Individual task – group 4
“How can bodies show intention?”
Guillermina Dubra
guil-dub@dsv.su.se
ABSTRACT
The abstract, is clear and talks about what you’re going to
analyze, “intentions with non-verbal communication” (page
1), what theory you’re using, focus, conclusion and results.
This is what the abstract should include [2].
INTRODUCTION
This part gives a good introduction to your work, you are
telling us what you will do in your analysis and what you
will not do.
Why do you choose Ethnomethodology? Why not
Distributed Cognition or Activity Theory? The only reason
you give us for choosing Ethnomethodology is because the
focus is on bodies in motion. You could have analysed the
video with Activity Theory and put the focus on the
activities the participants are performing [3]. The coffee
machine is the mediator, the object that the participants are
interacting with.
You should give more reasons of why you are choosing
Ethnomethodology. To strengthen this you could have
explained shortly why you are not using Activity Theory
and Distributed Cognition.
In the introduction you do also not give enough reasons of
why this is worthwhile studying, the only reason you give
to the reader is “We find this interesting in several ways
and worthwhile for thoroughly analysis.” (page 1) I think
that you could have written more about why you are
interested in studying this and what expectations you have
after making this analysis.
In this part you maybe also should talk about your
constraints, what you will focus on and what you will not
do. You mention that you will not analyze internal
processes in the abstract, maybe you should have explained
it further in the introduction so that the reader know what to
expect from the report.
Over all it is a nice introduction to your work and you
explain this in a very clear in an understandable way.
DATA MATERIAL
1
When you describe the video you are going to analyze you
say that “There are disturbances to the queue going on and
people entering and leaving; thus forcing the participants to
coordinate their movements more than usual.” (page 1) Do
you mean more than usual in a queue, more than usual
overall or at this specific moment? It is hard to understand
what you are referring to.
It is really nice that you explain the initial positions with
Figure 1. This gives a better understanding of the situation.
ANALYTICAL METHOD AND ANALYSIS OF MATERIAL
In the analytical method you say that “The focus are on
bodies and how they move rather than trying to guess the
internal processes” (page 1) referring to Ethnomethodology.
The main focus of ethnomethodology is to make sense of
how everyday actions are performed within a specific
socio-cultural context and how this context shapes the
norms of communication and actions of individuals [1]. I
find it hard to understand how you can make an analysis of
the bodies without taking in account the mental processes.
In this part you also say that you use interaction analysis
and make reference to Paul Ten Have (2004). This article
does not mention interaction analysis.
I think that the structure could have been better in the
analytical method, you say that your main foci is spatial
organization, then you write that “another important foci
from interaction analysis is turn taking” (page 2), are you
going to make an analysis of the video from this foci or is it
just important? After that you state that there are four foci’s
or main aspects in ethnomethodology, indexicality, context,
member methods and accountability. It’s not clear from the
text what you are going to focus on, or from which
perspectives you’re analysis is going to be.
In the analysis of the material you have the following
subtitles: Member methods, Spatial organization, personal
space, Reading and conveying intentions and Indexing,
gazes and body movement.
The context and accountability are “missing” in the
analysis, so does the turn taking, but you mention turn
taking under other titles.
It is good that you clearly explain that you are not going to
focus on the context (page 2) and the reason for why you
will not do that, it gives the reader information of what to moves out of the way to give her space to complete her
expect. intention of going to the table”, here you are saying that
they move to leave space for her not to “protect their own
DESCRIPTION personal space”. Where goes the limit? When are they
“giving” space and when are they “taking” space? How can
we know this?
It is really good that you have used pictures to illustrate and
explain what you are seeing. It makes it easy to follow,
Indexing, gazes and body movement
instead of having to go to the transcription and try to find it.
In the description part you state that “this can bee seen as an
You are focusing a lot on the gazing although the
example of when the communication does not work.” (page
participants are standing with their back towards the camera
3) I think that in order to analyze this and make a
most of the time. Maybe you should focus more on the
conclusion from it you have to take in account the context
body movements and less on gazing to get better, more
they are in and not only the body movements and gazes. For
reliable results since it is hard to see what they are really
example when Woman is given space and Grey Man is not.
looking at.
Maybe Woman is given space because she is a woman and
all the other participants are men, there can be some interest
CONCLUSION
from one of them, or it could also mean something
depending on the culture, for example that you “should”
leave space for women. It is too easy to say that You answer your research question, it is clear and the
“communication does not work” and I think that this could conclusion follows from the theoretical starting points.
be analysed further.
DISCUSSION
ANALYSIS
It is good that you are aware of that the students “might not
reflect the general population”, but in this context I believe
Member methods, Queue formation and vigilance
it is enough to make your analysis. And it is important that
you take into account that the students were aware of being
In this part you write that “Bag Man is more active and is recorded. A solution to this would be to hide the camera so
more aware of his surroundings” (page 4), how do you that the participants could not see it.
know that he is more aware of his surroundings? You were
It is nice that you reflect on your future work. Also on the
not going to analyze internal representations. Can you make
meaning of intention, and that you define how you
this conclusion by only watching how he moves around?
understand intention, “we have assumed that intention are
Apart from this you make good conclusions from what you closely related to completing the activity” (page 6). Maybe
are analyzing. this should also be at the beginning of the report, in the
introduction so that the reader knows what to expect.
Spatial organization, personal space
TRANSCRIPT
You write that when “Woman is standing and doing
something with her cup, Coat Man then slightly leans It is a nice detailed transcription which makes it easy to
backwards to get more space” (page 5), how do you know understand the video with the exact time and the pictures.
that he wants more space for him and that he is not giving
In some pictures you are describing participants that we can
her more space? And leaning backwards could mean other
not see, for example at 00:09, you are talking about Green
things in this particular context, maybe he is just looking at
Man but there is no Green Man in the picture. Maybe to
the girl? Is he “protecting himself against the intrusion”?
help this to be clearer you could have the nice figures you
Maybe if you analyze the particular context you would get
have through your whole work explaining where Green
another conclusion for why this is happening. I think that
Man is standing or just exclude him from the transcript.
cultural aspects are really important to analyze here and that
doing that it maybe give us different results. In the last picture 00:14, you are talking about Beige Man,
and I only see a man with a green jacket and a bag. It is
Reading and conveying intentions confusing.

GENERAL
Here you write that when Woman moves fast and that “it is
easy for the others to read her intention and accordingly

2
It is an interesting report which is easy to follow. You make REFERENCES
it clear by using pictures and maps and make it easy for the
reader to understand. As you said it would have been better 1. Atkinson, P. (1988). Ethnomethodology: A Critical
to have another camera so that you could analyze gazing Review. Annual Review of Sociology, August 1988, Vol.
more, but the results you have got are interesting in the 14, Pages 441–465.
context that you have analyzed it.
2. Rienecker, L. and Jorgensen, P.S., “Att skriva en bra
The language is good, there are some minor mistakes but uppsats”, 2008, Liber AB, page 209.
this does not disturb the reading at all. Maybe you should
not have abbreviated words like it’s, can’t and so on. 3. What is Activity Theory.
http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/act_dff.html
The references should also be in alphabetical order. (Last visited 2009-12-01).