ABSTRACT
This chapter explores human sociality from the viewpoint of language and communicative practices. Language and talk are pervasive in ordinary social life, across the spectrum from inner speech to face to face dialogue, service encounters, talk around the workplace, doctors visits, worship, hanging out, telephone conversations, and a seemingly endless variety of other settings. The path from observation to recording to transcription and analysis is fraught with selectivity and discontinuities. The chapter examines a single extended example of interaction between speakers of Yucatec Maya, the guiding questions can be stated more generally. It argues that the integration is produced through a combination of linguistic, semiotic, and perceptual resources combined over the time course of the episode. The chapter also examines the local integration of multiparty talk in a ritual context. The resources for integration and shared commitment are multiple. The built space in which our divination took place is a stable, publicly available and semiotically replete setting.
