ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a systematic study of how questions are prepared, made possible, projected, and actually asked in a professional context in which work and instruction are deeply intertwined. Asking questions is a simple device that enables learning and instructing in situ: novices can participate in the ongoing work and learn about it, while seniors can guide them. The chapter shows how, during surgical operations, remote video-connected trainees watch the operation in real time, and are instructed to ask questions by the operating surgeon and an expert mediating between them and the surgical team. To socialize trainees to ask questions, surgeons and experts highlight specific environments for questions, at the same time indicating which questions are relevant at that point. This enables in situ instructional activities in which experts as well as trainees ask questions. Although differently formatted and ultimately performing different actions, all questions contribute to learning and socializing. Taking into account the treatment of questions by surgeons, experts, and trainees reveals the complex interactional and praxeological configuration that makes this action possible, legitimate, and consequential. This casts light on the practical, material, embodied, interactional ecology, and on the subtle ways questions constitute a vehicle for professional socialization.
