Interpreting unfamiliar graphs: A generative, activity theoretic model

Research on graphing presents its results as if knowing and understanding were something stored in peoples' minds independent of the situation that they find themselves in. Thus, there are no models that situate interview responses to graphing tasks. How, then, we question, are the interview texts produced? How do respondents begin and end utterances? And, what is the relation between words and gestures used as part of the communication? Based on a database developed in two studies with research scientists (N = 37), we developed a theoretical framework using cultural-historical activity theory for understanding the texts produced during interviews. Our framework addresses three major findings, whose implications are discussed in the paper. First, the interview text is the contingent and situated product of the entire activity system, including interviewer and other aspects of the setting; the interview text can therefore not be reduced to the cognitive properties of the individual interviewee. Second, the interpretation unfolds in time, shaping the way the graph itself is perceived; unlike a written text that accompanies a graph, the verbally produced interview text therefore has to be analyzed through a moving interpretive window without recourse to subsequently produced talk. Third, gestures, speech, and the perceptual aspects of the graph currently salient to the interviewee, have to be understood as expressions that are irreducible to one another, requiring comprehensive research reports to present all modes of concurrent expression.