Pointing in the airline cockpit: witnessing, and making space 2nd International Conference on Gesture Lyon, 15-18 June, 2005 Pointing in the airline cockpit: witnessing, and making space Maurice Nevile University of Canberra, Australia Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra

Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra Introduction This paper joins interest in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis in how people accomplish social actions and create and understand the situated order of everyday life, and here specifically the worklife of airline pilots Pointing in naturally occurring cockpit interaction: one means by which pilots accomplish actions for work, competently and unremarkably… as they develop and demonstrate to one another their moment-to-moment understandings of what they are doing and what is going on Pointing in the cockpit is significant for directing own and other’s attention to objects and spaces in the immediate physical setting, for practical activities for actions occurring now Data are video recordings of pilots interacting to work together on actual scheduled passenger flights Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra

Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra Why point, and what’s to point at in the airline cockpit? Pointing reflects pilots’ orientation to the importance for developing shared understandings for their work, that actions and events are conducted or known not individually but jointly, and are jointly verifiable and so jointly accountable Variations in the form of pointing can present actions or events differently for how they should be attended, or witnessed, and so known i.e. how the recipient of the pointing is involved and implicated in what’s going on Is the point, and the current action/event, made to be just noted, or to be watched? the location of the point the timing and duration of the point Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra

Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra The form of the point (its location and timing) present it as … not for witness witnessable for witness … and this has implications for possible involvement of the recipient pilot in the current action/event Evidence from video clips…. [[NOT available in this powerpoint]] Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra

Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra Findings: the form of pointing in the cockpit varies in systematic and consequential ways for collaborative action… …to the nature of the action/event – what kind of task it it? (e.g. engaging autopilot, monitoring altitude) …for how different cockpit spaces are treated and presented as relevant and made intelligible for action, created as fields of activity (cf. C.Goodwin) …for the nature of attention the point can receive, is designed to receive, from the recipient i.e. if/how the point can be witnessed by the other pilot …therefore for the involvement and participation that the point allows, calls for, from the recipient – the point is not just identifying a referent, but is designed for how that referent can be seen and treated, and by whom (i.e. seen at all, or just noted, or watched now), relative to the current action/event …for how the point’s form contributes variously to understandings and accountabilities for collaborative action (i.e. who knows what) Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra

Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra So, pointing is one means for pilots to develop and demonstrate awareness of significance of actions and events for their collaborative work… a point helps establish in situ accountabilities for participation in tasks i.e. for seeing and knowing what is going on in the cockpit, and who is appropriately and accountably involved This paper considers evidence for systematic relations between forms of pointing and the nature and accountability of participation, relative to task, for collaborative work in the airline cockpit Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra

Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra Selected sources Glenn, P., LeBaron, C.D. & Mandelbaum (Eds.) (2003) Studies in language and social interaction: in honor of Robert Hopper. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Goodwin, C. (1995) Seeing in depth. Social Studies of Science, 25:237-274. Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3):606-633. Goodwin, C. & Goodwin, M.H. (1997) Contested vision: the discursive constitution of Rodney King. In B-L. Gunnarsson, P. Linell & B. Nordberg (Eds.) The construction of professional discourse (pp.292-316). London: Longman. Heath, C. & Luff, P. (2000) Technology in action. Cambridge: CUP. Hutchins, E. (1995) How a cockpit remembers its speeds. Cognitive Science, 19:265-288. Hutchins, E. and T. Klausen (1996) Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit. In Y. Engeström & D. Middleton (Eds.), Cognition and communication at work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (pp.15-34). Hutchins, E. and L. Palen (1997) Constructing meaning from space, gesture, and speech. In Resnick, L.B., R. Säljö, C. Pontecorvo & B. Burge (Eds.) (1997) Discourse, tools, and reasoning: essays on situated cognition. Berlin: Springer (pp.23-40). Kendon, A. (2004) Gesture: visible action as utterance. Cambridge: CUP. Kita, S. (Ed.) (2003) Pointing: where language, culture, and cognition meet. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. McNeill, D. (Ed.) (2000) Language and gesture. Cambridge: CUP Nevile, M. (2004) Beyond the black box: talk-in-interaction in the airline cockpit (Aldershot: Ashgate) (see chapters 4 and 5) Nevile, M. (2004) Integrity in the airline cockpit: embodying claims about progress for the conduct of an approach briefing. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 37(4):447-480. Nevile, M. (2002) Coordinating talk and non-talk activity in the airline cockpit. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 25(1):131-146. Maurice Nevile, Univ. of Canberra