Self-description
Chuck Goodwin (GoodwinC@Garnet.cla.sc.edu)
Fri, 22 Sep 1995 20:48:19 -0700 (PDT)
I am a linguistic anthropologist primarily interested in how action,
knowledge and cognition are constituted through temporally unfolding
processes of human interaction in a range of endogenous settings. Initially
my research focused on the organization of talk-in-interaction, e.g. the
perspective to the analysis of conversation initiated by the late Harvey
Sacks in collaboration with Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. I'm
especially interested in how units of talk -- noun phrases, sentences,
stories, etc. -- emerge not from the actions of a single party, a speaker,
but rather as the products of procsses of multi-party interaction in which
recipients of various types are crucial co-participants. To investigate the
actions of nonspeaking parties I use videotape to record interaction in a
variety of natural settings. Several years ago I had the opportunity to
particpate in the Workplace Project at Xerox PARC initiated by Lucy
Suchman. This required analysis of how the tool saturated environments of
work settings, such as the airport that was the focus of the project's
attention, both shaped, and were shaped by work relevant processes of
interaction. It also permitted the development of analytical frameworks
that could encompass both the details of language use, and the properties
of the artifacts linked to them within relevant activity systems. Since
then I've analyzed language, tool use, apprenticeship, and the social
constitution of the objects that animate the discourse of a number of
professions, focusing on work and interaction in settings such as chemistry
labs, oceanographers taking samples in the mouth of the Amazon,
archaeological field excavations, argument in law courts, etc. Currently
I'm also investigating the social life of aphasia.
Chuck Goodwin
============================
Chuck Goodwin
Anthropology
University of South Carolina
Columbia SC 29208
(803) 356-6006
(803) 777-0259 (fax)