Introduction to Garfinkel’s ‘Notes on Language Games

Language events as cultural events in ‘systems of interaction

Bibliographic Data

ID7771815
AuthorsAnne Warfield Rawls (0000-0002-4044-4314, Bentley University, Waltham, MA, USA and University of Siegen, Germany, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume22
Issue2
Pages133-147
Publication date2019-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1368431018824698
OpenAlexW2937570466
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited10

This article discusses ‘Notes on Language Games’, written by Harold Garfinkel in 1960 and never before published, one of three distinct versions of his famous ‘Trust’ argument, i.e., that constitutive criteria define shared events, objects, and meanings. The argument stands in contrast to an approach to cultural anthropology that was becoming popular in 1960 called ‘ethnoscience’. In this previously unknown manuscript, Garfinkel proposes that cultural events and language events are the same, in that both are created through constitutive commitments to interactional systems. The best-known version of the Trust argument (Garfinkel, 1963) emphasizes Schutz, while other versions build on Parsons (Garfinkel 2019). In this third version, the Trust conditions are elaborated in terms of Wittgenstein’s language games. Various strands of Garfinkel’s thinking about culture, language and interaction are interwoven. That Garfinkel was working with Parsons in 1960 to document a contractual basis for social events and their assembly practices in ‘systems of interaction’, a constitutive practice argument with roots in Durkheim’s work, is yet another strand. The article highlights how the Trust argument is the key to everything, not only ethnomethodology, but also Garfinkel’s attempt to develop a general sociology of culture, language and interaction

Epistemology · Ethnomethodology · Linguistics · Sociology · Anthropology · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy

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