Joint activities advance mostly through joint actions. In buying items in a drugstore, a customer joins a server in opening the transaction, settling on the items wanted, establishing the price, exchanging money, and closing. In a chess game, the players join in specifying discrete moves from the opening of the game to the checkmate. Joint actions like these belong to an extended family of actions that also includes moving together in waltzing, playing notes together in a string quartet, paddling in unison in a canoe, and passing a ball in soccer or basketball. It also includes asking questions, making requests, making assertions, making references – much of what we think of as language use.

What makes an action a joint one, ultimately, is the coordination of individual actions by two or more people. There is coordination of both content, what the participants intend to do, and processes, the physical and mental systems they recruit in carrying out those intentions. When Ann and Ben paddle a canoe together, they coordinate on their plans – the content of what they do. Overall, they aim to reach the spit of land on the other side of the lake as efficiently as possible, with Ann in front and Ben in the rear. At any moment, they aim to stay on course, with Ann pulling on one side and Ben on the other. Ann and Ben also coordinate on their physical and mental processes.

Writing a book can be like visiting a famous old city. You arrive with a copy of the Guide Michelin and begin touring the recommended sights. But as you walk from one landmark to the next, you discover the city beyond the Guide. Some features don't have the beauty or authenticity described in the Guide, and others aren't in the Guide at all. In one district, you find an exciting new style of architecture, and in another, an experiment in urban ecology. In still another, you come upon a new community of immigrants, complete with its own markets, restaurants, and religious activities. As you go from place to place, you meet more and more residents, who seduce you into extending your stay. By the time you leave, you realize that the city is just not what you expected. It is richer, more sophisticated, more diverse, and it took your visit to discover that.

Writing this book has been just such an experience. I am indebted to many for making it such an exciting, constructive, pleasurable, and prolonged experience. I wish to thank a great many collaborators for guiding me through new areas and expanding my horizons: Bridget Bly, Susan Brennan, Sam Buttrick, Stuart Card, Thomas Carlson, Jean Fox Tree, Ellen Francik, Wade French, Richard Gerrig, Ellen Isaacs, Barbara Malt, Catherine Marshall, Daniel Morrow, Gregory Murphy, Gisela Redeker, Edward Schaefer, Michael Schober, Robert Schreuder, Elizabeth Shriberg, Dale Schunk, Vicki Smith, Heather Stark, Elizabeth Wade, Thomas Wasow, Steve Whittaker, Deanna Wilkes-Gibbs. I owe a special debt to Randi Engle, Pirn Levelt, Gisela Redeker, and Michael Schober for commenting on an earlier draft of the book and instigating fundamental changes in it.

Signaling is of interest only because it is used in advancing the joint activities people are engaged in. Take this exchange from an interview by a British academic of a prospective student (3.1.174):

Arthur: u:h what modern poets have you been reading -

Beth: well I'm. I like Robert Graves very much -

When Arthur says “u:h what modern poets have you been reading -” he doesn't want Beth merely to understand what he means – that he wants to know what modern poets she has been reading. He wants her to take up his question, to answer it, to tell him what modern poets she has been reading. She could refuse even though she has understood. To mean something, you don't have to achieve uptake, and to understand something, you don't have to take it up. Still, Beth's uptake is needed if she and Arthur are to achieve what Arthur has publicly set out for them to do at this point in their interview.

Arthur and Beth's exchange is used to carry out a joint project. The joint project begins with Arthur projecting a. joint task for Beth and him to carry out – she is to tell him what modern poets she has been reading. It continues with Beth agreeing to that project, and it becomes complete, though slightly altered, with her answer. A joint project is a joint action projected by one of its participants and taken up by the others.

People use language for doing things with each other, and their use of language is itself a joint action. Much of this book has been devoted to these two points. In the course of this examination, I have made three broad arguments. One is that people use language only within broader joint activities. Another is that communicative acts divide into levels, tracks, and layers. And a third is that the very notion of language itself needs to be expanded if we are to account for language use. In this chapter I take a final look at these arguments.

Social action

Language is rarely used as an end in itself. It is primarily an instrument for carrying out broader activities – buying goods, planning parties, playing games, gossiping, exchanging stories, entertaining and being entertained. All of these are joint activities in which two or more people, in socially defined roles, carry out individual actions as parts of larger enterprises. Language is simply a device by which they coordinate those individual actions. When I buy a bottle of shampoo in the drugstore – a joint activity – among other things I talk to the clerk. But if I were asked, “What did you do in the drugstore?” I wouldn't say, “I talked to the clerk,” even though I did. I would reply, “I bought some shampoo,” which describes the larger enterprise. Using language was only a means to that end.

We cannot study language use without studying joint activities, and vice versa. People cannot carry out joint activities without signaling each other, nor do they ordinarily signal each other except in the course of joint activities.