ABSTRACT
In chapter 1, I introduced a complex thesis about conversation as a practice, a practice that says something not only about communicative action itself, but also about ways of relating, feeling, being, and dwell ing in nature. In the intervening chapters, I have illustrated this thesis by presenting descriptions of specific communication practices as well as interpretations of those practices. The interpretations showed how cultural conversations operate as specific means of organizing communicative actions. Each at times conveyed rich messages about social relationships, about the role of emotion in participants’ lives, about identities at play, and about the modes of emplaced living in volved in the performance. In this final chapter, I discuss some general conclusions based on this approach to communication as it applies in these and other, related studies. Specifically, I summarize some of the key cultural features in the four expressive systems discussed in the book, with special attention to the thesis that communication can be understood as a complex metacultural commentary about ways of be ing, acting, feeling, relating, and dwelling. Eventually, I explicate some propositions of the general investigative stance that was used to gener ate these studies of cultural premises in practices of conversation.
