Publications

Publication details [#59581]

Tylén, Kristian, Riccardo Fusaroli, Johanne Stege Bjørndahl and Svend Østergaard. 2015. Agreeing is not enough. The constructive role of miscommunication. Interaction Studies 16 (3) : 495–525.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Journal DOI
10.1075/is

Annotation

Collaborative interaction pervades many everyday practices: work meetings, innovation and product design, education and arts. Previous studies have pointed to the central role of acknowledgement and acceptance for the success of joint action, by creating affiliation and signaling understanding. This paper argues that various forms of explicit miscommunication are just as critical to challenge, negotiate and integrate individual contributions in collaborative creative activities. Through qualitative microanalysis of spontaneous coordination in collective creative LEGO constructions, this study individuates three interactional styles: inclusive, characterized by acknowledgment and praise; instructional, characterized by self-repair; and integrative, characterized by widespread self- and other-repair. The study then investigates how different interaction styles leave distinct material traces in the resulting LEGO models. The inclusive interaction style generally results in concatenations of individual contributions with little coherence and core narrative. The instructional style produces coherent, but largely individually driven models. Finally, the integrative style generates more innovative models, synthesizing individual contributions in shared narratives or schemas.