Over the past several decades, the notions of interaction and face have been used in arguably static ways to theorize communication and social relationships. In Communicating & relating: Constituting face in everyday interaction, Robert Arundale upends this traditional orientation to incorporate a more complex, nuanced perspective on how we engage in social life and proposes a framework—termed the conjoint co-constituting model of communicating (CCMC)—for investigating interaction. He does so, building on the work of conversation analysis, through the reconceptualization of key understandings about communication and relationships, as well as the connection between the social and individual and the ways humans relate to one another.
In chapter 1, Arundale provides an overview of the etiological implications of his proposed framework, which are further elaborated in each chapter, illustrating the ways, means, and implications of communicating and relating through several example exchanges. He previews the application of the CCMC as it applies first to communicating and then to relating, and lays both theoretical and practical groundwork for establishing the interdependency of interlocutors in shaping the immediate communicative environment and relationships as they evolve across time.
Chapter 2 introduces Part I of the book, which is concerned with situating the CCMC as a systematic principle whereby interlocutors take turns, act, and make meaning in daily interaction. This chapter situates the framework ontologically and introduces key concepts according to several central assumptions. First is that the individual and the social, while distinct, are dynamic, overlapping, and in constant tension. This dialectical relationship, or the ‘yin/yang dialectic’ (Baxter & Montgomery Reference Baxter and Montgomery1996), contributes to the way social systems emerge, an ongoing process delineated in the second assumption that social systems are nonadditive and organized as people interact. That is, they cannot be accounted for simply as a collection of contributions from separate individuals. Rather, social systems emerge from the means and manner by which communicating takes place and thus are comprised of nonquantifiable features. This theoretical orientation represents a departure from earlier studies and lends a fresh and welcome perspective on interacting.
Chapter 3 then addresses the related assumption, drawn from the adjacency placement principle of conversation analysis (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson Reference Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson1974), that participation structure produces sequentiality in interaction. However, Arundale attends to utterances rather than turns in the CCMC to emphasize the repertoire of both verbal and nonverbal signals that influence communicating. He also presents four levels through which interacting may come to fruition, from the autonomous level of the individual to the nonadditive level of conjointly co-constituting. At this final level, which requires at least three utterances by at least two participants, interpreting is emergent in the conjoint co-constituting of meaning by participants, as opposed to the additive interactional achievement of individuals. Here, Arundale positions familiar notions of interpretation in interaction put forth by conversation analysts as fluid and conditional in the CCMC as interacting unfolds. This understanding necessitates the triadic structure since such operative interpreting is contingent on the multi-partite contribution—the co-constituting—of the third turn. In sum, the CCMC orients to interacting as a collaborative, mutually dependent process and begins to consider the nuance of constructing and construing meaning in everyday communicating, diverging from more individualistic and rigid approaches to interaction.
The contribution of the individual to conjoint co-constituting is addressed in chapter 4. Arundale adopts a socially situated construct of a cognitive individual whose meanings, actions, and contexts are self-generated and self-contained. Nonetheless, like the individual themselves, those meanings, actions, and contexts are grounded in their engagement with the social. Chapter 5 elaborates on this notion by addressing the viability of mutually reflexive individual and social resources. Within the CCMC, conjointly co-constituting involves the deployment of individual and social resources such that common or normative, as well as divergent, meanings and interpretations may be collaboratively achieved while communicating. Arundale pulls from research on both social networks and agent-based simulations (Sawyer Reference Sawyer2005) to explain this process, though he goes on to operationalize interaction as dynamic where previous research has remained underdeveloped and undertheorized. The ongoing nature of the CCMC is further iterated in chapter 6, which argues that the model represents a nonreductive interactionist approach to communication. Therefore, the macro-levels of society—including communities, institutions, and cultures—are understood not as entities but as sets of processes of localized interacting. Analysis of everyday interacting, moreover, begins at the micro-levels of interaction and works ‘upward’ toward macro-societal levels (221), making conversation analysis an appropriate methodology for employing the CCMC. Again, this dialectical, multidimensional, process-based approach to that which is individual and social in communication suggests the empirical value of this model in research on interaction.
In Part II, Arundale builds on the CCMC in his conceptualization of how we relate to one another through conjointly co-constituting face in what he terms face constituting theory (FCT). He does so first in chapter 7 by conceptualizing relating according to similar ontologies as those for communicating that highlight the ongoing, emergent nature of human relations through interacting, as well as the resources used therein. Baxter & Montgomery's (Reference Baxter and Montgomery1996) study on dialectics and personal relationships serves as a central source in building the framework for relating as a dialectical process, which notably incorporates separating in addition to connecting. Arundale establishes that this yin/yang relationship between separation and connection shapes our interpretations as we interact and contributes to our nonadditive understandings of human relationships as conjointly co-constituted. Though this notion has been implicated in previous theorizations of interaction, Arundale's thorough operationalization of the dialectical relationship between connecting and separating marks an important etiological contribution to social systems-based analyses of relationships in interacting.
FCT is defined in chapter 8, beginning with an account of face under the CCMC. In addition to situating Brown & Levinson's (Reference Brown and Levinson1987) descriptions of positive and negative face in the broader sociocultural terms of connection and separation, Arundale also reframes facework as relational work to emphasize its co-constitutive, interdependent, nonadditive nature and its operative interpretation in communicating. Similarly, this interactional maneuvering is also approached as both the culture-general and culture-specific interpreting of relating. Chapter 9 then applies the constructs developed in previous chapters to articulate the CCMC/FCT's analytical framework that takes as its initial step formulating a conceptualization of the phenomena being enacted, such as the relationships among individuals or their emotions. The analyst then, according to this model, identifies the ways these phenomena are manifested by observing participants’ orientations to interacting as it unfolds and locating specific instances of the phenomena within broader social and interactional structures. Arundale also uses familiar examples from several seminal studies of everyday interacting to illustrate in detail how the proposed model treats connecting and separating as co-constituting through the trajectory of triadic communicating. In presenting these thorough analyses, the potential of the CCMC/FCT to uncover novel interpretations of relating and interacting is clear.
Indeed, chapter 10 explains the affordances and implications of adopting the CCMC/FCT in empirical research on everyday interaction. Notably, this framework allows analysts to identify interactive social practices as ways of connecting and separating by attending to the additive individual and nonadditive elements of the social system. Though Arundale uses conversation analysis in his application of the CCMC/FCT, he asserts that other methodologies may also be appropriate. The final chapter then summarizes how the CCMC/FCT fits within the field of interactional inquiry. It offers a unique perspective through its commitment to the dialectical and to nonadditive systems, as well as its rejection of the individual/social dichotomy. Future research should test the framework and its theoretical assumptions through empirical investigation of specific instances of situated interacting.
Arundale's theoretical account of interacting and relating opens new avenues for understanding human communication. It allows for a perspective that simultaneously captures the holistic complexity of interaction and its refined systematicity. The theoretical framework for the epistemological model is also well-defined and interdisciplinary, and researchers and educators concerned with sociocultural factors in interaction may benefit from its employment. In particular, while issues of power and agency are not explicitly addressed—a potential limitation of the monograph—the commitment of the CCMC/FCT to the dialectical and its concern for individual and social resources in communicating nevertheless offer much-needed entry points for including such issues in the analysis of conversation. The book, therefore, is a step toward a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of human communicating and relating.
