Animal actions and their involvement in human meaning-making processes in interaction

This article examines the meaning-making processes involved in how non-human animals, particularly dogs, contribute to our understanding of the concept of "a ball-throwing exercise." Theoretically, the article aligns with and contributes to interspecies pragmatics by introducing cognitive dimensions to the field. Interspecies pragmatics is based on conversation analytic (CA) research; this article explores how CA findings on cognition can contribute to pragmatic questions on meaning-making processes in interaction.

For this investigation, data were collected using GoPro action cameras attached to harnesses on three dogs, providing footage from their first-person perspective. The data, which total nearly 2 hours, were analyzed using CA methods.

We focus on dog-walking sessions where the dog summons the human to pick up its ball. The human arrives and either picks up the ball or leaves it on the ground to kick it later. This sequence is a pre to the exercise that occurs when the human returns the ball to the dog: the human throws or kicks the ball for the dog to catch. We identified two sequential occurrences in pre-sequences where human and non-human animal meaning-making processes intertwine: (1) the moment after the human's expected answer in the second position arrives, allowing the dog proceeds to the third position closing turn (dog runs) or directly to the main sequence (dog remains in place), and (2) the moment when the dog initiates a repair due to the lack of an expected answer by the human. Common to these occurrences is that they highlight the dog's expectations regarding the human's action in the second position of the pre-sequence.

These findings suggest that cognition is sequentially situated within the relationship between the pre-sequence and the main sequence, indicating how occurrences in the pre-sequence materialize in the main sequence. Cognition is grounded in the sequential development that facilitates the entire exercise through cooperation with the other participant.