ABSTRACT
We generally think of self-revelation-the sudden flash of insight the instant that we understand what something means-as something wholly individual, internal, and psychological. Conversation analysts, on the other hand, build their arguments only from the interactive, communicative behaviors that are available to the participants themselves. Is understanding then beyond the reach of ethnomethodology? Conversation analysts suggest otherwise. Frankel and Beckman (1989), for example, argued that “speakers and hearers continually negotiate meaning in and through conversational exchange and in so doing create social reality” (p. 61). In other words, what someone “understands” in interaction is not so much a psychological question as a social one. Pollner (1979) suggested that understanding is neither an entity nor an object in the mind or psyche of the actor, but rather is “a shorthand way of referring to a behavioral process or transaction in which the actor participated” (p. 247). These authors and others argue that understanding is a social creation, negotiated through interaction. Thus, it follows that understanding can never be a wholly individual phenomenon. It exists, not in one person’s mind, but rather in behaviors exchanged by interactants. Any consideration of understanding then should include a close examination of the participants’ interactive construction of that understanding. Of particular interest to this study is the as yet unaddressed question of how new and novel understandings first emerge-what occasions a so-called “aha moment”? This brief essay provides data and analysis showing that even this seemingly most internal and psychological of moments in the understanding process may have an interactive component. It also implicates several conversational devices in the construction of an “aha.”
