‘Lecturing’s Work’: A Collaborative Study with Harold Garfinkel

The lecturer looks at the blackboard and, after that, there is a shift in his face from a serious facial expression into a smile, concurrent with the movement of his right hand which starts scratching his head, seemingly in wonder, upon finding the fieldworker’s camera in the course of filming him. Next, there is a slight hearable laugh and hesitation and then the lecturer’s face shifts back to his previous serious expression and he removes his hand from his head, resuming the prior rhythmicity as the lecturer continues to introduce the day’s topics. Notably, the camera is not treated by the lecturer as relevant until his gaze comes upon it. The lecturer says, ‘Today I want to review with you four different views, four different ways of looking at revolts…’ Just then, the directional properties of his glance become relevant to the material content of his lecture topic and his glance terminates at just that place on the blackboard where the four theories he is about to review are listed. At that point, ‘review’ means that he plans to go over with the class the material his eyes are making available and which are listed in the place where his glance is witnessably terminating. But, with ‘you,’ the lecturer’s head arrives at the camera which is recording him. Suddenly, the matter takes on an entirely different sense that is embedded in the whole interactional ensemble. While seconds earlier, the lecturer had meant by ‘review’ to go over these topics with the class, upon arriving at the camera head-wise, he is suddenly in the midst of doing a gestural pun. A pun emerges in reference to what he is then talking about and when he looks at the camera, ‘review’ takes on its pun sense, as does ‘with you.’ What he is saying no longer means to go over the material with the locally-present audience, but upon noticing the camera and saying ‘review,’ the possibility of someone else being able to watch the lecturer at work again at some later time is evoked. The lecturer’s head meets the camera and we have the smile, the head scratch, the laugh, and the audio hesitation which all stand as an account of the emergent relevance of the camera as a pun on the immediately preceding matter that the lecturer was talking about. The technical content of the pun is not different from his embodied work. It only emerges as a humorous pun by way of its interactional origins and the timing wherein the lecturer’s gaze made contact with the camera and therein re-cast the matter he was talking about. As Harold explained, “[W]e have him [the lecturer] talking of reviewing and we have multiple meanings and rather than being confounded by the multiple meanings, we find ourselves attending the deepened sense of their co-presence” (Garfinkel, April 21, 1988, Informal Seminar, p. 14). Such findings and their descriptions are possible when ethnomethodological interests are brought to real–time records.