The dynamic, distributed organization of human action is further investigated by focusing on how utterances are constructed through processes of co-operative interaction in which not only speakers, but also hearers and addressees, play a crucial role. In the materials examined here, in the midst of an emerging utterance speakers telling news move their gaze from an Unknowing hearer to another with contradictory attributes: a Knowing (already informed) addressee. Sustaining the relevant distribution of knowledge as this occurs requires modification of the emerging talk, the type of action in progress, and the speaker’s own displayed state of knowledge. What is at issue is not individuals’ epistemic claims about their rights to knowledge, but the ontological constitution of intertwined actors with complementary attributes through co-operative action itself. Utterance, sentence, and actor all undergo dynamic modification as they are emerging so that the coherence and intelligibility of what is occurring moment by moment can be sustained and displayed publicly. The action that crystalizes at a turn’s completion is the mutable outcome of a transformative process.

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