Indeterminacy of actions

Working out a relevant next in interaction with people with late-stage dementia

Bibliographic Data

ID2916541
AuthorsAli Reza Majlesi (0000-0001-7562-991X, Karolinska Institutet, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume54
Issue4
Pages815-840
Publication date2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404524000769
OpenAlexW4406489197
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited48

This study examines video recordings of activities within an elderly care home, particularly focusing on interactions involving people with dementia. The study presents instances where the relevance of the current conduct-and consequently the generation of a fitting response-appears indeterminate to the co-participant. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the mutually understood 'constitutive expectancies' (Garfinkel 1963) and a lack of shared understanding of 'motivational relevancies' (Schutz 1970), the participants continue to engage with one another. The analysis reveals that, in the face of an unrecognizable set of conduct and the indeterminacy of subsequent actions before closing down the activity, participants strive to maintain some degree of intersubjectivity by preserving or revisiting the constitutive order of their interaction. This commitment to the 'co-operative' nature of human actions (Goodwin 2018) is argued to be central to their interactions. (People with dementia, co-operative actions, conversation analysis, multimodality, ethnomethodology, intersubjectivity

Cognitive psychology · Dementia · Disease · Epistemology · Indeterminacy (philosophy) · Sociology · Stage (stratigraphy) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Social Representations and Identity

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