ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we noted that Aphek and Tobin’s analysis of the discourse of fortune tellers assumed a model of communication in which language-use is viewed primarily as a means of exchanging information between people. This may seem an intuitively plausible view, in that it chimes with a common-sense understanding of the purpose of language. However, it is increasingly seen as offering an incomplete, if not inaccurate account of the way in which language is actually used in social interaction. This is because it ignores the situated and dynamic nature of language. Communication scholars from diverse academic backgrounds now accept that it is important to study language use as a medium for social action rather than as medium for information transfer. And conversation analysis has emerged as one of the key methods for the analysis of the action orientation of language. CA suggests that ‘understanding’, and sense making more generally, are not simply consequences of the encoding, transmission and decoding of ideas expressed in language, but the product of speakers’ use of tacit, socially organized methods for conducting social actions through their talk. This perspective casts psychic-sitter interaction generally in a new light; but more relevantly, it suggests novel lines of empirical investigation of what appear to be successful demonstrations of the psychic’s paranormal cognitive abilities.
