ABSTRACT
The overarching interest of this chapter is in the description of embodied courses of action. More specifically, we focus on the instructional descriptions of what sometimes is referred to as manual or instrumental action. The examples that we use are taken from an introductory course in endodontics and a YouTube tutorial on how to crochet. These examples show distinct relationships between descriptions and embodied courses of action. Although the instructional descriptions are all occasioned by manual actions, they vary in the extent to which the sense of the descriptions relies on the details of the displayed actions, and while instrumental actions in some demonstrations are produced independently of their descriptions, there are other situations where descriptions and embodied courses of actions mutually elaborate each other. In addition to this interest in descriptions as part of instructional demonstrations, we also turn to our own practices of description. Throughout this chapter, we discuss how professional sociological analysis trades on and differs from the analysis produced by members themselves in the course of demonstrations.
