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//-->Cultural Sociologyhttp://cus.sagepub.com/The Performance of Knowledge: Pointing and Knowledge in PowerpointPresentationsHubert KnoblauchCultural Sociology2008 2: 75DOI: 10.1177/1749975507086275The online version of this article can be found at:http://cus.sagepub.com/content/2/1/75Published by:http://www.sagepublications.comOn behalf of:British Sociological AssociationAdditional services and information forCultural Sociologycan be found at:Email Alerts:http://cus.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsSubscriptions:http://cus.sagepub.com/subscriptionsReprints:http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navPermissions:http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navCitations:http://cus.sagepub.com/content/2/1/75.refs.html>>Version of Record- Feb 28, 2008What is This?Downloaded fromcus.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 14, 2012Cultural SociologyCopyright © 2008BSA Publications Ltd®Volume 2(1): 75–97[DOI: 10.1177/1749975507086275]SAGE PublicationsLos Angeles, London,New Delhi and SingaporeThe Performance of Knowledge:Pointing andKnowledge in Powerpoint Presentations■Hubert KnoblauchTechnical University of BerlinABSTRACTPowerpoint and similar technologies have contributed to a profound transforma-tion of lecturing and presenting information. In focusing on pointing in power-point presentations, the article addresses aspects of this transformation of speechinto ‘presentations’. As opposed to popular attacks against powerpoint, theanalysis of a large number of audio-visually recorded presentations (mainly inGerman) demonstrates the creativity of these ‘performances’, based on the inter-play of slides (and other aspects of this technology), speech, pointing and bodyformations. Pointing seems to be a particular feature of this kind of presentation,allowing knowledge to be located in space. Considering powerpoint as one of thetypical technologies of so-called ‘knowledge societies’, this aspect provides someindication as to the social understanding of knowledge. Instead of ‘representing’reality, knowledge is defined by the circularity of speaking and showing, thusbecomingpresented knowledgerather thanrepresenting knowledge.KEY WORDScommunication / communicative culture / knowledge / knowledge society /performance / performative / powerpointIntroduction: Powerpoint Makes You Dumb?ithin the last decade or so, powerpoint has become a technology andmedium of communication that has disseminated at a speed one could callsensational. The number of social scientific studies of powerpoint andsimilar technologies, however, is surprisingly few, and most often they are eitherW75Downloaded fromcus.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 14, 201276Cultural SociologyVolume 2■Number 1■March 2008based on speculation or on the quantitative standardized analysis of learningeffects with this technology. Some studies, though, deserve mentioning bothbecause they have gained a certain amount of publicity, and also because theyhave taken a markedly critical, one may even say polemical, stance towards thistechnology. The work of the information scientist Tufte (2003) may be consid-ered as epitomizing this type of critique. In his view, powerpoint must be accusedof impoverishing the process of information dissemination. As an example, heargues that the catastrophe of the NASA space shuttle Columbia can be explainedby the fact that, although the information relevant to the prevention of the acci-dent was available, powerpoint did not allow the effective transmission of thisinformation due to its inbuilt under-complexity. In addition to impoverishing thetransmission of information, Tufte decries the fragmentation of thinking, thereduction of the potential to reflect, and the information overload (‘death bypowerpoint’) caused by it – arguments that have been widely debated elsewhere.Popular as these arguments have become, little is known about the fac-tual use of this technology. For this reason, we started to study powerpointand similar forms of audio-visually supported presentations in a research pro-ject initiated in 2005.1The goal of this research project was the investigationof how the factual use of powerpoint affects the speech situation in presenta-tions. That is, we do not restrict our data collection and analysis to the con-sideration of slides or software only (although we do analyse the types ofslides used in real-time presentations). Instead, we focus on theperformanceof speakers and audiences while carrying out and participating in powerpointpresentations.By the notion of ‘performance’, we want to stress that culture, commu-nication, and meaning cannot be reduced to signs and sign systems. Realityis not given by signs; as a meaningful reality, it is instead created in action.In this sense we agree with Butler (1988) and Alexander et al. (2006) whoconsider those actions as performative that can be understood as communi-cating meaning. In this sense, performance can be called communicativeaction if one does not reduce this notion to communicative rationality, asHabermas (1981) has done. Instead, communicative action always involves astock of more or less structured habitualized knowledges (Knoblauch, 2001).Whereas the latter may be referred to ascommunicative practice,the struc-tures created by communicative actions will be referred to here as thecom-municative genre(Knoblauch and Günthner, 1995). The notion ofperformance also stresses the fact that communicative action is to be consid-ered as a situational process in socially mediated time and space that con-tributes to the creation of meaning. In fact, performance studies stress thatthe process of communication in situations exhibits an order of its own, anorder that consists not only of signs (as structuralists would argue) but alsoof their practical bodily and temporal enactment and reaction in social con-texts. As will be seen with respect to pointing, actors perform in orderly waysthat are culturally patterned, and it is these cultural patterns of performancethat are the subject of the analysis that follows.Downloaded fromcus.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 14, 2012Performance of KnowledgeKnoblauch77This means that technically supported presentations cannot be reduced to theslides or texts and visualizations only. Rather, these presentations are here consid-ered as enactments in which speech and images are interrelated withtechnology and media. Speech, texts, and slides are embedded in the use of tech-nologies, such as notebooks, beamers, laser pointers, and presentation software;and these technologies allow for a mixture of written texts, visual projections andbodily modes of communication. From the perspective of the ethnography of com-munication (Bauman and Briggs, 1990; Hymes, 1974), presentations are perfor-mances that, rather than being mere ‘speech’ events, must be considered ascommunicative events. These events are characterized not only by the bodily andspoken performance and the activities of audiences. The presentation also includes‘mediated’ elements, such as slides, paper copies of slides, written text or notes, and‘live forms’, such as speech in front of a ‘live audience’ which is integrated to sucha degree as to constitute a genre of its own: the ‘presentation’.2Thus the power-point presentation constitutes what may be called a ‘hybrid’ form consisting of bothimmediate interaction as well as technologically mediated action.Against this background, we may first ask what determines the form of thesepresentations (i.e. the communicative genre). In order to do so, I will focus on aspecific aspect of this genre, namely pointing, because it seems (a) most specificto the genre and (b) relates to various other aspects of the genre, most importantlythe often ignored role of the human body in speech on the one hand, and its con-nection to technologies on the other. The dissemination of mediated technologiesraises additional questions as to the cultural signification of the use of these tech-nological media: do new technologies lead to a ‘“technological and aesthetic con-tamination” of live performance’ (Auslander, 1999: 40ff.)? Or could one considerthem as an ‘informization’ of speech, that is, as the extension of the ‘informationsociety’ (or ‘knowledge society’) into immediate, concrete settings?3The data I will refer to consist of field records, interviews, and, in particu-lar, videotaped records of presentations, focusing on speakers, slides, and audi-ences. (In many cases the research team also received digital copies of theslides.) The presentations have been recorded in ‘natural situations’, that is, aspart of the routine practical activities of organizations. The organizations wherewe have carried out field research range from universities and research organi-zations (in different disciplines such as law, social sciences, natural sciences,and medicine) to administrations, private businesses, churches, and entertain-ment organizations. Types of occasion sampled vary from seminars, meetingsand workshops to conferences, both national and international. In addition, wehave collected data from presentations using different technologies, such assoftware-supported presentations using beamers, overhead presentations andflip-chart presentations, as well as seminars using blackboards. The corpus ofdata now consists of more than 200 presentations, lasting from two minutes upto two hours. The data have been analysed according to a method we call genreanalysis (Knoblauch and Luckmann, 2004). This method is based on focusedethnography, sequence analysis as suggested by conversation analysis (Heathand Hindmarsh, 2002), and videography (Knoblauch, 2006).Downloaded fromcus.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 14, 201278Cultural SociologyVolume 2■Number 1■March 2008In the first part of this article, I will identify some forms and functions ofpointing during powerpoint presentations that are embedded in other forms ofbodily activities. It will be shown that pointing works as a kind of pivot, relat-ing the body of the presenter, audiences, and the technologically visualized text.In turning to ‘pointing of the second degree’, I will then indicate some addi-tional means to relate speech, speaker, audience, and presentations. Havingestablished the various forms of pointing, I will then consider the cultural andsocial significance of powerpoint presentations. Based on the assumption thatpowerpoint presentations epitomize communication in the ‘knowledge society’,I will argue that they contribute to a substantial transformation of knowledgethat is captured in the notion of theperformance of knowledge.Forms and Functions of Pointing in Powerpoint PresentationsWhen talking about pointing we should not restrict ourselves to language andlinguistic deixis, which is often addressed in studies of oratory and spoken lan-guage.4Pointing here refers to body and gesture deixis which may – or, as wewill see, may not – be accompanied by linguistic deixis. Because pointing typi-cally occurs within interaction (someone shows something to someone), itexhibits distinctive social characteristics.5Pointing belongs to those forms ofroutinized practices actors are able to perform without necessarily havingexplicit knowledge about when and how they execute this action.For this reason, the meaning of pointing has to be reconstructed in otherways. In gesture studies, one assumes that the meaning of gestures can be recon-structed by identifying the particular gestural forms that ‘carry’ meaning. On thesegrounds, pointing can be distinguished from, for example, iconographic gesturesthat appeal to visual images, or from mimetic gestures that mimic other processes.6Indeed, if we look at the data in Figure 1, we can easily detect the use of differentforms of pointing. Most popular, of course, is pointing with the index finger. Inaddition, pointing may be done with the palm downwards (Example 1), the handforming a triangle (Example 2), or the hand forming an L-shape (Example 3).The institutional importance of pointing becomes visible in the fact that, inaddition to the hand, a series of technical instruments is available to supportpointing: sticks, pens and pencils may be used as well as the computer mouse(although we find that presenters hardly ever utilize the mouse-pointing func-tions). The most popular form of pointing in connection with powerpoint is theuse of the laser pointer. If in the analysis of pointing one also includes pointingby means of technical aids, one may observe that the signification of pointing isnot dependent on the sign itself, as gesture studies suggest. Rather, the meaningof pointing is established in relation to other aspects of communication. Considerfor example the following case taken from an academic powerpoint presentationwith an audience of some 40 persons.7The orator speaks and points (doubleunderlined) (see the end of the article for transcription conventions):Downloaded fromcus.sagepub.comby Anna Dom on October 14, 2012 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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