Aaron V. Cicourel

A Note on the Uses of Official Statistics

In conclusion, we may suggest that in the light of such considerations as have been discussed here, it may be possible to assess the role of the administration in the affairs of the professional more adequately than has yet been done. It is very easy to see how, under some circumstances, administrative efforts at control of work are not mere bureaucratic aggrandizement, but conscientious efforts to fill a genuine vacuum engendered by the peculiarities of the professional system of self-regulation.

Three models of discourse analysis: The role of social structure∗

(1980). Three models of discourse analysis: The role of social structure. Discourse Processes: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 101-131.

Cognitive and organizational aspects of medical diagnostic reasoning

This paper addresses the use of oral and written communication in an area where the investigators expertise often is exceeded by the knowledge base of informants. The education of medical “house staff (fourth year medical students, interns, residents and training fellows) in a teaching hospital provides an opportunity to study the contribution of patient‐physician communication to medical diagnostic reasoning. The training of house staff occurs within an organizational framework in which hierarchical relationships become the basis for deciding when and which medical personnel are likely to see a patient, as well as the kinds of oral and written accounts that will be produced on each patient.

The interaction of discourse, cognition and culture

The kinds of social interaction necessary for the existence of human cultural practices and institutions and the human ability to change and survive depended on at least four (among other) conditions: biological brain evolution, cognition/affective processes, ethnographically-based cultural beliefs and practices, and the kinds of interpersonal relations that motivate or constrain social interaction. Thus human biological and cultural evolution could not have occurred without the interaction of brain processes, cognition/affective mechanisms, language, cultural beliefs, and social organization. No single one of these elements could have emerged without the others. We know little about how the four elements evolved, but can at least speculate about the necessity of each for human development. For example, the kinds of socialization experiences and skills infants acquire gradually to be called competent ‘adults,’ and how adult status begins to fade towards the end of life as adults seek to retain the properties that sustain human life.

SOME BASIC THEORETICAL ISSUES IN THE ASSESSMENT OF THE CHILD'S PERFORMANCE IN TESTING AND CLASSROOM SETTINGS

This chapter discusses some basic theoretical issues in the assessment of the childs performance in testing and classroom settings. A central problem in education is the failure to compare information provided by the test with the information provided by the childs behavior in the classroom. The omission of this comparison is dependent upon ones definition of the term information. In each case the language used by the teacher and tester points to the information about the child not directly available to the reader. Depending on the educational audience, the reader is expected to imagine or reconstruct typical classroom or testing settings to understand what is being said. The chapter discusses some theoretical and practical issues about classroom and testing settings by linking these issues to the teacher and testers unfamiliarity with some recent developments in the study of cognitive processes. The theoretical framework is based on the notion of interactional competence. The notion of interactional competence implies the idea of social and psychological cognitive processes or interpretive abilities. The childs acquisition of language and cognitive processes is central for gradually comprehending adult conceptions of social norms. A central problem in the education of children is that one knows little about the childs acquisition of the social and psychological cognitive processes and often attributes adult social competence to him while evaluating his intellectual growth.

Origin and Demise of Socio-cultural Presentations of Self from Birth to Death: Caregiver ‘Scaffolding’ Practices Necessary for Guiding and Sustaining Communal Social Structure Throughout the Life Cycle

The emergence, social differentiation, and reproduction of human communities require socialization of the young. Socialization practices require caregivers and socially distributed, intuitive, normative knowledge systems to enable progeny to acquire and sustain habitual, socially organized skills and belief systems. Neurobiological, cognitive, emotional, and socio-cultural evolution enabled and paralleled the acquisition of communicative and socio-cultural skills indispensable for the emergence and reproduction of a sense of others. Stable adult capacities differentially weaken over the life cycle. This ‘reverse socialization’ means gradual loss of self, sense of others, and decline of routine practices necessary for reproduction of communal life. A modest corpus of data (10 minutes of discourse between six couples, two deemed ‘normal’, and four where one spouse diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease or Frontotemporal Dementia) is used to illustrate caregiver scaffolding simulation of appropriate socio-cultural interaction, illuminating the origin and demise of socio-cultural presentations of self from birth to death.

Die soziale Organisation der Schule und abweichende jugendliche Karrieren

Everett C. Hughes hat behauptet, von einer Erforschung von ‚Karrieren‘ („der sich verandernden Perspektiven, in der sich Personen in bezug auf die soziale Ordnung orientieren und der typischen Abfolgen und Verkettungen von beruflichen Stellungen“) konne erwartet werden, das sie Wesen und ‚Funktionsweise‘ der Gesellschaft offenbare.

The effect of neurodegenerative disease on representations of self in discourse.

Four incontrovertible ‘facts’ are assumed for human emergence, survival and notion of a self: (1) the existence of neurobiological structures and mechanisms, (2) employment of cognitive problem solving mechanisms, (3) adoption of physiologically based emotional displays, and (4) aquisition of communal socio-culture knowledge through caregiver ‘scaffolding’ activities and situated practices. The ‘self’, therefore, is only viable with the simultaneous evolution of neurobiological, cognitive, emotional, and socio-cultural structures and processes. An emergent self presupposes an integration and continual interaction of a developing memory system, continual acquisition and reproduction of cognitive problem solving mechanisms and emotional displays, and acquisition and loss of distributed socio-cultural knowledge. The inability to reproduce coherent local displays of self becomes acutely evident in patients diagnosed with fairly advanced Alzheimers disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and related insults to the brain. Ten minutes of discourse between spouses with diagnoses unknown to the author are used to illustrate linguistic scaffolding provided by caregivers to simulate appropriate socio-cultural interaction; the value of such exchanges for diagnosing human brain dysfunction and loss of self is discussed.

John Rawls on Two Concepts of Rules: Some Speculations about Their Ecological Validity in Behavioral and Social Science Research

Over fifty years have passed since the publication of John Rawls’ paper ‘Two Concepts of Rules’ (1955). The paper remains a unique work. Rawls’ seminal ‘distinction between justifying a practice and justifying a particular action falling under it’ (1955: 3) provides us with a powerful analytic proposition that can have extensive theoretical and empirical consequences for the social sciences, as I seek to demonstrate below. In footnote 1 on page 3, Rawls states that ‘practice’ is a technical term that refers to ‘any form of activity specified by a system of rules which defines offices, roles, moves, penalties, defenses, and so on, and which gives the activity its structure. As examples one may think of games and rituals, trials and parliaments.’ Rawls’ philosophical objective was to defend utilitarianism vis-à-vis ‘punishment and the obligations to keep promises.’ The general idea was to provide a clearer understanding of a rule regardless of whether or not it is defensible. The notion of two conceptions of rules is central to his discussion. I ask: can Rawls’ unique analytical notion of two concepts of rules be clarified by empirical research in the social sciences? I present some recent data from a criminal justice case to illustrate the notion’s potential and limitations. The empirical circumstances are somewhat dramatic. The case involved an allegation of inter-racial sexual molestation and two counts of Grand Theft. The sexual molestation allegation is a theme at the heart of deep-seated cultural tensions between Caucasians and African Americans that can be traced back to initial importation of slaves from Africa. The inter-racial sexual molestation allegation was documented in detail by two law-enforcement agencies but was never pursued. Once major consequence of this decision was to render empirically problematic the issue of when a case is said to fall under a rule of law.

Response to Smith and Atkinson

Robin James Smith and Paul Atkinson (S&A) have prepared a lucid, succinct review of Method and Measurement in Sociology (M&M), and I welcome the opportunity to respond on this occasion of its fifti...