Interaction

Ethnography of speaking, remembered by the mnemonic SPEAKING:

Setting and scene
Participants and their communication roles
Ends: conventional outcomes and personal goals
Act sequences: message form and content
Key: tone, manner or spirit of the interaction
Instrumentalities: channel and forms
Norms: of interpretation and of interaction
Genres: such as poem, lecture

Argyle describes three types of information that is exchanged:

1. cognitive information, relating to the outside world and hence conveying factual content
2. indexical information, corresponding to the expressive and conative functions. This type of information enables the recipient of the message to ‘place’ the speaker against his social, geographical or occupational background, and to situate the exchange against the wider context
3. interaction management, enables the participant to ‘construct’ the interchange, managing their interaction in terms of their communicative roles as well as in terms of the sequencing of the different phases of the interaction.