Aspects of language use in design conversation

This paper investigates some episodes of the conversation between an architect and two clients' representatives in an architectural meeting. The analysis adopts an interpretative approach to design research and is guided by a qualitative research strategy. Designing is conceived as a social, interactive, interpretative process. The aim of the analysis is to reconstruct how participants interactively construct meaning in the design process and to describe practices they employ in the process. Sociological and sociolinguistic concepts and research results are deployed to analyse design conversation and designing in terms of contexts and frames. Analysis shows that participants often construct activities through simultaneous use of different kinds of semiotic practices in different media (such as language, gesture, and drawings) which mutually elaborate each other. Natural language is pervasively used in the observed design conversation. The inherent vagueness of natural language appears to serve several functions in designing such as introducing ‘interpretative flexibility’ (e.g. of requirements) and establishing social bond. The episodes investigated in this paper provide an example of how the problem ‘requirements’ emerge in the course of social interaction and of how clients' perspectives are interpreted or translated into design considerations.

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