Affecting in Discourse: Communicating uncertainly and communicating uncertainty

Abstract

We communicate uncertainly, and we communicate uncertainty. This essay argues the ambiguous and indeterminate aspects of everyday talk to be crucial to our felt sense of communication. To make this claim, I bring together an affect- and phenomenology-influenced orientation with close analysis of conversational discourse. Hence, this essay also offers one way in which affect theory can be entangled with language and discourse. Analysis of conversational episodes from fieldwork with teenage music listeners yields three key processes: (i) Patronage describes the experiential ‘distance’ between the ‘I’ and my own utterance or gesture, reflecting the intersubjective and improvised nature of conversation. (ii) Zones of indistinction describe transient pockets of ambiguity, which provide a sense of safety as I navigate uncertain waters conversation. (iii) These affective and reactive journeys through everyday conversation constitute the work of position-taking, through which emerges my style of being in the world, my subjectivity.