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INDEXICALITY
As used by ethnomethodologists refers to the contextual nature of behaviour and talk. Talk for example is indexical in the sense that it has no meaning without a context or can take on various meanings dependent on the context. As we construct talk or listen to talk we all must engage in the interpretive process of constructing a context. With this context we give the talk a sense of concreteness or definiteness. There is no way to avoid indexicality, however, nor a way to remove it, since talk about context itself is also indexical. For this reason constructing a sense of reality is an ongoing accomplishment of social members.

Last updated 2002--0-9-


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Athabaca University ICAAP

© Robert Drislane, Ph.D. and Gary Parkinson, Ph.D.
The online version of this dictionary is a product of
Athabasca University and
ICAAP

*This social science dictionary has 1000
entries covering the disciplines of sociology, criminology, political
science and women's study with a commitment to Canadian examples and
events and names