The Social Grammar(s) of Future-Making

This article outlines a theoretical approach for studying the “grammatical” structure of processes of future-making. Building off theoretical insights about the indexicality and relationality of meaning, I show that the prevalent semantic view of future-making as a movement from imagination to action is unable to theorize the dialogical relationship between the projection of futures and the construction of corresponding trajectories. I propose an alternative that draws on the concepts of enacted sensemaking and situated action to conceptualize projection as a process of organizing indexical practices into relationally defined trajectories into the future. I then reappropriate Leifer’s analysis of how the relations between local actions constitute shared projective horizons in chess to show how this iterational fabric of interconnections defines a relational grammar that coordinates future-orientations. Finally, I use Hutchins’s analysis of distributed cognition to draw these insights together into an account of how the continuous dialogical interaction between projectivity and iteration enacts social grammars, through which images and practical trajectories of future-making are co-constructed.