 1979, Cognitive Psychology.

[32]  Gordon H. Bower,et al.  Remembering script-based text , 1982 .

[33]  G. Button,et al.  Talk and Social Organisation , 1988 .

[34]  H. Kelley.  Attribution theory in social psychology , 1967 .

[35]  J. Potter,et al.  Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour , 1987 .

[36]  Derek Edwards,et al.  Nigel Lawson's tent: Discourse analysis, attribution theory and the social psychology of fact , 1990 .

[37]  M. Mulkay,et al.  Opening Pandora's Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists' Discourse , 1984 .

[38]  D. G. MacKay,et al.  Metaphor and Thought , 1980 .

[39]  C. Richard Puff,et al.  Memory Organization and Structure , 1979 .

[40]  G. Lakoff,et al.  Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind , 1988 .

[41]  H. Dreyfus.  What Computers Can't Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence , 1978 .

[42]  A. Graesser,et al.  Memory for typical and atypical actions in scripted activities. , 1980 .

[43]  Emanuel A. Schegloff.  Harvey Sacks — Lectures 1964–1965 An Introduction/Memoir , 1989 .

[44]  C SchankRoger,et al.  Dynamic Memory: A Theory of Reminding and Learning in Computers and People , 1983 .

[45]  B. Latour.  Science in Action , 1987 .