Actual Agreement, Shared Meaning Analysis, and the Invalidation of Boilerplate: A Response to Professors Kar and Radin

AbstractThe topic of trust has attracted increasing interest within HRI research, and is particularly relevant in the context of social robots and their assistance of older people at home. To make this abstract concept of trust more tangible for developers of robotic technologies and to connect it with older people’s living spaces and their daily practices, we propose a light-weight method drawing on elicitation cards to be used at early stages of participatory design. The cards were designed to serve as a guide for qualitative interviews at ideation phases. This was accomplished by using the cards connected to the living spaces of the participants, their daily practices, and ‘provocative’ questions to structure conversations. We developed the method with 10 inexperienced interviewers who conducted 10 qualitative interviews on the topic of trust without cards, and who tested the cards with 10 older adults. Our findings indicate that the method served as a powerful facilitator of conversations around the topic of trust and enabled interviewers to engage with everyday practices of older adults; it also facilitated a more active role for older adults during the conversations. As indicators of findings that can come from the cards, salient trust-related themes that emerged from the analysis of card usage were the desire for control, companionship, privacy, understandability, and location-specific requirements with regards to trust.

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Collective Referential Intentionality in the Semantics of Dialogue

Studies in Logic Grammar and Rhetoric ◽

10.2478/slgr-2014-0007 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 36 (1) ◽

pp. 143-159

Author(s):

Dale Jacquette

Keyword(s):

Collective Intentionality ◽

Mutual Understanding ◽

Shared Understanding ◽

Shared Meaning ◽

General Terms ◽

Question And Answer ◽

Key Terms ◽

Reasoning And Argument

Abstract The concept of a dialogue is considered in general terms from the standpoint of its referential presuppositions. The semantics of dialogue implies that dialogue participants must generally have a collective intentionality of agreed-upon references that is minimally sufficient for them to be able to disagree about other things, and ideally for outstanding disagreements to become clearer at successive stages of the dialogue. These points are detailed and illustrated in a fictional dialogue, in which precisely these kinds of referential confusions impede progress in shared understanding. It is only through a continuous exchange of question and answer in this dialogue case study that the meanings of key terms and anaphorical references are disambiguated, and a relevantly complete collective intentionality of shared meaning between dialogue participants is achieved. The importance of a minimally shared referential semantics for the terms entering into reasoning and argument in dialogue contexts broadly construed cannot be over-estimated. Where to draw the line between referential agreement and disagreement within any chosen dialogue, as participants work toward better mutual understanding in clearing up referential incongruities, is sometimes among the dialogue’s main points of dispute.

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Prekäre Kopräsenz. Raum, Sozialräume und geteiltes Erleben in Zeiten der Pandemie

Evangelische Theologie ◽

10.14315/evth-2021-810205 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 81 (2) ◽

pp. 101-113

Author(s):

Thomas Wabel

Keyword(s):

Social Interaction ◽

Public Space ◽

Social Cohesion ◽

Public Life ◽

Three Dimensions ◽

Digital Tools ◽

Self Awareness ◽

Shared Meaning ◽

Physical Presence ◽

Direct Encounter

Abstract The article explores changes in public self-awareness resulting from the reduction of social interaction in physical presence during the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the three dimensions of shared public space, social interaction in direct encounter, and shared meaning, the text argues that dwindling opportunities to experience social cohesion may become paradigmatic for more fundamental deficiencies in societal interaction. Seen in this light, church services in physical presence can help to maintain a sense for public life in physical presence, unmediated by digital tools.

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Racial Socialization and Racism

The Oxford Handbook of Symbolic Interaction ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190082161.013.30 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Margaret A. Hagerman

Keyword(s):

Social Interaction ◽

Young People ◽

Everyday Life ◽

Racial Socialization ◽

Symbolic Interactionism ◽

Meaning Making ◽

Theoretical Principle ◽

Shared Meaning ◽

Micro Level ◽

Interpretive Process

This chapter illustrates key connections between the traditional field of symbolic interactionism and the study of racial socialization and racism. When researching and writing about racial socialization and racism from a micro-level perspective, it is important to not lose sight of the mutually sustaining relationship between the shared meaning making processes that unfold in everyday life and the big, broad structures that shape and reinforce those meanings. This is particularly true when thinking about theories of how the newest members of a society, through an interpretive process, come to understand the concept of race. Understanding how children learn about race requires taking into account how this learning process is shaped by both micro-level meaning making and macro-level structures. And this is a key theoretical principle of symbolic interactionism. The chapter then explores how race as a concept develops for young people through processes of social interaction within particular contexts.

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