Action Basics Activity 04: Interpersonal action

Interpersonal, or social, action can be a little slippery, but it's a useful idea if you can grasp it.

If said I pushed Samantha, that would be a physical action, right? Sure.

Now if I said I talked to Samantha, that would also be a physical action... but it's not quite the same: pushed is relatively clear, talked is a little more vague: like you can imagine my mouth moving, but you're not sure how long it goes for, what I'm saying... Talk is a relatively abstract verb compared to push.

And if I said I convinced Samantha—is that a physical action? Of course in some way it is, because I must have talked or written to Samantha in some concrete way. But in another way it's not, because the concrete physical action is really hidden inside this abstract verb. At least if I said talked you know my mouth was moving, but persuaded could mean anything: talking, texting, writing, even just raising an eyebrow.

So we might call this type of action interpersonal action to indicate what happens socially and emotionally between people.

For example, take a look at this snippet, about the dynamics between some girls in school.

Can you see the interpersonal actions?

• Telling someone something
• Belonging to a group
• Pressuring someone

They're all different levels of abstraction.

• Telling: you can imagine someone's mouth moving as they speak
• Pressing: this doesn't mean literally pressing, it means applying pressure, and again we can sort of imagine someone leaning forward, speaking insistently, but we don't know the details
• Belonging: this is the most abstract of all, it could mean anything, you might imagine someone sitting with friends, laughing, leaning towards each other—or being quiet and turning away uncomfortably if they don't belong—but either way you are filling in a lot of blanks

So these are all interpersonal actions. They have their roots in physical or internal actions, but they have been summarised into distinctively social and interpersonal verbs.

Here’s a different snippet with different interpersonal actions.

What actions do we have?

• Needing someone to do something
• Telling someone something
• Wanting nothing to do with someone
• Insisting someone do or not do something

Again, you can see how each of these are at root either internal actions (need, want) or physical actions (tell, insist), but at the same time in they are fundamentally social and interpersonal.

Confused? Don't worry: this is a slippery concept. We're only highlighting it here to help you notice that you probably talk about interpersonal actions all the time—every time you summarise the interaction between people—but you might not use them in your writing as readily if they weren't pointed out to you.

Here are some more examples to get you thinking.