Orientation to the Setting: Discursively Accomplished Intersubjectivity

This article concerns intersubjective understanding; what it is to establish a shared understanding of the conversational activity in research interviews. This discussion was inspired by interpersonal subjectivity (Mead, 1910/1978) and constitution of otherness, one of the four matrices of intersubjectivity proposed by Coelho and Figueiredo (2003). In drawing attention to the interview as an intriguing and instructive realm of inquiry for social scientists, this article assumes two objectives: (1) outlining the concept of positioning as undergirding Coelho and Figueiredeo's third element of intersubjectivity—interpersonal intersubjectivity; and (2) suggesting how this might be studied using the discursive psychological and social constructionist approach. A specific task involved for this argument is a discourse analysis of an extract taken from interviews with British World War II veterans regarding their reconciliation experiences. I will argue that intersubjectivity is interactionally accomplished as an emergent feature of the discursive practices of remembering and reconciliation.