ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with exploring, via the particular case of “goals,” some general problems facing theories that use intrapsychic concepts to explain discourse behaviors. The use of the concept of goal to explain face-to-face interaction is an instance of a widely shared paradigm that assumes that the mind causes action, in other words, that an individual's observable behaviors must ultimately be explained by his or her mental processes. (Similar concepts include “intention,” “motivation,” “cognitive processes,” “learning,” “personality,” and so forth.) This paradigm is typical of psychology as a discipline, including social psychology, but it can also be found in many other social sciences, including communication and linguistics. A minority in each of these fields, including many discourse analysts, focus more on overt communicative acts and generate descriptive rather than inferential theories. What I have to say here has much less relevance for the latter group.
