- Title Pages
- Series Editor Preface
- Editors’ Preface
- Contributors
- Chapter 1 Elements of Agency
- Chapter 2 Distribution of Agency
- Chapter 3 Gnomic Agency
- Chapter 4 Semiotic Agency
- Chapter 5 Agency in State Agencies
- Chapter 6 Upending Infrastructure in Times of Revolt
- Chapter 7 Brain-to-Brain Interfaces and the Role of Language in Distributing Agency
- Chapter 8 Requesting as a Means for Negotiating Distributed Agency
- Chapter 9 Social Agency and Grammar
- Chapter 10 Distributed Agency and Action under the Radar of Accountability
- Chapter 11 Distributed Agency and Debt in the Durational Ethics of Responsibility
- Chapter 12 Money as Token and Money as Record in Distributed Accounts
- Chapter 13 Distribution of Agency across Body and Self
- Chapter 14 Distributed Agency in Ants
- Chapter 15 Group Exercise and Social Bonding
- Chapter 16 Social Bonding Through Dance and ‘Musiking’
- Chapter 17 Timescales for Understanding the Agency of Infants and Caregivers
- Chapter 18 Movement Synchrony, Joint Actions, and Collective Agency in Infancy
- Chapter 19 The Agency of the Dead
- Chapter 20 Distributed Agency in Play
- Chapter 21 Contingency and the Semiotic Mediation of Distributed Agency
- Chapter 22 Place and Extended Agency
- Chapter 23 How Agency Is Distributed Through Installations
- Chapter 24 Cooperation and Social Obligations
- Chapter 25 Deception as Exploitative Social Agency
- Chapter 26 Disrupting Agents, Distributing Agency
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Social Agency and Grammar
Social Agency and Grammar
- Chapter:
- (p.79) Chapter 9 Social Agency and Grammar
- Source:
- Distributed Agency
- Author(s):
Giovanni Rossi
Jörg Zinken
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
One of the most conspicuous ways in which people distribute agency among each other is by asking another for help. Natural languages give people a range of forms to do this, the distinctions among which have consequences for how agency is distributed. Forms such as imperatives (e.g. “pass the salt”) and recurrent types of interrogatives (e.g. “can you pass the salt?”) designate another person as the doer of the action. In contrast to this, impersonal deontic statements (e.g. “it is necessary to get the salt”) express the need for an action without tying it to any particular individual. This can generate interactions in which the identity of the doer must be sorted out among participants, allowing us to observe the distribution of agency in vivo. The case of impersonal deontic statements demonstrates the importance of grammar as a resource for managing human action and sociality.
Keywords: social agency, interaction, grammar, impersonal deontic statements, multimodality, cooperation, agency
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- Title Pages
- Series Editor Preface
- Editors’ Preface
- Contributors
- Chapter 1 Elements of Agency
- Chapter 2 Distribution of Agency
- Chapter 3 Gnomic Agency
- Chapter 4 Semiotic Agency
- Chapter 5 Agency in State Agencies
- Chapter 6 Upending Infrastructure in Times of Revolt
- Chapter 7 Brain-to-Brain Interfaces and the Role of Language in Distributing Agency
- Chapter 8 Requesting as a Means for Negotiating Distributed Agency
- Chapter 9 Social Agency and Grammar
- Chapter 10 Distributed Agency and Action under the Radar of Accountability
- Chapter 11 Distributed Agency and Debt in the Durational Ethics of Responsibility
- Chapter 12 Money as Token and Money as Record in Distributed Accounts
- Chapter 13 Distribution of Agency across Body and Self
- Chapter 14 Distributed Agency in Ants
- Chapter 15 Group Exercise and Social Bonding
- Chapter 16 Social Bonding Through Dance and ‘Musiking’
- Chapter 17 Timescales for Understanding the Agency of Infants and Caregivers
- Chapter 18 Movement Synchrony, Joint Actions, and Collective Agency in Infancy
- Chapter 19 The Agency of the Dead
- Chapter 20 Distributed Agency in Play
- Chapter 21 Contingency and the Semiotic Mediation of Distributed Agency
- Chapter 22 Place and Extended Agency
- Chapter 23 How Agency Is Distributed Through Installations
- Chapter 24 Cooperation and Social Obligations
- Chapter 25 Deception as Exploitative Social Agency
- Chapter 26 Disrupting Agents, Distributing Agency
- Author Index
- Subject Index