Verbal communication: from pedagogy to make-believe

This paper brings the concept of ‘acting in concert’ to the aid of those wanting to understand the nature of verbal communication. Verbal communication is introduced as a form of concerted activity which has a management function vis-à-vis other concerted (and cooperative) activity. In the body of the paper, verbal communication is likened to other basic management practices: the simplest pedagogic techniques, the soliciting of concerted action by means of mime, collective and solo rehearsing of activity, shared make-believe, the teaching and subsequent exploiting of perceptual abilities, empathy, and the use of objects and graphics for communicative purposes. Various concluding observations are offered, concerning: the great variety of speech’s managerial roles, the danger of relying on colloquial figurative ways of characterising verbal communication, the advantages of the acting-in-concert analysis, and the possibility of a future truly scientific account of verbal communication.