Objects, Bodies and Work Practice 1788924525, 9781788924528

Citation preview

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

LANGUAGE AT WORK Series Editors: Jo Angouri, University of Warwick, UK and Rebecca Piekkari, Aalto University Business School, Finland Language at Work is a new series designed to bring together scholars interested in workplace research. The modern workplace has changed significantly in recent years. The international nature of business activities and the increasing rate of mobility around the world create a new challenging environment for individuals and organizations alike. The advancements in technology have reshaped the ways in which employees collaborate at the interface of linguistic, national and professional borders. The complex linguistic landscape also results in new challenges for healthcare systems and legal settings. This and other phenomena around the world of work have attracted significant interest; it is still common, however, for relevant research to remain within clear disciplinary and methodological boundaries. The series aims to create space for the exchange of ideas and dialogue and seeks to explore issues related to power, leadership, politics, teamwork, culture, ideology, identity, decision making and motivation across a diverse range of contexts, including corporate, healthcare and institutional settings. Language at Work welcomes mixed-methods research and it will be of interest to researchers in linguistics, international management, organization studies, sociology, medical sociology and decision sciences. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

LANGUAGE AT WORK: 3

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice Edited by

Dennis Day and Johannes Wagner

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/DAY4528 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Names: Day, Dennis – editor. | Wagner, Johannes (Professor of communication), editor. Title: Objects, Bodies and Work Practice/Edited by Dennis Day and Johannes Wagner. Description: Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Multilingual Matters, [2019] | Series: Language at Work: 3 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019003617| ISBN 9781788924528 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781788924542 (epub) | ISBN 9781788924559 (kindle) Subjects: LCSH: Nonverbal communication—Case Studies. | Body language— Case  Studies. | Psycholinguistics—Case Studies. Classification: LCC P99.5 .O25 2019 | DDC 302.2/22—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019003617 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-452-8 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2019 Dennis Day, Johannes Wagner and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Nova Techset Private Limited, Bengaluru and Chennai, India. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by NBN.

Contents

Contributors

vii

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice: An Introduction Dennis Day and Johannes Wagner

xi

Transcription Conventions

xxiii

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action 1

Objects of Agreement: Placing Pins to Progress Collaborative Activity in Custom Dressmaking Maurice Nevile

2

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons Anne-Sylvie Horlacher

3

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation in Shared Decision Making Chiara M. Monzoni, Basil Sharrack and Markus Reuber

3 33

61

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction 4

5

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices Dennis Day and Gitte Rasmussen Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café: How Customers Obtain ‘Their’ Coffee Elwys De Stefani

87

113

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future 6

Dropping Off or Picking Up? Professionals’ Use of Objects as a Resource for Determining the Purpose of a Customer Encounter Trine Heinemann and Barbara Fox

v

143

vi

7

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving Maurice Nevile and Johannes Wagner

164

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments 8

9

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters Mie Femø Nielsen

191

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction Spencer Hazel and Kristian Mortensen

216

10 Olfactory Objects: Recognizing, Describing and Assessing Smells during Professional Tasting Sessions Giolo Fele

250

Postscript: Thing and Space Aug Nishizaka

285

Index

295

Contributors

Dennis Day is Associate Professor at the Department of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark. He is currently involved in the Social Objects for Innovation and Learning (SOIL) Project. Within the project he has worked together with Johannes Wagner on how the handling of objects, taking turns at talk, and object possession are related. Most recently he has run a project at a residence for asylum seekers and a residence for adults with neuropsychiatric disorders looking at how physical environments, and objects within them, can be adapted to improve possibilities for interaction. Elwys De Stefani is an Associate Professor of Italian linguistics at KU Leuven, Belgium. He analyzes ordinary settings of interaction with methods of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics. He contemplates interaction as a thoroughly multimodal phenomenon, where talk is used in concert with other resources, for example gesture, gaze, body posture and object manipulation. His current research interests cover the use and stepwise unfolding of grammar, the temporality and sequentiality of spoken language, mobile settings of interaction, practices of reference, categorization and manipulation of objects, methods of data collection and treatment for interactionally oriented linguistics. Giolo Fele is Full Professor of Sociology of Culture at the University of Trento (Italy). His research focuses on video analysis of social interaction with an ethnomethodological approach. He studies emergency calls management, wine and coffee tasting, TV football commentaries. He has presented his papers on several conferences around the world. He is author of six books and more than 60 articles and book chapters. Barbara Fox is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She works in the areas of Discourse-Functional Syntax and Interactional Linguistics. Her current research includes several areas within language use, including: formulation of requests, especially in regard to material objects, responses to polar questions with any, and the functions of minimal questions. Her research often explores the embodied and multimodal nature of grammar, extending our received notions of syntactic and grammatical organization to a view that treats grammar as enforming embodied action in interaction. vii

viii

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

Spencer Hazel is Senior Lecturer at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University. His research deals fi rst and foremost with co-present interaction as situated and embodied practice, seeking to describe the multifarious resources social actors draw on in their interactions. His research focuses mainly on linguistically dynamic settings such as international workplaces, language classrooms, and interactions involving people living with dementia. He also does research in the creative arts, with a particular interest in theatre production. He works from an interaction analytic approach, which draws on Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis and micro-ethnography. Trine Heinemann is a linguist and trained Conversation Analysts. She has a long-standing interest in how objects and other aspects of our environment influence and are influenced by interaction. Other research interests include the relationship between linguistic format and action, and how language is used in a range of institutional settings, for instance, in home help visits and audiology consultations. Anne-Sylvie Horlacher is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Between 2012 and 2018, she has carried out her work as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of French Linguistics at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She explores ordinary and institutional settings of interaction using multimodal conversation analysis and interactional linguistics. A first line of research is dedicated to understanding how participants use grammar as a resource for interaction and how, in turn, linguistic resources emerge within the sequential organization of interaction. A second line of research is dedicated to talk at work, more specifically in beauty service encounters. Chiara M. Monzoni is an independent researcher. She is a Conversation Analyst and has been working on a range of different socio-linguistic phenomena in ordinary and institutional interactions in Italian and English. Her main research interests include: multimodality; action-formation; medical interaction: differential diagnosis of epilepsy/Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures, shared decision-making, advice-giving, labelling; emergency calls to the ambulance, etc.; affi liation-disaffi liation (especially direct complaints/accusations); preference organization; and multi-party interaction. Kristian Mortensen is associate professor at the Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark. His research deals with practices for sense-making in social interaction with a focus on how social interaction is constructed through various resources such as talk, gaze, gesture, body posture and material objects. His research has mainly focused on language classroom interaction and user-based design. His research has appeared in journals such as Research on Language and

Contributors ix

Social Interaction, Discourse Processes and Journal of Pragmatics. He is co-editor of Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality. Before leaving research in 2017, Maurice Nevile was Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark (half time). As a linguist and applied linguist, he completed his PhD (2001) in conversation analysis. Further education included the 8-day intensive course at UCLA (2006), and three summerschool/courses with Gail Jefferson. For twenty years he researched video recordings of natural settings to examine the language, practices and collaborative activities of social interaction, in cars, commercial and military aviation, aviation accidents and incidents, pilot training, design, higher education, and problem gambling. He is lead editor of the book Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (2014). Mie Femø Nielsen is Full Professor of Communication at University of Copenhagen (Denmark). Her research focuses on video analysis of professionals' interaction with an ethnomethodological approach. She studies business meetings, video mediated encounters, innovation workshops and the social practices of facilitation and leadership in such institutional settings. She is (co)author of 12 books and about 200 articles, book chapters and conference papers. Aug Nishizaka is Professor of Sociology at Chiba University. His research has primarily been concerned with the social organization of vision and touch in various settings, including regular prenatal checkups. More recently, his interest also lies in interactions between evacuees/residents and volunteers/professionals in the areas directly affected by the nuclear power plant explosions subsequent to the earthquake on 11 March 2011. His recent publications include “The moral construction of worry about radiation exposure” (Discourse & Society, 2017) and “The perceived body and embodied vision in interaction” (Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2017). Gitte Rasmussen is Professor of Social Interaction and director of center for Social Practices and Cognition (SoPraCon). Her research interests include EMCA studies of social face-to-face conduct primarily in institutional and organizational settings. The settings range from clinics and care facilities to everyday environments such as shopping centers. Her research interests concern how human beings organize actions and practices socially, through which they locally indicate social and cultural values, concepts, and categories. The participants include professionals and ‘ordinary’ members of society as well as clients whom society ascribes to social categories such as persons with ‘dementia’, with ‘learning disabilities’. Markus Reuber is Professor of Clinical Neurology, Academic Neurology Unit at the University of Sheffield, UK, and Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

x Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

His clinical research work has focused on seizure disorders. He has explored the use of psychotherapy for patients with neurological problems and used a number of interactional and linguistic research methods to study communication between patients and doctors. More specifically, he has pioneered the use of sociolinguistic methods as differential diagnostic tools. Basil Sharrack is Professor of Clinical Neurology, Academic Neurology Unit at the University of Sheffield, UK, Consultant Neurologist at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Director of the Multiple Sclerosis Research Clinic. His clinical research work has focused on Multiple Sclerosis and he has had a Leading UK role in the design and conduct of clinical trials in Multiple Sclerosis (includes: first gene therapy trial at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NSH Foundation Trust and the fi rst phase III Autologous Haematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation treatment in patients with MS). Johannes Wagner is professor of Communication at the Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark. In his work in Applied Linguistics he has pushed for a microsociological understanding of second language learning and teaching practices. His latest edition (2018) is a volume on Longitudinal studies on the organization of social interaction (Palgrave Macmillan, with Simona Pekarek-Doehler and Esther González-Martínez). In recent years he has been working on human social praxis as the nexus of verbal interaction, embodied practices and tangible objects in the environment (social-objects.org).

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice: An Introduction Dennis Day and Johannes Wagner

What role do material objects play in the in situ, embodied and spatial circumstances of interaction? How do people organize their embodied conduct vis-à-vis such objects, and how is this consequential in and for their work practices? In this volume, contributors will focus on these questions, specifically to the extent that they concern connections between ongoing courses of action within work practices, an object’s materiality and mobility in space, bodily manipulation of objects, the body and language. The contributions to this book address a broad range of settings and actions (dressmaking, shoe repair shops, foreign language teaching, forklift driving, design workshopping, speech and language therapy, patient instruction, coffee tasting, international business meetings, hairdressing) where a large variety of objects become relevant as well as participants’ hands, arms, legs and torsos. The contributions address the role of objects for the progressivity of action (Part 1), spatial aspects of objects in interaction (Part 2), objects in the service of preparing for a possible future (Part 3) and, fi nally, objects as interactional accomplishments (Part 4). Before we present the studies in this volume and discuss what insights this book might may add to our current understanding of objects and human (inter) action, we will briefly sketch its pedigree. Studies of Objects in Interaction

The role of objects in human life has been studied within several traditions for a very long time. Archaeology, anthropology, ethnography and cultural theory have always had a central interest in cultural objects (e.g. Appadurai, 1986; Bourdieu’s 1970 famous study of the Berber home; Hodder, 2012, about the entangled relationship of humans and things; Ingold, 2000, 2006). Architectural and (aesthetic) objects have attracted students of architecture and design (e.g. Mattozzi, 2009; Suchman, 2007). Semiotics (e.g. Keane, 2003; Tilley et al., 2006) has been interested in the

xi

xii Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

role of material objects. Psychology has studied the affordances of objects (Gibson, 1979; Norman, 1988). In these traditions, objects are studied per se, that is, as entities with a certain durability, possibly created by humans but independent of human practices. An illustrative case in point may be experimental archaeology (Mathieu, 2002), where (pre)historical objects are studied by practically experiencing them. Here the point of departure is the object itself. What the contributors to this volume are doing, though, is exploring how objects play their part in the sequential history of human interaction. Here the starting point is the object, but it is only interesting in its in situ use. Archaeology and cultural studies may be interested in just any object that is available in human space. Interaction studies are interested in only those objects that in one way or another are made relevant for the participants’ specific actions and interactions. Following Nevile et al. (2014: 5) we refer by the term object to ‘those elements of the physical world that we can experience sensorially’, be it through vision, sound, touch, but equally by taste and/or smell. Objects are always grounded in the experiences of the human senses. They may emerge through human action and interaction, although they are not necessarily artifacts. They may become a resource for human action and interaction, but they may just be ‘sitting there’. The contributions to this volume have a common home in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA). Among the most influential works is Garfi nkel’s (2002) study of sense-making in the physical world, especially the chapters about instructed action (Suchman, 2007). The ethnomethodological tradition has never excluded objects from the analysis. Coming out of a Goffmanian tradition, objects and embodied action had a central role in the work of the Goodwins (1985, 1990, 2000). Conversation analysis, despite Sacks’ remark that the focus on talk was purely accidental (Sacks, 1984), has fairly recently widened its scope to objects (Nevile et  al., 2014), embodied action (Nevile, 2015), multiactivity (Haddington et al., 2014; Mondada, 2012a), mobility (Haddington et al., 2013; McIlvenny et al., 2009) and intercorporeality (Meyer et al., 2017) and has brought a sophisticated focus on details to the analysis of interaction. Current work is giving us a better understanding of the systematic and coherent ways in which complex multimodal resources are exploited to create and understand orderly and meaningful social actions. A strong precondition for the expansion of EMCA’s scope has been a quite radical shift from ethnographical or experimental data (EM) and audio-recordings (CA) to video documentations. This development has been strongly influenced by the pioneering work of the Goodwins (C. Goodwin, 1981, 1996; M.H. Goodwin, 1990), Suchman (2007), Streeck (1996), Heath et al. (2010), Mondada (2008, 2009b), Laurier et al. (2008), and others. Compared to other fields, EMCA has exclusively used documentary-style video-recording where one or more cameras are set up to

Introduction xiii

capture as much of the ongoing action as possible. The contributions to this book are no exception. Although EMCA is interested in the participatory perspective, studies that give participants a ‘roving’ camera to document their specific perspectives on the ongoing action are uncommon. (Pink, 2007; Ylirisku & Buur, 2007). Extensive reviews of EMCA research on objects can be found in Haddington et al. (2014), Nevile et al. (2014) and Nevile (2015). We draw briefly on these reviews to lay out our particular interests in this volume. The work reported in the reviews invites us to investigate the entire body in interaction and its adjustments to other bodies as well as embodied object manipulations. A point of departure is that interaction is configured not only by talk but also by a range of embodied resources which are temporally organized to develop particular activities and forms of participation (C. Goodwin, 1981, 2000; Mondada, 2009a ; Nikishaka, 2006). The interest in complex multimodal resources began with interlocutors’ bodily behaviors, for example gaze and gesture, and how these behaviors were involved in the orderly flow of verbal exchange. Objects have been of interest for their semiotic properties, most poignantly by their being inscribed (Day & Mortensen, in review; Goodwin, 2000; Mondada, 2012b; Streeck & Kallmeyer, 2001), but also, broadly, as referents and topics of talk (Hindmarsh & Heath, 2000), as part of environmentally coupled gestures (Goodwin, 2007), as elements in embodied action concurrent with talk or, more generally, as part of the environmental and material ‘surround’ of social activity (LeBaron & Jones, 2002). A focus on objects was prominently addressed by Streeck (1996), who revised J.L. Austin’s famous work ‘How to do things with words’ as ‘How to do things with things’. While Austin and the ordinary language philosophers had a tremendous influence on linguistics and its pragmatic turn in the 1970s, Streeck’s question was not taken up immediately with the same enthusiasm, but his work was furthered significantly in the edited volume by Nevile et al. (2014). Here we fi nd, roughly speaking, a collection of work comprising interests in the constitution of objects and how objects are consequential for order and progressivity. The volume before you continues this tradition with a particular focus on social actions in which the presence of verbal exchange may vary. Within these actions, objects, inscribed or otherwise, and the body may thus be explored not only for their regulative or semiotic duties in verbal exchange but also for their constitutive role in the material and sensorial ecology of (work) practices. The contributions to this volume thus focus more broadly than much previous work in that they demonstrate that objects and other aspects of the ecology can be made relevant for action in which talk may play no or just a minor role. Embodied work practices – as shown in a number of contributions to this volume – may make objects in the environment relevant for bodily and/or verbal action. Objects are more than what is said of or with them. We focus generally on the reflexivity of

xiv Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

objects and our activities. We address the question of how humans constitute things as objects in their activities verbally, bodily and sensorially, and how these activities are, in turn, constituted by these same objects. For example, we promote an interest in objects as they are phenomenally available to us by way of our senses and how this availability is made intersubjective and constitutive of an activity. Material things are tasted, touched, heard, seen and smelt, and thereafter made out to be material objects of particular sorts, for particular sorts of persons, in particular sorts of activities. In this way, issues concerning a sensorial and material ecology for interaction are addressed. Heinemann and Fox (this volume) demonstrate how a woman carrying a purse into a shoe shop is made visually available by shoptenders as a particular sort of customer, with a particular sort of object, for a particular sort of transaction. Here a sensorially available object, the purse, is made sensorially available as a receipt carrier object, and from this the shoptenders demonstrably orient to the woman as coming to pick up a serviced item. Shoptenders bodily prepare for this being the case, a verbal interaction ensues and the receipt is brought forward. Here we witness how vision, or perhaps more aptly ‘a way of seeing’ (Coulter & Parsons, 1990; Garfi nkel, 1991; Lynch, 1985; Nishizaka, 2000), is a professional practice (Goodwin, 1994) whereby a thing becomes an object constituted by and constitutive of a particular activity. For more on this point see the postscript by Aug Nishizaka (this volume). Of course, when a piece of paper is brought forth from the purse and verbal interaction ensues, a new object is born, a receipt which is both talked about and with, handled and possibly exchanged. In this way the receipt is constituted by and constitutive of the activity. Here we fi nd a coherent connection to much foundational work with regard to objects in interaction, from Marx’s notion of the object as embodied labor (Marx 1844/1964) to Hindmarsh and Heath’s (2000) seminal demonstration of objects as ‘organizational hubs’ of social activity. In this latter sense, the receipt is such a hub and it is a ‘congealed activity’ of the past, a product of labor or praxis (Bernstein, 2011). What is perhaps missing in this account, however, is what happened previously, for example the ‘seeing’ of the purse and the preparation ensuing based upon it as a ‘receipt carrier object’. One thing we can learn from this is that the boundaries of a material and sensorial ecology extend beyond the activity of, in this case, verbal interaction. It may be as noted by Mikkola and Lehtinen (2014) who, following the notion of ‘double orientation’ (Deppermann et  al., 2010), maintain that embodied cues, such as the woman carrying a purse: are practical for the participants since they make it possible for them to have a double orientation. That is, they can simultaneously close the present activity and initiate the next. … In the case at hand we can even state there are two interactional sequences at the same time, a verbal one and an embodied one. (Mikkola & Lehtinen, 2014: 76)

Introduction xv

In our case above, there is more chronological separation between the cue and the talk which, we believe, makes the point even stronger. That social interaction generally may be constituted by sequences of embodied interaction, including variable physical and sensorial orientation to objects, with or without talk, is commonplace. Concerning objects, most notable in this regard is the notion of ‘boundary objects’ (Star & Griesemer, 1989). Here the idea is that objects travel between activities, generally conceived as separated in time, space and personnel, and work as bridges between activities. What is missing in this account, however, is the detailed account of objects’ ‘movement’ as such, as well as the particular spaces they occupy. Such movement and spatial occupation, albeit within what many would consider as singular activities, are very much a concern in the works presented here. To a great extent, the seminal studies mentioned above have generally concerned work practices, communicative interaction and often objects of specific professions, as it were. For example, we have seen how objects may organize laboratory work (Lynch, 1985), how medical students collaboratively handle their specific tools of surgery (Koschmann et al., 2011) and how objects are used to coordinate industrial design activity (Day & Wagner, 2014). EMCA has a special and somewhat elusive relationship to the idea of work understood as paid labor within which a general category for work practices might fall. Rouncefield and Tolmie, in a recent volume entitled Ethnomethodology at Work, exemplify this: ethnomethodology argues that all activities, not merely those that attract some kind of monetary reward, involve ‘work’ – they are all effortful accomplishments, often seen but unnoticed – and, following Wittgenstein, elusive as objects of inquiry precisely because they are always in front of our eyes. (Rouncefield & Tolmie, 2011: xviii–xix)

Nonetheless the Rouncefield and Tolmie volume is very much about the work practices of engineers, project leaders and business relations managers, and general work practices such as scheduling, holding meetings, dealing with documents, and so forth. The point for EMCA is that work understood as effortful accomplishment is general for social life, and that work, in the paid labor sense, is no exception. Thus for us to understand work practices as such it is necessary to see those practices as ‘effortful accomplishments’. Our intention is to report on research which continues this tradition with work practice as an empirical field and which specifically focuses on the particularities of work practices as such. Contributions to the Book

The 10 chapters in the book cover interactions involving a wide range of large and small objects in a wide range of workplace environments: pins

xvi Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

and fabrics, mirrors, syringes, boots, purses, books, whiteboards, computer screens, forklift trucks, cups, spoons and coffee beans. In each and every instance these objects play a crucial role in workplace procedures: objects prime future actions, close up ongoing actions, indicate agreements, facilitate learning, provide the means for actions and much more. In other words, the identification of certain objects can have consequences for possible next actions (most obvious in Heinemann & Fox), transition of objects can portend next activities (Nevile) or the transition itself can be an expected next activity (Horlacher). All chapters in the book are cases in point that objects have categorical and sequential consequences for action and interactions. Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

The first section consists of three chapters where objects are resources for close cooperation in workplaces and institutional encounters. They explore the use or placement of objects to progress ongoing activities. Maurice Nevile’s chapter describes the use of objects in dressmaking. In designing a dress for a professional dancer, the dressmaker works with the dancer and her trainer in the presence of the dancer’s entourage of family and dance partner. Nevile describes how the placement of pins in the fabric indicates sites for alterations. Pins are placed when agreement has been reached, but sometimes also to indicate a possible solution under discussion. In this way the pin visibly indicates a new stage in the design process and progresses the activity towards a next decision. The situation here illustrates well the two potentials for objects-in-interaction suggested by Nevile et al.: […], as either practical accomplishments, emerging as the outcome of processes of interaction (e.g. in craft, cooking, surgery), or as situated resources, somehow involved in and even enabling social interaction for whatever it is participants are doing. (Nevile, in this volume)

In Anne-Sylvie Horlacher’s chapter about the cooperation between a master hairdresser and an apprentice, objects also indicate progress of action. The chapter describes how senior hairdressers and apprentices handle the transition of objects between themselves. Unlike in Nevile’s chapter, there is little talk. The hairdresser rarely makes a verbal request for a particular object, e.g. a mirror or a brush. The apprentice needs to deduce when the hairdresser will need an object, i.e. analyze the ongoing activity. The seamless exchange of objects (cf. Sanchez Svensson et al., 2007) relies on the apprentice’s ability to monitor and anticipate the hairdresser’s actions – in other words to make sense of the activity at hand and to evaluate whether assistance is expected and consequentially when the activity will progress. Chiara Monzoni, Basil Sharrack and Markus Reuber’s chapter describes the management of participation in consultations between

Introduction xvii

nurses and patients. The nurses demonstrate the use of syringes with new drugs to patients with multiple sclerosis. At the end of each demonstration sequence, the patients regularly take the syringes and inspect, comment on and evaluate them. In other words, showing an object in a demonstration (instead of just verbally informing about it) leads to patients’ initiatives and engagement. As Monzoni et al. argue, the physical access to the object progresses the activity towards opportunities for nurses and patients to engage in more extensive exchanges, and allows for the nurses to better understand and respond to patients’ concerns. Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

The second section of the book contains two chapters that deal with the interrelation between bodies, space and objects. Obviously, a material object needs to inhabit a specific space, but the two chapters in this section show how the movement and spatial placement of objects makes certain categories, rights and responsibilities relevant for the constitution of just these sorts of activities and just these sorts of people. Dennis Day and Gitte Rasmussen investigate the interactional consequences of object possession in institutional practices. In their data from speech pathologists on the one hand and designers on the other, objects are frequently used for their work with clients. Day and Rasmussen note that obligations follow an object by way of who ‘owns’ it. They describe a reflexive relationship between participants, activities, actions and objects. Physically claiming an object can give ownership and rights to modify the object (i.e. inscribing on it) and to instigate a next action. Furthermore, Day and Rasmussen show how the placement of objects vis-à-vis the human participants allows particular methods of working together. Objects occupy spaces and how they do this matters in a multitude of ways. Elwys De Stefani similarly describes the interactional and material organization in ordering and serving coffee in an Italian café. He shows how the format of the order, among other parameters, has to do with the space that the protagonists have to traverse from the door of the café to the bar where the coffee is consumed (see also Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014), and how the baristas prepare ‘temporary territories’ for specific categories of customers on the counter by placing saucers that indicate the type of coffee that will be served. The chapter follows the process from the order via the production of the coffee to its serving and shows it as a complex interplay of interlinking and parallel actions, talk, objects, movement and space. Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

The next section contains two chapters concerning how participants analyze incoming objects with respect to the hints they provide as to

xviii

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

possible future actions. In this way, objects may prepare the way for next actions, but are not so tightly coupled with them as when we speak of objects and progressivity. The ‘hints’ they provide may or may not pan out. Further, the objects themselves may very well be involved in independent courses of activity which may or may not converge with the activity in focus. Trine Heinemann and Barbara Fox’s data have been collected in a shoe repair shop. They demonstrate how shopkeepers categorize entering customers on the basis of what they carry with them as evidenced in how they prepare for next actions depending on whether the costumers are expected to pick up repaired items or drop items off for repair. These categorizations on the basis of spatio-material resources thus have possible consequences for what subsequently happens in the encounter and are evidenced by the overwhelming number of unproblematic encounters at the shop counter where shopkeepers’ actions seemingly ‘know ahead of time’ what customers want. Things do not always work out, however, as what people may be carrying can be ambiguous. This is evidenced particularly by the (infrequent) occurrence of open request solicitations, such as ‘how can I help you?’. Maurice Nevile and Johannes Wagner study forklift operators in a training environment. Forklift drivers need to regulate their current task and this includes controlling their future movement vis-à-vis several copresent drivers involved with their own individual tasks. The authors show that drivers while passing through the environment build understandings of the trajectory of other drivers’ forklifts. This is especially critical in cases where a driver is fi nishing a stationary task and begins to move again, as there is a risk of interfering with the driving trajectories of other forklifts. It is noteworthy that such scenarios portend an awareness of objects, here forklifts, that is quite extended in time and space and a negotiation of where people are going next. This extended negotiation among drivers is usually accomplished without verbal interaction, but sometimes drivers shout out warnings and their colleagues respond. Verbal exchanges between drivers are the extraordinary thing as moving heavy objects in the joint spatio-material environment is usually done without words. As ‘exceptions to the rule’, however, they make retrospectively apparent the role of objects in motion across extended space and time. Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Objects have been characterized as interactional accomplishments in their interactional ecology (Nevile et  al., 2014). Mie Femø Nielsen describes in her chapter how the interactional accomplishment of seeing objects demands extra work in the organization of an electronically mediated interactional ecology. She investigates how participants in

Introduction xix

video-mediated conferences constrain and modify their behavior to compensate for the specific visibility of environmental objects in electronically mediated business meetings, e.g. by tilting their head to stay visible for the participants that only see the mediated picture or by accounting verbally for other ‘hard to see’ objects. Because of problems in seeing, objects as interactional achievements become all the more apparent. Spencer Hazel and Kristian Mortensen study the role of incomplete graphical objects as a pedagogical resource. Here we see how an object is intentionally incomplete and its interactional achievement is the pedagogical goal of the activity. The incompleteness is not just there but it is produced as such by the teacher and taken as a puzzle to be solved by the students. It is especially interesting to note how the non-linguistic properties of inscribed objects, such as pieces of paper or whiteboards, are instrumental to what is ostensibly a language learning lesson. Giolo Fele studies the way in which coffee tasters build objectivity of taste descriptions. He shows that tasting is a complex set of activities in which the coffee is inspected and manipulated so that identified features can be described through a combination of different senses. In the service of arriving at an interpersonally acceptable description, the tasters routinely handle a range of material objects (cups, spoons) to hunt for an unstable sensual object: an odor or smell. By their procedures and conjoining talk, the tasters produce the joint olfactory object. Differently from tangible objects, olfactory objects as well as tastes and sound need work by the participants to shape them as an identifiable common object. So, although they are objects in the sense of our defi nition, above, they have a quite different materiality and extension. Further thoughts on the interactional ecology of objects

We are very fortunate to have a postscript to the volume penned by Aug Nishizaka. In it, he provides a solid conceptual foundation for our work, most notably with the notion of aspect-perceptions, that is, simply put, that objects are the in situ work of what we make of and with them. Further, what we make of them is a multisensorial project. Objects, of course, are not only perceptions, in some cognitive sense, but also have substance and in this way impinge on our bodies. Perception is embodied. In this regard, Nishizaka also encourages us to note configurations of bodies and objects in time and space. Being in the right place at the right time is more fundamental than we might believe. While objects are central here in their capacity to be ‘hubs of activity’ (Hindmarsh & Heath, 2000), it is, however, also worth noting that understanding may very well require extending our analytic awareness in time and space as well. Although postscripts are inherently after the fact, we believe that the studies presented here are consistent with the book’s postscript, or at least can be seen as brave attempts. With regard to multi-sensoriality, the human

xx

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

senses are thematized in several chapters; for example, Nielsen, Hazel & Mortensen, Heinemann & Fox as well as Nevile & Wagner discuss issues that have to do with seeing and bodily movement. Fele’s chapter has to do with tasting, and Nevile, Horlacher and Monzoni et al. describe issues related to vision and touch. That objects occupy temporal space is particularly evident in, for example, Day & Rasmussen and De Stefani. Nishizaka also mentions that ‘all pieces of talk and embodied conduct are mutually dependent within the totality of temporally configured embodied orientations’. Several chapters in the volume address the relative relations between talk, embodied conduct and objects, notably in action in which talk plays a minor role. In Horlacher’s data, the progress of the hairdresser’s work makes certain objects necessary. The ongoing talk between hairdresser and customer has little influence on the progressivity of hairstyling per se. In Nevile & Wagner’s contribution, the truck drivers rarely talk with one another apart from shouting warnings when a collision of the vehicles appears to be imminent. This is very different from the contributions by Nielsen, Hazel & Mortensen and Monzoni et al., where talk is the driving force. All in all, we can say that the interplay between the different chapters is more complex than how we have organized them above and, more substantially, perhaps more complex than the basic ecology of objects in Nevile et al. (2014), where objects are either situated resources or accomplishments. A fi nal point, of which we are more certain, is that understanding objects in work practices is far more than understanding the ‘tools of a trade’. As important as such an understanding is, once our focus turns to material things, we can not ignore the more general material circumstances of our actions. References Appadurai, A. (1986) The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bernstein, R.J. (2011) Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bourdieu, P. (1970) The Berber house or the world reversed. Social Science Information 9 (2), 151–170. Coulter, J. and Parsons, E.D. (1990) The praxiology of perception: Visual orientations and practical action. Inquiry 33 (3), 251–272. Day, D. and Mortensen, K. (in review) Introduction to Special Issue on Inscribed Objects in Professional Practices. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practices. Day, D. and Wagner, J. (2014) Objects as resources for turn taking and turn construction. In M. Neville, P. Haddington, T. Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 101–123). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Deppermann, A., Schmitt, R. and Mondada, L. (2010) Agenda and emergence: Contingent and planned activities in a meeting. Journal of Pragmatics 42 (6), 1700–1718. Garfi nkel, H. (1991) Studies in Ethnomethodology. New York: Wiley. Garfi nkel, H. (2002) Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkheim’s Aphorism. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.

Introduction xxi

Gibson, J.J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Miffl in Harcourt (HMH). Goodwin, C. (1981) Conversational Organization: Interaction Between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press. Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96 (3), 606–633. Goodwin, C. (1996) Transparent vision. In E. Ochs, E.A. Schegloff and S. Thompson (eds) Interaction and Grammar (pp. 370–404). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C. (2000) Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1489–1522. Goodwin, C. (2007) Environmentally coupled gestures. In S.D. Duncan, J. Cassel and E.T. Levy (eds) Gesture and the Dynamic Dimension of Language (pp. 195–212). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Goodwin, M.H. (1985) The serious side of jump rope: Conversational practices and social organization in the frame of play. Journal of American Folklore 98, 315–330. Goodwin, M.H. (1990) He-said-she-said. Talk as Social Organization among Black Children. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Haddington, P., Mondada, L. and Nevile, M. (eds) (2013) Interaction and Mobility: Language and the Body in Motion. Berlin: De Gruyter. Haddington, P., Keisanen, T., Mondada, L. and Nevile, M. (eds) (2014) Beyond Multitasking: Multiactivity in Social Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Heath, C., Hindmarsh, J. and Luff, P. (2010) Video in Qualitative Research: Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday Life. London: Sage. Hindmarsh, J. and Heath, C. (2000) Sharing the tools of the trade: The interactional constitution of workplace objects. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29 (5), 523–562. Hodder, I. (2012) Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationship between Humans and Things. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Ingold, T. (2006) Walking the plank: Meditations on a process of skill. In J.R. Dakers (ed.) Defining Technological Literacy: Towards an Epistemological Framework (pp. 65–80). New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. Keane, W. (2003) Semiotics and the social analysis of material things. Language and Communication 23, 409–425. Koschmann, T., LeBaron, C., Goodwin, C. and Feltovich, P. (2011) ‘Can you see the cystic artery yet?’: A simple matter of trust. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2), 521–541. Laurier, E., Strebel, I. and Brown, B. (2008) Video analysis: Lessons from professional video editing practice. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research. See http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1168 LeBaron, C.D. and Jones, S.E. (2002) Closing up closings: Showing the relevance of the social and material surround to the completion of interaction. Journal of Communication 52 (3), 542–565. Lynch, M. (1985) Discipline and the material form of images: An analysis of scientific visibility. Social Studies of Science 15 (1), 37–66. Marx, K. (1844/1964) Estranged labour (ed. and trans. M. Milligan). In The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and The Communist Manifesto. New York: Prometheus Books. Mathieu, J. (ed.) (2002) Experimental Archaeology: Replicating Past Objects, Behaviors, and Processes. Oxford: Archaeopress/University of Virginia. Mattozzi, A. (2009) A model for the semiotic analysis of objects. In S. Vihma and T. Karjalainen (eds) Design Semiotics in Use. Helsinki: Helsinki University of Art and Design Press. McIlvenny, P., Broth, M. and Haddington, P. (eds) (2009) Special Issue on Communicating Place, Space and Mobility. Journal of Pragmatics 41 (10).

xxii

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

Meyer, C., Streeck, J. and Jordan, S. (eds) (2017) Intercorporeality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mikkola, P. and Lehtinen, E. (2014) Initiating activity shifts through use of appraisal forms as material objects during performance appraisal interviews. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T. Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 57–78). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.. Mondada, L. (2008) Using video for a sequential and multimodal analysis of social interaction: Videotaping institutional telephone calls. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/ Forum: Qualitative Social Research. See http://www.qualitative-research.net/index. php/fqs/article/view/1161/2571. Mondada, L. (2009a) Emergent focused interactions in public places: A systematic analysis of the multimodal achievement of a common interactional space. Journal of Pragmatics 41 (10), 1977–1997. Mondada, L. (2009b) Video recording practices and the reflexive constitution of the interactional order: Some systematic uses of the split-screen technique. Human Studies 32 (1), 67–99. Mondada, L. (2012a) Talking and driving: Multiactivity in the car. Semiotica 191 (1/4), 223–256. Mondada, L. (2012b) Video analysis and the temporality of inscriptions within social interaction: The case of architects at work. Qualitative Research 17 (3), 304–333. Nevile, M. (2015) The embodied turn in research on language and social interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48 (2), 121–151. Nevile, M., Haddington, P., Heinemann, T. and Rauniomaa, M. (eds) (2014) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nishizaka, A. (2000) Seeing what one sees: Perception, emotion, and activity. Mind, Culture, and Activity 7 (1–2), 105–123. Nishizaka, A. (2006) What to learn: The embodied structure of the environment. Research on Language and Social Interaction 39 (2), 119–154. Norman, D.A. (1988) The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books. Pink, S. (2007) Doing Visual Ethnography. London: Sage. Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (eds) (2011) Ethnomethodology at Work. Farnham: Ashgate. Sacks, H. (1984) Notes on methodology. In J. Heritage and J. Maxwell Atkinson (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 2–27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sanchez Svensson, M., Heath, C. and Luff, P. (2007) Instrumental action: The timely exchange of implements during surgical operations. In L. Bannon, I. Wagner, C. Gutwin, R. Harper and K. Schmidt (eds) ECSCW ‘07: Proceedings of the Tenth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 24–28 September, Limerick, Ireland (pp. 41–60). London: Springer. Sorjonen, M.-L. and Raevaara, L. (2014) On the grammatical form of requests at the convenience store. In P. Drew and E. Couper-Kuhlen (eds) Requesting in Social Interaction (pp. 243–268). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Star, S.L. and Griesemer, J. (1989) Institutional ecology, ‘translations’, and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals on Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Social Studies of Science 19, 387–420. Streeck, J. (1996) How to do things with things. Human Studies 19, 365–384. Streeck, J. and Kallmeyer, W. (2001) Interaction by inscription. Journal of Pragmatics 33 (4), 465–490. Suchman, L. (2007) Human-Machine Configuration: Plans and Situated Actions (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tilley, C., Keane, W., Küchler, S., Rowlands, M. and Spyer, P. (eds) (2006) Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage. Ylirisky, S.P. and Buur, J. (2007) Designing with Video: Focusing on the User-Centred Design Process. London: Springer.

Transcription Conventions

We present below a list of the notations used in transcribing some of the speech, bodily actions and other phenomena of interest in our recordings. It is important to note that analysis of recorded material proceeds by repeatedly looking at/listening to the recordings in connection with, in some cases, knowledge gathered by our own physical presence in the settings where the recordings were produced. An important part of the analytic process is transcription of the recordings, as transcription itself requires quite a focus on details of which we are normally less aware. The transcriptions are then used as memory aids within the repeated looking/ listening sessions. In presenting our analyses in print, the transcriptions are meant to assist the reader in following our analyses. In EMCA, the transcription of speech has a longer tradition than other actions, and therefore there is more convention in its transcription. There is less conventionality in the transcription of other things the body does, as well as, for example, objects with which it may be involved. Therefore, the notation that we have attempted to use in the volume should be seen as tentative at best. Two issues that affect the transcription of speech as well as other actions are the levels of granularity an analyst feels are necessary for a particular analysis and its dissemination and, simply, how one has learned to transcribe. There are, then, different levels of detail portrayed in the transcripts in this volume. This is very evident in, for example, Heinemann and Fox’s contribution, where edited photographs of bodily action are the mainstay of the transcript and speech is colloquially represented in ‘speech bubbles’. This works very well given the analysis they pursue with its focus on how people ‘see at a glance’ the settings in which they are engaged, and act thereafter. In Fele’s contribution, on the other hand, there is quite a lot of detail in descriptions of the bodily manipulation of cups of ground coffee. Here, the focus is on the bodily sensation of the coffee and occasioned talk on this topic. Much attention is given to how tasters use their bodies to manipulate the cups to allow for a variety of embodied sensations. The table below lists the notations used in the main (i.e. numbered) transcript lines. First, below a main line, if there is speech within it not in English, there is a glossary line. Following this there may be action xxiii

xxiv

Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

description lines, begun with a forward slash ‘/’, which contain, as the name suggests, a transcriber’s description of some action, typically nonverbal, occurring within the timeframe of the main line. A forward slash is also placed in the main line to indicate when the action begins. Pictures or, more specifically, screenshots follow next, and their timing vis-à-vis the main line is marked both in a separate line above them, with ‘#pict. (number)’ and a ‘#’ in the main line. Here is an example: 176 177 INS:

178

(0.5) />°det syns jeg ikk=det syns jeg det fi nt nok°< I don't think so I think that's good enough /MAK adjusts hole above right hip /#(0.4) /#MAK places a pin behind hole #pict. 1

Picture 1

As mentioned above, the transcripts in the volume may vary, for analytical reasons, with regard to how detailed they are for specific types of actions. In order to display this the authors may have used some notations not found below. In such cases, however, they have described in their individual chapters these additional types of notation. Transcription Notations

Word ↑word, ↓word wo::rd

Underscoring indicates a stressed syllable, via pitch and/or amplitude. A prepositioned arrow indicates shifts into markedly higher or lower pitch. Colons indicate lengthening.

Transcription Conventions

°word° woWORD (word) ‘word’ ☺word☺ >word
sådan fold så’n< lidt mere ud her [igås] like folding a bit more out here right [°mm°] jo yes (0.5) /både foran å:- å bagpå tænker jeg both in front and in the back I think /MAK walks to table, gets pins, returns to dancer /(1.6) /MAK walks in front of dancer, stands to her right /er det her for meget is this here too much /MAK points to hole above right breast (0.5) /for oven at the top /MAK runs fi nger right/left across hole det syns [( ) think that [nej (0.3) nej no (0.5) />°det syns jeg ikk=det syns jeg det fi nt nok°< I don’t think so I think that’s good enough /MAK adjusts hole above right hip /#(0.4) /#MAK places a pin behind hole #pict. 1

Picture 1 179 MAK: vi skal /ikk længere ned. ↑vel= we won’t go further down right /MAK runs fi nger back and forth along lower edge of hole

6

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

Maker initiates collaboration on a possible alteration by walking in front of dancer, and gazing towards a hole in the dress above the right hip (154), before pointing to it and stating that it would be good to have it a little bigger (155), to which instructor immediately agrees (160). Maker prompts instructor to expand (158) and instructor confirms her agreement (161), as maker begins handling the fabric and suggests how to make the change before walking to the table to get pins (163, 167). On returning he walks behind dancer, stopping to her right side, and after asking instructor about a different dress feature (169–175) he returns to the hole at the hip, handles the fabric, and then places a pin to the back of the hole (178) as a visible reference point for later enlarging as now agreed. With the pin placed, maker progresses to a next possible alteration, enlarging the hole downwards (179). We see already some features of talk and embodied conduct for collaboration to settle agreement and place a pin to progress activity for possible dress alterations. Maker orients himself physically around dancer, suggests a possible alteration and gesturally indicates the relevant area for attention. Maker checks with instructor for her agreement and handles the dress fabric; he distinguishes between possible tasks (the holes at right hip and right breast), moves to the table to collect pins, places a pin, and initiates talk for a next possible alteration (also enlarging the hole along its lower edge). Of the other two participants, instructor attends to maker’s activity and responds by considering and agreeing to his suggested alterations. Dancer’s involvement, for now at least, is limited to standing such that the dress, as fitted to her body, is available for others’ physical scrutiny and manipulation. This study focuses on such moments, when the dressmaker places a pin into the dress fabric or sometimes removes and re-places (i.e. relocates) a pin, either to hold/form the fabric in some way or for the pin’s presence to act as a point of visual reference. The data show two ways by which placing a pin is significant for participation and progress towards agreement for collaborative dressmaking activity. Maker places a pin after agreement, so substantiating agreement, from which the participants progress to a next possible dress alteration: the placed-pin will inform maker’s individual work to fi nish the dress. Or, maker places a pin for agreement, seeking agreement between the participants, so supporting the participants’ new or ongoing consideration of some alteration: the placed-pin is treated as placed provisionally, as contingent upon the course and outcome of the participants’ continued discussion. It is important to note that, while I consider the character and course of talk for assessment and agreement sequences (e.g. after Sacks, 1987), how participants come to agree, ultimately my primary interest is in that participants come to agree, and how they recognize and act upon agreement to organize and progress their conduct for a larger, ongoing trajectory of embodied activity.

Objects of Agreement: Placing Pins in Custom Dressmaking

7

Social interaction and collaborative work practice

Analyses here consider an aspect of collaboration in design and making. Within the conversation analysis (CA) and ethnomethodology tradition, studies of naturally occurring social interaction for collaborative work show how participants are jointly engaged to conduct tasks and accomplish goals. Participants coordinate their contributions relative to their differing expertise and interests, responsibilities, commitments, accountabilities and forms of involvement and physical access, to progress activities in ways that are to them recognizable and appropriate. For example, in settings as diverse as commercial and military aviation, control centres, emergency response, factory work, research or surgical operations, among others, participants determine and enact courses of action, collect and allocate resources, follow procedures and instructions, time and order conduct, see and interpret phenomena in the scene and identify and respond to challenges and problems (e.g. Brun-Cottan, 1990; C. Goodwin, 1994, 1995; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1996; Kleifgen & Frenz Belkin, 1997; Koschmann et al., 2011; Mondada, 2014; Nevile, 2004, 2013). However, settings of social interaction for design and making activity are relatively less researched (on design see, for example, Heinemann et al., 2012; Matthews & Heinemann, 2012; Murphy, 2012). Regarding a situation most parallel to the present one, Fasulo and Monzoni (2009) consider the interaction between a designer and two tailors at a fashion atelier. The three participants assess the features of a jacket, worn by its designer, and discuss possible alterations. The authors detail the participants’ embodied conduct, but their focus is principally on explicating the nature of assessments and responses, not on progressing the making activity. Otherwise, studies of interaction for making, such as for textile crafts, examine how participants’ actions impact the materials and objects in creation, although a common focus is on instruction and learning and less on collaboration. For example, Heinemann and Möller (2016) show how novice knitters follow video tutorials, and without an expert on hand must themselves detect and resolve their errors in order to advance their learning. Alternatively, when expert guidance is immediately available, Ekström and Lindwall (2014) show what happens for corrective sequences in craft education at moments when the making activity is disrupted by some problem. They show how the materials themselves, and how they are understood and handled, are central to how problems are revealed and ultimately resolved (see also Lindwall & Ekström, 2012). Within clothing and textiles research there is an increased interest in capturing the knowledge and practices of design and creative activity, ‘the designerly ways of knowing, thinking, and acting’ (Bye, 2010: 210), but studies using video to examine the creative making practice are only now emerging, and lack the precise analyses of CA studies and/or do not use naturally occurring data (e.g. Strickfaden et al., 2015).

8

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

Embodiment and materiality: Objects and touch

Collaborative activity for making is inherently embodied and material. After C. Goodwin’s (1981) pioneering work, and especially over the past 15 years or so (Nevile, 2015), researchers have increasingly appreciated the role of embodiment – gesture, gaze, body posture and movement, mobility – as together with talk constituting the situated and accomplished character, order and sense of naturally occurring social interaction and activity. Significantly here, the participants attend to and act with features of the physical surround, including touching objects and their own and others’ bodies. The participants can orient closely to what and how to touch, who can/should touch (practically, legitimately), how to see and interpret what is touched, how to know when touching is worthwhile or warranted for developing and understanding activities underway, and how precisely to coordinate touch with associated talk. For example, a visually impaired person feels for a wall and navigates with a cane (Psathas, 1992), physicians handle pens and documents when talking to patients (Robinson & Stivers, 2001), airline pilots push buttons, touch displays and turn dials to control technical systems (Nevile, 2004), midwives palpate pregnant women’s bodies or guide a student’s hands (Nishizaka, 2007, 2011), architects arrange plans and sketches (Mondada, 2012) and surgical team members manipulate and distribute tools (Koschmann et al., 2012). Studies show how, in and for accomplishing social interaction, participants experience and understand objects as handled, discussed, seen, imagined, planned, transformed, shared, assessed, appreciated, and much more. In life, and living with others, materiality matters. Placing a pin

The study pursues an observation that moments of pinning, when a pin is placed into the dress fabric, are recurrent in and constituent of the dressmaker’s work for a fitting session. It examines specifically how the maker comes to act on when and where to place a pin, in collaboration with the co-present instructor and dancer. The maker places multiple pins, and often removes and re-places them, to shape the dress in particular ways, either to see how possible alterations might look and perform (i.e. fit, hang, move), or ultimately to prepare the dress for later making (e.g. cutting, stitching). Analyses show how moments of pinning are occasioned within, and progress, collaborative making. The pin is a core tool for clothing makers, and has been used for thousands of years (Petroski, 1992: 53). As Connor (2013: 139) puts it, ‘[p]ins belong to the great and diverse universe of fastenings, the thesaurus of contrivances that human beings use to latch, loop and lock things together, and themselves together with them’. Pins are placed into fabric, for example along

Objects of Agreement: Placing Pins in Custom Dressmaking

9

seams or folds to defi ne a sewing/stitching line, to hold fabric together as it is handled or later to be stitched (or pressed). They are commonly made of a long straight thin body of steel, most often of 2–4 cm length, with at one end a sharpened tip to pierce fabric, and at the other a blunted head (often plastic) to provide a driving surface and prevent the whole pin body sliding through the hole made by the tip. An important feature of pinning is that it is temporary – a pin can be easily inserted and removed. Pinning can therefore allow the maker to manipulate and hold the fabric into shape for the moment, to try out possible changes and see how the fabric might fit, fall, move and look, without producing the more lasting impacts of stitching, or especially cutting. Significantly, then, as we will see here, pinned changes do not themselves transform the dress, but can simply be unpinned and so undone, perhaps to be re-pinned some other way.

Data and Methods

Data are the video-recording and associated transcriptions of a late fitting session for making a competitive dance dress. This chapter therefore offers a single case analysis (Schegloff, 1987), an in-depth examination of a single occasion/situation of interaction to reveal practices and understandings by which the participants conduct their activities as, for them, ordinary, intelligible and unremarkable. The language is Danish. The fitting session was selected as indicative from among 20 hours of video-recordings of interactions and activities collected in cooperation with a Danish fashion design firm. At this stage of making, fi nal decisions are made for last alterations and ornamentation for the dress. Until now, the dressmaker has done earlier work to design and pattern the dress for cutting, and with the dancer to fit the dress. The three participants are gathered together: dancer stands wearing the dress; maker moves around the dancer to handle the dress; and instructor is seated within reaching distance of the dancer. Close by is a table on which the maker has various items to support dressmaking, including a supply of pins and a tool for unpicking stitches. Because the extracts show cumulative activity and change for the dress, I present the extracts in chronological order (except for Extract 8). Video-recordings were made with a single handheld camera. Relative to a fi xed camera view, handheld has the advantage of allowing the researcher to move around to optimize the view of the scene, capturing the participants’ activity centred around the dress. Transcription data here are modified from the original CLAN version, and guided by the Jefferson (2004) transcription system for CA. The extracts give English translation glosses and integrate embodiment details analyzed as significant to the participants, supported with images.

10

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

Analyzed Examples Extract 2: Placing a pin after agreement: ‘It could come further down’

Maker continues attending to the hole above the right hip: in Extract 1 he placed a pin to mark the extent of its enlargement to the left, and now he initiates joint consideration on enlarging the hole ‘lower down’. As before, through talk and embodiment, maker fi rst establishes the relevant site of interest on the dress and the nature of the possible alteration. Instructor and dancer each contribute, and maker then places a pin into the fabric, so treating their discussion as having achieved agreement. Extract 2 179 MAK: vi skal /ikk længere ned. ↑vel= we won’t go further down right /MAK runs fi nger back and forth along lower edge of hole 180 MAK: =er vi ikk enige om de/t?# don’t we agree about that /MAK holds fi nger at bottom of hole #pict. 2

Picture 2 181 (0.9) 182 MAK: eller må jeg godt det or can I do that 183 /(2.8) /MAK leans forward to see hole from the front, gazes towards instructor 184 INS: hvordan tænker du/= how are you thinking /MAK holds dancer’s arm 185 INS: =altså /tænker du at det /ska være asymmetrisk /MAK pushes dancer’s arm forwards, dancer moves forwards /MAK points to lower edge of hole, INS gestures with both hands around holes at both sides of dress 186 i forhold [til den anden derovre] I mean do you think it should be symmetrical to the other one over there 187 MAK: [ja >°det var tanken°heller ikk< tæt på: ↓ yes yes it is not at all close /INS removes hand, leans back (out of camera view) /DAN pulls down fabric #pict. 4 194

Picture 4

11

12

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

197 INS: jeg /syns godt /det (ku) kom længere ned /(på)= I do think it (could) come further down (on) /DAN releases fabric, removes hand /MAK comes into view returning from table stops to left of dancer, gazes towards instructor /INS points to dancer 198 MAK: /=o↑kay (0.4) godt okay good /MAK walks behind dancer to dancer’s right 199 INS: det syns jeg.= I really think so 200 UNK: =det synes jeg I really think so 201 DAN: jo. yes 202 /#(1.0) /MAK places a pin below hole’s lower edge #pict. 5

Picture 5

Maker initiates further discussion of the hole by noting the need for agreement to enlarge it downwards (lower) (179, 180), and asking if he can do that (182). He embodiedly identifi es the site of interest and direction of suggested change by running his fi nger back and forth along the lower edge of the hole (179), touching the fabric (180) (Picture 2), and leaning forwards to see the dress from the front, as instructor now sees it, before gazing to instructor, selecting her as the relevant recipient (183). Instructor responds by asking maker for his view (184), wondering if he thinks the holes either side of the dress should be symmetrical (185–186). Maker affi rms (187), having pushed dancer’s arm to prompt her to shuffl e forwards, allowing instructor to gesture with both hands directly over the two holes, as maker also places his fi nger at the lower point of the hole (185). With this joint embodiedly accomplished sense of the site and nature of the proposed alteration, maker (189) and instructor (191) agree at least on its need, and maker walks behind dancer to the table for more pins while initiating talk on a next possible alteration, the dress length (193).

Objects of Agreement: Placing Pins in Custom Dressmaking

13

But just how low down should the hole go, so where precisely should the pin be placed? With maker temporarily absent, dancer looks on as instructor leans forward again to see more closely, touching and holding her fi nger on the dress a little lower than where maker had previously, before leaning back into her seat (193, Picture 3). Dancer physically and visually demonstrates to instructor the possible alteration by pulling the fabric to expand the hole downwards (Picture 4), adding her view that it needs attention (196). As instructor agrees (197), dancer releases the fabric and moves her hand away. Maker returns, it seems, just in time to hear instructor’s acceptance to go ‘lower down’, to acknowledge and agree (198), and walk behind to dancer’s right side to place a pin at the lower point which the instructor had indicated (201, Picture 5). So, by placing a pin, maker evidences his understanding that the participants have, through talk and embodied conduct, collaborated to an agreement. Each has publicly signalled their agreement. The location for pin-placement was established through varying embodied engagement with the dress: pointing from distance towards the hole (maker, in Extract 1); leaning forwards to see; gesturing around the dress to link different spaces; pulling fabric down to demonstrate the change; and touching with pointing finger at the actual site, first to identify the general site (by maker) and then to revise precisely (by instructor and maker). The placed-pin realizes the suggested alteration as now-settled-upon and ready for making, and the participants as able to progress to a next possible alteration, which they then do. Extract 3: Placing a pin after agreement: ‘It becomes oval-like’

We again see maker place a pin after agreement as he considers enlarging the hole over the right hip, now upwards. While getting more pins, maker initiates discussion of a ‘little more square’ appearance at the front of the dress (286), related to the hole becoming ‘more round’ (215). Extract 3 209 (1.7) 210 MAK: det meningen at den ska v- (0.5) være [lidt] mere f:irkantet denne her. igås= it’s the idea that this should be a bit more square, isn’t it 211 INS: [(f’di)] (b’cause) 212 MAK: =nu det fordi at der ikk er lagt noget ind i. now it’s because there is nothing put in it 213 INS: ja yes 214 (0.3)

14

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

215 MAK: /#hvis du forestiller det- blir sådn lidt mere firkantet (alså) den blir så rund if you imagine this becomes a little more square (and) this gets rounder /MAK gestures from left to right across dress front and dancer’s stomach to hole, right hip #pict. 6

Picture 6

216 INS:

ja yes 217 /(0.3) /MAK walks behind dancer to her right 218 INS: den blir (0.4) ovalagt[ig] it becomes oval-like 219 MAK: [ja] o[val] yes oval 220 INS: [°yes°]:: 221 /(2.3) /MAK stands to dancer’s right, places pin above hole 222 MAK: (°skul mere oppe°) (should be higher) 223 (1.5)

Maker embodiedly indicates the relevant area and the nature of its proposed appearance by moving his hand across the dancer’s stomach (215, Picture 6), and facilitates instructor’s view by walking behind dancer to her right (217). Instructor agrees (216), elaborating that the hole will become ‘oval-like’ (218), to which maker agrees (219). Maker treats this apparent shared understanding as suffi cient and begins to place a pin at the top of the hole above dancer’s right hip, consistent with altering the fabric to make the hole more ‘oval-like’, and apparently while talking quietly to himself that the hole, and the pin’s placement, ‘should be higher’ (222). A few seconds later maker walks behind dancer and initiates discussion to possibly alter the line and fall of the dress to the foot.

Objects of Agreement: Placing Pins in Custom Dressmaking

15

Extract 4: Pausing to place a pin after apparent agreement: ‘Happy to go higher’

The next extract shows that even if agreement is apparently reached, maker might solicit the participants’ further input to confi rm the pin’s precise placement. Maker reaches forward to begin to pin, but then pauses and lifts his hand from the dress to check with instructor. Maker orients to the potential for pin-placement to settle collaboration, to later direct his fi nal work in actually making the dress (cutting, stitching, etc.). By pausing pinning he treats further discussion as possibly warranted, offering another chance for considering change. The possible alteration, analyzed over the following extracts, concerns how high the dress should open over the left leg, relating to dress length at the back. Extract 4 234 235 MAK:

236

237 INS: 238 MAK: 239 DAN:

(0.3) [MAK kneels at left in front of dancer, gazes towards and holds hand at dancer’s left hip ( ) (0.4) så vi ska //længere ned på bagdelen so we need to go further down on the behind /MAK pushes dancer, runs fi nger down fabric at dancer’s lower hip /DAN turns body 90 degrees to right, so left leg faces instructor, maker is behind //(1.4) /MAK removes hand from dress, continues gazing at dress /INS leans forward in seat, touches and holds her finger at dress on dancer’s thigh °du skal nok herop xxx øverst° you should go up here at highest /ja. yeah /MAK moves right hand towards dancer’s leg /#mh [hm:] /MAK holds fabric, begins to place a pin #pict. 7

Picture 7

240 MAK: 241 INS:

/INS removes hand from dress, leans back [okay] [xxxxxxx]xxx vi vil gerne igås we would like to, right

16

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

242 MAK: jam- /#jeg v- jeg vil oss gern gå højere well I would also be happy to go higher /MAK lifts right hand (with pin) up from dress, gazes towards instructor #pict. 8

Picture 8

243 MAK: >det er slet /ikk noget problem< for mi:g that is not at all a problem for me /[MAK returns gaze towards dress, holds right hand up 244 /(1.3) /MAK gazes towards instructor 245 INS: jaer yes 246 /#(2.4) /[#MAK gazes towards dress, returns hand to dress, fi nishes placing pin, then smoothes fabric down #pict. 9

Picture 9

In a trajectory of activity familiar from earlier extracts, maker first establishes the relevant site of attention for possibly altering the dress (235), and the participants arrange themselves to attend to and access it. Maker kneels at front left of dancer, gazes towards and touches the dress at dancer’s left hip (234), pushes dancer forwards, and runs his finger down the fabric to where it is currently stitched (235). Dancer responds to the push by turning her body right such that seated instructor can see her left leg, and maker is behind her (235). As maker moves his hand away, instructor leans closer to look and touches (236) to indicate a ‘highest’ point the dress should open (237), higher than currently stitched. Maker agrees (238, 240), as dancer

Objects of Agreement: Placing Pins in Custom Dressmaking

17

seems to also (239), and maker holds the fabric to begin to place a pin at that new point (Picture 7). However, maker pauses pinning by raising his hand from the fabric. He turns his gaze from the dress towards instructor to prompt a response from her, saying he would be happy to go higher (242, Picture 8). Maker allows for revising a possibly agreed placement. When instructor agrees (245), maker returns his gaze to the dress and pins a little higher than where instructor had touched (246, Picture 9). So, maker treats height as still not yet settled, for the pin’s precise location to be confirmed. Extract 5: Placing a pin for agreement: ‘Is this too short?’

In Extracts 2–4 we have seen how the participants orient prospectively to a pin’s future placement. In the next three extracts the participants orient to a pin that has already been placed. In Extracts 5–7 a pin is placed not after agreement is reached but for agreement, that is, to seek and accomplish agreement. A pin’s physical and visible placement, as maker shapes or indicates some location on the fabric, occasions the participants together to collaborate, assess and settle on possible alterations. The pin once-placed becomes a resource for the participants to see and try out suggested changes. This can result in a pin being removed and re-placed as the participants revise their considerations of the dress, and even negotiate what has or has not yet been agreed. Extract 5 continues immediately from the previous. With instructor’s agreement to ‘go higher’, maker has placed a pin for the dress opening over the left leg. But precisely where and how high is ‘higher’? Despite apparent agreement, maker treats the pin’s location as not yet settled but still contingent on agreement. Maker smoothens the now-pinned fabric (246), asking if the opening is ‘too short’ (247), and seems to hear instructor agree (248). This develops into extended talk and embodied conduct, especially handling the fabric, as all three participants contribute to determine an agreed height, before maker removes and then re-places the pin. Extract 5 246

Picture 9

/#(2.4) /MAK gazes towards dress, returns hand to dress, fi nishes placing pin, then smoothes fabric down #pict. 9

18

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

247 MAK: />#er det for< ko:rt?

is this too short? /MAK touches hand at dancer’s left hip #pict. 10

Picture 10

248 INS: (xxx xxx) 249 //(1.8)

/INS leans forward, pulls up fabric over left hip /MAK removes hand from dress 250 MAK: ja. yes 251 /#(2.7) /INS rolls and gathers fabric at hip, holds right hand at dancer’s hip #pict. 11

Picture 11

252 INS: //°prøv lige å se om forfra°

just try to see from the front /MAK lifts fabric behind leg /DAN turns 90 degrees (maker now to her front left) 253 (1.0) 254 ???: så sku vi højere op å no[tere] so should we go higher up than marked 255 MAK: // [#ja jo] det syns je= yes yes I think so /INS removes hand from dress /MAK gestures line of dress, from hip to foot #pict. 12

Picture 12

Objects of Agreement: Placing Pins in Custom Dressmaking

19

256 MAK: =jeg synes godt den må komme herop /å sidde hvor /MAK pulls and gathers fabric over hip at the placed-pin 257 jeg har sat 258 INS: 259 MAK: 260 DAN:

261 INS:

262 DAN: 263 264 MAK:

I think it may well come up here and sit where I placed ja. yes nålen:. hvis jeg så sætter den hvor xx dansthe pin if I then put it where xx danceska den højere op //end det syns du= should it be higher up than this do you think /MAK reaches left to table to get a pin, puts pin in Mouth /INS leans forward out of seat =//jeg tror [den må] komme lidt højere op. I think it may come a little higher up /INS leans back /MAK lowers and manipulates fabric [jaja] yeah yeah (0.5) /#°det ordner jeg her° I fi x that here /MAK removes and re-places pin a little higher #pict. 13

Picture 13

265

(0.3)

Maker signals pin-placement as relevant for further collaboration by continuing to gaze towards dancer’s hip and by smoothing the surrounding fabric and leaving his hand touching dancer’s left hip (247, Picture 10). Instructor leans forward to handle the fabric to simulate how the opening would look and fall over the leg with the pin placed as it is (249). Maker moves his hand away (249), allowing instructor to lift and roll the fabric and indicate with her hand a new higher location on the hip (251, Picture 11). Leaving her hand in place touching the dress, she asks maker to ‘try and see from the front’ (252), which dancer enables by turning herself 90 degrees left to give maker a direct view. Instructor moves her hand away,

20

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

allowing maker to check the dress line by running his hand along the fabric forward from the hip towards the feet (255, Picture 12), and suggesting the dress can come up to where he has set the pin (256, 259). Dancer and instructor confer and agree it can come even higher (260–262) while maker has pulled and gathered the fabric below the pin (256), reaches to the table for another pin which he places in his mouth, lowers the fabric and removes and re-places the pin a little higher (264, Picture 13). He explicitly verbalizes his own agreement and action by saying he will fi x it there (264). The placed-pin provided a physical and visual reference point allowing maker to ask if the participants could agree on that specific height over the leg. The pin then re-placed reflected the collaborative input of all three parties as they see and handle the fabric, and attend to one another’s possible access to the site. The placed-pin enabled the participants to shape and open the dress to simulate the outcome. Extract 6: Placing a pin for agreement: ‘Open more … than this?’

The pin placed, as agreed, to fi x the opening height over the left leg enables maker next to initiate collaboration for a new alteration. He has spent some seconds cutting existing stitching up to the newly placed pin, and now folds the fabric over and places two pins to shape the fabric into a possible line forward of the leg. Openness is potentially a matter of both aesthetics and physical movement for the dancer, including how her leg can be exposed. Placing two pins allows all three participants to see and assess the possible alteration. Extract 6

318

Picture 14

/#(0.4) /MAK fi nishes cutting stitches at hip, lifts fabric, rolls and folds fabric forward of left leg, begins to place a pin #pict. 14

Objects of Agreement: Placing Pins in Custom Dressmaking

21

319 MAK: ja yes 320 /(6.4) /MAK holds pinned and folded fabric, reaches to table for a pin 321 MAK: /nu ved jeg ikk om du ka se noget= now I don’t know whether you can see anything /MAK gazes towards instructor, back to dress 322 INS: /#=>jojo>sprays CLI’s hair———> (1.3)# #pict. 1

Picture 1 HAI sprays CLI’s hair while APP monitors the scene

3 4

HAI Δ((laughing)) app Δwalks twds where the mirror is stored——> (0.6)# #pict. 2

Picture 2 APP walks towards the portable mirror

5

CLI avec tous les dommages qu` y a d`jà eus, Δ#j` te dis pa:s Δ with all the damage I already have, I am telling you app ——>Δgrabs mirror ——>Δ #pict. 3

Picture 3 APP grabs the mirror

40

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

6

hein. huh. Δ(0.7) app Δapproaches HAI———> CLI #c’est trop tard. it’s too late. #pict. 4

7 8

Picture 4 APP approaches HAI

9

app hai

(1.0)

Δ (1.0) # (0.6)+ Δ ——>Δadopts a waiting posture——>Δ ——>+ #pict. 5

Picture 5 APP adopts a waiting posture

10 HAI Δvoi:[là, Δ+j` te mets pas trop] d` #laque hein? here we are, I don’t put too much hair spray huh? app Δsteps fwdsΔtakes hairspray and gives mirror———> hai +gives hairspray and takes mirror———> #pict. 6

Picture 6 HAI and APP exchange objects

11 CLI

[l’autre jour mon: mon:: ] the other day my my

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons 41

12 CLI non no 13 (0.2) 14 CLI l’autreΔ+ jour mon: mon::Δ the other day my my app ——>Δsteps backws———>Δ hai ——>+positions mirror bhd CLI———> 15 (0.7) 16 CLI ouais yeah 17 (1.0) 18 CLI #merci:[: ] thank you #pict. 7

Picture 7 HAI positions the mirror behind CLI

Chat is still ongoing when HAI fi xes CLI’s hairdo with the spray. At this point, however, both participants display orientations towards the closing of the service: HAI is using hairspray, an action that fi xes the current state of the hair and hence occurs towards the end of the encounter. This action thus projects the upcoming completion of the care. As for CLI, just before the extract begins, she has grasped her handbag from the small table in front of her and put it on her knees, potentially projecting her departure. Shortly after HAI starts to spray CLI’s hair, we see APP monitoring the scene (Picture 1), walking (Picture 2) and picking up a mirror which is stored near the wall (Picture 3), before approaching HAI (Picture 4) and adopting a waiting posture next to him (Picture 5), thereby showing her readiness to transfer the object. HAI then self-selects in Line 10 while already turning towards APP. His contribution starts with voilà ‘here we are’ (Mondada, 2018), a resource which he recurrently employs in transitional phases (see also Extract 4). By asking CLI j` te mets pas trop d’ laque hein? ‘I don’t put too much hairspray huh?’, HAI overtly displays his reorientation to the professional task at hand (see De Stefani & Horlacher, 2018, about transitions in hair salons where HAI establishes the priority of the task-related activity over chatting). By producing a taskrelated request which requires a verbal response from CLI (see Line 12), HAI demonstrates that hairdressing is the activity to which mundane talk is now secondary.

42

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

At that moment, APP, who is standing next to HAI with the handheld mirror in one hand (Picture 5), takes a step forward. She receives the hairspray bottle from HAI in one hand and simultaneously lifts the mirror that she holds in the other hand (Picture 6). By giving her the hairspray bottle, HAI makes it recognizable that the fixing of the hairdo is complete. APP displays an understanding of the task at hand by passing him the mirror right at this point. The smooth exchange of objects relies upon APP’s ability to respond to HAI’s initiating action: giving back the hairspray makes relevant the passing of the mirror. This is achieved without any reciprocal gaze and without any verbal request from HAI. APP’s embodied actions are smoothly embedded in the trajectory of HAI’s actions. The transition of the mirror is achieved in a way that allows HAI to immediately use it appropriately: it is passed in the horizontal position (HAI keeps this orientation when allowing CLI to evaluate the cut; see Picture 7), with the mirror-side oriented correctly. As we can see, passing the mirror is not only about identifying the right moment but also about manipulating the object in the right way. In the interaction between HAI and CLI, the handling of the mirror is treated as a fi rst action inviting CLI to inspect the cut. Although CLI has started a narrative at Line 11 (l’autre jour mon: mon:: ‘the other day my my’), recast with the same prosodic pattern at Line 14 (see Ford & Fox, 1996, about prosodic re-beginnings), she now suspends mundane talk when HAI places the portable mirror behind her and performs a normatively expected client response by nodding with the head (Oshima, 2009) and saying thank you (Line 18). Extract 1 has shown a case where everything works out smoothly. By making the mirror a crucial object to the business at hand, APP navigates from co-presence in the same room, to peripheral and then mutually oriented participation (Mortensen & Hazel, 2014). The mirror is made available to HAI in a timely manner. The smooth exchange of objects rests upon APP’s ability to make sense of where exactly HAI is in the progression of the care. Apprentices monitor for cues of what is expected to happen in order to anticipate their upcoming participation. Although they do not possess the same level of expertise as senior hairdressers, they are trained to align and integrate the professionals’ activities at any moment. By bringing the mirror, they display that they are competent members (Schmidt, 2002: 292): ‘They know the setting, they are not acting in abstract space but in a material environment which is infinitely rich in cues.’ HAI and CLI’s shifting of their bodily orientations, the hairspray sound, even the smell of it, are publicly accessible resources available to APP and which project the end of the treatment. APP expects HAI to allow CLI to evaluate the cut after the fixing of the hairdo with the spray, and

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons 43

therefore brings the mirror. HAI then builds his action by incorporating her presence. Extract 2 below shows that skilled ways of anticipating the right moment to fetch the mirror and pass it to HAI are constitutive of APP’s work. Before the extract begins, 3 APP receives the hairspray back from HAI (Picture 8) and goes to the wall where the mirror is stored (Picture 9), thereby displaying recognition that the care is moving towards the end. He demonstrates his familiarity and his competence as a participant in this setting; he knows the routines and the schedule. Therefore, he understands the task that HAI has just performed (spraying) and which makes relevant an upcoming action (allowing the client to evaluate the outcome of the service). He then adopts a waiting posture near the service post (Picture 10), while HAI unplugs the hairdryer, marking another shift towards the end of the treatment. As for CLI, she does not interact through the mirror at the wall anymore but tries to establish reciprocal gaze with HAI (Picture 10). Through her embodied conduct, she also treats this moment as some final part of the encounter.

Picture 8 HAI gives back hairspray

Picture 9 APP fetches the Picture 10 APP adopts a mirror waiting posture while CLI is talking

Like Extract 1, Extract 2 shows a timely and unproblematic passing of the mirror. What differs from the fi rst extract is that HAI initiates the passing at a moment when CLI is physically unavailable. This requires APP and HAI to adjust their movements in a subtle coordinated way to make the session progress. CLI and HAI are talking about a fi lm, in which the main character refuses to be placed in a nursing home: Extract 2: Symphony_coiffure_film (42:06) 1

HAI c’est la réalité de: comment c` qu’on va Δfi- mais bon it’s the reality of how we will en- but well app ——>Δsteps fwds——>

44

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

2

+j` #pense si on finit co+*mme çaΔ c’est d`jà bien hein? I think that if we end like that it’s all good huh? hai +arranges some strands——>+ cli *leans fwds———> app ——>Δ #pict. 11

Picture 11 HAI arranges some strands of CLI’s hair

3

cli hai

#(0.3)

#(0.4)* + #(0.3) ——>*grabs bag +reaches for the mirror #pict. 12 #pict. 13 #pict. 14

Picture 12 CLI grabs her bag on the floor

Picture 14 HAI reaches for the mirror

Picture 13 HAI has no access to CLI’s head

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons

4

45

CLI mai[:s +#(.)Δ(.) plus les- parce qu (0.3) elle a:- ] but (0.2) the more the- because (0.3) she hashai +takes mirror app Δgives mirror #pict. 15

Picture 15 HAI grabs the mirror

5

HAI

6

CLI

7 8

hai HAI CLI

9

hai

10 HAI 11 12 HAI 13

cli

14 15 CLI

[mai::s c’est assez dur hein, paraît-il ouais.] but it’s quite heavy huh, it sounds yeah. i` faut jamais promettre des choses +comme ça, [vous fai]re= you should never promise things like that, get +undoes cape [ °e:h ] =pro+mettre .h: qu’elle devrait jamais aller dans un asile, =the promise .h she would never be placed in a nursing home, +places mirror bhd CLI———>> ou: [un: hôpital ou:] or a hospital or [a::h non:, on ] peut pas. ah no, we cannot promise that. (1.8) ben c’est un peu la:: *la fin un peu d` tout l` monde hein? well it’s more or less the end more or less of everyone huh? *notices mirror en général hein? in general huh? (1.2) oui, c’est très joli. yeah, it’s very nice.

Picture 16 CLI does not orient  to the mirror

Picture 17 CLI orients to the mirror

When the extract begins, HAI is positioned behind CLI, sustaining mundane talk with her and arranging some of her strands (Picture 11). This seems to be part of some fi nal checks (see also Extract 3), since HAI has already strongly projected the end of the care. At that moment, CLI

46

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

displays an orientation towards closing when she grabs her handbag on the floor (Picture 12; see also Extract 1). As CLI leans forwards, HAI does not have access to CLI’s hair any more (Picture 13). He exploits this phase of brief physical disengagement from CLI to orient towards APP and take the mirror. HAI turns his head towards APP and reaches for the mirror while gazing at the object (Picture 14). APP starts extending his arm almost immediately after HAI starts reaching for the mirror, indicating that he is prompt in responding to HAI’s embodied exchange action (Picture 15). It is noteworthy that APP was slightly wobbling4 the mirror before the passing. This movement seems to be linked to the ways in which APP anticipates the handover. By keeping the mirror in constant motion, APP stays ready to integrate his movements with those of HAI in a seamless manner. And indeed, before handling the mirror, APP turns it to a position that makes it immediately usable for HAI. When HAI places the mirror behind CLI’s head, CLI does not immediately show her understanding of the launch of the final assessing sequence. HAI keeps sustaining mundane talk (unlike Extract 1) while CLI is looking for something in her bag (Picture 16). HAI keeps holding the mirror and exhibits it until he gets a response from CLI. Upon her evaluation depends the closing of the sequence. Once CLI notices the mirror, she provides a positive assessment (Line 15). Mirror transfer is here achieved so that it avoids the interruption of the progressivity of the encounter. Like in Extract 1, APP provides the object just at the moment it is needed. He follows the unfolding of the hair session and is able to assess moments for actions, even when the passing of the mirror is suddenly occasioned by CLI’s grabbing her bag on the floor. APP achieves tacit and precise coordination with HAI by exchanging the mirror right at this moment. CLI is thus an involved audience whose embodied conduct also influences the initiation of the passing. In addition, the extract demonstrates that the transfer involves skilful work from HAI too, as he is engaged in concurrent activities which force him to manage multiple parallel and serially organized actions. He performs the complex task of sustaining conversational talk with CLI, adjusting with APP in initiating the service-assessment sequence, reorienting CLI’s attention to the job at hand and achieving the successful completion of the service encounter (see Haddington et al., 2014; Mondada, 2011, about participants’ engagement in multiple activities). This requires particular skills for coordinating these different steps in a way that maintains a smooth progression. The passing of the mirror is thus a triadic accomplishment. The next two extracts are a more perspicuous occasion to demonstrate the importance of fi nely tuned coordination practices between HAI and APP, as there are some breaches in the unfolding of the procedure. Making the mirror available too early

Extracts 1 and 2 have shown that passing the mirror is an opportunity during which APP can exhibit a professional expertise. In the following

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons 47

extract, HAI challenges APP when he refuses the mirror, thereby making it recognizable that the moment to use it has not yet come. Seven seconds later, HAI initiates the passing and the transfer occurs in a seamless manner. Before the extract begins (Pictures 18 and 19), HAI has sprayed CLI’s hair and given back the hairspray to APP, who closes the bottle (Picture 18). APP adopts a waiting posture (Picture 19) next to HAI, thereby displaying that he is ready for the next stage of the procedure. At that moment HAI still holds a comb in his hand (Picture 19).

Picture 18 APP closes the hairspray bottle

Picture 19 APP adopts a waiting posture; HAI holds a comb in his hand

When the extract begins, the discussion is about HAI’s niece, who lives in Italy. Extract 3: Symphony_coiffure_italie (35:55) 1 2

CLI pourvu qu` i` ré- [(i) qu`i` ré] let’s hope they re- they reHAI [c’est +difficile# Δmais] +bon, it’s difficult but well, hai +..................+drops comb on t. app Δlifts mirror———> #pict. 20

Picture 20 HAI drops the comb on the trolley

48

3

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

elle a au moins du +traΔvail # main` + nant.Δ she has at least a job now. hai +does stop gesture+ app ——>Δholds mirror to HAIΔ #pict. 21

Picture 21 HAI does a stop gesture with open palm hand 4

CLI Δpourvu Δqu’i` #réélisent pas Δ[berluberlusΔconi] let’s hope they don’t re-elect Berlus- Berlusconi app Δ,,,,,,,,,, Δfreezes retraction gestureΔ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,>Δ #pict. 22

Picture 22 APP freezes his retraction gesture

5 HAI [main`nant on verra] 6 hein, non now we’ll see huh, no 7 CLI [oh mais quelle (°horreur°).] oh but it’s just terrible. 8 HAI [i` vaut mieux pas ] #hein? it’s better not huh? #pict. 23

Picture 23 HAI reaches for the mirror

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons 49

9 (0.2) 10 CLI non mais i` vous i`- v` trouvez pas qu’i` nous fait peur no but he- you he- don’t you think that he scares us 11 cet [homme?] this man? 12 HAI [ah oui] il a- +il est a[ffreux.] ah yes he has he is awful. hai +reaches for mirror———> 13 CLI [ mais ] (.) il a- (.) il est+ but(.) he has- (.) he is hai ——>+ 14 +comme [un ma:sque. ] like a mask. hai +grasps mirror———> 15 HAI [mais j` pense] pas qu’ i` +peut- ah il est affreux. but I don’t think that he can- ah he is awful. hai –——>+holds mirror bhd CLI–——>> 16 (0.3) 17 CLI mais aff- [mais- ] but aw- but18 HAI [a:h ] ouais physiquement il est a[troce.] ah yeah physically he is horrible. 19 CLI [oui ] yes 20 HAI i` fait peur [hein?] he is scary huh? 21 CLI [merci] #beaucoup. thank you very much. #pict. 24

Picture 24 HAI holds the mirror behind CLI

APP monitors HAI’s bodily conduct, remaining alert to any resource he could rely on to orient to an upcoming transfer. HAI is chatting with CLI while perfecting her hairdo. HAI holds a comb in his hand that he fi nally drops on the trolley. APP treats this as an appropriate moment to pass the mirror and lifts it (Picture 21). However, HAI does not treat it as an appropriate moment to launch the fi nal assessing sequence. Rather, he can be seen to resist the initiating move of APP. Without suspending topic talk with CLI, HAI refuses the mirror with what appears as a ‘stop gesture’ realized with an open palm hand upwards (Picture 21). When observing the trajectory of APP’s arm after HAI’s refusal, we see that his hand freezes (Picture 22), before defi nitely withdrawing (see Oloff, 2013, about participants who use suspension of a visible conduct). ‘Freezing’

50

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

may be a way to embody that passing the mirror is still a relevant activity that will come next, as opposed to retracting the hand which may suggest that the project of passing the mirror is abandoned. HAI displays that he is still engaged in the task: he seems to do a last check-up of the cut. APP’s presence and his holding the mirror do not work as a summons for HAI to launch the next phase. However, HAI is not just chatting while APP is frozen in motion. At least, Picture 22 indicates some hairdresser activity which needs to be done before the mirror can be taken. Identifying the right moment to hand the mirror is one way of making sense of the ongoing action. APP interprets HAI’s check-ups as the end of the care. As shown by the extract, these check-ups prove retrospectively not to be the fi nal ones. This demonstrates again how object transfers require detailed coordination and timely precision. For APP, the difficulty is to identify when HAI is done with the fi nal details. Only seven seconds later, we see HAI reaching for the mirror (Picture 23) and gazing at it, thereby initiating the action himself while (like Extract 2) sustaining the ongoing conversation with CLI, who briefly orients to the outcome of the cut (Line 21) when HAI positions the mirror behind her (Picture 24). It is interesting that upon a fi rst refusal of APP’s mirror offering, it is then HAI who claims the object. He is clearly in charge of deciding when the appropriate moment occurs. In this extract APP experiences difficulties in making sense of HAI’s activity and in projecting the end of the care. Since APP is the same as in Extract 2, it is not obvious to argue for a not yet stabilized professional expertise. Another argument is that passing an object, and particularly the mirror, is an important step in the progression of the activity. The analysis reveals that the professional predominantly controls this progression. HAI is primarily entitled to initiate the passing, while APP is principally supposed to respond to this initiative (see also Extracts 1 and 2). HAI expects full availability from APP, which also implies waiting. Any attempt from APP to shorten the waiting time by curtailing the activity HAI is engaged in fails. This inherently reflects an interactional asymmetry, which is consequential and conducive to the achievement of the activity at hand. Making the mirror available too late

In the last extract, HAI and APP again experience some problems in coordinating together. APP will end up arriving too late to hand the mirror to HAI, who will offer it too late to CLI, who will never orient to it. The analysis will further show that the interactional organization of passing the mirror is situationally and locally tied to the asymmetrically accorded rights and obligations of the participants. APP joins the scene once she hears HAI using hairspray (Picture 25). She arrives from the right, almost running, with the mirror in her hands

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons 51

(Pictures 26 and 27). However, it is far too early because HAI, in this case, uses hairspray not to fi x the hairdo but to boost the volume of CLI’s hair, which he upgrades with a brush (Picture 28).

Picture 25 HAI sprays CLI’s hair

Picture 26 APP arrives with the mirror

Picture 27 APP arrives with the mirror

Picture 28 HAI takes a brush

APP ‘knows’ from experience that the spraying of CLI’s hair is routinely followed by HAI, making her evaluate the outcome of the service. In bringing the mirror, APP displays her orientation to the recurrent ordering of these activities (see Hindmarsh & Pilnick, 2007, about members’ (re)production of routine sequences of action in the surgical room). Within the specifi c context of Extract 4, the fi rst spraying of CLI’s hair does not project the service-assessment sequence. APP misunderstands the procedures underway. This may be because she is not near the service post and picks up limited things, such as possibly the spraying sound, and interprets it as the ‘procedure ending’ hair spraying, although in this case it is not a reliable cue. Therefore, APP’s experience is not so readily transferable to another situation, which is always new and unique. Routines must be continually adjusted and accomplished within the particular context at hand. In this respect, successful collaboration and object-passing can be achieved when ‘members do not slavishly follow simple norms that are somehow fi xed over time, but

52

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

rather [when] they (re)produce the routine or normative character of activities for the fi rst time again’ (Hindmarsh & Pilnick, 2007: 1413). In the case of Extract 4, it seems also that APP runs in order to secure the availability of the mirror, without really seeking to get the details of what is going on. APP understands only retrospectively that it was not the right moment to come with the mirror. CLI’s hair shape at that moment indicates that more work must be done. However, APP will be waiting next to the service post with the mirror in her hands (Picture 29). Her presence is ignored and her failed attempt is not topicalized. HAI continues his work, while being engaged in chat with CLI. Many minutes later, APP leans her head and reorients her gaze, possibly evaluating that her help might be needed alongside someone else (Picture 30). APP faces a dilemma here, as on the one hand she has the obligation to be available to HAI with the mirror, and on the other hand she cannot afford to wait any longer and be inactive if her help is needed elsewhere. She decides to drop the mirror onto the chair next to CLI (Picture 31), and leaves the scene.

Picture 29 APP decides Picture 30 APP reorients to wait her gaze

Picture 31 APP leaves the mirror

How does the passing fi nally occur here (or not occur)? How do HAI and APP embody certain responsibilities and obligations through multimodal practices? The extract was video-recorded a few weeks before the national election in Italy in 2013. Extract 4: Symphony_coiffure_vote (46:34)

1 2 3 4 5

CLI moi je donne pas à berlusconi, ah non: ça non. I don’t give my vote to Berlusconi, no not that. (0.9) HAI non: toute façon y a personne qui va lui donner à lui no anyway nobody will vote for him c`te année hein?= this year huh?= CLI =o::h non: non non. = oh no no no.

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons 53

6

(0.3)#(1.2) #pict. 32

Picture 32 HAI does check-ups

7 8 9

HAI voilà that’s it +(0.5) hai +gazes at APP———> CLI merci beauΔ#coup. thank you very much. app Δarrives with pointing finger #pict. 33

Picture 33 HAI gazes at APP, who is pointing to the mirror

10

hai

(0.3)+#(0.5) ——>+gazes at the mirror on the chair #pict. 34

Picture 34 HAI gazes at the mirror

54

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

11 HAI ah, tu m’as posé là? oh, you put (it) there for me? 12 (0.4) 13 APP oui, mais j’ai été:: yes, but I went to 14 (0.2)+(1.0) hai +HAI positions mirror bhd CLI———> 15 HAI j` (le) cherchais.# I was looking (for it). #pict. 35

Picture 35 HAI positions the mirror behind CLI

16

(1.0)# #pict. 36

Picture 36 CLI does not orient to the mirror

17

CLI alors c’est main`nant? so is it now? 18 (0.5) 19 HAI voi+là, (0.2) merci. that’s it, (0.2) thank you. hai ——>+

HAI is perfecting CLI’s hairdo and doing check-ups (Picture 32) while chatting with CLI. This activity comes to an end when HAI says voilà ‘here we are’ (Line 7), which CLI understands as closing implicative. She responds to it by saying merci beaucoup ‘thank you very much’ (Line 9), whereby she closes the activity and seems to ‘control’ the progression of the encounter. Her ‘thank you’ could be interpreted as ‘popping over’ the service-assessment sequence. In any case, the mirror – which is a key object for the service-assessment sequence to take place – is not available

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons 55

to HAI at that moment. HAI is thus late compared to CLI’s temporality. He gazes at APP, who is running in his direction with a fi nger pointed to the mirror lying on the chair (Picture 33), thereby delimiting a ‘domain of scrutiny’ (Goodwin, 1994: 606) in which HAI should look for the mirror. At Line 11, HAI’s contribution starts with a change-of-state token (Heritage, 1984), by which he expresses that he has located the mirror in space and attributes the responsibility of its location to APP: ah, tu m’as posé là? ‘oh, you put (it) there for me?’. In this case, the mirror is not passed from APP’s hand to HAI such as in direct handovers (Extracts 1–3); the mirror has been set down (on the chair), available to be picked up by HAI. It is the fi rst time that APP is verbally addressed by HAI. Noteworthy is that APP seems to near this as a ‘blameable’, i.e. the mirror was not made available when needed. At Line 13, APP starts uttering what HAI can possibly perceive as an account. At Line 15, HAI formulates – post hoc – that he was looking for the object: an action for which APP is held responsible. To sum up, APP freed herself from the obligation to wait. Although there was no display of authority coming from HAI when APP left the scene, we understand retrospectively that it was maybe not a self-imposed obligation since APP is now verbally addressed and blamed for the unavailability of the mirror. Offering help thus comprises a complex set of obligations; if APP chooses to assist, she has a moral commitment to be available and provide that assistance until the passing is achieved. APP’s decision to leave (i.e. any attempt to modify or control rights and obligations) is massively consequential for the smooth ongoing of the procedure. When HAI has effectively fi nished the task and needs the mirror, APP is no longer at his side. He does not immediately see the mirror left on the chair by APP and offers it too late for CLI’s inspection. CLI does not orient to the mirror (but see already Line 9) and does not assess the cut at all (Pictures 35 and 36). HAI deals himself with a ‘new’ closing (see previous comments about Line 9 as being closing implicative) by saying voilà, (0.2) merci. ‘that’s it, (0.2) thank you’ (Line 19). Conclusion: The Apprentice as an ‘Active’ Shadower

This chapter contributes to current research by showing how objects – even if they are not topics of talk – feature in practical workplace activities, hence becoming central for coordination and collaboration (Hindmarsh & Heath, 2000). Tools’ manipulation is ubiquitous in beauty service encounters. In this type of environment, professionals rely heavily on material objects, making use of them, looking for them and passing them on to others, sometimes after a first attempt. The interplay between work, tools and activities constitutes the core of this chapter, which focused on how senior staff and apprentices handle the transition of the hand-held mirror in fi nal assessing sequences. Both apprentices and

56

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

hairdressers orient to the fact that there is a correct moment for passing the mirror. Apprentices actively prefigure and reconfigure a sense of what is next, by monitoring the hairdressers’ next steps. Like the novice hunter described by Ingold (2000: 37), the apprentice in a hair salon ‘is led to develop a sophisticated perceptual awareness of the properties of his surroundings and of the possibilities they afford for action’. The resources for apprentices to assist bring together verbal, visual, auditory and olfactive resources. The apprentices’ monitoring work is crucial for the smooth organization of hair salons. This chapter has shed light on the complex organizational structure of hair salons and contributed to a better understanding of what it means to work as a team in this setting. It has looked at how institutionally relevant identities are evidenced and made real by the participants themselves through passing practices – the initiative of the passing being one incarnation of their asymmetry. The analysis has shown that apprentices are limited to responsive actions, although they have an anticipatory dimension. By recognizing trajectories of actions that they can contribute to, apprentices display a form of professional competence, by actively organizing the availability of the mirror. In this respect, anticipation in bringing the mirror could be interpreted as a form of initiation in all extracts (even when this anticipation displays a lack of experience, as in Extract 4). However, with regard to the passing itself, apprentices are merely ‘followers’. Although they take the initiative of joining the hairdresser for the service-assessment sequence (instead of letting him manage this step by himself), once they are at the hairdresser’s side, any attempt to initiate the passing fails (see Extract 3), thereby revealing the institutional distribution of responsibilities and tasks that prevails within these sequences. In sum, when the hairdresser initiates the handover, the apprentice must be available and respond to it in a timely manner (Extracts 1 and 2). Instead, when the apprentice assumes some degree of authority over the passing, the hairdresser can be seen to refuse the object (Extract 3). If the apprentice fails to identify the right moment, this jeopardizes the smoothness of the ongoing procedure (Extract 4). In a nutshell, apprentices face a practical problem: objects not immediately available may delay the hairdresser’s task but anticipating too much is likely to be rejected. All these observations testify to the strong asymmetrical relationship between the hairdresser and the apprentice. In conclusion, apprentices appear as ‘implementers’ of the hairdressers’ needs. They are not fully recognized as third parties but rather treated as ‘extensions’ of the experienced hairdresser. The staff in hair salons are in a continuing state of incipient talk (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973). In this sense, apprentices are all ratifi ed participants (Goff man, 1981) in the salon. However, apprentices are merely working in the shadows, helping their boss achieving service excellence. They are active but almost

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons 57

invisible. In this sense, talking about apprentices as being active shadowers is not a contradictory claim. Apprentices take part in the work at hand by showing their involvement in an embodied way. They are seen but unnoticed – ‘unnoticed’ as far as their actions are delicately embedded in the trajectories of the hairdressers. Their presence is turned into an accountable event when shadowing is not skilfully done. In sum, the successful achievement of the service in hair salons lies in the apprentices’ capacity to be invisible. Apprentices are these ‘little’ helping hands which prove to be ‘an integral feature of the accomplishment of a highly complex collaborative activity’ (Sanchez Svensson et al., 2007: 42). Acknowledgements

The author warmly thanks Elwys De Stefani, Lorenza Mondada, the editors of this book and an anonymous reviewer for their suggestions and valuable comments on an earlier version of this article. All remaining oddities are the responsibility of the author. Notes (1) In the recorded extracts, three apprentices are in the salon at the same time. Therefore, responsibilities and obligations are redistributed at any time when the ‘launch’ (Oshima, 2009) of the service-assessment sequence becomes relevant. This raises the question of whether there may be negotiations between apprentices about who is going to help a staff member at a particular moment and who is not. Unfortunately, this point is not captured by the data. The cameras do not capture interactions that take place in areas where no client is visible. (2) In transcribing my recordings I have followed the transcription conventions laid out earlier in this volume. For the more detailed transcription of gestures and other embodied actions I have used a symbol for each participant at the beginning and end, respectively, of the description as below: APP (apprentice) = Δ CLI (client) = * HAI (hairdresser) = + And for the descriptions themselves, I have used: ———>> The action described continues after the extract’s end. ….. Action’s preparation. --Action’s apex is reached and maintained. ,,,,, Action’s retraction. (3) Due to space limitations, Pictures 8–10 are here provided without any transcript to contextualize Extract 2. (4) This term was suggested to me by Christian Heath and Jon Hindmarsh during a data session at King’s College in November 2016.

References Bezemer, J., Murtagh, G., Cope, A., Kress, G. and Kneebone, R. (2011) ‘Scissors, please’: The practical accomplishment of surgical work in the operating theater. Symbolic Interaction 34 (3), 398–414.

58

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

Billett, S. (2001) Knowing in practice: Re-conceptualizing vocational expertise. Learning and Instruction 11, 431–452. De Stefani, E. and Horlacher, A.-S. (2018) Mundane talk at work: Multiactivity in interactions between service providers and their clientele. Discourse Studies 20 (2), 221–245. Dixon, S. (2015) Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!: Object requests, ownership and entitlement in a children’s play session. Journal of Pragmatics 82, 39–51. Ford, C.E. and Fox, B.A. (1996) Interactional motivations for reference formulation: ‘He had. This guy had, a beautiful, thirty-two o:lds’. In B. Fox (ed.) Studies in Anaphora (pp. 145–68). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Goff man, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Oxford: Blackwell. Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96, 606–633. Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M.H. (1996) Seeing as a situated activity: Formulating planes. In Y. Engeström and D. Middleton (eds) Cognition and Communication at Work (pp. 61–95). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M.H. (2004) Participation. In A. Duranti (ed.) A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 222–244). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Greer, T. (2013) Some multimodal constraints on L2 use in client-hairdresser talk. Journal of School of Languages and Communication 10, 44–58. Haddington, P., Keisanen, T., Mondada, L. and Nevile, M. (2014) Multiactivity in Social Interaction. Beyond Multitasking. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Harper, R.H.R. and Hughes, J.A. (1993) What a f-ing system! Send ’em all to the same place and then expect us to stop ’em hitting: Making technology work in air traffic control. In G. Button (ed.) Technology in Working Order: Studies of Work, Interaction, and Technology (pp. 127–144). London: Routledge. Heath, C. and Luff, P. (1996) Convergent activities: Line control and passenger information on the London Underground. In Y. Engeström and D. Middleton (eds) Cognition and Communication at Work (pp. 96–129). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, C., Knoblauch, H. and Luff , P. (2000) Technology and social interaction: The emergence of ‘Workplace Studies’. British Journal of Sociology 51 (2), 299–320. Heath, C., Luff, P., Sanchez-Svensson, M. and Nicholls, M. (2018) Exchanging implements: The micro-materialities of multidisciplinary work in the operating theatre. Sociology of Health & Illness 40 (2), 297–313. Heritage, J. (1984) A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 299–345). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hindmarsh, J. and Heath, C. (2000) Sharing the tools of the trade: The interactional constitution of workplace objects. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29 (5), 523–562. Hindmarsh, J. and Pilnick, A. (2002) The tacit order of teamwork: Collaboration and embodied conduct in anesthesia. Sociological Quarterly 43 (2), 139–164. Hindmarsh, J. and Pilnick, A. (2007) Knowing bodies at work: Embodiment and ephemeral teamwork in anaesthesia. Organization Studies 28 (9), 1395–1416. Hutchins, E. (1990) The technology of team navigation. In J. Galegher, R.E. Kraut and C. Egido (eds) Intellectual Teamwork: Social and Technological Foundations of Cooperative Work (pp. 191–220). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment. New York: Routledge. Jacobs-Huey, L. (1996) Negotiating price in an African American beauty salon. Issues in Applied Linguistics 7 (1), 47–59. Jacobs-Huey, L. (2006) From the Kitchen to the Parlor: Language and Becoming in African American Women’s Hair Care. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kendrick, K. and Drew, P. (2016) Recruitment: Offers, requests, and the organization of assistance in interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1), 1–19. Kidwell, M. and Zimmermann, D.H. (2007) Joint attention as action. Journal of Pragmatics 39 (3), 592–611.

Workplace Asymmetries and Object-passing in Hair Salons 59

Korkiakangas, T., Weldon, S.M., Bezemer, J. and Kneebone, R. (2014) Nurse-surgeon object transfer: Video analysis of communication and situation awareness in the operating theatre. International Journal of Nursing Studies 51, 1195–1206. Koschmann, T., LeBaron, C.D., Goodwin, C. and Feltovich, P. (2011) ‘Can you see the cystic artery yet?’: A simple matter of trust. Journal of Pragmatics 43, 521–541. LeBaron, C.D. and Jones, S.E. (2002) Closing up closings: Showing the relevance of the social and material surround to the completion of interaction. Journal of Communication 52 (3), 542–565. Mondada, L. (2007) Operating together through videoconference: Members’ procedures for accomplishing a common space of action. In S. Hester and D. Francis (eds) Orders of Ordinary Action (pp. 51–67). Aldershot: Ashgate. Mondada, L. (2011) The organization of concurrent courses of action in surgical demonstrations. In C. Goodwin, C. LeBaron and J. Streeck (eds) Embodied Interaction (pp. 207–226). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mondada, L. (2012) The dynamics of embodied participation and language choice in multilingual meetings. Language in Society 41, 213–235. Mondada, L. (2018) Turn-initial ‘voilà’ in closings in French: Reaffi rming authority and responsibility over the sequence. In J. Heritage and M.-L. Sorjonen (eds) Between Turn and Sequence: Turn-initial Particles across Languages (pp. 371–412). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mondada, L. and Keel, S. (eds) (2017) Participation et asymétries dans l’interaction institutionnelle. Paris: L’Harmattan. Mortensen, K. and Hazel, S. (2014) Moving into interaction: Social practices for initiating encounters at a help desk. Journal of Pragmatics 62, 46–67. Nevile, M. (2004) Integrity in the airline cockpit: Embodying claims about progress for the conduct of an approach briefi ng. Research on Language and Social Interaction 37 (4), 447–480. Nevile, M. (2007) Action in time: Ensuring timeliness for collaborative work in the airline cockpit. Language in Society 36, 233–257. Nevile, M., Haddington, P., Heinemann, T. and Rauniomaa, M. (2014) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nizameddin, Z. (2016) Occupational skills and communication in body treatments. PhD dissertation, King’s College London. Ogiermann, E. (2015a) Object requests: Rights and obligations surrounding object possession and object transfer. Journal of Pragmatics 82, 1–4. Ogiermann, E. (2015b) In/directness in Polish children’s requests at the dinner table. Journal of Pragmatics 82, 67–82. Oloff, F. (2013) Embodied withdrawal after overlap resolution. Journal of Pragmatics 46 (1), 139–156. Oshima, S. (2009) Beauty and consensus: Practices for agreeing on the quality of the service in client-professional interaction. PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin. Oshima, S. (2014) Balancing multiple roles through consensus: Making revisions in haircutting sessions. Text & Talk 34 (6), 713–736. Oshima, S. (2018) Embodiment of activity progress: The temporalities of service evaluation. In A. Deppermann and J. Streeck (eds) Time in Embodied Interaction: Synchronicity and Sequentiality of Multimodal Resources (pp. 261–292). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Oshima, S. and Streeck, J. (2015) Coordinating talk and practical action: The case of hair salon service assessments. Pragmatics and Society 6 (4), 538–564. Rossi, G. (2014) When do people not use language to make requests? In P. Drew and E. Couper-Kuhlen (eds) Requesting in Social Interaction (pp. 303–334). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation (2 vols) (ed. G. Jefferson). Oxford: Blackwell.

60

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

Sanchez Svensson, M., Heath, C. and Luff, P. (2007) Instrumental action: The timely exchange of implements during surgical operations. In L.J. Bannon, I. Wagner, R.H.R. Harper and K. Schmidt (eds) Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 41–60). Berlin: Springer. Schegloff, E.A. and Sacks, H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica 8 (3), 289–327. Schmidt, K. (2002) The problem with ‘awareness’: Introductory remarks on ‘awareness in CSCW’. Journal of Collaborative Computing 11 (3–4), 285–298. Suchman, L. (1996) Constituting shared workspaces. In Y. Engeström and D. Middleton (eds) Cognition and Communication at Work (pp. 35–60). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suchman, L. (1997) Centers of coordination: A case and some themes. In L.B. Resnick, R. Säljö, C. Pontecorvo and B. Burge (eds) Discourse, Tools, and Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition (pp. 41–62). Berlin: Springer. Takada, A. and Endo, T. (2015) Object transfer in request-accept sequence in Japanese caregiver-child interactions. Journal of Pragmatics 82, 52–66. Toerien, M. and Kitzinger, C. (2007a) Emotional labour in the beauty salon: Turn design of task-directed talk. Feminism & Psychology 17 (2), 162–172. Toerien, M. and Kitzinger, C. (2007b) Emotional labour in action: Navigating multiple involvements in the beauty salon. Sociology 41 (4), 645–662. Tuncer, S. and Haddington, P. (forthcoming) Transferring objects in the car and in the lab: Embodied resources to progress joint activities and display agency. Language in Society. Wootton, A.J. (1994) Object transfer, intersubjectivity and third position repair: Early developmental observations of one child. Journal of Child Language 21 (3), 543–564.

3 Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation in Shared Decision Making Chiara M. Monzoni, Basil Sharrack and Markus Reuber

Introduction

It is now widely accepted that social action is organized through both verbal conduct and a complex set of multimodal resources, such as bodily behaviour, gaze and the manipulation of objects. These resources constitute different levels of affordances for constructing mutual understanding and engagement in particular interactional activities. Most noticeably, in institutional and work settings, the use and manipulation of objects in interaction is a resource professionals use in order to establish their professional vision (Goodwin, 1994). More generally, through their use and manipulation, objects can be differently constituted by different types of participants (i.e. professionals and laymen). However, bodily behaviour and the manipulation of objects are also employed to achieve other ends, such as initiating, managing and terminating interactants’ participation in interaction, as well as switching between activities and moving forward the interaction (see also below). Previous conversation analytic (CA) research on action formation has demonstrated that sequence organization and turn-design are not the only resources through which speakers locate when and where they can start contributing to the conversational sequence, but that embodied actions strongly come into play as well. It has been shown that embodied resources make major contributions not only during the delivery of social action (Schegloff, 2007), but also when initiating new interactional projects, i.e. a ‘course of action that at least one participant is 61

62

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

pursuing, which may at first be opaque to others then retrospectively discernible (…) and then prospectively projectable’ (Levinson, 2013: 122). Interactional projects aim to achieve a specific interactional outcome through a series of actions or moves (Levinson, 2013). Previous work has demonstrated that the initiation of new interactional projects is constituted by a series of actions and ‘moves’ during which multimodal resources are mobilized and/or the physical context is exploited as a resource in order to implement new action (Fasulo & Monzoni, 2009; Haddington, 2006; Heath, 1986; Kärkkäinen & Keisanen, 2012; Mondada, 2009; Streeck et al., 2011, among others). Through the use of multimodal resources, participants may engage in a series of rather different activities: negotiating incipient speakership and securing the engagement of prospective recipients; focalizing the material object related to the upcoming core (verbal) activity; and checking whether there is an opportunity for the projected activity to be carried out (as in the case of requests for material objects, cf. Arminen et al., 2015; Keisanen & Rauniomaa, 2012; Monzoni & Laury, 2015; Rossi, 2012; Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014). Similarly, multimodal resources, the manipulation of objects and the physical context strongly come into play when moving between different courses of action and ending whole sequences, including the closure of an encounter (Hazel & Mortensen, 2014; Kendon, 1990; Mondada, 2006, 2009; Stevanovic & Monzoni, 2016, among others). For instance, Hazel and Mortensen (2014) demonstrated how objects may be used by speakers to manage different action sequences, and how the use of objects goes far beyond their mere instrumental affordances. In fact, objects may emerge in interaction as constitutive elements of the material ecology of work practices. Through the use of CA, the present chapter focuses on the management of participation in consultations during which nurses show syringes to patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) while describing the specific features of the syringes and how they should be used. Similar to other instructional sequences, bodily conduct and the manipulation of objects are key to showing how things should be appropriately done and objects suitably manipulated by the instructor as well as by the person being instructed (De Stefani & Gazin, 2014; Keevallik, 2014; Stukenbrock, 2015, among others). However, as we will see, in our sequences the instructions given by nurses are only informative, i.e. patients do not have to follow these instructions in order to use the syringes immediately thereafter and to show that they have understood these instructions through their bodily conduct. The nurse’s instructions are, in fact, for demonstration purposes only.1 For this reason, we will refer to these activities as demonstrations rather than instructions. Nonetheless, the mere act of showing and explaining how to use the syringes in particular ways will be consequential for the patients’ more active participation and will result in specific interactional outcomes. More specifically, we will investigate how the materiality of objects will emerge in interaction through their manipulation and sensorial appreciation, and how it will be organized by patients to initiate

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

63

new activities and enhance their participation through embodied action, and not just talk. In our data, the materiality of the syringes comes strongly into play in the very activities the nurses first engage in, i.e. showing what they are, which smaller parts the syringes are constituted of and how these must be assembled, as well as how the syringes will be used (in a prospective future). Syringes are presented as material and sensorial objects which may, but need not, be inspected and evaluated by patients through their senses: through gaze and touch (i.e. manipulation). In this way, these objects come into play in interaction as effortful and interactional accomplishments by both participants alike. Patients, in fact, exploit the very materiality of the syringes as objects to be inspected and as opportunities to manage and alter their participation in interaction: this will in turn modify the professionals’ work practices. In so doing, the reflexivity of objects and activities are concurrently constituted step-by-step in interaction. Data and Methods

This study is based on 15 consultations between patients with MS and MS-nurses, during which nurses fi rst give information to the patients about four different MS-drugs, encouraging patients to consider the pros and cons of each drug. In a second part of the consultation, they show the syringes for each particular drug, explaining in detail how the syringes work. These consultations with the nurses are the second part of a longer (shared decision-making) process in the clinical centre in which they were recorded: once patients have received a diagnosis of MS qualifying for disease-modifying drug treatment, they fi rst see a neurologist who provides information about the four MS-treatments available at the time of recruitment (Consultation 1), and then they see an MS-nurse who explains the pros and cons of each drug in more detail and who shows patients what the syringes look like and how they work (Consultation 2). Patients will only be encouraged fi nally to make up their minds about whether to take disease-modifying treatment and which treatment to opt for four weeks after their last consultation with the MS-nurse. Only after this decision do they meet an MS-nurse again who will fi nally instruct them on how to use the syringes (Consultation 3). The consultations we are examining here are, thus, the second in a series of three, in which nurses give information about the treatments and how the syringes work, i.e. here they are not ‘teaching’ patients how to use the syringes; they just show them and describe how they work, in order for the patients to get as much information as possible before they make their decision about their treatment of choice. Therefore, the activities in which nurses engage with the syringes are not pure instructions but just demonstrations. These data are part of a larger project on shared decision making in the MS-clinic exploring how equipoise is engendered. 2 One way through which equipoise is engendered in interaction both in the consultations

64

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

with neurologists and with MS-nurses is that health professionals make recurrent comparisons between the four treatments, regardless of whether they use a unilateral (the neurologists) or more bilateral (the nurses) conversational style. 3 In spite of the nurses’ bilateral style, we found that, in general, they used conversational strategies that undermined the patients’ decisional autonomy which they were theoretically trying to promote (Monzoni et al., 2011). However, we will see here, instead, how interactional opportunities emerge for patients to intervene more actively by, for example, appraising the objects under scrutiny. The data were video-recorded and transcribed using CA conventions (Jefferson, 1984). Following Mondada (2009) for the representation of multimodal resources, we inserted single frames from the videos and we annotated relevant bodily activities. When the described movement is followed by an arrow (‘-----> ’), the arrow indicates that that movement lasts throughout the concurrent turn. One important thing should be noted regarding the representation of gaze: in the data we are analyzing below, patients attentively and ostensively look at the syringes (and their manipulation) throughout the sequences we present. For this reason, we have chosen to represent gaze only through the frames and not in the actual verbatim transcript. Nurses Isolating Referents during Instructional Activities

First of all, nurses show all four syringes and how they work, regardless of whether the patient has already expressed some preference for a specific drug. The only consequence patients’ expressed preferences may have on these sequences, during which the syringes are displayed, is that nurses may start by showing the syringe used with the preferred drug(s). Here we will consider a case in which the nurse shows syringes and engages in demonstrative activities on how to assemble them. Later, we will consider how a certain manipulation of these objects will eventually be consequential for the patient’s more active participation in interaction (see also below). The extract begins when the nurse starts unpacking the syringe, which is composed of different parts: the main body of the syringe (which she refers to as ‘injection’) and the needle (Line 3): Extract 1: Andrew 1–6

1

#/(.4) /N. unpacks syringe box #pict. 1

Picture 1 N unpacks syringe box

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

2

N:

#That’s the #/nee::dle:; #/(.) /N. takes syr. and shows it /N. moves syr. up #pict. 2 #pict. 3 #pict. 4

Picture 3 N takes up syringe

Picture 2

3

N:

That’s the in#/jectio:n;= /N. hands on syr. #pict. 5

Picture 5 N hands on syringe

4

N:

=you #/click that off,= /N. takes needle #pict. 6

Picture 6 N takes needle

5

N:

=you at/#tach it;= /N. attaches needle #pict. 7

Picture 7 N takes needle

Picture 4 N moves up syringe

65

66

6

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

#//(.4) /N. moves syr. towards P., bouncing movement /patient frowns #pict. 8

Picture 8 P’s frown

Picture 8 Close-up

From the moment the nurse begins to unpack the device, the patient follows all the nurse’s manual actions very attentively through gaze (Picture 1 onwards), demonstrating his focused attention and participation. Concurrently, while the nurse is unpacking the syringe, she points out verbally, through what we refer to as a presentative clause, which part of the syringe she is manipulating (that’s the nee::dle:;, Line 2), thereby describing and highlighting each single part of the syringe. Moreover, when she is uttering ‘the nee::dle:;’ (Line 2, Picture 3) she moves the needle up to show it more in detail and to isolate it from the other parts of the syringe: in fact she keeps holding the needle up for 0.2 seconds (Picture 4), after her first turn construction unit (TCU). She then shows the syringe while naming it, again through a presentative clause (That’s the injectio:n;, Line 3, Picture 5) and concurrently snapping the end off it (Picture 5). A few things should be noted at this point. The nurse does not just show the objects and how they should be appropriately manipulated; she also isolates and highlights each single object from the flow of actions that must be performed to assemble the whole device properly. She uses ostensive defi nition by naming the single elements which constitute the syringe (the needle and the ‘body’ of the syringe) and concurrently brings them more into focus. She does this not just by showing them, but also by maintaining them for a while in the position in which they are displayed, thereby making them maximally available for the co-participant’s view and achieving joint attention on them (Kidwell & Zimmerman, 2007). Then, the nurse performs the fi rst action that should be carried out with the syringe and verbalizes a description of the activities that should be performed with the different parts of the device (you click that off, Line 4, Picture 6), while putting away the piece she has just taken off (Picture 6). She continues with a further instruction (you attach it, Lines 5–6, Pictures 7/8), while concurrently putting the needle on the syringe. Towards the end of this turn, she raises the syringe upwards and moves it slightly more towards the patient, almost into his line of sight; then she holds it for a while in mid-air (0.4 seconds, Line 6, Picture 8) with a slight

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

67

bouncing upwards movement, again with emphasis, showing it to her recipient and explicitly drawing the focus of attention to it through her movements. This occurs in spite of the fact that, from the very beginning, the patient has been demonstrating close attention to all her activities (Pictures 1–8). This multimodal and non-verbal action of showing something in detail by isolating and holding an object in the same position (in mid-air) is rather similar to what she did before when showing the needle. In both cases, she then isolates a specific referent and engages in the act of ‘properly’ and overtly showing something: whether just an isolated referent (for instance, the needle) or how such objects should be manipulated (for instance, attaching the needle to the syringe). Moreover, from the very beginning, the nurse has engaged in a demonstrative activity which is formed by a subset of other minor actions that must be done in order to set up the syringe properly (taking the syringe, taking the needle, clicking off a part of the syringe, attaching the needle), so that there is a flow of different demonstrative activities that follow on from one another. By holding some referents for a while and/or, as in Picture 8, moving them up towards the recipient of those demonstrations, the nurse isolates and highlights the main and most important action(s) in that flow of activities and distinguishes this from just an ‘nth further action’, like clicking off a part of the syringe, for instance. More specifically, she highlights the end-result of that sequence of activities, showing what the syringe looks like once it has been properly assembled. As we will see later, these activities will also have specific consequences for a more active participation of the patient in interaction (see next section). Patients More Actively Initiating their Participation in Demonstrative Sequences

During these demonstrative sequences, patients may initiate their participation more actively, rather than just paying attention to the nurse’s demonstrations. They do so by identifying clear sequential points/places in these multimodal sequences in which objects are being manipulated. Here we will present two cases in which patients initiate their participation in different ways. First, they exploit sequential places as an opportunity to participate more actively in interaction, when the nurse’s overall activity has clearly fi nished. Secondly, they do so by focusing on and/or ‘manipulating’ the same objects (the syringes) that the nurses have just demonstrated. As we will see, while in the fi rst case the patient will selfinitiate her participation in interaction, in the second one the initiation of the patient’s participation is achieved more interactionally, i.e. it is invited by the nurse’s actions. In the following case, the extract starts towards the end of a demonstrative sequence in which the nurse has shown the patient (Courtney) how to perform an injection by using a silicone cube representing fake skin.

68

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

Extract 2: Courtney 1–8

1

#//(.2) /N. takes syr. off cube #pict. 1

Picture 1

2 N:

.hhh #= /P.’s hand-pinch /P.le a n s forward #pict. 2 #pict. 3 #pict. 4 #pict. 5

Picture 2

Picture 3 P’s change of posture

Picture 4 P’s ‘pinched-hand’

Picture 5 P’s slight leaning upper part of body and head

3 P:

Picture 6

=#(°° # °°) /P. moves back #pict. 6 #pict. 7

Picture 7

#/(.2) #pict. 8

Picture 8 P moves back

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

4 N:

the#re you go. just #pict. 9

Picture 9

5 P:

69

#be ↑care#ful. #pict. 10 #pict. 11

Picture 10

Picture 11

#yeah. #pict. 12

Picture 12

6 N: 7 P:

don’t #stab your#[self #[Huh. huh. huh. huh.= #pict. 13 #pict. 14

Picture 13

8 P:

Picture 14

=☺Don’t #sta(h.)b yourself☺ #pict. 15

Picture 15

The extract starts when the nurse takes the syringe off the silicone cube (Picture 1), thereby indicating that this demonstrative phase (i.e. showing how to make the injection) is reaching its end. The patient is looking at this activity attentively and leaning slightly forward towards the cube. After that, the nurse starts to reassemble the syringe by putting the cap back on the needle, while producing an assessment of the action of injecting oneself designed to pre-empt any possible trouble by the

70 Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

Figure 3.1

patient (.hhhh it’s actually not that ba:d., Line 2, Pictures 2–5). Through these two concurrent actions (i.e. putting the cap back on the needle and the assessment which evaluates the whole injection process), the nurse is indicating the end of this phase in the demonstrative sequence. Thus, here we fi nd the emergence of a (potential) juncture point, indicating the end of this demonstrative phase (see Figure 3.1). The patient clearly orients to this point as the ending of a sequence. When the nurse is putting the cap back on the syringe, Courtney straightens her torso (Pictures 2–3) and starts moving her right hand forward towards the syringe, while leaning her torso and head towards the syringe (Pictures 4–5). As soon as Courtney starts this movement, her hand is already prepared in a ‘pinching’ configuration, with her thumb being opposed to the other fingers, in a horizontal closed position (Picture 4; cf. Kendon, 2004); she then opens the gap between her thumb and the forefinger slightly while approaching the syringe (Picture 5). Such movements and hand configuration are more than sufficient for the nurse to understand the patient’s action as a request for the transfer of the object from the nurse to the patient, and to comply with it. In fact, the nurse immediately moves the syringe slightly closer to the patient, while aborting her own upcoming activities (her apparent plan to put the syringe down on the table, see Picture 6; for similar cases, see also Stevanovic & Monzoni, 2016). As soon as Courtney reaches the syringe and takes it with a pinching motion (Picture 6), the nurse leaves the object to her, thereby aiding the transfer of the object (Pictures 6–8; note the extension of the nurse’s left hand in Picture 7). Despite the immediate compliance by the nurse to Courtney’s invited action and the very synchronous movements by both parties, the object transfer does not occur smoothly. In fact, one part of the syringe (presumably the needle) falls off on the table (Pictures 7–8, see also Picture 9). This seems to occur for two reasons. First, Courtney extends her arm and hand while the nurse is putting the needle back on the syringe, i.e. before that single action is properly fi nished, so that the needle was not, at this point, correctly secured to the syringe. Secondly, while the nurse is moving the syringe towards Courtney, she holds it with both hands on its two ends (Pictures 6–8). Meanwhile, Courtney’s hand is aiming at the central part of the syringe, which she pinches, without, however, moving her left hand

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

71

quickly enough to take hold of the needle subsequently, despite having prepared it for this movement (Picture 8). Moreover, as soon as Courtney pinches the syringe at the centre, the nurse releases her hold of the object and takes both hands off the syringe (Picture 8) and, despite the smooth flow of this movement, the needle comes off. The needle is subsequently picked up by Courtney who puts it back on the syringe (Pictures 9–10). Once Courtney has taken the syringe, she moves it closer to herself and returns to her original and more upright position (Pictures 9–11). While doing so, her gaze is fixed on the syringe, even when the nurse produces a warning and an ironical comment (just be ↑careful, Line 4, Pictures 9–11; Don’t stab yourself, Line 6, Pictures 12–14), to which Courtney responds with laughter and a repetition of the warning (Lines 7–8). Towards the end of this sequence, the nurse starts changing position in order to prepare for and initiate a new demonstrative activity (showing how to inject her leg, Pictures 13–15). In the meantime, Courtney continues to look at the syringe attentively and ostensively, subsequently responding to the nurse’s ironical remark (Lines 7–8, Pictures 13–15) without, however, paying attention to the nurse’s new activities. In this way, Courtney is displaying closely inspecting the syringe and being (almost) completely involved in this activity. Courtney’s attention will only be recaptured by the nurse later when she explains how the injection in the legs should be carried out (data not shown). Hence, in this sequence the patient exploits an opportunity to participate more actively in the interaction at the clear end of a demonstrative phase, and she does so almost exclusively through multimodal means: she first changes her body posture and immediately extends her arm and hand to take the syringe which, at this point, is being reassembled by the nurse. In this way, she is bodily interjecting the very moment at which a fi nal set of activities by the nurse is produced. Compared to verbal communication, this could be likened to a fi nal and recognitional overlap (cf. Jefferson, 1984; Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014): fi nal, because the nurse is fi nishing her demonstrative sequence by reconstituting the object in the same form as it was originally; recognitional, because the patient is recognizing the end of that sequence. In this way, Courtney orients to the nurse’s activity as a juncture in a flow of actions (see Figure 3.1). As we have seen in the previous case (Extract 2), patients may initiate their participation more actively in interaction by exploiting as an opportunity the end of demonstrative sequences which are carried out through multimodal activities and the objects being involved in them. We have just seen how a patient moves towards the syringe to take it and to inspect it more closely, after having closely monitored the nurse’s actions. Next we discuss a similar case. As we have seen earlier during the nurse’s demonstration (Extract 1), the patient (Andrew) displays his focused attention throughout the sequence through his gaze. Moreover, at the very end of a demonstrative phase, the nurse lifts the syringe up towards him through a bouncing movement and holds it in mid-air for a while (Extract 1, Lines

72

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

5–6, Pictures 7/8). Let us consider now how the sequence we considered in Extract 1 continues: Extract 3: Andrew 7–13

5 N:

=you at/#tach it;= /N. attaches needle #pict. 7

Picture 7 N attaches needle

6

#//(.4) /N. moves syr. towards P., bouncing movement /patient frowns #pict. 8

Picture 8 P’s frown

7 N:

Picture 8a Close-up

#/and= /P. starts moving head down + frown #pict. 9

Picture 9 P starts moving head down + frown

8 N: 9 P:

=that’s# /your°in#jecti#[on.°= /P. eyebrows up---------------> [mm. =mm. = #pict. 10 #pict. 11 #pict. 12

Picture 10 P’s eyebrows up

Picture 11

Picture 12

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

10 P:

=#let me see #that;= #pict. 13 #pict. 14

Picture 13

11 P:

13 P:

Picture 14

# >that is a quite #big needle< isn’t #it? #pict. 15 #pict. 16 #pict. 17

Picture 15

12 N:

73

Picture 16

Picture 17

(.4) it #/is::. but it’s a standard. [believe in me. /P.’s eyebrows up [mm::::. #pict. 18

Picture 18 P’s eyebrows up

While the nurse lifts the syringe up and holds it in mid-air, Andrew is still looking at it closely (Lines 5–6, Pictures 7– 8). Earlier we saw how the nurse’s action is done in the service of isolating and highlighting the end-result of the demonstrative and assembling activities, thereby also defining the end of a phase of this demonstrative stage (see the discussion of Extract 1). However, this action is more than just that: it is interpreted by Andrew as an invitation to inspect the object more closely. A couple of things should be noted at this point. First, as noted earlier, the actions being performed by the nurse are rather marked: that is, she ostensively shows the assembled syringe by holding it almost at the same height of Andrew’s eyes for some time, i.e. his view-line; this action is accompanied by a slight bouncing movement

74

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

through which she further focuses the patient’s attention to the object she is holding. Secondly, while the nurse has been assembling the syringe, she has always been looking at it (Line 5, Picture 7), thereby displaying a closer attention and involvement with the object being manipulated, rather than with her recipient. By contrast, at this point when she attaches the needle and holds the syringe in mid-air, she makes a sort of bouncing movement with the object towards her recipient, while directly looking at him, thereby more explicitly directing her activities to him and inviting a response (Picture 8; cf. Stivers & Rossano, 2010a, 2010b, among others). Concurrently, Andrew still monitors her activities and displays being focused on the syringe. Thirdly, thereafter, the nurse moves the syringe away from the patient’s view-line and brings it back down to the table. As soon as the nurse starts this movement, Andrew lowers his head first (Line 7, Picture 9) followed by his torso (Lines 8–10, Pictures 10–14), so that his view-line is lower and closer to the syringe. In this way, he also displays a nonalignment with the nurse’s activities: i.e. the nurse has been moving the object away from him too early while he was looking at it, and he has to change his position in order to continue an even closer and more overt inspection of the syringe. During this posture adjustment, he first produces an acknowledgement token in overlap with the nurse’s turn (Lines 8–9, Pictures 11–12), when his head is almost at the same height as the syringe. At this point, the nurse keeps holding the syringe in the same position without moving it further down, while he produces a turn (let me see that, Line 10, Pictures 13–14), an overt request to inspect the object more carefully and for longer. In this way, he is verbally indicating his concurrent inspection and appraisal of the object (cf. Heinemann & Steensig, 2016, for similar types of requests). Moreover, through such actions he is also explicitly indicating that the nurse has moved the object away from his view-line too soon. Next, while both participants still maintain their respective positions and the object is held firmly in place, he produces a negative assessment of the needle (>that is a quite big needle< isn’t it?, Line 11, Pictures 15–17), in which the qualifier is stressed. Once again, we fi nd a misalignment between the nurse’s and the patient’s activities, but one of a rather different kind from that found in the previous instance (Extract 2). First, in the latter case, it is the nurse who invites an appraisal and inspection by the patient not only by showing how to attach the needle to the syringe, but also by temporarily suspending her flow of actions and marking the end-result of those activities by holding the object in mid-air just in front of the patient’s view-line for some time, while the patient actually displays his inspection and appraisal of the object. As soon as the nurse brings up the syringe and holds it in mid-air, the configuration of Andrew’s eyebrows changes. If we look at

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

75

Figure 3.2

Picture 7 (before the syringe is moved up, Line 5), their position is relaxed (i.e. they are in horizontal position). Then, once the object is lifted up, almost to the height of his eyes, the eyebrow position changes to a frown (Line 6, Pictures 8, 8a), constituting a negative evaluation in itself (Kaukomaa et al., 2014; Ruusuvuori & Peräkylä, 2009; see also below). This is noticed by the nurse who is looking at him, and it is at this very point that she suddenly moves the object down, thereby orienting to the fact that the inspection has taken place and the patient has expressed an appraisal, even though he has communicated this merely through his facial expression. However, that inspection is pursued further, since he keeps looking at the object and moves closer to it in order to continue his inspection. Therefore, the misalignment between the two participants is due to a matter of duration of their individual activities. While the duration of the patient’s inspection was sufficient for the nurse, indicated by his facial appraisal, it was not sufficient for the patient himself. Eventually, following on from his multimodal negative appraisal, he produces a verbal assessment after a much closer and longer inspection of the object (cf. Fasulo & Monzoni, 2009). The inspection is overtly demonstrated through the patient’s gaze and body movements, as well as through the turn in Line 10, an overt request to inspect the object for longer. In this last extract, we have seen how a more active patient’s participation in interaction is invited by the nurse’s manipulation activities of the object in focus and the ostensive display of the endresult of those activities to her recipient, thereby determining and  highlighting the end of this specific stage of the demonstrative activity (Figure 3.2). Hence, this example demonstrates that the manipulation and ostensive and ongoing showing of the object is key to the emergence and actualization in interaction of junctures between different stages in demonstrative sequences, as well as its intersubjective interpretation. And it is at these junctures that an even more active participation by the patient and an appraisal of those activities emerges. Let us now consider how this sequence continues and how the patient’s participation is again invited by similarly marked ostensive actions.

76

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

Extract 4: Andrew 12–18

12 N: 13 P:

it #/is::. but it’s a standard.[believe in me. /P.’s eyebrows up [mm::::. #pict. 18

Picture 18 P’s eyebrows up

((8.0 seconds omitted during which the nurse has problems with taking the cap off the needle)) 15 #/(1.2) /N. taking needle cap off and showing it #pict. 19 & 20

Picture 19 N taking off needle cap

16 N:

Picture20 N showing the needle

that’s #//your needle. /N. holding needle up /P’s frown--------> #pict. 21

Picture 21 Needle pointing up; P’s frown

Picture 21b P’s frown close-up

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

17 P:

77

#/Eu::::::w = /P.’s frown #pict. 22

Picture 22 P’s frown

Picture 22b P’s frown close-up

18 N: =#/and it’s /# fi:ne. /P.’s face ‘opening up in a smile’--------------> /N. putting cap back on needle #pict. 23 #pict. 24

Picture 23 Putting cap back on

Picture 24 Putting cap back on

needle (1)

needle (2)

Having responded to Andrew’s initial assessment of the needle with a confirmation and a minimization of the problem (Line 12), the nurse starts manipulating the syringe to take off the needle cap with which she has some problems (sequence omitted). When she eventually manages to take it off (Line 15, Picture 19), she first ostensively shows the needle to the patient (Picture 20), before moving it slightly upwards, nearer to his view-line, and tilting it slightly towards him. At the same time, she produces another presentative clause (that’s your needle., Line 16, Picture 21). Once again, the nurse uses a set of rather marked multimodal activities through which she focalizes the patient’s attention on the manipulated object. While the nurse is showing and moving the needle, the patient’s eyebrows move into a frown, therefore once again expressing a first evaluation through facial expression only (Pictures 21, 21a). The frown is held and ‘upgraded’ when he subsequently produces a verbal outcry (Eu::::::w [note the modulated syllable lengthening], Line 17, Pictures 22, 22a). However, as soon as his outcry

78

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

finishes, concurrent with the positive assessment by the nurse, Andrew’s facial expression ‘opens up’ in a smile (and it’s fi:ne, Line 18, Pictures 23–24).4 Hence, once again the nurse overtly invites a patient’s greater participation to the ongoing demonstrative sequence through multimodal means including the manipulation of objects and their ostensive display as a means of highlighting the clear-cut end phase of a demonstrative sequence. In this example the invitation is shown to be successful by the subsequent appraisal of the object delivered by the patient. We have seen here, then, how both patients and nurses exploit clear junctures in the flow of multimodal activities independently to intervene to inspect the object more closely, or to invite the patient to do so. Such junctures may be clearly defi ned by a more ostensive manipulation of objects. Moreover, it should be noted that, despite the flow from one activity to the next, i.e. from the end of a demonstrative phase to the inspection and appraisal by the patient, small problems may arise. Discussion and Conclusions

In this chapter, we have considered sequences in which nurses show syringes to MS-patients during consultations in which disease-modifying treatments are presented. Such sequences are demonstrative sequences, insofar as nurses explain how the syringes work and should be assembled. However, patients do not have to follow these instructions straight away in order to use these devices immediately after the encounter. The purpose of the interaction is to enable patients to make a better informed choice of one of the disease-modifying drug treatments available. Nonetheless, patients actively participate in these interactions by showing focused attention and respond to the demonstrations with overt inspections and appraisals. These sequences are formed by smaller multimodal actions through which interactional junctures emerge in interaction. These junctures may occur at the very end of a whole and complex demonstrative sequence, for instance at the end of showing how injections must be done (Extract 2), or junctures may emerge between more limited courses of actions which form the instructional activity, such as showing how to attach different parts of the syringe (Extracts 1, 3, 4). 5 In both cases, these junctures emerge in interaction, not just through talk, but especially through participants’ manipulation of objects, which is frequently performed in rather heightened and marked ways, and through which the structural features of these objects are brought to the foreground. Such junctures are clearly evident in the analyzed data of both nurses and patients. Patients demonstrate thorough involvement in the interaction by displaying focused attention towards nurses’ activities throughout the demonstrative sequences, which in turn play a major role in the recognition of potential junctures at which to intervene

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

79

(cf. Arminen et al., 2015; Monzoni & Laury, 2015). The recognitional nature of nurses’ moves in manipulating and showing objects is not only displayed by their placement in the flow of activities (i.e. at their end), but also by their marked and heightened nature. Such marked moves at the end of clear-cut phases in demonstrative sequences are interpreted by patients as invitations to participate in interaction more actively. Rather than being just passive recipients of explanations, patients may exploit such junctures not just by responding to the showing of an object but by inspecting it more closely and by expressing their own point of view and evaluations. In fact, similarly to the study by Kidwell and Zimmerman (2007: 609) on joint attention in children’s interaction, once joint and focused attention has been interactionally established on an object, a response also becomes consequential. As we have shown, the consequentiality of a response after the showing of an object in a rather marked and extensive way is also evident in our data. However, we have found that the act of showing an object and inviting a subsequent response by a coparticipant may not be without problems. First, in the case of sequential relevance as in the case of adjacency pairs, given a fi rst pair-part a specific second pair-part is sequentially relevant, like an answer following a question (Sacks, 1984). By contrast, in our instances it is not clear what specific kind of activities are projected and invited by the person manipulating and showing the objects. In the analysis of the data (especially Extracts 3 and 4), we have described the patient’s actions as inspection and appraisal, based on his multimodal moves. These actions were promptly recognized and deemed sufficient by the nurse who promptly lowered the object to move on to new phases of the demonstrative sequence. Hence, the mere act of showing is by itself not sufficient to defi ne what specific kind of activity is invited as a(n) (adequate) response. Secondly, as noted, problems may arise regarding the timing and the duration of the multimodal activities in which the participants were engaged. While the nurse oriented to the multimodal response by the patient as being sufficient, the patient did not: so much so that he overtly demonstrated that his inspection was still ongoing by changing position and even by resorting to verbal means to stop the nurse’s action of lowering the inspected object. This in spite of a close synchrony and coordination between the nurse’s and the patient’s moves, once the object was shown. In this specific case (Extracts 3 and 4), the mismatch in timings might be related to the very nature of the multimodal moves of both participants (the showing by the nurse and the inspection and appraisal by the patient) once joint attention had been achieved, since it would be difficult for the nurse to anticipate how long the ostension of the object and co-participant’s inspection should last. Another more substantial reason for this mismatch may be related to the patient’s fi rst multimodal response after his initial inspection of the syringe: his frown itself represents a negative appraisal (Kaukomaa et al., 2014). By moving the syringe away from the patient, the nurse orients to

80

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

the patient’s frown as being a sufficient response. Moreover, she may have done this in order to pre-empt a stronger negative evaluation of the syringe, which is nevertheless pursued by the patient. Similar problems in the coordination of multimodal activities between nurses and patients have also been found when patients exploit junctures independently, in order to participate more actively in interaction, despite the apparent initial close synchrony and coordination between co-participants. As previously shown (Extract 2), patients may bodily interject the end of a subset of demonstrative activities. Despite such multimodal interventions, nurses are able to suspend and change their flow of actions in order to initiate new ones, thereby trying to establish a new coordination with their recipients. Despite these efforts, problems with coordination may still arise due to patients’ quick moves. Multimodality also makes a crucial contribution to the overarching aim of these consultations. Previous research on shared decision making has focused on the ways in which health professionals should empower patients to make their own independent decisions about treatments (cf. Charles et al., 1997; Coulter, 1997). Most previous research has been primarily concerned with the conversational (i.e. verbal) practices health professionals use in consultations during which treatment choices are discussed (Collins et al., 2005; Mangione-Smith et al., 2003; but see Heritage & Stivers, 1999; Peräkylä, 1998, among others). However, as we have seen here, things are rather more complex, at least in encounters involving objects. The sequences in which nurses explain how syringes are used go far beyond a mere showing, informing and demonstrative activity. By illustrating the procedures that must be followed through bodily behaviour, nurses do not just provide patients with an informative, professional and neutral description of these objects (like neurologists might in the initial consultations in which disease-modifying drug treatment is discussed); they give patients a more practical account of what it would actually be like to use a particular drug (Monzoni et  al., 2011). Most importantly, they provide patients with opportunities to have direct access to the syringes. As discussed above, the mere achievement of joint and focused attention to an object makes a response by the recipient consequential (Kidwell & Zimmermann, 2007). Once joint and focused attention on the syringes has been interactionally established, as well as direct access to them by the patients, patients may take the initiative and become more actively engaged in interaction, such as inspecting the syringes more closely, manipulating or appraising them. In this way, nurses set up opportunities for patients, which patients can exploit to express an objective and more factual, and thus independent, evaluation of the syringes. Their objective and independent appraisal is directly connected to the direct access they have been provided to these objects (cf. Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992; Pomerantz, 1984, among others). This is important for two reasons. Multimodal or non-verbal prompts allow nurses to invite patients’ views

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

81

of the syringes more surreptitiously than verbal means (nurses frequently ask at the beginning of the encounter whether the patient already has any preferences – and patients tend to deny they have; cf. Monzoni et  al., 2011). Knowing what patients think about particular drugs, devices or procedures would allow nurses to address misunderstandings, concerns or uncertainties. Most importantly, the neutral and independent appraisal of the particular pros and cons of different syringes may subsequently inform patients’ (ultimate) treatment choices. Hence, nurses do not only encourage patients’ more active participation in the decision-making process with ‘bilateral’ verbal practices (Collins et al., 2005), but also by providing opportunities for patients to have direct ‘physical access’ to the objects under discussion and to appraise them. Such occasions are not only used by patients, but in some cases patients seem to make an effort to anticipate and exploit these occasions. Our findings are rather different from previous research in other healthcare settings. This is primarily due to the nature of these consultations and the particular physical objects that are the focus of these conversations. Previous research demonstrates how conversational practices during the physical examination and the manipulation of the patients’ body are rather different from what emerged in our data, especially in terms of patients’ participation. For instance, doctors may deliver online commentaries during examinations to reassure patients and/or tackle patients’ anticipated subsequent resistance to a ‘no medical problem’ account (Heritage & Stivers, 1999). In contrast to what occurs in our data, such commentaries are designed to limit patients’ participation, insofar as online commentaries are not addressed directly to them (frequently doctors do not look at patients while delivering them), so that they do not have to respond to them. More importantly, most online commentary is about ‘objects’ (i.e. parts of the patient’s body) to which patients do not have the same access as the doctors (for instance, during the examination of the patient’s ear through an otoscope, Heritage & Stivers, 1999). Moreover, online commentary as well assertions about particular physical features of the patient’s body constitute a medical assessment; i.e. patients do not have the medical expertise to counteract these statements (see Peräkylä, 1998). This is completely different in our data, where the very activity of manipulating and showing objects by making them fully available to patients and building joint attention on them builds up an interactional context in which patients’ participation is enhanced. Not only can patients intervene more actively, but they can also assess objects without requiring any medical expertise. Notes (1) The main aim of these consultations is informative only, i.e. giving patients an overview about how the injection devices work so that they can make a choice. Once they have chosen one of the drugs, some weeks later, another consultation with the nurses

82

(2)

(3)

(4) (5)

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

takes place, during which they will teach patients how to inject themselves. Moreover, in none of these consultations do patients perform the activities that have been shown by the nurses. This study was conducted with the approval of the Bradford Review Ethics Committee and the Research Department at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. All patients gave written informed consent. Their names were pseudonymized. Through bilateral styles, nurses create opportunities for patients to actively intervene and/or express evaluations, ideas and doubts about the treatments or to ask questions about them. Such opportunities are avoided instead in the doctors’ unilateral styles (Monzoni et al., 2011). Note that the assessment is not designed as a rebuttal to Andrew’s negative appraisal, but as a next item in her agenda of describing the needle (cf. Heritage & Sorjonen, 1994). Such a distinction between more extended sequences and smaller actions in sequences is rather similar, in some respects, to the difference other studies have found in verbal interaction between global pragmatic completion points, such as at the end of a storytelling, and local pragmatic completion points, such as at the end of smaller units of a story (cf. Ford & Thompson, 1996).

References Arminen, I., Laury, R. and Monzoni, C.M. (2015) Multi-modality of turn-taking: Auspicious junctures for the co-ordination of self-selection and the initiation of actions in multi-person and multi-activity contexts. Revisiting Participation Conference, University of Basel, Switzerland, June. Charles, C., Gafni, A. and Whelan, T. (1997) Shared decision-making in the medical encounter: What does it mean? (or it takes at least two to tango). Social Science & Medicine 44, 681–692. Collins, S., Drew, P., Watt, I. and Entwistle, V. (2005) ‘Unilateral’ and ‘bilateral’ practitioner approaches in decision-making about treatment. Social Science & Medicine 61, 2611–2627. Coulter, A. (1997) Partnership with patients: The pros and cons of shared decisionmaking. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy 2, 112–121. De Stefani, E. and Gazin, A.D. (2014) Instructional sequences in driving lessons: Mobile participants and the temporal and sequential organization of actions. Journal of Pragmatics 65, 63–79. Fasulo, A. and Monzoni, C.M. (2009) Assessing mutable objects: A multimodal analysis. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42 (4), 362–376. Ford, C.E. and Thompson, S.A. (1996) Interactional units in conversation: Syntactic, intonational, and pragmatic resources for the management of turns. In E. Ochs, S. Thompson and E.A. Schegloff (eds) Interaction and Grammar (pp. 134–184). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional vision. American Anthropologist (New Series) 96, 606–633. Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M.H. (1992) Assessments and the construction of context. In A. Duranti and C. Goodwin (eds) Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 147–190). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haddington, P. (2006) The organization of gaze and assessments as resources for stance taking. Text & Talk 26, 281–328. Hazel, S. and Mortensen, K. (2014) Embodying the institution – object manipulation in developing interaction in study counselling meetings. Journal of Pragmatics 65, 10–29. Heath, C. (1986) Body Movement and Speech in Medical Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Informing and Demonstrating: Manipulating Objects and Patients’ Participation

83

Heinemann, T. and Steensig, J. (2016) Seeing it my way versus seeing it our way – Se- and Prøv å’se- constructions in Danish talk-in-interaction (Mimeo). Heritage, J. and Sorjonen, M. (1994) Constituting and maintaining activities across sequences: And-prefacing as a feature of question-design. Language in Society 23, 1–29. Heritage, J. and Stivers, T. (1999) Online commentary in acute medical visits: A method of shaping patient expectations. Social Science & Medicine 49, 1501–1517. Jefferson, G. (1984) Notes on some orderlinesses of overlap onset. In V. D’Urso and P. Leonardi (eds) Discourse Analysis and Natural Rhetoric (pp. 11–38). Padua: Cleup Editore. Kärkkäinen, E. and Keisanen, T. (2012) Linguistic and embodied formats for making (concrete) offers. Discourse Studies 14 (5), 1–25, 587–611. Kaukomaa, T., Peräkylä, A. and Ruusuvuori, J. (2014) Foreshadowing a problem: Turnopening frowns in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 71, 132–147. Keevallik, L. (2014) Turn organization and bodily-vocal demonstrations. Journal of Pragmatics 65, 103–120. Keisanen, T. and Rauniomaa, M. (2012) The organization of participation and contingency in prebeginnings of request sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (4), 323–351. Kendon, A. (1990) Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in Focused Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kendon, A. (2004) Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kidwell, M. and Zimmerman, D.H. (2007) Joint attention as action. Journal of Pragmatics 39, 592–611. Levinson, S.C. (2013) Action formation and ascription. In T. Stivers and J. Sidnell (eds) The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 103–130). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Mangione-Smith, R., Stivers, T., Elliott, M., McDonald, L. and Heritage, J. (2003) Online commentary on physical exam fi ndings: A communication tool for avoiding inappropriate antibiotic prescribing? Social Science & Medicine 56, 313–320. Mondada, L. (2006) Participants’ online analysis and multimodal practices: Projecting the end of the turn and the closing of the sequence. Discourse Studies 8 (1), 117–129. Mondada, L. (2009) The embodied and negotiated production of assessments in instructed actions. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42 (4), 329–361. Monzoni, C.M. and Laury, R. (2015) Making referents accessible in multi-party interaction. ESUKA-JEFUL (6–2), 43–62. Monzoni, C.M., Sharrack, B. and Reuber, M. (2011) Establishing and maintaining equipoise in decision-making about disease modifying drugs for multiple sclerosis. University of Sheffield (mimeo). Peräkylä, A. (1998) Authority and accountability: The delivery of diagnosis in primary health care. Social Psychology Quarterly 61, 301–320. Pomerantz, A. (1984) Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Actions (pp. 57–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rossi, G. (2012) Bilateral and unilateral requests: The use of imperatives and Mi X? interrogatives in Italian. Discourse Processes 49 (5), 426–458. Ruusuvuori, J. and Peräkylä, A. (2009) Facial and verbal expressions in assessing stories and topics. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42, 377–394. Sacks, H. (1984) Notes on methodology. In J. Heritage and J. Maxwell Atkinson (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 2–27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff , E.A. (2007) Sequence Organization in Interaction, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

84

Part 1: The Role of Objects for the Progressivity of Action

Sorjonen, M.-L. and Raevaara, L. (2014) On the grammatical form of requests at the convenience store: Requesting as embodied action. In P. Drew and E. Couper-Kuhlen (eds) Requesting in Social Interaction (pp. 243–268). Studies in Language and Social Interaction No. 26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Stevanovic, M. and Monzoni, C.M. (2016) On the hierarchy of interactional resources: Embodied and verbal behaviour in the management of joint activities with material objects. Journal of Pragmatics 103, 15–32. Stivers, T. and Rossano, F. (2010a) Mobilizing response. Research on Language and Social Interaction 43, 1–31. Stivers, T. and Rossano, F. (2010b) A scalar view of response relevance. Research on Language and Social Interaction 43, 49–56. Streeck, J., Goodwin, C. and LeBaron, C. (eds) (2011) Embodied Interaction: Language and Body in the Material World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stukenbrock, A. (2015) Deixis in der face-to-face-Interaktion. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Part 2 Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

This page intentionally left blank

4 Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices Dennis Day and Gitte Rasmussen

Introduction

‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law’ is an idiom, in English at least, meaning that, given no authoritative evidence to the contrary, having something in one’s possession is almost equivalent to owning it, and due the rights and obligations owning something implies. Hold this thought. In this chapter we explore how two groups of professionals, speech and language pathologists (SLP) and industrial designers, respectively, utilize objects in interactions with clients. For both professions, objects are ubiquitous. In speech and language pathology pre-made objects are typically embedded into interaction to stimulate talk about the objects, particularly inscriptions made upon them. The everyday uses of the objects are rarely relevant; for example, newspaper clippings in this professional setting are not read for what they are, but used to promote topics upon which talk can be based. For many in industrial design (ID), objects are essential to the notion of the ‘tangibility’ of design, the idea being that quite amorphous objects made ‘on the spot’ will lead to innovation through creative ways organizing reasoning, interaction and talk (see, for example, Luck, 2010). In these ways, the two professions provide distinctively different goals and methods for objects in their practices. Still, the objects are, in both professions, constitutive elements of the practices, and with the possession of the object comes thus specific rights and obligations for action. This chapter aims at mapping out these rights and responsibilities, which involves illustrating how objects become embedded sequentially, both locally and into the overall activities of SLP training and an ID workshop, respectively. Prior research includes the introduction and use of 87

88

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

objects and the distribution of turns in interaction, both turns at talk as well as turns at possessing and using the objects themselves (see, for example, Day & Wagner, 2014; Korkiakangas et al., 2014; Mikkola & Lehtinen, 2014; Mondada, 2006; Rasmussen, 2017). We follow this work and attempt to extend it by exploring how objects are brought into play in activities that are specific to the two different professional settings. We also look at what having the object, in the sense of holding the object or it being within reach in one’s ‘workspace’, means with regard to the rights and responsibilities for ways of structuring action in the two activities (see, for example, Day, forthcoming; Ekström & Lindwall, 2014; Koschmann et al., 2012; Lindwall & Ekström, 2012; Rasmussen, 2013). For example, who holds the object when it is used for particular turn constructions, what is accomplished when the object changes hands and how is the placement of objects in physical space consequential for the activity? Objects, just like bodies, occupy space in particular spatial alignments which may change over time and thus substantiate different material ecologies. We focus on what these changes do, and who does them, for the two specific work practices. Not only may objects move, but what they are for the activity at hand is negotiable and changeable. In general, no matter whether objects come ‘ready made’ for particular uses or not, what is to become of them is a something for interactants to work out. This is commonly accomplished through sequences of action that combine multimodal, embodied action and talk (Rasmussen, 2017). The specific foci above will help us to arrive at more general considerations concerning how the configuration of objects, their embodied handling, and talk, as well as other action, are part of the differential distribution of rights and responsibilities characteristic of participants in professional work activities. Our claim is that the possession of specific kinds of objects in specific turns has consequences for current and ensuing contributions, including not only the right to talk/act, but the obligation to talk/act in specific ways. We hereby expand on claims made for talk in interaction that certain contributions may establish (next) speakers as primary speaker. Primary speaker contributions differ from listener responses (Bavelas et al., 2000) or recipient responses in terms of minimal responses, e.g. ‘yes’, ‘hm hm’ (Goodwin, 1980; Jefferson, 1983; Schegloff, 1982; Stivers, 2008), in that they to some extent set the agenda for next contributions. Our focus here orients towards action generally, i.e. not only talk, and includes the sociomateriality of settings by way of our focus on possessed objects. As mentioned, our focus is additionally on the specifics of the two particular work settings and the professional and lay interactants who inhabit them which, analytically, necessarily involves practices of categorization beyond categories such as primary speaker. We are inspired in this regard by Zimmerman’s (1998) and particularly Watson’s (1997, 2015) and Fitzgerald and Housley’s (2015) work on discursive identities and membership categorization analysis (MCA), respectively. For our

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 89

purposes, this plays out in the idea that possessing an object helps set up particular reflexive relationships between the sorts of actions and the sorts of categorial identity available for the possessor vis-à-vis other interactants in the activity, as well as the categorial character of the activity itself as being, for example, a proper ‘design activity’ or a proper ‘speech and language therapy session’. In this MCA view, objects in someone’s possession are available as features of the in situ accomplishment of a member’s incumbency to a category with its concomitant rights and obligations. Analytically, then, we venture into two sets of research practices within ethnomethodology – conversation analysis (CA) and MCA. We are therefore concerned with reflexive relations between activities and the sequential structure of actions, categories of and for people, and their use of particular objects. Categorial relations in interaction are occasionally taken for granted in studies on interaction, although the very notion of, for example, ‘a doctor–patient consultation’ is in itself a gloss for the assemblage of these relations. The question is: How can we, as analysts and members, work out, for example, that a person holding a stethoscope to someone’s chest and saying ‘exhale’, followed by the other exhaling, is a medical doctor conducting a consultation with a patient? Watson (1997) maintains that we must: treat both categorial and ‘structural’ aspects as explicit, mutually-inextricable topics to be explored in their own right, as part of our overall analytic concern with sensible conversational order. (Watson, 1997: 53)

In our example, members, and analysts, make out structure, i.e. utterance/action, artifact and sequence, in accordance with a ‘normal form’, i.e. a doctor–patient consultation; and, vice versa, we make out the doctor–patient consultation as a product of ongoing analysis of utterance/ action, artifact and sequence. For Watson, this ‘back and forth’ (Cicourel, 1973) analysis is a formulation of Garfinkel’s (1967) ‘documentary method of interpretation’ in which members, in public displays of their understanding of actions, index an underlying pattern, while those very same displays are constitutive of that pattern. Important to add here is the focus on the ‘just thisness’, or haecceity, of the encounter. The search is not for a generic architecture of interaction nor a generic catalogue of categories, but for the public and ‘ordinary’ assembling of particulars by members for another ‘first time through’ (Garfi nkel et al., 1981). As noted by De Stefani (this volume), there is little previous research to go on with regard to categorial and sequential analysis of objects in interaction. Objects and their categorial import can be thought of first as a visual phenomenon for members; we may ‘see’ a doctor if we see someone with a stethoscope around their neck. To the extent that this is accomplished, we further see the stethoscope as the doctor’s stethoscope. As a visually drawn inference, this method for a member’s recognition is perhaps analogous to other visually accomplished inferences noted in earlier ethnomethodological work on ‘seeing at a glance’ (see, for example,

90

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

Bittner, 2013; Garfi nkel & Rawls, 2006; Sudnow, 1972; Wieder, 1969). If members are not just glancing at the world but also acting within it with others, then, with reference to the discussion above, categorial practices must be seen in relation to sequential action and, reflexively, the very activities they constitute and are constituted by. Here Watson’s (1997) notion of turn-generated categories, originating in Sacks’ work on ‘caller’ and ‘called’ in telephone conversation (Sacks, 1992: Vol. 2, 360–366) and which can be equated with Zimmerman’s (1998) ‘discursive identities’, is particularly illustrative. With regard to ‘visual orders’ and turn-generated categories, Watson offers the example of a queue: The queue comprises a set of visibility arrangements (to use Pollner’s term) that display a turn order of service. Again, here we have turn-generated categories, most vividly those of ‘head’ and ‘tail’ of the queue, but also, that of ‘second in line’ and further numerically-indexed categories. Again, the head of the queue who is ‘next up’ has special obligations to monitor (say) the point of service and to monitor the ongoing service transaction for its upcoming completion point, etc. The turn-generated categories of the queue (fi rst, second, etc. in line) might be said to be integral to the queue … (Watson, 1997: 71)

One’s place in the turn-taking system of a queue, i.e. one’s place in a sequential order, is thus consequential for categorial membership and its concomitant rights and obligations. It is not, however, simply a matter of some categorizations made relevant as part of the queue as a context, but ‘at the level of laic method, part of its [the queue’s] very production’ (Watson, 2015: 35). Other categories may be realized beyond turn-generated ones. Watson (2015: 35) reminds us of easily recognizable practices whereby persons categorized in particular ways, such as the elderly or infi rm, are allowed to move to the head of a queue, a sequential position attained through a categorization practice. Once there, they also enjoy the rights and fulfi ll the obligations of categorically being ‘queue head’. Applying this thinking to our example above of a person holding a stethoscope to someone’s chest and saying ‘exhale’, while we do not have a visual representation of sequential order as in a queue, we do have an initiation of a ‘first’ verbal and embodied action – ‘exhale’. Additionally, and visually available, we also have the stethoscope in the person’s possession and involved in the embodied action of being put on the other’s chest in synchronized fashion with the verbal action. Finally, we have a ‘second’ in the sequential order, namely the other person exhaling. These actions, their sequential positions and the object in question index activity we can recognize as ‘a doctor and patient engaging in a consultation’. At the same time, the consultation is reflexively a product of those very same actions, sequential positions and object. The initiator of the first action in a sequence, our ‘doctor’, has the rights and responsibilities for particular actions which are consequential for the other person, our ‘patient’, with whom she is engaged as evidenced by the patient carrying out the request to exhale. Likewise, the

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 91

stethoscope can be seen categorically as part and parcel of a medical practice, as opposed to a manufacturing practice, for example, through its possession and the obligatory and allowable actions it is used for. Our purpose below is to pursue the analysis of objects in this fashion with the aim of understanding their role in some institutional work activities of speech and language pathology and industrial design, respectively. We attempt to show how the objects as part of specific actions and activities are specific to the two professions. In both cases, the objects are, or become, inscribed objects, i.e. here they are written upon, and this chapter shows how specific rights and obligations to produce current and next actions of a specific kind go with object possession and transfer of that possession. There are nonetheless interesting differences and similarities between the activities, and thereby between the professions, as evidenced in how the objects become inscribed, who has possession of them and which rights and obligations are obtained.

Data and Methods

From our respective corpora we have selected examples from three settings: (1) A training activity in Denmark between an SLP and a six-year-old boy diagnosed with specific language impairment. He can produce all vowels and consonants in Danish in isolation and a few expressions as single words: far ‘Dad’, hov ‘whoops’, is ‘ice(cream)’ and mer ‘more’ (Rasmussen, 2013). The interaction takes place under the auspices of a public institution that is responsible for special education intervention programs for children. The nature and the purpose of intervention programs in special education for children and adults and the rights to taking part in them are defi ned by Danish law. (2) A training activity in Denmark between two SLPs and an elderly woman, who is diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia, i.e. non-fluent or expressive aphasia. (3) A workshop activity in Sweden between two senior practitioners from industry and a consulting interaction designer. The workshop’s aims are to create new channels of communication between stakeholders in a multi-industry collaboration. The designers have instigated a host of group work activities in which practitioners are to design these channels. In the particular activity under investigation here, the two practitioners, with occasional guidance from the designer, explore how various stakeholders might move ‘through’ a website interface. The data from all three settings consist of video-recordings which have been transcribed according to CA tradition (Atkinson & Heritage, 1984;

92

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

Hepburn & Bolden, 2013) using the transcribing interactions mentioned in the volume introduction, with one exception. We occasionally make special note of the use of sign language in the following way: ‘Gerda’ Sign language for Gerda The Use and Possession of Inscribed Objects in Professional Practices Inscribing objects and embedding them into an emergent activity: The design setting

We begin in Example 1 with how a designer inscribes a Post-it® on the spot and embeds it into an ongoing activity. The participants are to find 10 examples of possible ‘platforms’ through which one might come into contact with new customers. Some instructions are on a piece of paper in front of W (right in pictures). M (center in pictures) is writing the situations on his laptop. Note their bodily orientation and their respective workspaces (Picture 1). There is quite minimal interaction between them. M is typing on his laptop while W is flicking her iPad. They do agree on what to do next, but little is done between them. They seem to occupy two separate workspaces with speech being the only occasional connection between them. In the ensuing extract, the designer D (left in pictures) has joined in. M and W have completed their list, which M has inscribed on his laptop. M and W then agree to look for patterns in the list (Lines 1–8). At Lines 6–8, M suggests they note down the list items and places his fi nger on his writing block. In overlap with this action, D then picks up a pad of post-its (Picture 5). At the end of M’s turn, after a half-second pause during which M removes his fi nger from the notepad and looks at the post-its, D suggests, at Line 10, that they might write on the post-its. The suggestion gets immediate acceptance by M and W (Lines 11, 12). D picks up the task M began. She begins by recycling M’s ‘old contacts’, reformulates this as ‘earlier contacts’, and after some discussion of what ‘earlier contacts’ might be, proceeds by writing the expression on the post-it, tearing it from the pad and placing it in front of M’s laptop.

Picture 1 Two separate workspaces

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 93

Example 1, Extract 1 ((#Positions just before transcript begins))

Picture 2 Two separate workspaces

1

M:

2

#nu ska du bjuda utifrån dem tio skulle vi kunna dra ut uhmm now you are to invite from those ten we can fi nd a (1.0) #pict. 3

Picture 3 W picks up iPad; M looks towards W

3

W:

mönster# Pattern #pict. 4

Picture 4 M and W mutual gaze 4

M:

mönster (.) exakt pattern exactly

94

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

5 6 7 8

(3.0) och där skulle man /kunna göra på enkelt sätt genom att and there one could do in an easy way by ba::ra uh:: här (0.5) skriva (0.5) åå sätta pinnar då va just uh:: here writing and putting pins then right, /M & D look at M’s screen, W at paper in front of her (0.5) gamla kontakter är #ju en sån old contacts are one of those #pict. 5

Picture 4 M puts index finger on notepad; D picks ups post-it pad

9 10 D:

11 M: 12 W: 13 D:

14 M: 15 D:

16 M: 17 W:

(.5) ska vi:: eh:: göra det/ på sån här/ [kanske] shall we:: eh:: do it on one of these here perhaps /M removes index fi nger from notepad ,looks at post-its /D begins pulling off post-it, places it in front of her [ja] Yes [ja] Yes eh:: /gamla /kontakter eller tidigare [kontakter] eh:: old contacts or earlier contacts /D Pen poised to write on post-it /W puts away paper [ja (.)precis] yes precisely (.)alltså den återkommande kund earlier (1) contacts (.) that is the returning customer /D writing on post-it [um] Um ah yeah

In this way, D has embedded a new set of inscribable objects into the activity. The methodical way this is achieved is quite subtle. She monitors M and W’s work with the list (Lines 1–8) until the precise moment M verbally and bodily orients to writing something down, at which time she picks up the pad of post-its (Line 10). This action brings the post-its into play. They are made relevant by deictic reference to them in her utterance at Line 4. Moreover, the grammatical structure of the utterance makes the object relevant as an obligatory constituent for the action to make sense

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 95

(Rasmussen, 2017) as revealed in the subsequent acceptance of her suggestion to use them for achieving M’s project concerning the list in Lines 11–12. What ostensibly is an exchange of medium, from M’s notepad to post-its, is artfully achieved by D by slotting the exchange into an ongoing activity. This is not questioned and is readily accepted by M and W. While the notepad was under M’s hand and finger and seeable as in his possession, the now relevant post-it pad is held by D. Additionally, M has removed his finger from the notepad, physically abandoning his project of writing on it. After the completion of M’s turn at Line 8, there is half a second pause ending with D’s suggestion and its acceptance that ‘we’ use the post-its. This is followed by D (Lines 13, 15) continuing with M’s project of transferring the list from the laptop. She begins by recycling M’s starting point of ‘old contacts’ (Line 13) as she reformulates ‘old contacts’ as ‘earlier contacts’. This is aligned with physically by W (Line 13), who removes the paper in front of her, and verbally by M (‘yes precisely’, Line 14). At Line 15, D delivers again the phrase ‘earlier contacts’. Verbally this is performed in a sort of ‘writing while reading aloud’ voice (Couper-Kuhlen & Selting, 1996) as she simultaneously writes the phrase on the post-it. This is also aligned with by M and W in Lines 16 and 17, respectively. D’s suggestion that ‘we’ use post-its develops not only into her slotting in the post-its as a medium of choice, but also into her physically taking over the task of writing on them what M and W have prepared beforehand. We maintain that her holding the post-it pad in this sequential position allows her this right and obligation and that her role as a designer is reflexively constituted in all this. This has been a two-step process. Possession of the post-it pad and the pause at the end of M’s utterance at Line 3 gave D at least the possibility of structuring the next action. Her suggestion (‘shall we do it on these here perhaps’), the second step, follows and is immediately aligned with by M and W at D’s turn completion at Line 4. During that spoken turn she has maintained possession of the post-it pad and used it as a constitutive element in the construction of her turn and has in this way prepared a possible next (spoken and/or multimodal) action, upon her co-participants’ alignment in terms of a confirming response, by removing a single post-it and placing it in front of her. Thus, through the construction of the fi rst pair part in this pre-sequence (Schegloff, 2007) and the physical arrangement of the object, she has made it relevant that she is responsible for the upcoming sequence and activity-initiating action. That D does so unproblematically can be seen as M and W allowing D some special set of categorical rights and responsibilities which are attributable to her as a ‘designer’. D has effectively changed the course of the activity which she has just joined by: (1) monitoring the others; (2) bringing forward a new artifact into her possession at a sequential and for the activity-relevant juncture; (3) offered an accepted suggestion for its use at a turn-transition relevant point; and (4) taken responsibility for actually using the artifact again at an

96

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

activity-relevant juncture. Her actions and their sequentially appropriate placement smoothly push the activity forward and a possible categorical accountability for this, we suggest, can be found in a designer category. This is designers’ practice of using tangible objects for creative ways organizing reasoning, interaction and talk. The segment continues with D and M collaboratively describing features of the category ‘earlier contacts’. The segment ends with D moving the post-it from in front of her to in front of M’s laptop. The remaining nine items on M’s laptop list are subsequently re-inscribed on post-its in the same fashion and placed in the space in front of M’s laptop (see Picture 17). Embedding a pre-fabricated object into an emergent activity: SLP setting 1

Example 2 is an example of how a pre-fabricated object is introduced into a professional activity. Specifically, it is an instance of how a letter is introduced by an SLP to a training activity in the use of language and signs (see also Rasmussen, 2013). It will be recalled from above that the interaction is a mandated training session, and the social categories ‘SLP’ and ‘client’ are available from the very beginning of the interaction. The analysis will show how the participants orient towards these categories and actions ascribed to them, e.g. the training is initiated by the SLP who draws upon the letter that was written by the child’s, B’s, foster mother and brought to the public kindergarten by B, in which the interaction is carried out. Thus, it will show how the SLP and B methodically demonstrate their understanding of the situation, interaction, and the use of the object as the interaction unfolds, while they simultaneously bring about the relevant (training) actions-in-interaction, situation and the social categories (see ‘documentary methods of interpretation and reflexivity’ above). Prior to where the extract begins, the SLP and B order the physical space in concert (Ciolek & Kendon, 1980): they sit at a table in front of each other and the SLP puts the letter on the table which she subsequently holds up in front of her for B to see. Example 2, Extract 1 ((SLP holds letter in front of her herself during excerpt)) 1 SLP: hvem har /skrevet det der? who wrote this? /points at the letter as »B 2 B: /»letter signs ‘Gerda’ as »«SLP 3 SLP: /Gerda Gerda /nods as »«B 4 (0.3) 5 SLP: /de:t /Gerda it’s Gerda /holds letter /’Gerda’ as »«B

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 97

6 SLP: /hun har skrevet det her /til ↑mig/ she wrote this to me /fist, arm back and forth in front of her as »«B /index fi nger points at herself /»letter 7 B: /»SLP 8 SLP: #/continues »letter #pict. 6

Picture 6

In addition to holding up the letter in front of B, the SLP points at the letter, gazes at him and asks him whether he knows who wrote it, which he does. Notice that the construction of the action that introduces the object is similar to the one accomplished by the designer: the object is an obligatory constituent for the action to be complete (‘who wrote this’). His answer is constructed through the use of a sign for ‘Gerda’ as well as gaze at the letter and at the SLP. In a next turn (Lines 3–5), the SLP does not only evaluate his answer as she repeats Gerda, nods and gazes at B. She also repeats the sign for ‘Gerda’ as used by B, before she carries on with the next question (not in the transcript) in a so-called initiativeresponse-evaluation sequence (Mehan, 1979). The fact that a new question is upcoming is indicated by her gazing at, i.e. reading, the letter (Line 8) after having gazed at B during the production of her turn (Line 6), and by B gazing at her while she reads ‘it’ (Line 7, Picture 6). In this way, both participants engage in and establish a distribution of interactional tasks, according to which the SLP asks questions by reference to the object, the letter, to which she knows the answers that are to be delivered by B and evaluates (confi rms or repairs) the signs used by B to produce the answers. The signs are on some occasions introduced by her in coordination with her talk. On other occasions, they are not. In this way, the co-participants not only establish primary discursive identities ‘questioner’ and ‘answerer’ (Zimmerman, 1998), but also the social categories ‘SLP’ and ‘client/pupil’. As Rasmussen (2013) notes, the significance of the letter to the training of signs for producing known answers is, however, not established until after this initial establishment of discursive identities with an orientation towards relevant social categories. The specific purpose of the letter

98

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

is demonstrated and made manifest through a sequential structure that becomes a general pattern in the data: the SLP (a) reads the letter (as exemplified in Picture 6), (b) looks up, (c) holds on to the letter, and (d) asks a question to the boy that is seemingly related to the contents of the letter. The boy then confi rms or disconfirms the question. Example 2, Extract 2 (below) is meant to illustrate this sequential pattern. The sequence is in this case, though, expanded by the SLP’s initiation of a repair (Schegloff, 1992, 2007) of B’s response (Line 2). Notice that the SLP works to repair his response, while she reads the letter again (Line 4, Picture 10): Example 2, Extract 2 1

SLP:

#/og /hvem /sov# /du/sammen# med, and whom did you sleep with /holds letter /»letter and hvem ‘whom’, /»«B and sov ‘sleep’/ /lets go of letter and du ‘you’ /sammen ‘together’ #pict. 7 #pict. 8 #pict. 9 ((arrow in middle indicates where the letter is))

Picture 7 og ‘and’

2 3

B: SLP:

4

SLP:

Picture 8 sov ‘sleep’

Picture 10 Kasper

5

B:

6

SLP:

Picture 9 sammen ‘together’

/’Gerda’ as »«SLP sammen med /Gerda? together with /Gerda /’Gerda’ /var det ik sammen med #/Ka/sper, wasn’t it together with Kasper /»letter /’Kasper’ /»«B #pict. 10

/ah ah /»«SLP /ja: yes /nods as »«B

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices

99

The SLP initiates the sequence as described above. Upon du ‘you’ in Line 1, the SLP, however, lets go of the letter (Pictures 8 and 9) and puts it on top of her booklet with the text towards herself to produce the sign for ‘together’ using both hands (Picture 9). Having the letter in this position, she suggests as mentioned a repair of B’s answer while she continues reading (Line 4). Thus, the general sequential pattern as re-established in Lines 1–2 is also maintained in the sequence-expanding repair sequence (Schegloff, 2007), in which the SLP also draws on the letter (Line 1, Picture 10 and Line 4, Picture 11). In this case as in many others, she of course does not hold it in her hands as she did previously (and as did the designer). However, she keeps it within her working space which is her ‘warrant’ for knowing the answers that are on the object. As we shall see, the placement of the post-its within the designer’s workings space is also, of course, a warrant for the designer to do the job of inscribing them. Also similar to the designer setting, although for a different purpose, the co-participants, SLP and B, collaboratively embed the object, letter, in a recognizable practice for speech, language and sign training, which was initiated in this case by the SLP. Thus, the questioning action is initiated and the discourse identity as the ‘questioner’ established by her by virtue of her being a member of the social category ‘SLP’, while the action simultaneously and reflexively invokes the category. The same holds for B’s actions in terms of recognizably previously known answers and his use of signs, and the category that he is, becomes and remains a member of, i.e. ‘client’. Possessing a pre-fabricated object and rights: SLP setting 1

Central to this study is the fact that the SLP in Example 2, Extracts 1 and 2, ‘holds on’ to the letter either physically or in terms of holding it within her workspace. Holding on is here, as we saw above, embedded in discursive practices for allocating turns-at-talk (Day & Wagner, 2014; Sacks et al., 1974) and moreover for establishing local discursive identities. It continuously and reflexively invokes who brought it to the training session and held it in the first place while producing the initial action of the activity and thus ascribes rights to that original possessor, the SLP, to structure the interaction for training purposes. The boy not only orients towards such distributed rights and obligations by aligning with the SLP’s actions. He also deals with these rights when he later takes the letter into his possession, as shown in Example 2, Extract 3, below: Example 2, Extract 3 ((letter lying on the table within SLP’s working space)) 1 SLP: /trampolin /hm hm trampoline hm hm /nods as»«B /»letter

100

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

2

//(0.8) /SLP »letter during the pause while B»SLP /B»letter 3 SLP: /var det /sjovt? was it fun? /»B /’fun’ 4 B: /ah ah /»letter and takes the letter 5 SLP: /#»B then »letter #pict 11

Picture 11

6 B:

/#reads the letter #pict. 12

Picture 12 B reads the letter

In Line 4, B takes the letter and gazes at it, i.e. ‘reads’ it as did the SLP, although he has no reading skills. He then starts telling about his whereabouts during the weekend by using an idiosyncratic mixture of vocalizations, (idiosyncratic) signs and gestures, and letter manipulation (not in the transcript). One could hold that this is not unproblematic since the established professional purpose is the training of signs for telling his story in systematic, recognizable, structured ways. However, it seems that the letter as an artifact of work constrains the interactional practice for sign training in ways that transform the relation between the SLP and the boy beyond what he can accept. As

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 101

Rasmussen (2013) shows, structuring sign training based on a story necessarily implies that the SLP structures the boy’s story and in the end has a major influence on what is told about what happened. At one point (Lines 1–4 above), however, a line is obviously crossed. The boy taking hold of the letter changes who possesses it and what can be done with it. That the boy nonetheless carries on with talking about his weekend, which at least topically is what the SLP has been pursuing, is noteworthy. While one may consider that this concerns a general right to tell one’s own story, we maintain that the locally organized right to hold the object physically grounds such a general right. Sticking to the physical object, the letter itself, situated in established practice for communication and sign training, gives him the right to initiate talk about his whereabouts which, in its turn, makes it sequentially relevant for the SLP to respond to him.

Possessing the object and obligations: SLP setting 2

Holding on to the object not only documents rights to structure the interaction for specific purposes, as we saw above. It also entails obligations to do so. Example 3 aims at illustrating this. In this case, the SLP introduces a visual for language and communication training. The visual is a clip from a newspaper in which a Danish princess and her new partner are pictured (see also Rasmussen, 2017). The client is an elderly woman, Else, who is diagnosed with aphasia. Also in this instance, the SLP and the client organize the physical space. They are sitting at a dinner table and the SLP draws forward a folder and makes relevant that she (in the company of another present SLP) has brought pictures to the interaction which, as indicated, are somehow relevant for the interaction. Example 3, Extract 1 1

SLP1:

2

E:

3

/vi har taget nogle /flere billeder med we brought some pictures /moves folder towards herself as » folder with pictures /holds it still with both hands as » E /ja yeah /»«SLP1 (0.3)

The SLP then draws forward a specific picture of a Danish princess and her new partner from the folder (Example 3, Extract 2, Picture 13), presents it to Else (Picture 14), and starts structuring the interaction as she gazes at the picture and formulates questions or produces comments which are related to the picture. For the point made in this section, notice that the SLP does not hold on to the specific picture. Instead she moves it into Else’s ‘working space’.

102

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

Example 3, Extract 2 1 SLP1:

//#((pulls out a picture from a newspaper from a folder, holds it in front of her)) / » picture /E » picture #pict. 13

Picture 13 SLP pulls out a picture

2

/har# du hørt noget om /de to he:r/ [Else have you heard about these two here Else /moves picture to E as »picture /puts it on the table in front of E as »E /E » picture as she moves right index fi nger towards picture #pict. 14

Picture 14 SLP puts picture in front of E

3 E: 4 SLP:

/puts right index fi nger on picture ja yeah

/ja:rh yeah

Also in this example, the introduction of an object in a sequence initial position as part of practices for language and communication training purposes is consequential for the rights to structure the interaction, including the right to ask questions, comment on the picture, etc., and the client’s obligation to respond to such initiatives. However, as mentioned, in contrast to Example 2, the SLP does not hold on to the picture that she brought. Instead, she puts it in front of Else

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 103

(Line 1 above, #3; see also Picture 15) and thus makes it available to her. In other words, she initiates a transfer of the object (Lerner & Zimmerman, 2003), as did the boy in Example 2, and hence initiates a transfer of the right and obligation to initiate some action, in this case talk. That is, the SLP makes it possible for Else to pick up the picture or in other ways take it into possession and initiate topics, themes, questions, etc., related to the picture and thus to the princess and her partner or the royal family, etc. The physical transfer is coordinated with talk in terms of a close-ended question, which in some educational environments may be used to actually elicit more than a type-forming ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (Raymond, 2003; Steensig & Heinemann, 2013). Else touches the clip once while confi rming the SLP’s question ‘ja:rh (yeah)’ (Line 3), and thus orients to the constituents of the fi rst pair part while producing the second part. However, in this way her action does not go beyond a type-confirming minimal response. Then, as we shall see (Extract 3 below), a gap emerges, before the SLP continues talking (Line 6). Example 3, Extract 3 5 6 7

(0.6) SLP1: prinsesse princess E: /#nods as »picture #pict. 15

Picture 15 E nods

8 SLP: »E 9 (0.1) 10 SLP1: /Alex= Alex /points at picture of princess 11 SLP1: /»E 12 E: /nods as»pic 13 SLP1: /=andra= andra /»E 14 E: /=ja yeah /nods 15 (0.6)

104

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

16 SLP1: /og hendes kære/ste (.) and her partner /moves fi nger toward picture as »picture /»E 17 SLP1: /Martin(.) Martin /»E 18 E: ja yeah 19 SLP1: /har du set i fjernsynet did you see in the television /»«E 20 E: /jha na na na tsk /»«SLP 21 SLP1: /ja yes /»«E 22 (0.5) 23 SLP1: de ska /(0.5) giftes they are getting married /»«E as points to ring fi nger 24 E: /ja:h yeah /nods while moving arm up and batons with index fi nger as »«SLP

After Else’s confirming response (Extract 2), SLP1 (Extract 3) gives her the possibility to continue talking, but she does not do so. Neither does she engage in, for example, a co-production of the turn-at-talk initiated by SLP1 (Lines 6, 10, 13, 19). Notice how SLP1 gazes at Else at specific points at which Else could relevantly do so (Lines 8, 11, 13, 16, 19). Instead, she restricts her contributions to minimal confirmations of the SLP talk. Also, and importantly, she does not take the picture into possession (by, for instance, putting both arms or hands on it or moving closer to her). Instead she responds minimally, looks up and leaves the picture on the table. In this way, it is up to the SLP to develop the topic or talk on something else (e.g. introduce a new topic); it is her obligation. This obligation comes with the return of the right to speak after a minimal response (yes or no + nodding) (Sacks et al., 1974) which was produced in combination with a lack of (perhaps refusal to) taking the picture into possession as made relevant by the SLP by moving it closer to her. The non-possession of the object goes then hand in hand with a non-obligation to develop talk and topic through talk, which she cannot due to her injury. As part of the continued structure of the interaction, the structure of who is doing what is sustained. Else is thus continuously obliged to respond to developments when the turn is allocated to her upon topic-initiation typically in the form of questions. And so she does. Common ownership: The design setting

Moving the object out of the working space of action and the activity initiator’s workspace is also part of the practices in the design workshop. Once the designer has produced the post-its, she moves them out of her

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 105

own space and into a common space. Still, the activity differs from the ones shown above in that, subsequently, no-one takes the inscribed objects individually into possession. The participants nonetheless seem to orient towards both the rights and obligations of possession as they treat the inscribed objects, the post-its, as belonging to nobody and to everybody. We re-enter the setting as the designer inscribes and embeds the last post-it. Picture 16 illustrates how D, once the 10 list items have been reinscribed onto post-its and placed in front of M’s laptop, does something new. She inscribes a formulation on a larger post-it, which offers a ‘reading’ of the other post-its in the workspace. In this case, the array of 10 post-its are formulated as ‘types of communication platforms’. Example 1, Extract 2

((#D is writing on a large orange post-it))

Picture 16 D writing

1 M: vet inte vilken platform du har kommit via utan= don’t know which platform you’ve come in via but 2 D: =nej no 3 M: då är det ehhh när vi säger platform then it’s ehh when we say platform 4 så tänker ju åtminstone jag at least I think 5 då tänker jag nästan uuh automatiskt then I think almost automatically 6 på en hemsida [eller uh ja] (of a homepage or uh yea) 7 D: [precis] precisely 8 D: samtidigt wu så det kan ju vara det jag tänker at the same time it can be like that I think 9 /kommunikations platform i en bred bemärkelse= communication platform in a broad sense /D stops writing & shows post-it to others] 10 M: =ah yes

106

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

11 D: det är nån slags umm it’s some sort of umm 12 (1.5) 13 D: #det kan vara liksom alla dem här it can be sort of all these here #pict 17

Picture 17 D places post-it at top of array (at arrow)

14

egentligen som vi listade här nu actually that we listed here now 15 W: precis precisely

In the previous scene, D more or less faithfully re-inscribed M’s list. Now she has initiated a formulation on her own, but nonetheless collaborates with M and W as she inscribes the post-it. M in Line 1 notes that one might not know through what sort of platform a customer contact has been made. D agrees at Line 2 and M continues at Line 3 that he sees a home page as the prototypical communication platform. D aligns with this at Line 7 in overlap with a possible continuation by M (Line 8), and initiates the turn at Line 5 with a contrastive samtidigt ‘at the same time’, followed by how she sees communication platforms in en bred bemärkelse ‘a broad sense’ such that all that is inscribed on the 10 post-its might be seen as examples of communication platforms. Again, there is subtlety in D’s actions – she aligns with M concerning home pages, yet her slightly contrastive position is given as more inclusive, in fact including all of the items on M and W’s original list, which she has re-inscribed on the post-its and laid out on the table. At the same time, placing the big orange post-it at the top of the array, and in fact the array itself, is not subtle at all. The post-its now comprise a definitive, and materially rendered, historical account of the work thus far as well as the physical and conceptual workspace within which M, W and occasionally others will now work. Furthermore, note in Picture 17 that W has now put away her iPad and M has had to pull his laptop to where it is almost touching his body. Compare this to the scene in Picture 2 where M and W were interacting very little, focusing most of their attention on their individual screens. Now all attention is on the common workspace

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 107

consisting of a host of inscribed objects placed there by D. Participants to ensuing work in the activity are potentially obligated to attend to this workspace (see, for example, Pictures 18 and 19). And this is what happens. Generally, in the rest of the activity, the objects are treated as representing a flow of activity between potential customers vis-à-vis communication platforms. The interaction between participants concerns accounts of what each element ‘does’ in the flow given certain contingencies. In the extract below, W and O (whose arm appears in Picture 18) are commenting on one such element, the ‘offer’ element. Example 1, Extract 4

1 M: (xx) utav interaktivitet och så vidare xx of interactivity and so forth) 2 (2) 3 O: man behöver en /viss #abstraktion där one needs a certain abstraction there /hand baton above post-it] #pict. 18

Picture 18 O’s hand baton

4 M: exakt exactly 5 (.5) 6 W: /och så and then /W #index fi nger on same post-it as O above] #pict. 19

Picture 19 W index finger on post-it

108

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

7 O: inte för mycke å inte för lite not too much and not too little 8 W: /nej å sen behöver vi också veta:: no and then we also need to know 9 vilka vi ska kommunicera med så att säga who we are communicating with so to speak /W is tapping on post-it while D is preparing and re-arranging other post-its

The new workspace is fully in use now; all participants orient to it and construct actions within it and with the inscribed objects, i.e. the post-its found there. Participants use the post-its to gain the right to produce actions as well in the construction of actions, but without taking possession of them. For example, O produces a hovering baton gesture over one post-it (Line 3) in constructing his turn-at-talk concerning what the postit, because of its inscription and placement, signifies. W touching and holding her fi nger on the same post-it (Line 6) signals a bid for the floor which she subsequently obtains. In the construction of her turn-at-talk she also uses the post-it both materially as a site for a pointing baton gesture and conceptually as a topic for her talk (Line 9). D’s professional practice – consisting of possessing and making relevant a new potential resource (the post-its) and the concomitant right and obligation to structure that resource through inscription and physical arrangement – moves M and W into a new workspace which makes public and persistent a conceptual overview of M and W’s work. In re-inscribing, she is ‘re-using’ and ‘re-materializing’ resources provided by M and W. In formulating, she re-conceptualizes these resources. Having now co-created a new workspace, the participants are obliged to bodily and verbally orient their actions within the workspace and towards the inscribed objects there. The post-its now remain where they are – they are not picked up, moved or re-inscribed. They are a common resource, possessed by one and all. D’s actions and the relative smoothness of the transformation of the workspace and work within it instigated by them displays a special sort of competence by D and an orientation to and acceptance of that competence by M and W. Furthermore, the transformation of the workspace resonates with the ideals of tangible design – physically managing in space and talking about usually quite amorphous objects made ‘on the spot’. These sequential actions, the objects involved within them, and the manifest discursive identities attachable to the actions’ originators are reflexively related to D as incumbent to the social category of designer and the activity she effectively leads as a work practice of designer/practitioner cohorts. Two Settings: Differences and Similarities

A fundamental difference between the two settings concerns what we will call the ‘provenance’ of the different focused-upon objects in the two settings and the accomplishment of the actions introducing them. By

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 109

provenance we mean the chronology of ownership of the object and the inscription and the movement of the object. In the SLP settings, the objects – the letter written by the boy’s foster mother to the SLP and the newspaper clipping brought by the SLP – thus both have an activity prior provenance. They are introduced by the SLP with the purpose of language and communication training based on everyday life, assumed interests and prior knowledge of the ‘clients’. The objects are in both settings thus owned by the SLPs and the inscriptions on them are supposedly known by the co-participants. The reflexive relations between social category (SLP), activity (communication and communication training), action (asking questions) and object have consequences for who has what rights to use the object to structure the interaction. It will be recalled that the SLPs in both settings hold and hold on to the objects while they embed them in their initial action. They differ in that the inscribed object in one activity is transferred to the co-participant, Else, along with the allocation of the right to a turn, whereas it remains in the SLP’s possession as the sign training activity subsequently unfolds. The transfer of the object was in SLP setting 2 accompanied by an invitation to contribute to develop talk about the royal family, and in SLP setting 1, the object, i.e. the letter, staying in the possession of the SLP, was accompanied by questions related to its content, i.e. the inscription. The provenance of the inscriptions of the objects differ too. In a sense, the boy ‘owns’ the story in the letter in that it concerns his whereabouts during the weekend. Through the practice of sign training, however, the SLP controls how and what kind of (his) story can be told. Perhaps as a consequence of this, we saw the boy take the letter and the right of the primary speaker to structure the activity: he abandons the structured training and reads and tells the story. By contrast, when the SLPs embed their picture of the princess and her partner in SLP setting 2 in the action that initiates the training activity which is organized by them, and orient to it in subsequent actions, they do not trespass on known knowledge territories. Actually, they put the picture in Else’s working space for her to pick up and comment on the clippings and thus in effect tell what she knows about the public news from the royal family. Else, however, effectively derails the obligation to structure a next action as primary speaker, although pursued by the SLPs, by refusing to take possession of it. The designer-practitioner setting differs from the SLP settings in two fundamental ways. First, the inscriptions on the post-its have no activity prior provenance. They are constructed on the spot by the designer. Secondly, the designer, for the most part, re-inscribes and partly reformulates on the post-its, materials produced by the two practitioners. The practitioners align with it, and thus the content on the objects, i.e. what is written upon them, is owned by the practitioners and designer in common.

110

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

Parallel to the SLPs who had the right to structure the activities in which the inscribed objects are used, the designer has the right to structure the activity initially in which the list of items constructed by the practitioners is split into isolated units and inscribed on post-its. In a reflexive relationship between social category, discursive identity, initial action, unfolding activity and the objects, the objects in all (SLP and designer) cases become objects for specific purposes. The designer, however, does not structure the activity by asking the practitioners to comment on the inscribed objects, as with the SLP setting, and she does not hold on to the post-its once they have been inscribed, as did the SLP in setting 1. Instead she structures the activity by holding on to the individual post-its while she inscribes them with the consent of her co-participants, and then she physically places the inscribed objects in a particular fashion, effectively creating a new common workspace. From this new common workspace, the core common activity of the group is supposed to emerge, i.e. the development of ‘new ideas’. This may be done by the practitioners re-ordering the post-its and the items on them in different ways. In contrast with the SLP in setting 2 who put the picture in the client’s workspace for her to pick up and take on the job of developing an interaction with the SLP, the designer leaves the work entirely to the practitioners as she effectively leaves the room. Conclusion

Practices for creating inscribed objects may differ in a variety of ways. Also, the subtle ways in which they may be introduced to an upcoming professional activity may differ. However, specific reflexive relationships between object, action, activity, discursive identity and social category are socially and interactionally consequential in similar ways. This consequentiality can be glossed as rights and obligations attached to objects for doing things interactionally. These rights and obligations are ‘handed over’ as the turn is allocated to the co-participant and the object is transferred to him or her through actions that make more or less specific next actions relevant. This the co-participants orient to when they choose to pick up the object or not, whether handed over to them or not. As we have shown, the rights and obligations coming with the object and the turn give the co-participants different interests in obtaining it. Hence, we see co-participants taking possession of it and others refraining from doing so. Yet for others taking an object into individual possession is not necessary, indicating that the object belongs to all participants at the same moment in time or is part of a common task of, for instance, creating innovative ideas and solutions. References Atkinson, J.M. and Heritage, J. (1984) Structures of Social Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Interactional Consequences of Object Possession in Institutional Practices 111

Bavelas, J.B., Coates, L. and Johnson, T. (2000) Listeners as co-narrators. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79 (6), 941–952. Bittner, E. (2013) Some elements of methodical police work. Ethnographic Studies 13, 188–194. Cicourel, A.V. (1973) Cognitive Sociology: Language and Meaning in Social Interaction. London: Macmillan. Ciolek, M.T. and Kendon, A. (1980) Environment and the spatial arrangement of conversational encounters. Sociological Inquiry 50 (3), 237–271. Couper-Kuhlen, E. and Selting, M. (1996) Towards an interactional perspective on prosody and a prosodic perspective on interaction. In E. Couper-Kuhlen and M. Selting (eds) Prosody in Conversation: Interactional Studies (pp. 11–57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, D. (forthcoming) The design sketch as a space. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practices. Day, D. and Wagner, J. (2014) Objects as resources for turn taking and turn construction. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T. Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 101–123). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ekström, A. and Lindwall, O. (2014) To follow the materials: The detection, diagnosis and correction of mistakes in craft education. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T. Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 227–248). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fitzgerald, R. and Housley, W. (2015) Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis. London: Sage. Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall. Garfi nkel, H. and Rawls, A.W. (2006) Seeing Sociologically: The Routine Grounds of Social Action. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Garfi nkel, H., Lynch, M. and Livingston, E. (1981) The work of a discovering science construed with materials from the optically discovered pulsar. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 11, 131–158. Goodwin, C. (1980) Processes of mutual monitoring implicated in the production of description sequences. Sociological Inquiry 50, 303–317. Hepburn, A. and Bolden, G.B. (2013) The conversation analytic approach to transcription. In J. Sidnell and T. Stivers (eds) The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 57–76). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Jefferson, G. (1983) Notes on a systematic deployment of the acknowledgement tokens ‘yeah’ and ‘mm hmm’. Papers in Linguistics 17 (2), 197–216. Korkiakangas, T., Weldon, S.-M., Bezemer, J. and Kneebone, R. (2014) Nurse–surgeon object transfer: Video analysis of communication and situation awareness in the operating theatre. International Journal of Nursing Studies 51 (9), 1195–1206. Koschmann, T., Dunnington, G. and Kim, M. (2012) Team cognition and the accountabilities of the tool pass. In E. Salas, S. Fiore and M. Letsky (eds) Theories of Team Cognition: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives (pp. 405–420). New York: Taylor & Francis. Lerner, G. and Zimmerman, D.H. (2003) Action and appearance of action in the conduct of very young children. In P. Glenn, C.D. LeBaron and J. Mandelbaum (eds) Studies in Language and Social Interaction (pp. 441–457). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Lindwall, O. and Ekström, A. (2012) Instructions-in-interaction: The teaching and learning of a manual skill. Human Studies 35, 27–49. Luck, R. (2010) Using objects to coordinate design activity in interaction. Construction Management and Economics 28 (6), 641–655. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons: Social Organization in the Classroom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

112

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

Mikkola, P. and Lehtinen, E. (2014) Initiating activity shifts through use of appraisal forms as material objects during performance appraisal interviews. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T. Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 57–78). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mondada, L. (2006) Participants’ online analysis and multimodal practices: Projecting the end of the turn and the closing of the sequence. Discourse Studies 8 (1), 117–129. Rasmussen, G. (2013) That’s my story! Resisting disabling processes in a therapeutic activity. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders 4 (2), 273–298. Rasmussen, G. (2017) The use of pictures for interactional purposes and the grammar of social interaction. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders 18 (1), 121–145. Raymond, G. (2003) Grammar and social organisation: Yes/no interrogatives and the structure of responding. American Sociological Review 68, 939–967. Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation (2 vols) (ed. Gail Jeff erson; intro. E.A. Schegloff ). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50 (4), 696–735. Schegloff, E. (1982) Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of ‘uh huh’ and other things that come between sentences. Analyzing Discourse: Text & Talk. Georgetown University Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics (pp. 71–93). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Schegloff, E.A. (1992) Repair after next turn: The last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation American Journal of Sociology 97 (5), 1295–1345. Schegloff, E.A. (2007) Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Steensig, J. and Heinemann, T. (2013) When ‘yes’ is not enough – as an answer to a yes/ no question. In B.S. Reed and G. Raymond (eds) Units of Talk – Units of Action (pp. 207–241). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Stivers, T. (2008) Stance, alignment, and affi liation during storytelling: When nodding is a token of affi liation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (1), 31–57. Sudnow, D. (1972) Temporal parameters of interpersonal observation. In D. Sudnow (ed.) Studies in Social Interaction (pp. 229–258). New York: Free Press. Watson, R. (1997) Some general reflections on ‘categorization’ and ‘sequence’ in the analysis of conversation. In P. Eglin and S. Hester (eds) Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis (pp. 49–76). Lanham, MD: University Press of America and International Institute of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Watson, R. (2015) Dereifying categories. In R. Fitzgerald and W. Housley (eds) Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis (pp. 23–49). London: Sage. Wieder, L. (1969) The convict code: A study of a moral order as a persuasive activity. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, UCLA. Zimmerman, D.H. (1998) Identity, context and interaction. In S. Widdicomb and C. Antaki (eds) Identities in Talk (pp. 87–106). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

5 Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café: How Customers Obtain ‘Their’ Coffee Elwys De Stefani

Introduction

This chapter examines how customers and baristas collaboratively produce and transform what ends up being the ordered item, thereby offering a detailed analysis of interactions taking place in a public café in Italy. In this setting, persons enter the café and immediately order a coffee (or any other available item) at the counter, which is also the place where they will later consume the requested beverage. While this seems to be an unvarying, routine activity, the aim of this chapter is to show how participants adapt their actions to locally emerging contingencies. The focus will be on the product that customers order and baristas prepare in a rapid and seemingly effortless way. What at fi rst sight might appear as a straightforward request-compliance sequence is actually a complex interactional accomplishment. This chapter follows the production of a cup of coffee from the customer’s order until its presentation on the counter. It addresses language resources that participants use when placing an order. These are sensitive to the spatiotemporal organization of the service encounter – i.e. to the converging movement of the customer’s and barista’s bodies in the initial phases of the interaction. They are also practices of naming and categorizing the product to be prepared. Reaching agreement about which kind of coffee the customer is requesting is a fundamental achievement of the initial phase of the encounter, since it allows baristas to proceed with the preparation of the ordered item. However, while the coffee is being prepared, customers may articulate further requests, by which they seek to obtain a ‘personalized’ version of the coffee they have ordered. It is the barista’s job to materially assemble the requested product and to reorganize the spatiality of the counter in a way to create a temporary space of consumption for each customer, 113

114

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

typically by placing a saucer in proximity to where a customer is standing. Especially when serving multiple customers at the same time, baristas have to match the ‘right’ coffee with the ‘right’ customer. What ends up as apparently being an ordinary cup of coffee is in fact a product that customers and baristas collaboratively shape for the consumption of ‘that’ customer, on ‘that’ occasion, in ‘that’ particular space of consumption. The analysis is based on 2.5 hours of continuous recording in a public café located in southern Italy and offers further insight into research about the categorization of material objects (De Stefani, 2014; Koschmann & Zemel, 2014), the openings of face-to-face service encounters (Mondada, 2017; Mondada & Sorjonen, 2016; Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014) and café sociality (Laurier, 2008a, 2008b, 2013). In sum, this chapter contributes to interactional research on objects at the workplace by examining how ‘a cup of coffee’ is materially assembled in the course of a service encounter, and how participants transform the material ecology of the counter by ordering and serving coffee. Service Encounters in an Italian Café

Cafés have recently caught the interest of scholars from various disciplines, such as sociology (Tjora & Scambler, 2013), literary studies and history (Rittner et al., 2013). Cafés are generally seen as places where people engage in different kinds of interaction. Or, as Henriksen et al. (2013: 98) put it, ‘the café space invites a multitude of social interaction’. However, research based on naturally occurring conversation in café settings is still scarce, with the refreshing exception of Laurier’s (2008a) article on how customers coordinate talk with (coffee-)drinking and his (2013) contribution on conversations between customers and baristas. In Italy, a public café (which Italians call bar) is a place where customers consume their coffee standing at the counter. Some cafés provide tables for customers to sit down, but many customers habitually order their coffee and drink it at the counter. Hence, the setting analyzed here has less in common with the public bars and coffee-houses studied in the UK (Laurier, 2008a, 2008b, 2013; Richardson, 2014; Richardson & Stokoe, 2014) than with other kinds of service encounters, where customers request and obtain a product directly at the counter, such as non-self service convenience stores (De Stefani, 2006; Merritt, 1976; Mondada, 2017; Mondada & Sorjonen, 2016; Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014), butcher stalls (Dausendschön-Gay & Krafft, 2009), shoe-repair shops (Fox & Heinemann, 2015, 2016, this volume), etc. A difference with respect to the latter settings, however, resides in the fact that the counter is not only a ‘transaction point’ (Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014), but is also the place where customers actually consume the product they order (if the latter is not ordered ‘to take away’). Moreover, in the data analyzed here, the requested products are not readily available but have to be produced

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

115

for  each customer anew. Ordering coffee is thus always ‘task-setting’ (Deppermann, 2015), in that it makes relevant a series of sequentially and serially organized actions that baristas have to carry out. Complying with the order takes thus a certain time, during which baristas may, for instance, take further orders from other co-present customers or pursue other activities, whereas customers may monitor the preparation of what is going to be ‘their’ coffee, possibly modifying their initial request. ‘A Certain Liquor Which They Call Coffe’ (William Parry, 1601)

The notion of object appears in numerous humanistic disciplines. In the language philosophical and linguistic tradition, objects often appear as virtual entities, which speakers can refer to with linguistic means in order to ensure communication (e.g. Bühler, 1934; Frege, 1892, among many others). Interactionally oriented researchers have instead focused on materially available objects as referential targets, thereby showing how reference is interactionally established (De Stefani, 2014; Eriksson, 2009; Mondada, 2017), and how this may serve other purposes, such as speakers’ self-selection (Mondada, 2007). One of Goodwin’s influential achievements is to have shown that participants in interaction collaboratively construct objects as semiotically meaningful entities (Goodwin, 1994, 1995, 2003). He thereby clearly illustrates that referential practices contribute to creating the object of reference, rather than just selecting it from a range of available objects. In other words, language is ‘constitutive of the objects it designates’ (Garfi nkel, 2008: 114). How baristas and customers go about ‘thingifying’ (Garfi nkel, 2008: 114) coffee and how this involves language but also the materiality of objects and their manipulation (Nevile et al., 2014) is at the heart of this chapter. In a previous contribution (De Stefani, 2014), I have pointed out that participants who refer to objects – or to other environmental features – not only isolate and thereby constitute the object of reference, but also categorize it. Categorization is a fundamental concern for both ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts, who investigate, not without controversy (see Carlin, 2010), the relevance of membership categories (Sacks, 1992) in social interaction. The ways in which participants categorize objects and how such object categorizations relate to membership categories has instead only scarcely been addressed, and the notion of ‘object category’ pops up only marginally in the literature (De Stefani, 2014: 284; Jayyusi, 1984: 36). Cafés provide a ‘perspicuous setting’ (Garfi nkel & Wieder, 1992) for examining object categories and the lexical resources participants use when making them relevant. For instance, in Italy the default category for coffee is ‘caffè’ and the default term speakers use to refer to it is caffè ‘coffee’. Technically, what Italians call caffè is an espresso, i.e. a small coffee with foam on top, which is by large the most frequent and thus most expectable category. In the data set analyzed here, customers widely use caffè when

116

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

they place their order, whereas espresso never occurs. However, they may use alternative wordings – such as caffè normale ‘regular coffee’ – when referring to the category ‘caffè’. The occurrence of such alternative labels is not haphazard: the analyses will show that there are sequential reasons why an interactant might speak of a caffè normale rather than simply a caffè. In other words, when accomplishing a referential practice, participants choose the lexical resources on the basis of the larger course of action in which they are engaged. Lexical choice has indeed a categorizing import for participants (Housley & Fitzgerald, 2002) and, I argue, also for objects (see also Day & Rasmussen, this volume). As Goodwin (1997) puts it, ‘[d]etermining what will and will not count as a proper referent for a category in a specific setting is lodged within larger activity structures’ (Goodwin, 1997: 120). This is precisely the problem Liberman (2013) addresses when examining what he calls ‘coffee taste descriptors’ used by professional coffee tasters. Ordering Coffee

Ordering coffee and serving the ordered item is a fundamental organizational method in coffee house interaction. From a conversation analytic perspective, by placing an order a customer might be seen to produce a fi rst pair part, which makes relevant a complying action (second pair part) by the barista. Accordingly, the literature has treated such actions in terms of requesting (Drew & Couper-Kuhlen, 2014; Rossi, 2015; Zinken & Ogiermann, 2013), a practice that has particularly been observed in service encounters (Vinkhuyzen & Szymanski, 2005). However, recent work on service encounters has taken into account not only the interactants’ bodies and the environments’ materiality but also the multiple courses of action in which participants engage (Mondada, 2017; Mondada & Sorjonen, 2016; Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014). These studies have shown the shortcomings of an analysis restrained by the corset of a logocentric understanding of sequentiality, which reduces the complex organizational and interactional work that participants achieve in service encounters. It is also for this reason that I speak of orders (rather than requests), thereby adopting a more vernacular term, as used by the participants themselves in restoration and catering settings. Individuals entering the café generally place their order immediately after the greeting sequence, thereby presenting ‘having a coffee’ as the reason for the encounter and displaying their being customers. They articulate their order either with a noun phrase (NP) (e.g. un caffè ‘one coffee’) or they use clausal turns (e.g. mi fate un caffè macchiato da portare via per favore? ‘can you make a caffè macchiato to take away for me please?’). These two formats have been described in other kinds of service encounters and in other languages as well (see Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014). While baristas systematically treat both formats as orders, the analysis

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

117

shows that NP-turns present the order as non-problematic and relating to a default coffee category (such as ‘caffè’), whereas clausal turns are used when other kinds of coffee categories are made relevant. Extract 1 shows the typical features of a service encounter in the setting analyzed here. Gianni is the customer, whereas Anna and Carla are the two baristas, who are not positioned behind the counter when Gianni enters the café. Extract 1: Co13BA2-22 (14:06–14:32)

1 Gianni: #salve hello #pict. 1

Picture 1 Gianni enters the café

2 3 4 5 6

(0.4) buona [sera. good [evening. Carla: [salve. [hello. (1.9) Gianni: #un caffè. a coffee. #pict. 2 Anna:

Picture 2 Anna and Carla look at Gianni, who reciprocates the gaze with Anna

7

(21.5)

118

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

The sequential organization of this brief episode of interaction is easily recognizable on the basis of what the participants say: at Line 1 Gianni utters a greeting, which the two baristas subsequently reciprocate (Lines 3–4). After a pause (Line 5), Gianni places his order with the words un caffè. ‘one/a coffee.’ The subsequent long pause (Line 7), during which the baristas prepare the coffee, shows that Gianni’s order is non-problematic. In other words, the baristas have identified a coffee category that is compatible with the wording un caffè (Line 6). If we also take into consideration the spatial and temporal dimensions of this encounter, we observe the following: Gianni utters his greeting as soon as he appears in the café (Picture 1); Anna and Carla move behind the counter and both orient their eye-gaze to Gianni, who establishes mutual gaze with Anna. Incidentally, note that Anna is the one who reciprocated Gianni’s greeting fi rst (Line 3) and she is also the one who appeared fi rst behind the counter, thereby exhibiting availability to social interaction earlier than Carla. By positioning themselves behind the counter and facing the customer and by displaying that they are not engaged in any other activity, the baristas present themselves as ready to participate in the service encounter. And this allows Gianni to place his order, which he articulates as a lexical NP (Line 6). This way of ordering coffee is in line with Sorjonen and Raevaara’s (2014: 247) fi nding (on Finnish), according to which in non-service convenience stores, requests for tobacco products are produced as NPs in 71% of the cases. In their analysis, the authors show, among other things, that the way in which participants organize the interaction is sensitive to the locally emerging spatial and temporal contingencies. They observe, for instance, that greetings are exchanged upon entrance into the store, whereas customers produce requests for a specific product only once they reach the counter. Extract 1 confi rms this fi nding, as the comparison between Pictures 1 and 2 shows. Clearly, the greeting sequence (Lines 1–4) and the subsequent pause (Line 5) enable the participants to bring themselves into position, in preparation of the subsequent expectable collaborative course of action. By repositioning spatially, the baristas exhibit what they take to be the reason for Gianni’s visit, namely the consumption of (at least) one of the products they serve. Gianni is treated as a customer even before he has actually uttered his reason for the visit. The placement of an order is thus highly expectable at this point and this is indeed what happens at Line 6. As in Sorjonen and Raevaara’s (2014) cases, the order (or ‘request’, in the authors’ terms) is uttered in proximity of the counter. The fact that the baristas treat it as an order is proven by their embodied response: during the subsequent long pause (Line 7), Carla (who is standing next to the coffee machine, Picture 2) prepares the coffee, whereas Anna (who is standing next to where the saucers and a bottle of water are located) arranges on the counter a saucer with a spoon as well as a glass of water for Gianni (see Picture 10). One advantage of using single NPs consists

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

119

thus in the non-problematic recognizability – both of what Gianni is doing (placing an order) and of the kind of beverage he is asking for. This allows the baristas to start the production of the coffee immediately upon receiving the order. In the following case, the café has no other customers when Roberto and Luigi appear (several other customers will follow just behind them). As soon as she perceives the two men entering the room, Carla brings herself into position behind the counter. In this extract, it is Carla who initiates the greeting sequence when Roberto and Luigi have already reached the counter, with Roberto slightly placing himself ahead, facing the staff at the counter (see Picture 3). Extract 2: Co13BA2-23 (19:02–19:17)

1 Carla: sal#ve= hello #pict. 3

Picture 3 Carla and Roberto exchanging greetings

2 Roberto: =salve, due caffè. hello, two coffees. 3 Luigi: sì: due caffè grazie. yes: two coffees thank you. 4 (12.0)

At Line 2 Roberto reciprocates the greeting and immediately after places the order with the words due caffè. ‘two coffees.’, i.e. with an NP. In the subsequent turn, Luigi ratifies this order (Line 3) and Carla immediately fi rst places two saucers on the counter (see Picture 4) and then prepares the coffees during the following pause (Line 4). In contrast to Extract 1, in this fragment Roberto and Luigi have reached the counter without greeting or placing an order. Their presence at the counter is

120

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

accountable (see Merritt, 1976: 4–5) and this is precisely what Carla displays with her greeting. In other words, ‘[…] a greeting by the seller is treated by the customer as an action that makes a relevant next the presentation of the request, the customer’s reason for the visit’ (Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014: 250). In this case too, the customers use an NP for the order and they make relevant the default category ‘caffè’. The fact that participants use the unit caffè as referring to a default coffee category is also visible in orders that are solicited by the baristas. This is precisely what happens in the following extract. Roberto and Luigi (see Extract 2) are waiting for their coffees to be served, as the saucers on the counter make visible. Another customer, Piera (who can also be seen in Picture 3, in the background), has been looking at the croissants arranged in a small display (visible in the right corner of Picture 4) and is now looking in Carla’s direction.

Picture 4 Piera looking at Carla; Roberto and Luigi waiting for their coffee

Shortly after, Carla establishes mutual gaze with her and the following conversation occurs: Extract 3: Co13BA2-23 (19:37–19:42)

1 Carla: ca[ffè? co[ffee? 2 Piera: [( ) (il caffè °t-°) [( ) (the coffee °t-°) 3 (0.7) 4 Piera: che c’è nei cornetti? what is there in the croissants? 5 Carla: eh::: marmella:ta:, uh::: ja:m:, 6 (0.6)

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

121

In this case, no greetings have been exchanged between Carla and Piera. However, Piera’s presence in the café is accountable and Carla produces a candidate order, precisely caffè? (Line 1). She uses a format that is recurrent in customers’ orders, namely an isolated NP – which is even more reduced in this case, since Carla does not utter the indefi nite article un ‘a’. Carla’s use of the unit caffè testifies to the fact that she refers to the most basic, and hence most expectable, category in this setting. However, such language uses are not only relevant for how participants categorize the object of consumption, but also for how they categorize each other. In this sense, by producing the candidate order caffè?, Carla categorizes Piera as an ‘in-house customer’ (see subsection on baristas’ methods for serving the ‘right’ coffee to the ‘right’ person, p. 130) – given that take away coffee is always spelled out as such (see Extract 4) – and potentially also as a ‘regular customer’ (see Laurier, 2013). While the use of the NP-format appears to be the most routinized way of placing an order in this setting, at times customers choose a different format. Rather than producing an NP (as in Extracts 1 and 2), they use a clausal construction, as in the subsequent extract. Anna and Carla are standing behind the counter and looking towards the entrance, when Tina appears. They are thus immediately recognizable as ‘ready to serve’ to persons entering the café. Extract 4: Co13BA2-22 (03:17–03:22)

1 Tina:

sera= evening= 2 Anna: =buona [se:ra =good [e:vening 3 Carla: [sera [evening 4 (0.5) 5 Tina: salve (.) me lo fate un caffè macchiato hello (.) can you make me a caffè macchiato 6 da portare via per favore?= to take away please?= 7 Carla: =sì. =yes. 8 Anna: sì. yes.

Similar to Extract 1, Tina initiates the greeting sequence ‘from a distance’, i.e. as she is still walking towards the counter (Line 1), and both baristas rapidly reciprocate with greetings (Lines 2–3). At Lines 5–6 she places her order by using the right-dislocated format me lo fate un caffè macchiato da portare via per favore? ‘do you make me a caffè macchiato to take away please?’. According to Sorjonen and Raevaara (2014: 252), the use of clausal format-requests in non-convenience stores ‘allows the

122

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

customer more time to approach the counter when the relevance of the request has been established by the seller’s greeting’. This is also observable in the data analyzed here. However, as far as the specific setting of Italian cafés is concerned, it seems that a further aspect is relevant, and this has to do with how the requested product is categorized. Extracts 1 and 2 have shown how customers order a caffè, where both baristas and customers treat caffè as relating to the default category ‘caffè’. Extract 4 shows instead that Tina uses a clausal format for ordering a product that is not pertaining to the default category ‘caffè’. She asks for a caffè macchiato (i.e. an espresso with milk foam on top) to take away. She is thus recognizable as a ‘take away customer’ and this will also be visible in the way in which the baristas treat her subsequently (see subsection on a customer’s methods for obtaining ‘her’ coffee, p. 127). From Ordering to Serving

When they fi rst place their order, customers generally make use of conventional coffee labels (such as caffè, caffè macchiato, etc.), thereby making relevant corresponding coffee categories. The baristas’ tasks consist, then, in producing instantiations (Koschmann et al., 2006) of those categories. At times, especially if multiple customers are simultaneously served, participants may use alternative lexical resources for referring to the same categories. Hence, participants continuously adapt the referential expressions they use to locally emerging contingencies. What initially may be referred to as a caffè may later be treated as a caffè normale ‘regular coffee’ (in opposition to other kinds of coffee ordered by co-present customers). Moreover, customers actively monitor the barista as s/he prepares their coffee and they frequently formulate additional requests that allow the barista to prepare a recipient-designed version of the requested item, rather than just offering a standardized instantiation of it. Serving the ‘right’ coffee to the ‘right’ customer is hence a fundamental pursuit of the baristas’ professional practice, whereas overseeing how ‘their’ coffee is being prepared and intervening in its fabrication is what customers do. The sequential sensitivity of referential expressions for coffee

In the following extract, Silvia and Pina initiate the greeting sequence as soon as they enter the café. Anna, who at this moment is serving water to another customer (Tina), gazes in the direction of the newly arriving customers and greets them (Picture 5). Extract 5: Co13BA2-22 (03:44–03:57)

1 Silvia: buonasera.# good evening. #pict. 5

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

Picture 5 Pina and Silvia entering the café

2 (0.4) 3 Anna: buonasera. good evening. 4 Pina: sera. evening. 5 Anna: salve. hello. 6 (4.0) 7 Anna: #prego. please. #pict. 6

Picture 6 Pina and Silvia arriving at the counter

8

(0.5)

123

124

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

9

Pina:

10 11 12 13

eh:: [due caffuh:: [two coffSilvia: [allora io quasi quasi prendo [okay I think I might go for un caffè d’orzo. a barley coffee. (0.2) Anna: caffè d’orzo,# barley coffee, #pict. 7

Picture 7 Anna pointing at Pina

14 Pina: e un caffè normale. grazie. and a regular coffee. thank you. 15 (0.5)

Pina and Silvia arrive at the counter without having placed an order yet (Picture 6). That their presence at the counter is accountable is shown by the barista’s prego ‘please’ (Line 7), by which she invites the newly arrived to place an order. The advantage of prego over other resources is that Anna can use it to solicit an order without selecting the speaker who is actually going to place that order. Moreover, prego is non-specific with regard to the item that Pina and Silvia can possibly order and contrasts thus with other resources baristas employ to invite an order, such as caffè? ‘coffee?’ (Extract 3), which articulates a candidate order. Pina starts placing her order with the words eh:: due caff- (Line 9). Her choice of the NP-format is in line with the kind of product she was going to order: due caff- is hearable as relating to the default category ‘caffè’ and as producing an order for both customers, as shown in Silvia’s subsequent turn. Indeed, Silvia overlaps Pina’s talk with a turn that invalidates the order that Pina was in the process of making. By saying allora io quasi quasi prendo un caffè d’orzo. ‘okay I think I might go for a barley coffee.’ (Lines 10–11), Silvia

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

125

uses a clausal format with which she places an individual order, requesting a barley coffee, i.e. a specific coffee category. Note that Silvia’s overlap of Pina’s talk starts very early, just after Pina has pronounced a lengthened eh:: and just as she starts mentioning the object of her order. Silvia’s early overlap is further evidence that she is treating Pina’s action as ordering the default category ‘caffè’, since she is intervening in a way to pre-empt the completion of that action. It also shows that Silvia hears Pina as placing an order for both customers – rather than an individual order. Silvia’s use of a clausal structure, which entails positioning the pronoun io ‘I’ at the very beginning of her turn, allows her to display early on that she is now making an individual order. At Line 13 Anna ratifies Silvia’s order with a continuing intonation, thereby projecting that more talk will follow. By pointing at Pina at the same time (Picture 7), Anna selects her as the next speaker. Indeed, Silvia having placed an individual order and thereby having invalidated Pina’s initial attempt to order coffee, Pina has to make her order anew. It is only once Anna has received both orders that she will start preparing the requested beverages. By doing so, she treats Pina and Silvia as forming a couple and ‘having a coffee’ as a social event in which they are engaged in that moment. The wording Pina uses is noteworthy: by saying e un caffè normale. ‘and a regular coffee.’ (Line 14), Pina adds her order to the one Silvia has just articulated. In this way, she presents Silvia’s and Pina’s words as articulating one combined order (rather than two separate, individual orders), thereby further displaying the customers’ ‘togetherness’. Moreover, Pina reintroduces the default category ‘caffè’ that she was referring to in her initial, abandoned order (Line 9). But she now uses different lexical resources to do so, namely caffè normale ‘regular coffee’. We might wonder why Pina employs a more elaborate resource here, whereas in other cases (Extracts 1–3) participants use the word caffè to refer to the category ‘caffè’. Note that in the previous extracts ‘caffè’ was the only category that participants made relevant, whereas in Extract 5 a further coffee category is mentioned (caffè d’orzo ‘barley coffee’). In the latter case, more lexical material is used to refer to ‘caffè’ and we can identify a sequential reason that occasions Pina’s order of a caffè normale ‘regular coffee’ at Line 14: it comes after a different coffee category has been mentioned. In other words, the label caffè normale is sequentially occasioned (see Hester, 1994). The following fragment provides a similar case in point. Rosa and Franco are entering the café arm in arm while Anna is cleaning the counter. Anna is initiating the greeting sequence as the couple is approaching the counter: Extract 6a: Co13BA2-24 (24:55–25:00)

1 Anna: salve= hello= 2 Rosa: =buon[a sera =goo[d evening

126

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

3

Anna:

4 5

(0.9) Rosa: due caffè uno decaffeinato macchiato. two coffees one decaffeinated macchiato. (0.2) Anna: sì. yes.

6 7

[prego. [please.

At Line 3 Anna invites an order with the same resource observed in Extract 5 (prego. ‘please.’) and Rosa produces it once the couple has adopted a stationary position at the counter (Line 5). Rosa employs the NP-format as she initiates her turn with due caffè ‘two coffees’, which could be heard as referring to the default category ‘caffè’, had she stopped her turn there. But she continues with the words uno decaffeinato macchiato. ‘one decaffeinated macchiato.’ Clearly, this is hearable as a specifi cation of her request for two coff ees, one of which should be a decaffeinato macchiato. Rosa is intelligibly ordering two coffees, not three. How is it that Anna can interpret Rosa’s order in this way? First, and most obviously perhaps, Anna is interacting with a couple; there is no other customer in the room and routinely only one beverage per customer is ordered and served at a time. Secondly, Rosa uses the full form of the numeral uno ‘one’ rather than its truncated version un (see Extract 1), which speakers of Italian generally use if the following word starts with a consonant and which can then be heard as an indefi nite article. Hence, uno is heard as anaphorically referring to the previously mentioned caffè. What Rosa is ordering is thus two coffees, one pertaining to the category ‘caffè’, the other to the category ‘decaffeinated macchiato’. And this is also the way in which Anna hears it, as she acknowledges receipt of what she treats as a referentially unproblematic order (Line 7). What appears to be problematic is instead the preparation of the decaffeinated coffee: Anna is indeed requesting help from her colleague, as the continuation of the extract shows. Extract 6b: Co13BA2-24 (25:04–25:14) 8 9

(3.6) ca: ((name)) 10 (0.6) 11 Anna: mi aiuti che [c’è:: uno decaffeinato macchia:to, d’you help me [the::re’s one decaffeinato macchia:to, 12 Carla: [sì. [yes. 13 (0.6) 14 Anna: come:: funziona per quello decaffeinato? how:: does it work for the decaffeinated one? 15 (2.3) 16 Anna: e uno normale. and a regular one. Anna:

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

127

Anna asks Carla for help in preparing the decaffeinato macchiato (Lines 11, 14). As she addresses Carla, she mentions the two kinds of coffee that have been ordered, namely a decaffeinato macchia:to (Line 11) and a normale, a ‘regular one’ (Line 16). Again, similar to Extract 5, Anna uses additional lexical resources for referring to the coffee category ‘caffè’. In this case, too, the use of normale ‘regular’ is related to the fact that a different coffee category has been mentioned previously. A customer’s methods for obtaining ‘her’ coffee

The counter-coffee machine ecology provides customers with the potential to monitor the baristas’ actions as they pursue the preparation of their coffee. This is precisely what Tina does. The following extract reproduces the continuation of Extract 6b. Pina and Silvia have just ordered a ‘barley coffee’ and a ‘regular coffee’ and at Line 16 Anna relays that order to Carla, the other barista. Extract 7a: Co13BA2-22 (03:57–04:01)

16 Anna: ca un [caffè d’orzo e uno normale.] ((name)) a [barley coffee and a regular one.] 17 Tina: [se me lo::# hm h m::] [if you:: hm h m::] #pict. 8

Picture 8 Pina and Silvia waiting to be served; Tina pointing towards her cup in the espresso machine

18 (0.2) 19 Tina: se me lo zuccherate con un if you sugar it with a 20 cucchiaio di: zucchero per [favore. spoonful of: sugar pl[ease. 21 Anna: [sì. [yes.

Carla responds to Anna’s turn in an embodied way, by moving towards the espresso machine and by starting to prepare the requested coffees. Tina, who is waiting for the take away caffè macchiato that she has previously ordered (Extract 4), witnesses Carla’s conduct and self-selects at this point, thereby overlapping with Anna’s talk. Her turn is formatted as an if-clause and shows various lengthenings and hitches (Line 17).

128

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

Picture 8 shows that while Tina starts talking, she is pointing towards the coffee machine, where coffee is pouring into a paper cup. Visibly, she treats this as being ‘her’ coffee, on the one hand because of the sequential organization of the activity, since she has ordered her coffee before Pina and Silvia and therefore can expect to be served first, and on the other hand because of the materiality of the cup. A paper cup makes the coffee recognizable as a take away beverage, whereas porcelain cups are used for customers who consume at the counter. As she starts talking, she receives the gaze of Anna, the barista – who positions herself as a possible recipient of what Tina is saying – and Silvia, a bystander. At Line 19 Tina restarts her turn and produces what is treated as a request: she is asking the baristas to add a spoonful of sugar to her coffee. This request shows that Tina is attentively monitoring the preparation of what is going to be ‘her’ coffee. Also, the request is produced in a timely way, i.e. while the coffee is still pouring into the cup and it is still possible to add sugar (whereas it would be more problematic later on, once a lid has been placed on the paper cup; see Horlacher, 2017, for similarly urgent requests). While on grammatical grounds she is addressing both baristas (see the second-person plural in se me lo zuccherate ‘if you sugar it’), only Anna produces a response at Line 21 (sì ‘yes’), whereas Carla remains with her back turned to Tina. Given that Tina has relied on pronominal and deictic reference (lo ‘it’; pointing gesture) and Carla had no visual access to her when she produced that action, this causes referential problems, as the continuation of the extract shows. Extract 7b: Co13BA2-22 (04:02–04:12)

22 (0.9) 23 Carla: il caffè normale è zuccherato? the caffè normale is sugared? 24 Anna: il caffè::: normale# della signora è the caffè::: normale of the lady is #pict. 9

Picture 9 Anna pointing at Tina; Carla looking at Tina

25 26 Carla: 27 Tina:

zucche[rato. suga[red. [ah[a. [uh[u [non normale macchia[to. [not normale macchia[to.

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

28 Anna: 29 30 Carla: 31

ma[cchiato scusi. ma[cchiato sorry. [ah ma[oh ma(4.8)

129

[ih: [eeh:

By producing a confi rmation request at Line 23, Carla positions herself as the one who is going to fulfi ll the request that has just been uttered. Hence, this is a case in which a request (Lines 19–20) is followed by two kinds of responses: whereas Anna provides the token sì ‘yes’, thereby completing the adjacency pair, Carla will respond to the request by actually performing the requested action, namely adding sugar to the coffee. At this point, however, Carla relates the request to the caff è normale that Pina, i.e. another customer, has ordered seconds before (Extract 5, Line 14). At Lines 24–25 Anna corrects her colleague’s assumption by explicitly relating the label caffè normale to a particular customer, which she refers to in talk (il caffè::: normale della signora ‘of the lady’; Line 24) and with a co-occurring pointing gesture (Picture 9). Carla gazes in Tina’s direction and then produces the receipt token aha ‘uhu’ (Line 26). Tina subsequently corrects Anna’s wording: what she has ordered is not a caff è normale but a caff è macchiato (Line 27). This otherrepair is then ratified by Anna (Lines 28–29), who ends her turn with an apology token. Carla’s contribution at Line 30 starts with what appears to be a change-of state token ah ‘oh’ (Heritage, 1984) and the truncated beginning of the word macchiato (Line 30). However, her turn remains abandoned. Whereas Tina’s request to ‘sugar the coffee’ (Lines 19–20) shows that she was attentively monitoring the preparation of her beverage, the repair sequence occurring at Lines 27–30 unveils the limits of her monitoring. Indeed, whereas she is able to witness that ‘her’ coffee is being prepared, she is not able, at this point, to see what kind of coff ee Carla is preparing. Hence, by repairing caff è normale into caff è macchiato she is not just correcting the usage of an inappropriate wording, she is instead making sure that she will eventually obtain the coffee that she has ordered, both in terms of the selected coffee category (caffè macchiato) and in terms of the recipient-designed instantiation of it (i.e. a sugared caff è macchiato). This is precisely the diff erence between coff ee from a vending machine – which produces identical instantiations for every available coffee category – and coffee bought in a café. It is the added value of the service, which eventually allows each customer to obtain ‘their’ coffee. Problems of this sort also unveil the barista’s engagement in multiple, overlapping courses of action, with multiple parties: the café is indeed a setting of multiactivity (Haddington et  al., 2014), and it is precisely for this reason that

130

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

categorizations, both of beverages and customers, play an important role in facilitating the barista’s task of serving each customer to their satisfaction. Furthermore, coff ee categories allow baristas to tie the coff ee they are preparing to its relevant participant, as the following section will show. Baristas’ methods for serving the ‘right’ coffee to the ‘right’ person

Baristas categorize customers both with regard to the interaction at hand and with respect to prior and future encounters they may have. Laurier (2013) has shown, for instance, the economical importance of treating a customer as a ‘regular’. In this section, I zero in on categories that participants make relevant via the material resources they manipulate. For instance, baristas distinguish ‘take away customers’ from those who consume their beverage on the spot, which I call ‘in-house customers’. Whereas for take away customers beverages are served in disposable containers (see Tina’s plastic cup of water, Pictures 5, 7, 8, and her paper cup for the coffee, Picture 9), in-house customers are served their coffee in porcelain cups. These are always served on saucers: this is not just a conventional practice; baristas rather exploit material resources to organize a smooth service. Indeed, in this data set, one of the first things baristas do upon receiving an order from in-house customers is placing a saucer – and generally also a glass of water, although not always1 – on the counter, before each customer.

Pictures 10–12 Disposition of saucers (and glasses) before the customers

As Pictures 10–12 show, the saucers and glasses that the baristas place on the counter in proximity to the customers define a space that temporarily pertains to them. In the case of couples (Pictures 11 and 12), they also make visible the couple’s ‘togetherness’. And this is evident in that newly arriving customers never disrupt such a togetherness by positioning themselves in between the two individuals (see Ryave & Schenkein, 1975, for a similar account). But the saucers serve also as a mnemonic device for the

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

131

baristas, especially when multiple customers are simultaneously served. They enable them, on the one hand, to keep track of which customers have already placed an order; on the other hand, the size of the saucers, among other things, may relate to specific coffee categories (e.g. small saucers for caffè, larger saucers for cappuccino). This allows baristas to go about their professional practice in an efficient way, because they inscribe material resources in space, allowing them to match a specific coffee they prepare to a particular individual. Couples of customers provide an interesting case for analyzing the interactional relevance of coff ee categories. If both members of the couple order an instantiation of the same coffee category, then they are generally served simultaneously. This is possible, among others, thanks to the technical features of commercial coff ee machines, which are equipped with double spout portafi lters, allowing the baristas to produce two cups of coffee at the same time. Hence, in these cases (as well as when individual customers are served), baristas may silently place the cups on the saucers, whereas customers may acknowledge this action with a ‘thank you’. This is precisely the way in which Luigi and Roberto (Extract 2) are served, with Roberto producing a grazie ‘thank you’ (Picture 13), whereas Luigi grabs a sachet of sugar that he will subsequently pour into his coffee.

Picture 13 Carla serves two cups of coffee simultaneously; Luigi grabs a sachet of sugar

Adding sugar is of course a further transformation of the coffee, and it is the customer’s responsibility to sugar or not their coffee. 2 Whereas in-house customers such as Luigi proceed to sugar the coffee once it is served, the take away customer documented in Extracts 4 and 7 has to ask the barista to sugar it for her while the coffee is pouring into the

132

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

paper cup – i.e. before the beverage is presented to the customer with a lid on top of the cup. The materiality of the receptacle is consequential for the moment of the sugaring. Once the coffee is served, an open cup provides the customer with the opportunity to add sugar at any time, whereas a closed cup is presented and treated as a product ready to be consumed – and any additional transformation would require risky manipulations, such as lifting the lid and exposing oneself to spattering hot coffee. In cases in which the members of the couple order different kinds of coffee, baristas need to make sure that they serve the ‘right’ coffee to the ‘right’ person. They may do this by producing a fi rst pair part, which is formatted as a single NP. This happens after collective orders (one member of the couple orders for both customers), but is also observed when each member of the couple places their order individually, especially if the barista who took the order is not the one who is serving the coffee. For instance, Rosa has ordered a regular coffee and a decaffeinated one for Franco and herself (Extract 6). Anna fi rst serves the decaffeinated coffee. Extract 8: Co13BA2-25 (01:45–01:48)

1

Anna:

2 3

Rosa:

4 5

Anna:

decaffeinato? decaffeinated? (0.3) per me grazie. for me thank you. (1.1) prego. you’re welcome./here you are.

While she serves the coffee, Anna produces the fi rst pair part decaffeinato? ‘decaffeinated?’, which is treated as a resource for identifying the ‘right’ recipient for that specific coffee. At Line 3 Rosa completes the sequence with the words per me grazie. ‘for me thank you.’, after which Anna places the cup of coffee on the saucer located in front of Rosa (during the pause at Line 4). Anna’s subsequent prego. – which can be understood both as a reply to Rosa’s previous ‘thank you’ (Line 3), hence the translation ‘you’re welcome’, or as English ‘here you are’ – closes down this short sequence. Similarly, in Extract 5 Pina and Silvia ordered a caffè normale ‘regular coffee’ and a caffè d’orzo ‘barley coffee’. Anna took the order, whereas Carla prepared the beverages and is now serving the ‘barley coffee’. Extract 9: Cos13BA2-22 (03:44–03:57)

1 2 Carla:

(6.2) #l’orzo?# the barley? #pict. 14 #pict. 15

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

Picture 14 Carla looking at Silvia

133

Picture 15 Mutual gaze Carla and Silvia

3 (0.6) 4 Silvia: grazie.# thank you. #pict. 16

Picture 16 Carla places the coffee on Silvia’s saucer

Pictures 14 and 15 show how the short sequence (Extract 9) is embedded in the participants’ multimodal conduct. Carla orients her gaze towards the putative recipient of her turn just before she starts talking (Picture 14). By saying l’orzo? ‘the barley?’ (Line 2) she manages to achieve mutual gaze with Silvia (Picture 15). Carla visibly treats the receipt of Silvia’s gaze as confirming that Silvia is the ‘right’ recipient of her turn and of the ‘barley coffee’ she is serving. As in the previous extract, the first pair part l’orzo? ‘the barley?’ is used in order to identify the recipient of the coffee. It also enables the customer to hear that she is being addressed. In the absence of other addressing devices that would be available to acquainted interactants (e.g. proper names), referring to the coffee category is an efficient device for other-selection. Hence, by articulating l’orzo? ‘the barley?’ Carla manages to perform a fi nal check that she is serving the ‘right’ coffee to the ‘right’ client.

134

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

In this case, Silvia provides a silent, embodied response by reorienting her gaze towards Carla. Once the coffee is placed on the saucer, Silvia produces a grazie. ‘thank you.’ (Line 4, Picture 16). In this case, ‘barley coffee’ is served in a glass cup, rather than a porcelain cup. This shows, on the one hand, that coffee categories are associated to specific material qualities of the cups. On the other hand, it is evidence that ‘preparing a coffee’ is not just about assembling the right ingredients, but it is also a question of serving it in the right cup. Serving the ‘right’ coffee to the ‘right’ customer is clearly a practical problem that baristas recurrently face. It is precisely when the coffee is eventually served that baristas may exhibit their orientation towards other, not overtly addressed, dimensions and putative characteristics of the customer. The way in which Carla serves the coffee that Gianni has ordered (Extract 1) illustrates a case in point.

Pictures 17–19 Carla serves the cup with the handle on the right side; Gianni turns the cup around

Carla uses her left hand to put the cup on the saucer (Picture 17). By doing so, the cup’s handle is oriented towards the customer’s right side. In other words, Carla serves the cup in a way that a right-handed person could immediately grab it by the handle. However, in this case, Gianni uses his left hand to turn the cup around (Picture 18). The handle is now located to the left from the customer’s perspective (Picture 19), and only at this point does Gianni bring the cup to his mouth. Gianni is visibly embodying his left-handedness, thereby invalidating Carla’s tentative ascription of right-handedness. Note incidentally that the coffee cup is itself designed for right-handed customers: indeed, the logo of the coffee brand is printed only on one side of the cup, which is visible only if the handle is turned to the right. It becomes invisible if a customer grabs the handle with their left hand, because the logo is then placed at the back of the cup (Picture 19). Clearly, while serving a cup of coffee, baristas may display specific assumptions about their customers. Offering the ‘right’

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

135

coffee to the ‘right’ customer entails also serving it in the correct way, at the risk of exhibiting normative expectations that may not be met, as in this case. Discussion and Conclusion

By looking at service encounters, in this contribution I investigated a primary setting of professional practice through the lens of multimodal interaction analysis. In doing so, this chapter contributes to an emerging interest among conversation analysts and ethnomethodologists in exploring how interactants use material objects (Nevile et al., 2014) in everyday settings. By focusing on interaction in a public café, it falls within the domain of study on service encounters (Merritt, 1976) for which interactional linguists have recently developed a renewed interest (De Stefani, 2006; Fox & Heinemann, 2015, 2016, this volume; Mondada, 2017; Mondada & Sorjonen, 2016; Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014). In this chapter I have examined objects from various angles. I started by examining how customers place an order at the very beginning of the service encounter. Like Sorjonen and Raevaara (2014), I observed two grammatical formats customers recurrently use when ordering coffee, namely the NP-format and the clausal format. Sorjonen and Raevaara (2014) convincingly argue that clausal formats are found when customers start their request while approaching the service point, whereas NPs are used at the transaction point. In my data, however, the different formats appear to be related to different coffee categories: the NP-format is used for common, default categories, whereas I observe the clausal format when other coffee categories are requested. Coffee categories are not organized in static taxonomies (Bilmes, 2009); they are rather combinable ‘layered object categories’ (De Stefani, 2014), which participants make situatedly and interactionally relevant for the encounter at hand. The analysis has also shown that both customers and baristas may use different labels when referring to the same coffee category (e.g. caffè versus caffè normale) and that these are sensitive to the sequential environment in which they occur. Typically, caffè is used initially, whereas caffè normale occurs in elaborations of the order, especially if other coffee categories are also made relevant. A further focus of the chapter was on the material objects participants manipulate in the course of the service encounter, how these are assembled and how participants arrange themselves relative to those objects. The material quality of the objects used – porcelain cups, paper cups, glass cups, etc. – is related to specific coffee categories. One way in which baristas display their professional expertise is by matching the right receptacle to a specific coffee category. Hence, a caffè macchiato is not just a specific way of preparing coffee; it is distinguished from other coffee categories also by presenting it in a category-related cup.

136

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

The analyses have shown that serving coffee starts very early. Before the coffee is even ready, baristas place a saucer on the counter in the customer’s proximity. Saucers are objects which are manipulated silently and which are not talked about. Nevertheless, they are a fundamental resource in the accomplishment of the barista’s work in that they enable them to ensure the smooth progression of their professional activity. Saucers are mnemonic devices: they allow baristas to remember which person has already placed an order – and in this sense they are similar to coasters used in public houses; they also allow them to remember what kind of coffee category has been ordered (small saucers are for ‘regular coffee’ such as caffè). Especially when serving multiple customers simultaneously, this appears to be a very effective resource for keeping track of the orders. A saucer is also the ‘fi rst part’ of a complex object that is assembled at the point of readiness and completed by putting a cup (as the ‘second part’) on it. Placing a saucer before customers also defi nes their temporary consumption space, thereby making them recognizable as in-house customers – whereas take away customers are not given such a space. The simple action of placing a saucer on the counter sets up a material solution to the baristas’ practical problems in the pursuit of their work. It also assigns a temporary personal space to customers, as a part of the service provided in Italian cafés. A further aspect of the service concerns the possibility of requesting and obtaining a personalized version of any available coffee category. The coffee machine being visually accessible to customers, they have the possibility of monitoring the preparation of the coffee during the whole process and intervening at any time. The coffee may be continuously transformed in the course of its production, until the moment at which the customer fi nally brings the cup to their mouth. Adding sugar has been observed as a customer’s task, and it is typically carried out once the coffee has been served. In-house customers indeed receive a cup of coffee which they may themselves further manipulate, e.g. by adding sugar, milk, water, etc. Take away customers instead are given a ‘fi nished’ product in a paper cup closed with a lid. That being so, take away customers have to request any additional modifications of the coffee (such as adding sugar) while it is still being prepared, whereas in-house customers can carry out such actions silently and autonomously once the coffee is served. In other words, the material features of the cup in which the coffee is first prepared and then served are consequential for identifying the ‘right’ moment to sugar it. The observations reported in this chapter show that dealing with the local contingencies requires a plethora of both customer- and staff-skills to produce smooth service. Customers face the problem of having to refer to a consumable object that has no physical existence at the time when they place the order. They have to fi nd the ‘right’ words for the ‘right’ coffee – when placing the initial order as well as in subsequent requests for

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

137

adjustments to their specific needs. Baristas face the problem of serving the ‘right’ coffee to the ‘right’ customer, and they solve this problem by accurately organizing the spatiality of their working environment in a way that allows them to oversee the current state of the orders at any moment. The saucer on the counter epitomizes a method baristas and customers use in pursuing the ordinary activity of having coffee in a public café. Funding

The data used for this study have been collected for the project ALIAS (Archivio di LInguA Spontanea). The project was funded by KU Leuven as an educational project and directed by Stefania Marzo, Elwys De Stefani and Bart Van Den Bossche (Project No. OWP2012/08). The goal of the project consisted of the implementation of tools for teaching Italian as a foreign language on the basis of natural data (for more information, see https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/ling/alias). To this purpose, Eleonora Sciubba collected naturally occurring conversations in a variety of settings and regions in 2013 and 2014, among which is the data set analyzed for this chapter. Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Eric Laurier, Maurice Nevile, Eleonora Sciubba and the editors of this book as well as an anonymous reviewer for their valuable and insightful comments on a prior version of this chapter. Notes (1) Serving a small glass of water with the coffee is a general practice in cafés in central and southern Italy, whereas in northern Italy coffee is often served without an accompanying glass of water. The correct use of the water is often described as part of the coffee drinker’s etiquette. It is said that the water should be used to rinse the mouth before drinking the coffee, in order to have the full taste of the brew, whereas drinking water after having consumed the coffee would dissipate the good coffee taste too quickly. (2) Coffee is generally served unsugared in Italy, with the exception of Naples, where traditionally baristas put sugar into the cup before letting the coffee pour into it, thereby preserving the foam which would be damaged if sugar were to be added only successively.

References Bilmes, J. (2009) Taxonomies are for talking: Reanalyzing a Sacks classic. Journal of Pragmatics 41, 1600–1610. Bühler, K. (1934) Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: G. Fischer. Carlin, A.P. (2010) Reading ‘A tutorial on membership categorization’ by Emanuel Schegloff. Journal of Pragmatics 42, 257–261.

138

Part 2: Spatial Aspects of Objects in Interaction

Dausendschön-Gay, U. and Kraff t, U. (2009) Preparing next actions in routine activities. Discourse Processes 46 (2), 247–268. Deppermann, A. (2015) When recipient design fails: Egocentric turn-design of instructions in driving school lessons leading to breakdowns of intersubjectivity. Gesprächsforschung: Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 16, 63–101. De Stefani, E. (2006) Le chiusure conversazionali nell’interazione al banco di un supermercato. In Y. Bürki and E. De Stefani (eds) Trascrivere la lingua: Dalla fi lologia all’analisi conversazionale (pp. 369–403). Bern: Peter Lang. De Stefani, E. (2014) Establishing joint orientation towards commercial products in a selfservice store: How practices of categorisation matter. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T.  Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 271–293). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Drew, P. and Couper-Kuhlen, E. (eds) (2014) Requesting in Social Interaction. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Eriksson, M. (2009) Referring as interaction: On the interplay between linguistic and bodily practices. Journal of Pragmatics 41, 240–262. Fox, B. and Heinemann, T. (2015) The alignment of manual and verbal displays in requests for the repair of an object. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48 (3), 342–362. Fox, B. and Heinemann, T. (2016) Rethinking format: An examination of requests. Language in Society 45, 499–531. Frege, G. (1892) Über Sinn und Bedeutung. Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik (Neue Folge) 100, 25–50. Garfi nkel, H. (2008) Toward a Sociological Theory of Information. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Garfi nkel, H. and Wieder, D.L. (1992) Two incommensurable, asymmetrically alternate technologies of social analysis. In G. Watson and R.M. Seiler (eds) Text in Context: Contributions to Ethnomethodology (pp. 175–205). London: Sage. Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96, 606–633. Goodwin, C. (1995) Seeing in depth. Social Studies of Science 25, 237–274. Goodwin, C. (1997) The blackness of black: Color categories as situated practice. In L.B. Resnick, R. Säljö, C. Pontecorvo and B. Burge (eds) Discourse, Tools and Reasonings: Essays on Situated Cognition (pp. 111–140). Berlin: Springer. Goodwin, C. (2003) Pointing as a situated practice. In S. Kita (ed.) Pointing: Where Language, Culture and Cognition Meet (pp. 217–241). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Haddington, P., Keisanen, T., Mondada, L. and Nevile, M. (eds) (2014) Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond Multitasking. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Henriksen, I.M., Skjølsvold, T.M. and Grønning, I. (2013) The café community. In A. Tjora and G. Scambler (eds) Café Society (pp. 87–101). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Heritage, J. (1984) A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 299–345). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hester, S. (1994) Les catégories en contexte. Raisons Pratiques 5, 219–242. Horlacher, A.-S. (2017) ‘Vous coupez quand même pas trop hein?’ Quand la cliente prévient et conteste une action du coiffeur. In S. Keel and L. Mondada (eds) Participation et asymétries dans l’interaction institutionnelle (pp. 261–284). Paris: L’Harmattan. Housley, W. and Fitzgerald, R. (2002) The reconsidered model of membership categorization analysis. Qualitative Research 2 (1), 59–83. Jayyusi, L. (1984) Categorization and the Moral Order. Boston, MA/London: Routledge. Koschmann, T. and Zemel, A. (2014) Instructed objects. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T.  Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language,

Ordering and Serving Coffee in an Italian Café

139

Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 357–377). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Koschmann, T., LeBaron, C., Goodwin, C. and Feltovich, P. (2006) The mystery of the missing referent: Objects, procedures, and the problem of the instruction follower. CSCW ‘06 Proceedings of the 2006 20th Anniversary Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (pp. 373–382). New York: ACM. Laurier, E. (2008a) Drinking up endings: Conversational resources of the café. Language & Communication 28 (2), 165–181. Laurier, E. (2008b) How breakfast happens in the café. Time & Society 17 (1), 119–134. Laurier, E. (2013) Encounters at the counter. The relationship between regulars and staff. In P. Tolmie and M. Rouncefield (eds) Ethnomethodology at Play (pp. 287–308). Farnham: Ashgate. Liberman, K. (2013) The phenomenology of coffee tasting: Lessons in practical objectivity. In K. Liberman (ed.) More Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 215–266). Albany, NY: SUNY. Merritt, M.W. (1976) Resources for saying in service encounters. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania. Mondada, L. (2007) Multimodal resources for turn-taking: Pointing and the emergence of possible next speakers. Discourse Studies 9 (2), 194–225. Mondada, L. (2017) Nouveaux défi s pour l’analyse conversationnelle: L’organisation située et systématique de l’interaction sociale. Langage & Société 160/161, 181–197. Mondada, L. and Sorjonen, M.-L. (2016) Making multiple requests in French and Finnish convenience stores. Language in Society 45, 733–765. Nevile, M., Haddington, P., Heinemann, T. and Rauniomaa, M. (eds) (2014) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Richardson, E. (2014) The order of ordering: Analysing customer–bartender service encounters in public bars. PhD thesis, Loughborough University. Richardson, E. and Stokoe, E.H. (2014) The order of ordering: Objects, requests and embodied conduct in a public bar. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T. Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 31–56). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Rittner, L., Haine, S.W. and Jackson, J.H. (eds) (2013) The Thinking Space. The Café as a Cultural Institution in Paris, Italy and Vienna. London/New York: Routledge. Rossi, G. (2015) The request system in Italian interaction. PhD thesis, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. Ryave, A.L. and Schenkein, N. (1975) Notes on the art of walking. In R. Turner (ed.) Ethnomethodology (pp. 265–278). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell. Sorjonen, M.-L. and Raevaara, L. (2014) On the grammatical form of requests at the convenience store. In P. Drew and E. Couper-Kuhlen (eds) Requesting in Social Interaction (pp. 243–268). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Tjora, A. and Scambler, G. (eds) (2013) Café Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Vinkhuyzen, E. and Szymanski, M.H. (2005) Would you like to do it yourself? Service requests and their non-granting responses. In K. Richards and P. Seedhouse (eds) Applying Conversation Analysis (pp. 91–106). New York: Palgrave. Zinken, J. and Ogiermann, E. (2013) Responsibility and action: Invariants and diversity in requests for objects in British English and Polish interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (3), 256–276.

This page intentionally left blank

Part 3 Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

This page intentionally left blank

6 Dropping Off or Picking Up? Professionals’ Use of Objects as a Resource for Determining the Purpose of a Customer Encounter Trine Heinemann and Barbara Fox

Introduction

For professionals, the provision of a service to a customer or client is often very routine. In fact, most service encounters have a relatively fi xed structure that is organized around different sequences (Merritt, 1976; see also Fox et al., forthcoming), for instance: the request-response sequence where the customer asks for a service or goods and the professional provides it (Richardson & Stokoe, 2014; Sorjonen & Raevaara, 2014); the payment sequence in which the professional announces the price of the provided service or goods and the customer pays (Halonen & Koivisto, forthcoming; Llewellyn, 2015; vom Lehm, 2014); and – in contexts where a service has been provided – the sequence in which the customer determines whether they are satisfied with the service provided (Fox & Heinemann, forthcoming). Despite the routine nature of service encounters, the particular details of each encounter have to be established jointly by the participants, on a case-by-case basis (Schegloff, 1993); every encounter is by nature unique, insofar as it involves a unique customer with specific needs and requirements. An important aspect of the professional service provider’s work is thus to determine how any particular encounter is both routine and special. As previous research on service encounters has demonstrated, this work begins before the encounter has even begun, with the professional needing to establish – at least in some settings – whether any given person in their environment is an actual customer or client. In a study of a Big Issue magazine vendor,1 for instance, Llewellyn and Burrow (2008) describe how a street vendor relies on the spatial and material environment 143

144

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

to determine whether people passing in the street are potential customers. They show, among other things, that the way in which passing people change the trajectory of their walking, or manipulate physical objects such as a bag or a purse, is observed and interpreted by the street vendor as indicating that the person in question is or is not a potential customer. Similarly, in their study of service encounters at a university help desk counter placed within a larger area where other offices are also located, Mortensen and Hazel (2014) note that the service provider at the help desk counter ‘faces a practical problem, namely to monitor and distinguish between future co-interactants and others who pass by the counter to access other offices’ (Mortensen & Hazel, 2014: 51). They then go on to show how this practical problem is solved through the deployment of a range of ‘sequentially organised resources’ that include ‘gaze, body posture, walking trajectories as well as manipulations of material objects that are relevant to the institutional business’ (Mortensen & Hazel, 2014: 65). Although neither Llewellyn and Burrow (2008) nor Mortensen and Hazel (2014) address this directly, both studies illuminate a point later specified by Watson (2015), namely that the categorization work continuously done by participants in interaction (Sacks, 1972, 1992) may to a large degree be an embodied practice that can be examined ‘as arrays of methodologically produced visual indications and visibility arrangements’ (Watson, 2015: 34). That is to say, the Big Issue vendor and the service provider, respectively, are able to categorize any given person in their public space as either a potential customer/client or a passer-by, through applying commonsensical reasoning on the available visual indications and visibility arrangements: where the person is located in the public space; how the person moves through the public space; where the person directs his/her gaze and attention; and how the person manipulates any objects in his/her vicinity. In addition to categorizing persons in their vicinity as customers/clients (or not), service providers may also need to do further categorization work to determine what type of customer/client any such given person is, i.e. what the customer/client is there for. It is this aspect of categorization work that we will focus on in the current chapter, by building on a collection of more than 200 service encounters in an American shoe repair shop (see also Fox & Heinemann, 2015, 2016, 2017, forthcoming), where the objects that customers bring into the shop are used by the shoetenders2 to categorize every customer entering the shop as a particular kind of customer, i.e. as being there either to ‘pick up’ an item that has been handed in for repair at an earlier point or as being there to ‘drop off ’ an item for repair. As we shall demonstrate, the objects that customers bring into the shoe repair shop, and the way in which these are objects are made available – or not – to the shoetender, play a constitutive role in the material and sensorial ecology of work practices, to the degree that these objects become consequential for the order and progressivity of the encounter between customer and service provider.

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

145

In the shoe repair shop, customers typically have one of two purposes; either they enter the shop to drop off an item (for instance shoes, boots, gloves, bags or belts) for repair or they enter the shop to pick up an item that has been repaired. Customers often carry an object with them that clearly indicates their purpose: if dropping off, they bring with them the item that is to be repaired; if picking up, they may carry a receipt slip. When either of these items is unambiguously present in a customer’s hands, the shoetenders prepare their actions in accordance with the item. If the customer carries a shoe, boot or similar ‘repairable’ object, the shoetender typically reaches for the receipt pad and a pen, thus preparing to take down the customer’s – and the item’s – details. If the customer carries a receipt slip, the shoetender will either reach for the slip before the customer reaches the counter or go directly towards the storage space for pick-up items. Through these alternative ways of arranging themselves and the task-related objects in their vicinity, shoetenders visibly display not only that they have categorized a customer as a drop-off or a pick-up customer, but also that this categorization has consequences for the shape and progression of the overall service encounter or, as Watson (2015: 39) puts it, ‘Categorisation practices are part of the production and distribution of the task-related practical identities deployed in the performance through time of the activities involved in specific work settings’. The two alternatives are illustrated in the graphic transcripts (Laurier, 2014) of Examples 1 and 2 below. Example 1: Shoe shop, 15 March 2014

146

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

In Example 1 we see the shoetender (to the right) looking towards the entrance and greeting the customer as soon as she enters the shop (Picture 1A). While we cannot see the customer ourselves, it is obvious that already at this point the shoetender has seen that she is bringing a pair of shoes in (see Picture 1D where the customer enters the scope of the camera, shoes raised): while moving towards the centre of the counter where customers are normally served, he takes a receipt with his right hand (Picture 1B), shifts the receipt to his left hand and grabs a pen (Picture 1C). By the time the customer is at the counter and initiates her request (see Fox & Heinemann, 2017), the shoetender has taken what Svinhufvud (2018: 73) describes as a ‘waiting position’ – ‘an active physical stance displaying waiting while staying attentive to the customer’s conduct’ – at the counter (Picture 1D), from which he is ready to take the customer’s details down after an inspection of the shoes she has brought in (Picture 1E). Compare the trajectory of Example 1 to that of Example 2. Example 2: Shoe shop, 28 June 2013

In Example 2, the shoetender and the customer also greet one another while the customer is approaching the counter. As in Example 1, the customer is visible to the shoetender, although not to us. Instead of reaching for the stack of receipts that are on the counter just to the right of her (as in Example 1, Picture 1B), the shoetender here begins to extend her hand towards the customer. When the customer enters the view of the camera

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

147

in Picture 2C and initiates her reason for visiting the shop verbally, we can see that she has in fact been holding the pink receipt that customers receive when handing in an item. Presumably the shoetender has been able to see this all along and has consequently categorized this customer as a pick-up customer, as indicated by her extending her hand already in Picture 2B. When the customer reaches the counter (Picture 2D), the shoetender is thus ready to engage with the customer in the relevant way, i.e. to take the receipt and subsequently go to the back of the shop where the repaired items are placed, in order to locate the customer’s shoes. Examples 1 and 2 are representative of our overall collection of encounters in the shoe repair shop: when shoetenders can see that the customer is carrying either a repairable item or a receipt slip, they systematically rely on these objects to categorize the customer as either a pick-up or a drop-off customer and (with this categorization) determine the nature of the customer’s visit. In such cases, which constitute the majority of all encounters in our collection, the verbal exchange between customer and shoetender is initially very minimal, and concerns only an exchange of greetings, sometimes with a ‘how are you’ sequence included (as in Example 2). Any subsequent verbal exchanges concern not the more general purpose of the encounter, but instead its specifics. In Example 1 the customer formulates a request in the form of a declarative of trouble (Fox & Heinemann, 2016) which describes the problem for which she is seeking help. In Example 2 the customer provides an account for why she has failed to pick up her item at an earlier opportunity (she thought she had already done so). Notably, in neither of the two examples does the customer specify verbally whether she is in the shop to drop off an item (as in Example 1) or to pick one up (as in Example 2), nor does the shoetender make any verbal inquiries as to the customer’s business in this regard. In order to demonstrate the systematic and effortful accomplishment with which shoetenders categorize their customers through the object(s) brought into the shop, we will focus in the following on cases where objects are either ambiguous, absent or not immediately visible to the shoetender, i.e. on encounters in which it is – for various reasons – not possible for the shoetender to unambiguously determine by sight alone what kind of encounter is projected. In such cases, we will show, shoetenders may instead rely on verbal resources to determine the customer’s purpose, i.e. by making inquiries as to that purpose. In formulating these inquiries, however, shoetenders still orient to a preference for keeping the verbal exchange concerning the general purpose of the customer’s visit as minimal as possible. Our analysis will thus demonstrate that the shoetenders will use whatever visual information is available to them in formulating their inquiry: they may, for instance, demonstratively try to determine whether a bag is large enough to conceal a pair of shoes, whether a purse conceals a receipt slip or could be the object that needs repairing, or whether the customer might be wearing the object that needs repairing. The

148

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

shoetenders will then use this visual information – and their analysis of this information – to shape their inquiries about the customer’s purpose for being in the shop, favouring candidate understandings (e.g. ‘Dropping off stuff?’) that can be confi rmed or disconfi rmed over more open request solicitations (e.g. ‘How can I help?’). Our findings thus suggest that there is a clear preference for the staff to visually determine – rather than verbally inquire about – the purpose of the encounter by interpreting the objects brought in. We will also suggest that there is a preference for producing candidate understandings, rather than requesting solicitations, when resorting to verbal resources. We conclude by discussing why it may be that shoetenders orient to a preference for minimization in determining the purpose of the customers visiting the shop. Determining the Purpose of a Customer’s Visit to the Shoe Repair Shop

In Examples 1 and 2 we saw instances in which customers, upon entering the shoe repair shop, very clearly carried with them an object or item that could be used by the shoetender to categorize them as either a drop-off or pick-up customer, respectively, through the means of a pair of shoes and a pink receipt slip. While the presence of one such object in the customer’s hands is routine in most of our cases, the spatiomaterial environment can also be more ambiguous. In the following, we consider three sets of cases in which this applies, either because (a) the object is concealed, e.g. in a bag or purse, or (b) the object is ambiguous by nature, e.g. a bag or purse that could either conceal another object or constitute a repairable in itself, or (c) the customer does not appear to bring any object into the shop at all. For each set of cases, we will demonstrate how the shoetenders nevertheless do work to categorize the customers and determine the purpose of their visit to the shop, and do so by relying on their own interpretation of the spatiomaterial resources available to provide ‘best guesses’ as to the customer’s purpose. Possibly concealed objects

We begin by considering cases in which a customer brings into the shop an object, such as a purse, wallet or bag, which could possibly conceal another object, e.g. a pair of shoes or a receipt slip. In the first example of this type, the bag that the customer brings into the shop has the name of a big and well-known shoe brand printed on its side. This, in combination with the fact that she places the bag on the counter, indicates that the bag is concealing a pair of shoes or boots; at least the shoetender has no trouble in determining that her purpose in visiting the shop is to drop off some footwear for repair.

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

149

Example 3: Shoe shop, 5 June 2014

In Example 3 the customer and shoetender greet one another as they are approaching the counter, the customer from the entrance and the shoetender from the back of the shop (not shown here). They reach the counter at the exact same time, at which point the customer dumps the bag on the counter and the shoetender places a pair of insoles at his side of the counter while glancing briefly at the customer’s bag (Picture 3A). The customer’s placement of the bag on the counter, the matter-offact way in which she does so as well as the shoe brand name on the side of the bag, may each contribute towards the shoetender’s interpretation of what this particular customer is there for. At least he immediately torques his body (Schegloff, 1998) right, towards the place on the counter where receipt slips are stored and takes fi rst a slip, then a pen (Pictures 3B–3C). Most significantly, he initiates these actions before the customer’s verbal request (I have a question about these) is fully produced, and before the customer has actually taken her boots out of the bag. In this way, the shoetender very clearly demonstrates that he has categorized the customer as a drop-off customer at a point at which the customer has neither specified this verbally, nor presented him with unambiguous visual evidence of her purpose. In Example 4 we see another shoetender similarly categorizing a customer as a drop-off customer through the little visual evidence available to him. In this case, the shoetender not only demonstrates his interpretation through physical actions, but also specifies this verbally.

150

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

Example 4: Shoe shop, 22 March 2014

In Example 4 the shoetender is at the counter, browsing through the customer database, when a new customer enters the shop. As the two greet one another, the shoetender directs his gaze towards the approaching customer (Picture 4A). This brief glance is apparently enough for the shoetender to determine that the bag carried by the customer (visible to us only in Picture 4D) is of a type and size that is most likely to be concealing some repairable item, such as footwear. Thus, the shoetender immediately begins to move along the counter towards the area where customers are served, while taking a receipt slip from the right end of the counter where these are stored (Picture 4B). Simultaneously with reaching for a slip, he formulates his understanding of the customer’s purpose (dropping off ?) and with this he indicates that ‘the conversation has been and is ongoingly a self-explicating colloquy’ (Heritage & Watson, 1979: 139, their emphasis). 3 When the customer reaches the counter and hence enters the scope of the camera, we can see that he is not only carrying a bag of a type and size large enough to contain at least one pair of shoes, but the bag has also been carried forward with a clear trajectory towards the top of the counter (Picture 4D). This trajectory may have served as further evidence or selfexplication for the shoetender that the bag carried by the customer was brought into the shop for shoe repair relevant reasons. Based on instances such as Examples 3 and 4 alone, one might come to the conclusion that shoetenders by default categorize any customer entering the shop with an object in hand as a drop-off customer,

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

151

independently of what the object may be or what properties it has. In the following example, however, we see the shoetender concluding that a customer, who is carrying a wallet rather than a bag, is there to pick up an item. Example 5: Shoe shop, 28 March 2015

As in many other cases, the shoetender and customer greet each other before meeting at the counter (Pictures 5A–5B). While approaching the counter, the customer, as was also the case in Examples 3 and 4, is holding an object in front of him, but this time the object is a wallet rather than a bag (see Picture 5B). Wallets are usually carried in a concealed manner, i.e. in a pocket or purse, and the visibility of the wallet in this case is apparently enough for the shoetender to categorize this particular customer as a pick-up customer. In Picture 5C he thus formulates this conclusion, picking up?, using the same format – but with a different content – as did the shoetender in Example 4. Presumably, the shoetender’s understanding and categorization is based here on the nature of the object that the customer carries with him – a wallet which is too small to conceal a piece of footwear but would adequately fit a receipt slip – as well as on the way in which the wallet is carried, in the customer’s hands, where it is ready to be opened for the slip to be taken out. And as we see from the customer’s subsequent actions (Pictures 5D–5E), this is exactly the right interpretation: upon reaching the counter and verbally

152

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

confi rming his status as a pick-up customer, the customer places his sunglasses on the counter, thus freeing his one hand to open the wallet and take out the receipt slip, which he subsequently presents to the shoetender (not shown here). While Examples 3–5 attest to the speed with which shoetenders – even with somewhat ambiguous visual evidence – determine the purpose of any particular customer’s visit to the shoe shop before the customer has articulated such purpose, shoetenders do not always interpret the visual evidence available correctly. This is the case in the following example, where a customer who has entered the shop with a bag is nevertheless categorized as a pick-up customer by the shoetender, either because the shoetender does not have direct visual access to the bag or because the nature and size of the bag does not suggest the possibility of a concealed item. Example 6: Shoe shop, 6 June 2013

In this case, one customer is already at the counter, being served by a shoetender, when a second customer enters the shop and is addressed by a second shoetender. This second shoetender is seated in the back of the shop where she is doing some sewing. Her position may thus encumber her visual access to the customer; although she clearly sees the customer and addresses her, she may not be able to see that the customer is carrying a small bag with her. Of further relevance, here, is also the fact that the shoetender has just had an operation on her foot and is less mobile than she

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

153

would be under normal circumstances. This means that she may have additional good reasons for wanting to determine the customer’s purpose in visiting the shop well in advance: if the customer is there to pick up an item and is able to provide the relevant details of this item, it would in all likelihood be easier for the shoetender to go directly from where she is seated in the back to the place where the pick-up items are stored, instead of first going to the counter, then to the storage area. Probably through a mixture of these issues, the shoetender thus initiates her encounter with the customer by providing a ‘best guess’ of that customer’s purpose: are you here to pick something up? In contrast to most of our other cases, this formulation is here corrected by the customer, who in Picture 6A states that she is there to drop off. The shoetender then announces her deferred compliance with this ‘request’ (okay. here I come. just be patient.) and after a minute or two she reaches the counter and greets the customer. When the customer in Pictures 6D–6E also reaches the counter, we can see that the bag she carries with her is relatively small and was used to conceal rather delicate footwear (strapped stilettos). The nature and size of the customer’s bag may thus have further confounded the shoetender in her (failed) attempt to determine the customer’s purpose for being in the shop. From examples such as 3–6, it should be quite evident that even when customers do not present direct visual evidence of the purpose of their visit to the shoe repair shop (by presenting either a repairable item as in Example 1 or a receipt slip as in Example 2), shoetenders rely on the spatiomaterial evidence available to them to determine as quickly as possible what the purpose of any given customer who enters the shop may be, and to categorize a customer as either dropping off or picking up. In Examples 3–6 we can see that shoetenders interpret, for instance, the size and/or character of the objects carried by the customers with respect to whether such objects could possibly conceal a repairable item (e.g. footwear) or a receipt slip, and then demonstrate that interpretation to the customer by physical manifestations of action (reaching for a slip or not), and sometimes, in addition, by verbalizing their interpretation. In the following, we consider a second set of potentially ambiguous cases, where shoetenders similarly display their interpretation of the customers’ purpose in entering the shoe repair shop. Ambiguous objects

In the context of the shoe repair shop, there are objects that are ambiguous because they can be used for concealing a repairable object or a receipt slip, or they can constitute a repairable object by themselves, and they may even be objects that customers bring along as part of their everyday routine. This ambiguity applies in particular to one object, the purse. When a customer brings a purse into the shoe repair shop, it is not always sufficient evidence for the shoetender to determine the customer’s

154

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

purpose for the visit: on the one hand, the purse may be big enough to contain a smaller repairable object; on the other hand, it can be small enough to conveniently contain a repair slip, it may be the repairable object itself or it may simply be a situation where the customer always carries a purse and it has no relevance for the visit to the shoe repair shop. We see a fi rst illustration of how the shoetenders may deal with this ambiguity in the following example, where a customer is bringing a leather attaché into the shop. Example 7: Shoe shop, 22 March 2014

As in most of our examples, the customer and shoetender greet one another while both are moving towards the counter. As can be seen in Picture 7A, the customer is visibly carrying an object under her arm while approaching the counter and she lifts this object gradually before depositing it on the counter in Picture 7C. While verbally noticing that it’s quiet today and while the shoetender is still approaching the counter, the customer starts fiddling with something on the object, which should now be recognizable also to the shoetender as a leather attaché. Compared to cases such as Examples 3 and 4, where the customers clearly begin to open the bag they have placed on the counter to bring an item out of the bag, the customer’s movements in Example 7 are much more ambiguous, as is the actual object. Being of leather, the attaché could be a repairable item itself, but it is also big enough to contain either a piece of footwear or a wallet with a receipt slip inside. As we can see in Pictures 7D–7E, these ambiguities are oriented to by the shoetender: although he clearly directs

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

155

his gaze to the attaché (and the customer’s manipulation of it), he does not interpret it as defi nitive evidence of the customer’s purpose in visiting the shoe repair shop. Instead of taking a new receipt (as in Examples 1, 3 and 4), holding his hand out towards the customer to receive a receipt slip (as in Example 2) or formulating a ‘best guess’ (dropping off?/picking up?) of the customer’s purpose (as in Examples 4 and 5), he takes a waiting position, right hand resting on the counter (Picture 7E). Only when the customer launches her business with um so (see Bolden, 2009) and lifts a part of the attaché up and towards the shoetender does he apparently conclude that the purpose of this visit is to drop off the attaché; he then reaches for a receipt (Pictures 7F–7G). In the following even more ambiguous presence of a purse, we see the shoetender similarly holding off his interpretation of the customer’s purpose in visiting the shop. Example 8: Shoe shop, 12 June 2014

Here, one customer (to the back and right of Picture 8A) is already being served, while a second customer is waiting at some distance from the counter, with a purse slung over her shoulder. A second shoetender greets her, while approaching the counter. The customer returns the greeting, at the same time moving slightly closer towards the counter (Picture 8B). She maintains some distance from the counter, however, and does not – as in other cases – place an item on the counter, nor does she in any other way present an object to the shoetender, for instance by holding it

156

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

up or in front of her. Thus, although she has clearly brought an item into the shop with her, i.e. her purse, there are no indications from her that this purse may be the repairable itself, nor does she manipulate it in any way that would suggest that there would be something (e.g. a concealed repairable or a receipt slip) in the purse that is of relevance for this encounter. Instead she formulates a rather ambiguous need for help (I need some help with something), which the shoetender accepts with ’kay (Picture 8B). At this point, then, there are neither verbal nor visual indications sufficient for the shoetender to categorize the customer as either dropping off or picking up. Consequently, and as in Example 7, he takes a waiting position behind the counter and directs his gaze and attention towards the customer (Picture 7C). Only when the customer nominates the purse as the ‘something’ she needs help with (it’s this purse) and simultaneously reaches for the purse is the shoetender apparently able to determine that this customer is in the shop to drop off and have her purse repaired (Picture 7D). From Examples 7–8 we can see that some objects that customers bring with them into the shoe repair shop are so ambiguous that shoetenders will refrain from making any immediate interpretation of the purpose of the customer’s visit to the shop. In our collection of encounters in the shoe repair shop, purses appear to be the most ambiguous objects that a customer can bring into the shop: compared to bags such as those presented in Example 3 and 4, and wallets such as that presented in Example 5, purses are neither obvious containers for footwear nor for receipt slips, although such items can of course be concealed within a purse. Moreover, purses – at least when made of leather – in themselves constitute possible repairables in the context of a shoe repair shop, although they at the same time may simply be brought into the shop as part of the customer’s daily routine and without any relevance to the shoe repair business. As we can see from Examples 7–8, these ambiguities mean that although the purses are clearly visibly accessible to the shoetender, as spatiomaterial resources they do not suffice for the shoetender to categorize the customer as either dropping off or picking up. Thus, it is only when the customers manipulate, present and/or verbalize their purse in a manner that makes it evident that it is the repairable that shoetenders actively involve themselves in furthering the customer’s purpose in visiting the shop. In the following, we consider a third set of cases that are even more ambiguous because there appears to be no object present at all; in these cases, the shoetenders similarly refrain from demonstrating their interpretation of the customer’s purpose until more evidence has been provided. Absent objects

While most customers come into the shoe repair shop carrying some type of object, whether they be unambiguous as in Examples 1–2, concealed

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

157

as in Examples 3–6, or ambiguous as in Examples 7–8, a few customers enter the shop without any apparent object on them. This of course poses a further challenge for the shoetenders, as it dramatically reduces their possibilities for relying on the spatiomaterial environment to categorize the customer as a drop-off or a pick-up customer. Example 9 provides a first illustration of how the shoetender (and customer) manage such situations. Example 9: Shoe shop, 1 January 2014

In this case, the shoetender is already at the counter when the customer enters the shop and they greet one another. The customer is outside the scope of the camera when entering the shop but, as is evident from Picture 9D, he enters with no object visible and in fact has his hands in his pockets until he reaches the counter. This visible information is available to the shoetender (as evidenced also by the fact that she greets him), who aligns both her manual and verbal actions with the absence of any spatiomaterial resources from which she could possibly determine the customer’s purpose in visiting the shop. First, she refrains from performing any physical actions that might indicate that she has categorized the customer as either a drop off or a pick up. That is, instead of for instance picking up a pen or receipt slip or holding out her hand towards the customer to receive a slip from him, she organizes the counter space, clearing it for whatever type of interaction is about to take place by depositing a pen from the counter in the pen holder (Pictures 9B–9C). Secondly, she

158

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

produces the request-soliciting how can I help you inquiry. Such solicitations are extremely rare in our collection of encounters at the shoe shop, and in this case it seems to be directly related to the lack of spatiomaterial resources: instead of formulating a ‘best guess’ or awaiting further visual or verbal clues from the customer, the shoetender here directly inquires about the customer’s purpose in visiting the shop. This direct approach is evidently successful, as the customer now specifies his purpose (picking up for Douglas), after which the shoetender immediately moves to the back of the shop to collect the customer’s shoes (Picture 9D–9E). In the following example, we similarly see how the shoetender holds off making any interpretation of the customer’s business because the customer is not bringing an item with her into the shop. Example 10: Shoe shop, 15 March 2014

Here, the shoetender is already at the counter when the customer enters. The shoetender directs his gaze at the customer and they exchange reciprocal greetings (Picture 10A). Although the shoetender then directs his gaze to the pad of receipts to his right, this is a very brief glance only (Pictures 10B–10C); most notable here is that he keeps his hands folded and on the counter, making no movement towards the receipt pad. In other words, the shoetender here shows no indication whatsoever that he has reached any conclusion regarding the customer’s purpose in visiting the shop. Still on her way to the counter, the customer now begins to

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

159

verbalize her reason for being in the shop, specifically stating that she will take my shoes off to show you what I mean (Picture 10D). With this statement, the customer orients directly to the fact that she is not carrying a visible object with her into the shop and instead directs the shoetender’s attention to an object that she is wearing, identifying this object as being the repair-relevant object. And as we can see in Picture 10D, the shoetender in turn directs his gaze towards the shoes still worn by the customer, verbalizes his understanding that it is this object that will be in focus for their encounter (with ’kay, Picture 10E) and then waits patiently while the customer takes off her shoes and presents the shoetender with the problem (so there’s a little uh elastic) in Picture 10F. Examples such as 9 and 10 illustrate that customers may enter the shoe repair shop in a manner that entirely strips the shoetender of any spatiomaterial resources for determining what the purpose of the customer’s visit may be, i.e. without carrying with them any type of item that can be scrutinized and interpreted. In such cases, we see the shoetender holding off making any interpretation and categorization, instead either inquiring directly about the customer’s business (as in Example 9) or waiting for the customer to formulate his or her business (as in Example 10). Concluding Discussion

The examples we have provided above together illustrate that in the shoe repair shop, shoetenders rely heavily on the spatiomaterial resources at their disposal to determine what purpose any given customer may have for visiting the shop and in particular whether the customer is there to drop off or pick up an item. In the majority of encounters, these spatiomaterial resources are so visually evident that shoetenders can categorize the customer ‘at a glance’ (see Bittner, 2013), simply by registering whether the customer is carrying a receipt slip or a repairable item. In such cases, shoetenders simply align their manual actions in accordance with the identified purpose, i.e. by taking a receipt slip and pen if the customer’s object is a repairable item, or by holding a hand out to receive the pink receipt slip if this is what the customer is carrying. In other cases, the object carried by the customer can be interpreted as concealing another object. In such cases, the shoetenders base their categorization of the customer on matters such as the size and nature of the object, as well as on the way in which the object is presented and manipulated by the customer: if the object is a bag large enough to conceal a repairable item and is deposited on the counter where it can be further manipulated for the upcoming business, then the shoetender interprets the customer’s business as dropping off; if the object is small, e.g. a wallet that may conceal a receipt slip, then the shoetender will interpret the customer’s business as picking up. In these slightly less apparent cases of potentially concealed items, shoetenders typically align not only their manual actions with the interpreted

160

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

purpose, but also formulate that purpose verbally, for the customer to confirm or correct the shoetender’s interpretation of their purpose. In a third set of cases, the objects that customers carry with them into the shop are ambiguous, because they can be interpreted either as a repairable item in their own right, as a container for concealing either a repairable item or a receipt slip, or as an item (e.g. purse) that the customer is carrying as part of her daily routine rather than for the specific purpose of visiting the shop. In such cases, we saw how the shoetenders refrain from demonstrating any interpretation of the customer’s purpose in visiting the shop up until the customer has manually and/or verbally disambiguated the nature of the item they are carrying with them by, for example, indicating that the item is indeed a repairable, rather than a container for a concealed object. Finally, we have considered cases in which there are no apparent spatiomaterial resources available to the shoetender for determining the customer’s purpose in entering the shop, i.e. cases in which customers appear not to be bringing any object with them into the shop at all. In these cases, shoetenders not only refrain from demonstrating or ‘guessing’ the customer’s purpose, but they may also inquire directly about the purpose verbally, or they may simply withhold any further actions until the customer has stated their purpose more clearly. Taken together, the different trajectories of the 10 examples discussed in this chapter indicate that shoetenders have a preference for using the available spatiomaterial resources (and in particular those provided through the items a customer may carry with him or her into the shop) to categorize the customers entering the shop as either drop-off or pick-up customers, rather than resorting to verbal means and routines such as inquiring directly of the customer what their purpose may be. This preference for the shoetender to categorize their customers by virtue of ‘visual indications and visibility arrangements’ (Watson, 2015: 34) is reminiscent of recent fi ndings related to the organization of requesting sequences more generally and in particular of Rossi’s (2014, 2015) fi ndings that there is a preference for making requests through non-verbal means rather than through linguistic ones. These preferences for nonverbal contributions over verbal ones, in turn, appear to be a species of the more general preference for minimization (Sacks & Schegloff, 1979) in interaction, which itself is a subtype of the preference for recipient design and of the preference for progressivity. That is to say, by demonstrating their understanding as early as possible, shoetenders are able to minimize the necessary contributions to the encounter and ‘propel’ the sequence forward in as timely and expedient a manner as possible. In demonstrating their ability to categorize their customers with very little visual evidence, shoetenders at the same time demonstrate their acquired skills and abilities to the individual customer and the categorization of customers as either drop-off or pick-up customers thus constitutes one way in which

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

161

shoetenders’ professional practices come into play and become ‘part of the production and distribution of the task-related practical identities deployed in the performance through time of the activities involved in specific work settings’ (Watson, 2015: 39). We see the same orientation to – and relation between – professional practice and a preference for minimization in the organization of the shoetenders’ verbal contributions, where formulations that are constructed as candidate understandings such as dropping off ? are preferred to full request solicitations such as how can I help you?. As noted by Heritage and Watson (1979: 138), ‘the primary business of formulations is to demonstrate understanding and, presumptively, to have that understanding attended to and, as a first preference, endorsed’. By formulating a candidate understanding of the customer’s purpose in visiting the shop, the shoetenders display that they have examined the customer’s entry into the shop and have analyzed it skilfully, using their expert understanding of customers’ motivations and behaviours. By designing their contribution as a candidate understanding, then, the shoetenders minimize the work required of the customer in formulating the reason for their visit. By offering a guess, the shoetenders make it possible for the customers to merely confi rm the reason for the visit, as opposed to stating that reason on their own. However, it does pose an interactional risk, in that it can also make disconfirming necessary, which expands the sequence and requires rather more work of the customer. Nonetheless, the risk is low, given the skill that the shoetenders have in guessing the customers’ reasons for visiting. We have thus seen that these brief and potentially insignificant early moments in the shop interactions are rich with displays of epistemic stance and skill, and reveal further evidence, from a new sequence type, for a set of potentially universal and sequence-neutral interactional preferences. Notes (1) (The) Big Issue is the British version of a magazine published by an organization for homeless people and sold by recognized vendors on the street. (2) Not all service providers at the counter of the shoe repair shop are cobblers, so we use the term ‘shoetender’ for any staff servicing customers in the shoe repair shop. (3) Although the customer’s initial answer to this (uh well) may suggest that he is not dropping anything off, this is actually not the case. This particular customer has two pairs of shoes in the bag, one of which he wants to drop off and another pair on which he wants the heels tapped while waiting. This is what his initial answer I was gonna see addresses.

References Bittner, E. (2013) Some elements of methodical police work. Ethnographic Studies 13, 188–194. Bolden, G. (2009) Implementing incipient actions: The discourse marker ‘so’ in English conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 41 (5), 974–998.

162

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

Fox, B. and Heinemann, T. (2015) The alignment of manual and verbal displays in requests for the repair of an object. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48 (3), 342–362. Fox, B. and Heinemann, T. (2016) Rethinking format: An examination of requests. Language in Society 45, 499–531. Fox, B. and Heinemann, T. (2017) Issues in action formation: Requests and the problem with x. Open Linguistics 3, 31–64. Fox, B. and Heinemann, T. (forthcoming) Slippery customers: What can happen at the interface between picking up a repaired item and paying for it. In B. Fox, L. Mondada and M.-L. Sorjonen (eds) Encounters at the Counter: Language, Embodiment and Material Objects in Shops. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Fox, B., Mondada, L. and Sorjonen, M.-L. (eds) (forthcoming) Encounters at the Counter: Language, Embodiment and Material Objects in Shops. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Halonen, M. and Koivisto, A. (forthcoming) Moving money: Money as an interactional resource in kiosk encounters in Finland. In B. Fox, L. Mondada and M.-L. Sorjonen (eds) Encounters at the Counter: Language, Embodiment and Material Objects in Shops. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Heritage, J.C. and Watson, D.R. (1979) Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (ed.) Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 123–162). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Laurier, E. (2014) The graphic transcript: Poaching comic book grammar for inscribing the visual, spatial and temporal aspects of action. Geography Compass 8 (4), 235–248. Llewellyn, N. (2015) Microstructures of economic action: Talk, interaction and the bottom line. British Journal of Sociology 66 (3), 486–511. Llewellyn, N. and Burrow, R. (2008) Streetwise sales and the social order of city streets. British Journal of Sociology 59 (3), 561–583. Merritt, M. (1976) Resources for saying in service encounters. PhD dissertation in linguistics, University of Pennsylvania. Mortensen, K. and Hazel, S. (2014) Moving into interaction: Social practices for initiating encounters at a help desk. Journal of Pragmatics 62, 46–67. Richardson, E. and Stokoe, E. (2014) The order of ordering. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T. Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 31–56). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Rossi, G. (2014) When do people not use language to make requests? In P. Drew and E. Couper-Kuhlen (eds) Requesting in Social Interaction (pp. 303–334). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Rossi, G. (2015) The request system in Italian interaction. PhD thesis, Nijmegen. MPI Series in Psycholinguistics. Sacks, H. (1972) On the analyzability of stories by children. In J.J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (pp. 325–345). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell. Sacks, H. and Schegloff, E.A. (1979) Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In G. Psathas (ed.) Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 15–21). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Schegloff, E.A. (1993) Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26 (3), 99–128. Schegloff, E.A. (1998) Body torque. Social Research 65 (3), 535–596. Sorjonen, M.-L. and Raevaara, L. (2014) On the grammatical form of requests at the convenience store: Requesting as embodied action. In P. Drew and E. Couper-Kuhlen (eds)

Dropping Off or Picking Up?

163

Requesting in Social Interaction (pp. 243–268). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Svinhufvud, K. (2018) Waiting for the customer: Multimodal analysis of waiting in service encounters. Journal of Pragmatics 129, 48–75. vom Lehm, D. (2014) Timing is money: Managing the floor in sales interaction at streetmarket stalls. Journal of Marketing Management 30 (13–14), 1448–1466. Watson, R. (2015) De-reifying categories. In R. Fitzgerald and W. Housley (eds) Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis (pp. 23–49). London: Sage.

7 Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving Maurice Nevile and Johannes Wagner

Introduction

We use video data of forklift truck driving to examine moments when drivers treat the coordination of their respective mobility and activity as potentially vulnerable. When a driver considers it possible that two trucks’ movement paths could confl ict, prompting a possible collision, that driver offers a verbal warning to alert the other driver. Put simply, one driver warns another by announcing his/her presence, movement or activity, and the other driver then responds to the warning in appropriate ways, for example by pausing activity, stopping or waiting, or with a verbal or embodied recognition and acknowledgement. We show precisely when such warnings occur in the order and course of progressing routine task performance, and how forms of talk orient to participants’ relative activity and mobile presence within the physical surround (e.g. change in driving – direction, speed – or in task performance). Most significantly, warnings reveal how forklift drivers draw on fleeting visual access to others’ conduct/mobility to anticipate its potential trajectory and to interpret and act upon a possible confl ict with their own. Forklift truck driving is an ideal site for examining objects in motion because forklift trucks are themselves objects that the drivers control, and the drivers’ primary professional activity is to handle and take objects (usually on pallets) from one place to another, effectively and safely, and in good time. Our setting is a site (in Denmark) for training and certification, simulating a warehouse scene, in which drivers learn and are assessed on their forklift competence. This includes individual skills to control and maneuver trucks and to use the forks to collect, transport and stack different kinds of load. As for a typical forklift workplace, trainee drivers 164

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

165

must also learn to conduct their forklift activities and movements around the warehouse relative to the activities and movements of other trucks. Generally, it is this social aspect of forklift driving in which we are interested: how drivers coordinate their respective actions to negotiate the warehouse as a shared mobile space. The chapter considers moving objects in two senses: the forklift truck drivers’ task is to carry and move loads, and the truck is itself an object to which drivers are physically connected, and which they control and maneuver. The chapter therefore contributes to research on objects and materiality in social interaction, especially for how objects, as resource, contribute to participants’ action and understanding for whatever they are doing (Nevile et al., 2014). Also, by attending ongoingly to others’ conduct and having their own conduct available to others, forklift drivers complete their individual activities to locally and jointly accomplish the warehouse as a collaborative mobile workspace. In this sense, forklift driving is comparable to people walking or assembling in public spaces, car drivers managing progress in traffic, or pilots navigating within crowded airspace (see Haddington et al., 2013). However, as a transport setting, forklift movement within a warehouse is free of the typical directions of a road environment such as traffic lights, speed controls, signage and line markings, and barriers (Haddington et al., 2012) and, unlike air traffic control, is not guided or directed by an outside party (Koskela et al., 2013; Nevile, 2004: 147–196). Nevertheless, we see how elements of the physical surround, most significantly the arrangements of shelves and the locations of loads, necessarily defi ne relevant places and spaces to influence and guide drivers’ movements as they conduct their tasks. To begin, we outline some basics of forklift truck driving, and detail the setting and how our data recordings were collected and produced. We then approach our data analytically in two ways. First, we present and analyze some examples of warning moments to uncover some circumstances through which warnings are occasioned and resolved, highlighting details of forklift warnings’ embodied, temporal and material/spatial occurrence. Secondly, as prompted by the extracts, we identify some recurring features of warnings’ verbal formulation across the wider corpus. We end by discussing the means of warnings’ production within and for drivers’ multiparty collaborative mobile work setting. Forklift Truck Driving and the Warehouse Training Setting

A forklift truck is an industrial vehicle designed to pick up and move objects or loads, commonly using two ‘forks’ – flattened prongs extending from the front (usual) or side. Loads include almost anything, especially as positioned on wooden pallets which the forks can then raise,

166

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

lower and support while the vehicle is in motion. In warehouse or other storage settings, forklifts typically deposit/recover loads to/from shelves, other fi xtures, containers or the floor, and often to freight vehicles for transport. We highlight some important details for the simulated warehouse setting considered here: (1) Typical of any warehouse, it is a large enclosed space with high shelves for storing goods, around which the trucks drive to handle and carry loads (see Picture 1). To identify specific storage locations, shelves are numbered (1–8), divided into sections (1–14), and labelled A, B or C to indicate the level, e.g. location 4-B-12 would indicate shelf 4, height B, section 12.

Picture 1 Warehouse overview

(2) While there are some guiding lines marked on the floor, typical of most warehouses to indicate shelves’ placement and safe or restricted areas, trucks are mostly free to move whenever and in any direction to complete activities. For example, there is no rule to drive clockwise or to stay right/left, and drivers often travel in reverse, even from one location to another. However, a significant physical constraint impacting movement, as we will see in the examples, is that to use forks to deposit/recover a load a truck approaches a shelf straight in and reverses straight out. Turns are made when a load is clear of the shelf. Driving with raised forks is restricted due to the risk of accident and is sanctionable by an instructor. (3) For a training or assessment session, each driver is given an individual task sheet specifying a list of loading activities to be completed in order. A load activity involves a location of origin and destination, for example 4-12-B to 8-4-A. Crucially, task sheets

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

167

specify different activities and orders, and drivers are not aware of what other drivers are being tasked to do. So, at any moment multiple trucks (up to 12) can be seen engaged in loading activities and movements at and between multiple warehouse locations, and also for tasks outside. (4) Loads vary greatly, but usually involve boxes, crates or sacks of produce, which might be somehow bound together (e.g. tied, plastic wrapped), barrels of liquid or larger household appliances. Because they differ in nature, such as shape, weight or balance, loads require different forms of fork handling and transport. The available loads are intended to reflect the demands drivers can encounter during typical professional forklift work, and so for which they must demonstrate handling competence. (5) Drivers use and are assessed on diff erent kinds of forklift truck. Most relevant here are the counterbalance truck (CB) in which the driver sits in an open cabin (see Picture 2), and the stacker truck (ST) on which the driver stands exposed on a platform (see Picture 3).

Picture 2 Counterbalance truck

Picture 3 Stacker truck

In the warehouse, usually nine or more trucks are busily circling around. They are at the same time loading, offloading, transporting payload from A to B, or driving from B to A to pick up another load. The trucks need to share the space in the warehouse and must avoid crashing into other trucks while doing their work. A crash might have severe consequences. To avoid accidents, drivers need to scan the conduct of other trucks to discern their activity and movement trajectories and eventually modify their own trajectory to avoid a collision. Alternatively, they might call out a warning. Physically, the most exposed and so vulnerable drivers are those standing on the STs. If they were hit by another truck they might be seriously injured or worse.

168

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

Data

Data are approximately 85 hours of video-recordings of driving sessions at a simulated warehouse centre for training and assessing forklift drivers, located in Denmark. The data language is Danish. Recordings were collected by members of the project Social Objects for Innovation and Learning (funded by the Velux Fonden, Denmark, 2014–2017), with the support and cooperation of the AMU centre, Kolding, Denmark. The forklift driver training lasts seven working days. Every day, half a day is devoted to theory and safety instructions, and half a day to driving. Drivers at the centre range from beginners to those having varying experience levels on different truck types but still needing formal qualification and accreditation. We did not collect information on individual drivers because drivers routinely move from truck to truck, and cameras were truck-fi xed. Recordings were captured with multiple cameras (GoPro 3, Black edition; Sony Camcorder). Three cameras were mounted on each of three trucks (two CBs, one ST): one camera was directed forward to parallel a driver’s view to show fork movement and activity; one camera was directed downwards to the vehicle controls to reveal driver hand movements; and a third camera was directed towards the driver to reveal head/ gaze direction and bodily orientation. Other than on vehicles, three cameras were mounted on floor tripods and controlled by researchers who tracked movements of the individual data vehicles. A fi nal camera was fi xed on a raised truck-mounted aerial platform, as for a ‘cherry picker’, to give a bird’s-eye view of the whole warehouse floor space. Each truck was fi lmed for up to 28 hours. Recorded material was edited to about 60 hours with up to six parallel streams for each truck. We searched the seven recordings of the STs, two to three hours each, for warnings at moments of potential trouble. In total, we considered 19 hours of data and found and analyzed 108 warning instances. The distribution of warnings is not equal for each day and hour: Day 1 – 7 instances, Day 2 – 0 instances, Day 3 – 5 instances, Day 4 – 11 instances, Day 5 – 20 instances, Day 6 – 33 instances, Day 7 – 32 instances.

Extracts: How Warning Moments Are Occasioned and Resolved

As a fi rst general observation across the corpus, we see that warnings are quite rare, given that drivers pass by one another frequently, at

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

169

least once every few minutes and often much more often. Indeed, in a simple trip from A to B a driver might pass many other trucks, either also in motion or engaged with a load at a shelf. In the vast majority of cases, drivers routinely pass without a warning. Just how they do so is worth analysis elsewhere, but here we focus on what can occasion one driver to warn another driver of possible confl ict in their respective activity and movement. In our fi rst extract we introduce aspects of forklift work and their mobility by showing vehicles passing with no warning given, as indicative of the overwhelming majority of passing maneuvers. Subsequent examples introduce salient circumstances of warning moments. Extract 1: Passing with no warning

Our first extract illustrates a situation where no warning is given, as typical of most instances of close encounters when trucks merely pass one another without remark. This example shows such an instance where two trucks have less than a metre between them. Presenting the conditions under which no warning is given allows us to better show the instances where one driver offers a warning.

Picture 4 Close encounters – no warning

Picture 4 shows the movement trajectories of an ST (ST7) and a CB (CB12). The paths the trucks are driving are marked by white lines and certain points are indicated where the vehicles are at the same time. At the points indicated by ‘1’ in their paths, the CB is sitting behind the roller with barrels and the ST is driving past the roller on his way from the other end of the warehouse. When ST7 is nearly clear of the roller, driver CB12 is turning his head, looking behind himself, and starts to reverse.

170

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

Picture 5 CB12 starting his path

Picture 6 CB12 passing behind ST7

When CB12 has passed another truck that is coming towards him (Picture 5), he speeds up, monitoring his path backwards and turning his head so he constantly keeps ST7 in his focal view. When both trucks have reached Position 2 (Picture 4), the driver of ST7 starts swinging the truck to its left, so it is positioned at a 90° angle with respect to the roller. During this time CB12 slows down and passes closely behind ST7. Due to camera settings we can only see part of the forks and the vehicle’s roof (Picture 6, Position 3 in Picture 4). The ST is now slowly moving forward when both trucks are side by side. To calculate his trajectory, the driver of the CB must understand whether ST7 might reverse and eventually cut into his truck’s path. If the approaching driver would expect ST7 to reverse, he might stop or give warning; if not, he would proceed. In this case, while the ST moves further forward to deploy the load, CB passes closely behind ST. Note that driver ST7 is not monitoring the approaching truck CB12 at all. We must expect that he could have had him in his peripheral vision when he positioned the truck at Position 2, but at no point do we see driver ST7 turn his head to monitor the incoming CB. Close encounters of trucks with no warning being issued happen all the time in the warehouse. Due to reasons of space we cannot show any other instances here, but issues of monitoring the other drivers and projecting their course are crucial for the discussion of warnings below. Extract 2: A simple warning: Summoning the other driver’s attention

In our first example of a driver issuing a warning, one ST driver warns another ST driver. In the foreground (Figure 7.1), ST7 swings left to a shelf to deposit a load. As ST7 moves in, truck ST0 further down on the opposite side of the aisle simultaneously reverses without load from the shelf. ST0 then turns right to pass behind ST7, and when about few metres from ST7 issues the warning jeg kører lige bagom ‘I’m just driving behind’. This is marked on Figure 7.1 with a circle and shown in Picture 7. Driver ST7 briefly turns

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

171

Figure 7.1 Scenic overview

his head right to look towards ST0 (Picture 8) and then looks back to his load. He makes no verbal response and continues his activity at the shelf while ST0 passes.

Picture 7 The moment of warning

Picture 8 ST7’s embodied response

Driver ST0’s warning orients to the possibility that ST7 could reverse into his path of movement, especially because there is very little space for maneuvering between the two sets of shelves. If ST7 were to reverse, the trucks would collide. When the two trucks are closest to each other moving in/out of shelves there is less than a metre’s space between them. As ST0 reverses, we do not see driver ST0 looking towards ST7, but ST7’s proceeding into the shelf might be in his

172

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

peripheral vision. Regardless, after reversing and turning right, driver ST0 now has ST7 in his field of view. Driver ST0 can project that ST7’s next relevant movement might be to reverse. Also, driver ST7 has not yet looked directly towards ST0, and so driver ST7 cannot be sure he has been seen, and that driver ST7 is now aware of his location and movement. The warning prompts driver ST7 to look and be aware of ST0. Extract 3: Warning despite being seen

In this example, a CB driver warns an ST driver as he passes behind, even though both drivers already certainly know of the presence and location of the other, and the approaching driver can expect the other’s projected activity and movement. The warning highlights how on this occasion these drivers treat this awareness alone as insufficient. What matters for coordinating their relative conduct are the situated circumstances and timings of actual movements and courses of activity, and especially the possibility of crossing paths. As indicated by ‘1’ in Figure 7.2, CB12 enters the aisle with a load of barrels to deposit while ST0 is engaged in loading. CB12 is oriented forwards along the aisle, facing ST0, and ST0 is oriented across the aisle facing a shelf, so effectively blocking the aisle if CB, about two metres away to his right, were to move forwards. So ST0 is directly in driver CB12’s field of view. ST0 is looking left, away from CB12, talking to a different driver outside the aisle. Driver CB12 keeps apparently waiting for ST0. ST0 fi nishes talking and resumes moving, reversing his truck from the shelf into a reverse left arch. In Figure 7.2 this is indicated by 2a. Here a misunderstanding arises about what ST0 is doing. Projecting that ST0 will continue to reverse, CB12 slowly begins to move forwards (2b), but must stop when ST0 actually stops. ST0 and CB12 are now stationary and facing each other, with the trucks perhaps a metre apart. Driver ST0, though, immediately moves forwards and accounts for his movement by pointing left (Picture 9), indicating to driver CB12 his next direction of movement, not to reverse but move forwards and left into the shelf, to collect a load. As ST0 moves forwards, CB12 reverses a little to allow him space; ST0 then moves into the shelf and CB12 passes behind him (Picture 10). Even though ST0 vacates the aisle, making it possible for CB12 to pass behind, and has begun the maneuver he had indicated, moving to the shelf to collect a load, driver CB12 issues the warning jeg kører bag om ‘I drive behind (you)’ after he starts passing behind (the truck is already in motion). Picture 10 shows the moment when the warning is produced. Driver ST0 responds with det gør du bare ‘you just do that’. The warning allows ST0 to be aware that CB12 is no longer stationary and waiting but is now also moving, and directly behind him. Significant is that driver ST0 is focused on his activity at the shelf and cannot know CB12’s movements,

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

173

Figure 7.2 Scenic overview

and driver CB12 can not know for sure if ST0 will actually continue moving in to the shelf and not, for example, stop, or even reverse to adjust his alignment, and in so doing put their paths in conflict as had happened just before. So CB12’s warning fits the local contingencies to ensure the drivers’ relative movements do not conflict.

Picture 9 Pointing towards target

Picture 10 Passing behind

Extract 4: Warning at a last moment

Picture 11 shows ST7 placed before the shelf and in the process of lowering a pallet with wooden crates from the second level of the shelf. Behind him we see CT2 who has raised the forks to the fi rst level and is

174

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

pushing forward to collect a pallet with a container. When driver ST7 is ready to move off, he is approached by a colleague, who asks about shelf position. During the few seconds of this encounter, driver ST prepares for leaving and then starts slowly to reverse. Meanwhile, driver CB2 has inserted the forks fully (Picture 12).

Picture 11 Trucks working side-by-side Picture 12 ST7 starting to reverse

While reversing, driver ST7 is alternately turning his head to the right to monitor the space behind CB2 and looking at the driver who has approached him. When having left the vicinity of the shelf, driver ST7 is turning in an arc around CB2. Driver CB2 has at this moment raised the load off the shelf and is moving his hand from the wheel to the gear shift when the following exchange happens. 1 CB2: lifts hand 2 ST7: /jeg kører I drive CB2: /shifts into

from steering wheel towards gear change position lige bag ved /dig just behind you back gear##) # pict. 13a # pict. 13b

Picture 13a Shifting into gear

Picture 13b Shifting into gear

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

175

4 CB2: /starts turning head # #pict. 14

Picture 14 Turning head

5 (0.6) /CB shifts out of gear 6 CB2: yes

During driver ST7’s turn, driver CB2 manages to shift into back gear and in Line 5 out of it again before he acknowledges ST7’s presence in Line 6. We make the following observations: • • •

Driver CB2 does not look in ST7’s direction while ST7 is starting to pull back. Driver CB2 is about to reverse to pull the load out of the shelf. He has not looked in ST7’s direction for a while. If driver CB2 reverses, in this case ST7 – being immediately behind him – would be in danger. Driver CB2 has not yet looked behind him but might still do so. He has not moved the truck yet.

The warning is uttered at the last possible moment when the trucks drive very close to each other. Driver CB2 responds verbally to the warning after he has shifted the truck out of gear. As in Extract 3, the warned driver acknowledges the warning, here with a ‘yes’. This is diff erent from Extract 2 where the driver did not respond verbally but both drivers exchanged gaze. In Extract 3, the ST driver does not turn his head but responds verbally; in Extract 4, the warned driver turns his head but the warning driver has already moved so far that gaze contact physically cannot be established. Verbal acknowledgements seem to be used when no gaze exchange is established. In Extract 4, the driver fi rst secures the truck by putting it out of gear – but that is not sufficient since the passing

176

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

driver would not know. So the verbal response makes clear that the passing driver has been noticed. Extract 5: Addressing specific drivers

In Extract 5 we see how warnings can be addressed to specific drivers and not to all drivers within earshot. In Picture 15, ST0 is on his way across the warehouse to pick up a wooden crate at the other end. On his way, ST0 drives past two CB trucks which are working side by side. CB2, the truck that ST0 will pass first, is about to load and ST has seen him approaching the shelf and raising the fork. Under normal circumstances, the driver will raise the forks fully while ST0 passes him and then can be expected to insert them into the pallet he needs to pick up.

Picture 15 ST0 approaching two trucks Picture 16 Getting close

The truck behind, CB4, has lifted a pallet with beer boxes from the shelf. This specific load is placed in the shelf with its long side facing the driver. It must be lifted out, lowered to the floor and picked up from its short side to fit into the container to which CB4 has to transport it. So CB4 needs to reverse and change his approach to the pallet by 90°. In Picture 16, the driver of CB4 starts slowly to reverse, still hidden behind CB2. When ST0 gets a clear view and sees the reversing truck CB4, with the driver looking away from ST0, he gives a warning (Picture 16, the insert shows the situation from an opposite camera). At the warning moment, ST0 is about to pass behind CB2. ST0’s warning jeg er bagved dig ‘I am behind you’ draws driver CB4’s gaze towards him (Picture 17). CB4’s gaze follows ST0 driving past fi rst by looking over his left shoulder and then over his right shoulder while still very slowly reversing. When ST0 is free of CB4, the latter speeds up.

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

177

Picture 17 Gaze exchange between drivers ST0 and CB4

As we already have mentioned in the discussion of Extract 2, the crucial factor to decide about giving a warning seems to be visual contact between the drivers. Being seen by the other driver can make a warning unnecessary, whereas not being seen may motivate a warning even if the other driver is not at a point in his activity where he can be expected to move into the approaching truck’s path. Some preliminary findings

In all the instances shown, the drivers on the move indicate that they are monitoring the other drivers they encounter. Drivers who are engaged in a loading activity typically do not indicate that they have seen passing drivers, although they often will have seen or heard them. In Extract 1, driver ST7 is loading without monitoring the approaching CB12, while that driver keeps a close eye on ST7’s movements. In Extract 2, the approaching driver ST0 sees and warns driver ST7 who does not indicate having noticed ST0. In Extract 5, none of the loading drivers indicates that they have seen the approaching ST0. To issue a warning and to avoid a collision, the approaching driver must analyze the work the other driver is doing and project what he or she will do next. In other words, the passing driver must build an understanding of the ‘stationary’ driver’s possible next actions and their consequences for his own driving trajectory. Likewise, a driver busy with loading may notice an approaching truck and expect him to change his path to avoid a collision. He will not himself take relevant action, e.g. by moving out of the way. If a driver encounters another truck, especially an ST where the driver is in an exposed position, the passing truck must anticipate the

178

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

immediate and next movement of the other truck. Material for this analysis includes the witnessable activities of the other driver, since the expectable movements of a truck depend upon the activity in which it is involved. Extract 5 is a good example: CB2 has stopped and is raising the forks before a shelf. The driver can be expected to move forwards towards the shelf or to lower the forks before moving anywhere. Driving is not expected at this point. If, in contrast, a driver has lowered the forks with a load, a next relevant activity is to reverse from the shelf space, ready to turn and drive the load somewhere else. This is the case in Extracts 2 and 4. In Extract 4, the driver of the stationary truck is just about to move; he already has the truck in gear. In Extract 5, the driver is moving. Gaze exchange is crucial here. In Extract 1, ST7 is beginning to offload. He is not expected suddenly to move the truck backwards and the passing CB12 is monitoring him but not uttering a warning. In Extracts 2 and 5, the warnings trigger gaze exchange. In Extracts 3 and 4, the warned drivers do not establish gaze exchange but acknowledge the warning verbally. Extract 6: Early warnings: Projecting others’ activity

From an overview of the corpus it became clear that there were more warnings during the last three days of the training than in the first three days. Extract 6 happens on the fi nal day and shows a more routinized form of warning which we observe more often during the last three days. Here the driver of a reversing ST, carrying a load, issues the warning jeg kører lige bag ved dig ‘I’m just driving behind you’ as he approaches to pass behind truck CB4 which is involved in depositing a load onto a high shelf (Picture 18). The warning is given early, when ST0 is still about 2–3 metres away from CB4. We observe especially that throughout all the approach, driver ST0 looks forwards in the direction of travel and so CB4 is fully in his field of view. CB4’s activity, moving forward to the shelf, is visually available to driver ST0. However, driver CB4, captured by a manual camera, constantly focuses his gaze towards his load and the shelf, and does not ever gaze towards approaching ST0. Driver CB4 gives no verbal response to the warning, continues with his activity, and ST0 passes routinely behind. So as driver ST0 approaches he can see and project CB4’s activity to move with his load to the shelf, but the warning orients to possible conflict if CB4 were to reverse into ST0’s path of movement. Driver CB4 might do this to adjust (e.g. realign) his load placement, as the training drivers often do. We note that the warning is given with sufficient time for driver CB4 to respond and modify his activity. Driver ST0’s warning orients to a preference to keep moving, for CB4 to attend and adjust his activity to allow for this. The warning therefore occurs when driver ST0 interprets a possible confl ict of movement, that driver CB4 likely has not seen him

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

179

approach and is not aware of his location and possible movement direction.

Picture 18 Warning from a distance

Extract 7: Mobility and proximity in overtaking

This example shows a warning issued during a different form of traffic coordination. In our previous examples a driver has issued a warning when one truck has passed behind another truck, usually stationary, from one side to the other. In this extract, a truck (ST2) approaches from behind (Picture 19), and overtakes alongside on the left (CB2) as both vehicles are moving. Figure 7.3 shows that, apart from ST2 and CB2, two other trucks (ST17 and CB4) are close by. They are ignored here since ST17 is moving out of the way in time while CB4 moves after ST2 has passed.

Figure 7.3 Scenic overview

Picture 19 Truck approaching from behind

180

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

CB2 is maneuvering to approach a loaded pallet placed on the floor in front of a shelf. Unlike previous examples, CB2 is not oriented to face the shelf, but is sidewise with the shelf to the right and has the forks directed down the aisle. A loaded truck (ST2) is approaching from behind. While CB2 approaches the pallet, another truck (ST17) swings in close to CB2. Figure 7.3 shows the relative positions of these three trucks: • • • •

ST17 is swinging out of the trajectory of ST2 and CB2; ST2 is closing in behind CB2; CB2 has loaded the pallet, starts moving forward and speeds up while veering left into the trajectory of ST2; CB4 is stationary, waiting to swing across the aisle to pick up a load. He will not move before the three trucks have moved away.

As CB2 engages and lifts the pallet, ST2 has reached CB2 and is about to pass on the left. CB2 then begins to move forwards, simultaneously turning a little to the left, directly towards the path of the now-passing and faster moving ST2. The trucks are side by side less than a metre apart, and if CB2 continues turning left the trucks will collide. We note that the passing ST2 is not in driver CB2’s forward or peripheral fields of view, and driver CB2 has not turned to look over his shoulder. CB2, however, is in ST2’s immediate forward field of view and driver CB2’s left arm/hand is potentially visible turning the steering wheel left.

Picture 20 Overtaking

The situation of potential collision lasts only a moment. We provide a transcription. 1 CB2 starts moving 2 ST2: jeg /overhaler lidt I overtake a bit /CB2 looks into mirror

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

181

3

/(0.4) /CB2 turns head 90° left 4 CB2: n ↑ å oh 5 /(0.5) /CB2 turns head further left until he gets sees driver ST0, stops truck 6 CB2: ja yeah 7 /(0.4) /driver CB2 watches ST0 starting to overtake 8 CB2: /hhe hhe hhe hhe. /driver CB2 looks at driver ST0 who passes without looking back

Picture 20 shows the moment when driver ST has already produced jeg ‘I’ and before driver CB2 starts looking to the mirror. CB2 now looks to his mirror and then turns his head to the side where he can already see CB’s load, acknowledging the situation with a change of state token (Heritage, 1998). At the same time he stops the truck. Driver CB2 then turns his head until he can see the other driver and responds to the warning with ‘yes’, i.e. he possibly establishes gaze contact while orienting visually to the passing truck. Since driver ST2 is hidden during this period, we do not know whether both drivers exchange gaze, but when ST2 again appears in camera view he is looking forwards and not towards CB2. Recurring Features of Forklift Warnings’ Verbal Formulation Across the Data Corpus

These few examples already exhibit some features of warnings’ verbal formulation which we fi nd to be recurrent across the wider corpus of 100 instances. The vast majority of warnings, about 80%, include at least two or three of these features, many have more, and some warnings have all of them. To summarize, the recurrent features are: (i) a participant; (ii) a form of mobility; (iii) a location or direction; and (iv) a minimizing adverb. We suggest that these features make explicit details of a warning’s specific circumstances, orienting to its occasion at some particular moment in the converging courses of particular drivers’ activities and mobility. Warnings are designed for the social action, in and for this particular setting, of driving forklift trucks together with others within the physical confi nes of warehouse workspaces. Some of the warnings are given jokingly, often when they occur just after another encounter, such as Hvorfor skal du altid stå I vejen for mig ‘Why do you always have to be in my way’. In contrast, we rarely see generic warnings such as ‘honk honk’ (Danish dyt dyt), ‘look out’ (Danish pas på), ‘hey’ (Danish hej) or ‘excuse me’ (Danish undskyld). Extract 8 is one such contrasting deviant case, and we use it to best elaborate why warnings exhibit the recurrent features we now outline.

182

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

(i)

A participant. The warning refers to self, jeg (I), and often also the warned driver with dig/du (you) or an address term (‘Tom’, ‘Kalle’). The warner makes participation salient, who is doing what, where and sometimes why, as relevant to the other’s movement, location or loading activity. For example, in Extract 2 the driver said jeg kører lige bagom ‘I’m just driving behind’. Other examples we see in the corpus include jeg kom forbi (‘pass’), or more minimally referring only to the warned driver with bagom dig or om bagved dig (‘behind you’). Typically, then, the warning makes salient that ‘I’ am doing something, and often as relative to ‘you’. (ii) A form of mobility. The warning makes salient that, and maybe how, the warner (usually) is moving. Extracts here showed one of the most commonly used forms, ‘drive’ (køre), as in jeg kører lige bag ved dig (Extract 4, ‘I’m driving just behind you’), and across the corpus komme (‘come’) is also common. However, we note some other forms, like ‘slip’ (smutte), or as in Extract 7 ‘overtake’ (jeg overhaler lidt ‘I’m overtaking a little’). So the warning makes explicit the dynamic nature of the mobile occasion, that the warning truck is moving and that this movement is relevant for the warned truck’s (possible) movement. (iii) A location or direction. The warning makes explicit where the warner is, or moving to, relative to the warned driver. The warning allows the warned driver to assess the trucks’ relative positioning and movement, perhaps by gazing towards the warning truck to confirm and monitor it. We saw this with ‘behind’ in most extracts, making salient a least-visible location. Indeed ‘overtaking’ in Extract 7 indicates both mobility and trucks’ relative positioning, that the warner is passing from behind but close alongside the warned truck. (iv) A minimizing token. The warning is mitigated or minimized, most commonly with lige (‘just’), bare (‘just/only’) or lidt (‘a little’). We suggest that this presents the situation as not critical, as remarkable but routine (Heinemann & Steensig, 2017). The potential for the trucks’ paths to conflict is worthy of verbal notice but is not urgent. In short, in a setting where multiple parties are moving and individually performing competing activities within a shared warehouse workspace, a verbalized warning makes salient details of one driver’s mobility, location and activity to another driver who can understand these details relative to their own mobility, location and activity. Trucks mostly pass without comment, so these utterances are hearable as warnings because they make trucks’ relative presence verbally explicit, literally remarkable, worthy of note and accountable. It is in this sense that warnings of the shorter and generic form, like ‘hey’ or ‘look out’, or using the truck’s horn, which might on the surface seem more efficient, might hide mobility/spatial details which can be relevantly and helpfully made clear and could convey a greater sense of urgency than situations actually and usually warrant.

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

183

Extract 8: Reversing without looking back: Hello! as a deviant case

As the exception, in our fi nal example an ST driver (ST17) issues the warning hello! to a reversing CB (CB2). The ST is moving without a load and will pass the CB from behind while it is involved in collecting a load, a pallet of holding two barrels filled with liquid, from a ground-fi xed storage structure (Picture 21). Why might driver ST17 use such a minimal form of warning, without any of the features we observe typically recurring? Why is there no reference to the circumstances of participants, truck location/direction or form of mobility, and with no minimizing token to present the passing as routine? We observe that that ST17 passes very close behind CB2, within less than a metre, and is moving very slowly. Novice drivers in general drive more slowly than experienced drivers, but this driver is unusually slow. We note too that CB2 begins to reverse just as ST17’s forks begin to pass behind (Picture 22).

Picture 21 Conflicting trajectories of movement

Picture 22 The warning moment

At the warning moment when ST17 says hello!, ST17 is passing directly behind CB2 and the vehicles are less than half a metre apart and will collide at the speeds they are moving. Significantly, driver CB2 has not seen ST17, but has focused his gaze constantly forwards towards his load. Neither before or during reversing does driver CB2 turn away to look around for traffic. In response to the warning, driver CB2 immediately stops reversing, looks left and establishes eye contact with driver ST17 (Picture 23). CB2 then looks over his right shoulder and monitors the progress of ST17, which continues moving to pass behind. 1 ST17: hello 2 /(1.0) /CB2 stops, driver CB2 looks over left shoulder, achieves gaze contact#, ST17 proceeds and smiles towards CB #pict. 23

184

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

Picture 23 Gaze contact between the drivers

3 CB2: //ehh hhhe hhe /driver CB2 turns head and looks over right shoulder, /driver ST17 smiles and looks at CB2, 4 /(0.6) /driver CB2 looks to mirrors 5 ST17: ehh hhe hhe= 6 CB2: ehh hee 7 /(0.8) /driver CB2 brings head back, looks forward 8 CB2: det godt du siger til it good you say PREP it’s good that you give the word 9 CB2: /starts pulling back

We suggest that ST17’s warning ‘hello’ is effective precisely because its short formulation is fitted for the urgency of the situation, a pressure on time and space that is not routine. It makes salient only the truck’s presence, rather than indexing one or more circumstantial features. In a setting where drivers mostly pass one another without any verbalized warning, it signals only and especially that another’s proximity is immediately relevant and demands attention and action. We see this is how CB2 hears and responds to it. He stops, he looks, and the trucks pass without problem. So, rather than supporting drivers’ awareness of possibility for future confl ict in their activities or movements, the warning here is understood to signal actual and immediate confl ict. As in Extract 7 we find laughter, but here it is built up sequentially. Driver ST17 smiles when driver CB2 makes gaze contact and keeps smiling at driver CB2 throughout the whole passing. CB2 does whatever is necessary to avoid a collision, monitors ST17 and produces some laughter tokens (Line 3) that are responded to by ST17 (Line 5) and again responded to by CB2 who in Line 8 comments on the warning.

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

185

Discussion

From our video-recordings of forklift driver training sessions, exemplified with indicative cases here, we summarize our observations on the occasion, character and impact of verbal warnings. Commonly, there is some lack of visual contact between drivers, and a driver interprets a situation as involving a potential for conflict between their projected trajectories of movement and activity. Generally, the warning driver interprets the activity/movement of another truck as potentially confl icting with his own. Warning situations usually involve the warning driver passing behind a stationary or slowly moving truck involved in loading or depositing at a shelf or other fi xture (roller). Simply, it is typically the driver moving from A to B within the warehouse space, approaching another truck, who does the warning. The warning driver attends closely to the dynamic state and progress of other drivers’ conduct for its relevance and potential to impact his own. Specifically: (i) the warning driver approaches another truck from behind and so is not in the other driver’s primary or peripheral field of view; (ii) the other driver has not noticeably looked towards the warning driver’s truck or indicated that he is aware of it; (iii) the warning driver looks to monitor the other driver’s conduct, i.e. location, activity (e.g. at a shelf, with a load) or movement; (iv) the warning driver interprets the other driver’s conduct potentially or actually as conflicting with his own, and so risking a collision; (v) the warning is made in due time, allowing the other driver to respond if and as needed; and lastly (vi) we suggest that the warnings are especially significant for drivers of STs, trucks with no cabin and with the driver standing vulnerably on an exposed platform. Warnings reflect that the warning driver is approaching the other from behind (or the side) and is not visible. Notable of their character is that they are issued verbally, rather than through embodied means such as waving or pointing, etc., or the use of the truck’s horn which is designed to alert others. What might verbal warnings better afford? We elaborated on the formulation of the great majority of warnings as making salient one or more circumstantial aspects of the immediate situation, i.e. the participants (e.g. I, you) or their location/direction (e.g. behind you) or form of mobility (e.g. drive, slip), or to convey the situation as remarkable but routine (just/only). Such warnings typically do not indicate a situation of urgency demanding immediate remedial action. Extract 7, involving overtaking, is perhaps an exception because the two trucks head in the same direction and are rapidly becoming closely adjacent, such that any change by the other to turn into the warner’s path would immediately cause a collision. We see various impacts of warnings, i.e. how drivers attend to and modify their activity and truck movement in response to a warning. At the least, the warning allows the other driver to be aware of an approaching

186

Part 3: Objects in the Service of Preparing for a Possible Future

truck, which likely is not in his active field of view. The warned driver might acknowledge verbally (Extracts 3, 4) or embodiedly, such as turning his head to look towards the approaching truck (Extracts 2, 4, 5) or nodding. More than this, the warning can make available details of the approaching truck’s mobility, location and direction. The warning prompts the other driver to assess his own conduct and respond appropriately to ensure that the trucks are not in confl ict and will not collide. In many cases the warned driver needs to make no change, and continues with current non-conflicting activity, for example moves into or is active at a shelf, or remains stationary. In other cases, however, the warned driver does respond by someone modifying their activity or mobility, for example by pausing activity or waiting before moving (Extracts 4, 7, 8), or actually stopping moving (Extract 4). Indeed, Extracts 4, 7 and 8 show situations where collision was a real possibility, were it not for the warning and the other driver’s response by stopping. In both their verbal formulation and their embodied and material realization in space, warnings reflect forklift drivers’ orientation to the local and dynamic circumstances of their routine work. Most significantly, by issuing a warning a driver best ensures the chance to remain mobile and continue the trajectory of his own activity, so without needing to slow, re-route or stop. The warning driver makes his movement available to another driver, who might then make accommodations in his own activity and movement. Indicative of our corpus, in all examples here the warning driver continues moving. Warnings are therefore a means by which forklift drivers coordinate their diverse activities and movements to accomplish the warehouse as a multiparty cooperative mobile setting. Warnings help many trucks completing different tasks in different locations to move around without colliding. Training to be a forklift driver involves more than learning to control trucks and handle loads. It also involves learning how to drive in the context of others, to collaborate with them so that the work of the warehouse gets done, routinely, safely and effectively. This requires at least attending to and interpreting others’ actions, and projecting how they can relate to one’s own. Fundamentally, warnings reflect the ongoing relevance for forklift drivers to be aware of others’ activity and movement, of who is doing what, and where, and what happens next. Warning moments might therefore reveal something of the nature and emergence of the professional individual, collaborative and interactive competences constitutive of routine forklift work. Finally, we address the increase in the number of warnings over the progress of the training course. One might expect the opposite – if drivers become more experienced, they might get better at creating visual contact with other operators by turning their head before they are moving out into a possible path of another truck. One obvious possible reason for the increase is that operators drive faster at the end of the course than at the beginning. So they may simply be making more trips. Also, moving faster

Objects in Motion: ‘I’m Just Behind You’ and Other Warnings in Forklift Truck Driving

187

through space can significantly reduce the time in which they can be seen as approaching. Further, drivers may orient to higher speed as increasing the potential severity of a collision. We notice too an increase in warnings where operators shout out at a larger distance from another truck. We suggest that warning other trucks seems to become more routinized as part of the procedure to drive a truck in the warehouse. Perhaps drivers at first learn that, and how and when, risky collision situations can arise and are experienced. Later, drivers can become better able to identify or anticipate such situations, and with warnings can head them off as or even before they emerge. References Haddington, P., Keisanen, T. and Nevile, M. (eds) (2012) Meaning in Motion: Interaction in Cars. Special Issue of Semiotica 101, 1/4. Haddington, P., Mondada, L. and Nevile, M. (eds) (2013) Interaction and Mobility: Language and the Body in Motion. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter. Heinemann, T. and Steensig, J. (2017) Three imperative action formats in Danish talkin-interaction: The case of imperative + modal particles bare and lige. In M.-L. Sorjonen, L. Raevaara and E. Couper-Kuhlen (eds) Imperative Turns at Talk: The Design of Directives in Action (pp. 139–173). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Heritage, J. (1998) Oh-prefaced responses to inquiry. Language in Society 27 (3), 291–334. Koskela, I., Arminen, I. and Hannele, P. (2013) Centres of coordination as a nexus of aviation. In P. Haddington, L. Mondada and M. Nevile (eds) Interaction and Mobility: Language and the Body in Motion (pp. 245–276). Berlin: De Gruyter. Nevile, M. (2004) Beyond the Black Box: Talk-in-interaction in the Airline Cockpit. Aldershot: Ashgate. Nevile, M., Haddington, P., Heinemann, T. and Rauniomaa, M. (2014) On the interactional ecology of objects. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T. Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 3–26). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

This page intentionally left blank

Part 4 Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

This page intentionally left blank

8 Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters Mie Femø Nielsen

Introduction

Meetings mediated by information and communications technology (ICT) are widely used by institutions and individuals to keep down the costs of travelling. Professionals and citizens have used the telephone to mediate their encounters for generations; video-mediated interactions have been employed for professional purposes in the private sector for decades and now are also increasingly being used in the public sector, for example in telemedicine. In all cases, the use of ICT-mediated interactions is motivated by practical, economic and democratic concerns. Teams and individuals meet and discuss regularly in spite of the physical distance between multiple locations, and public services may be offered in areas where few professionals are available compared to the number of citizens in need of service. This particular mode of interaction is, however, different from co-present face-to-face (FTF) interaction and participants therefore strive to shape their interactional framework accordingly. Human interaction is a result of highly coordinated actions requiring mutual monitoring and draws on resources from multiple ‘semiotic fields’ (Enfield, 2005; Goodwin, 1994, 2000). Material objects, graphics and textures of the environment provide resources and structures through which participants construct their actions (Goodwin, 1994, 2000; Nevile, 2015; Streeck, 1996, 2011; Streeck & Kallmeyer, 2001). When professionals’ interaction is ICT mediated, and the material and sensorial ecologies of their respective work practices are fractured, it is stressed how these are consequential for the order and progressivity of their encounter. This chapter explores aspects of this. ICT-mediated professional encounters offer new possibilities, but also present participants with interactional challenges. A number of studies have explored what constitutes interaction mediated by ICT (Arminen, 2005; Mondada, 2009b, 2010). Settings as diverse as computer chats

191

192

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

(Markman, 2007), teaching sign language (Hjulstad, 2016) and remote supervision of surgery (Mondada, 2007) have been researched. A recent study of project group work interaction via a telepresence system enabling collaborative manipulation of shared objects has also been conducted (Luff et al., 2016). Some studies point to how participants may need to have a basic relationship to build upon before using the technology to meet (Arnfalk & Kogg, 2003; Lu & Peeta, 2009), while others show how interpersonal asymmetries may be produced in ICT-mediated interactions (Heath & Luff, 1992). Furthermore, studies have shown that interaction may be affected by technically caused delays and reduced visibility, as well as the lack of haptic experience (Denstadli et al., 2011). As pointed out in an early study by Raudaskoski (1999: 175f), video conferencing, for example, was in the early years studied either as an emulation of FTF interaction or with a view towards improving mediated interaction (e.g. Svenning & Ruchinskas, 1984). More recently, though, Arminen et al. (2016) have argued that underlying conventional perspectives on mediated interaction is a notion of context as a bucket (cf. Drew & Heritage, 1992) which shapes interaction. Furthermore, it is believed that perception is never unmediated and that FTF interaction is not to be seen as a ‘pure’ form of interaction – apparently contradictory results. In video-mediated professional encounters, the video/computer screen enables as well as constrains visual interaction across physical locations. Screens provide only reduced visibility for and of interlocutors and also represent an obstacle to the normal gaze behaviour that is familiar from FTF interaction. A reason for the former is that screens are usually small, and project only a selection of what is visually available at the connected locations (Raudaskoski, 1999). Moreover, eye contact is not technically possible and the direction of mediated participants’ gaze may be difficult to detect. Being able to look at somebody and being able to be looked at is a central feature of canonical FTF social interaction. Being seen working on something and inviting others to share a joint visual focus is routine to professional practice. Where the practice of ‘seeing’ is not routine and perhaps is even met with obstacles, interesting compensatory practices have been developed in encounters mediated by video or telephone. Exploring this contributes to understanding ‘the moment-to-moment accomplishment of everyday work and interaction’ (Luff et  al., 2014). When material objects and other visuals are consequential for accomplishing collaborative work practices, visual access to them is a participant’s problem to sort out in professional ICT-mediated encounters. How participants compensate for barriers introduced by mediation will be discussed in this chapter. The aim is to explore interactional strategies involving verbalizing or physically manipulating visuals, i.e. things that are potentially visible such as faces, bodies, actions, objects or physical environments, when reduced or poor visibility and lack of eye contact is made

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

193

relevant in ICT-mediated professional interactions by participants. Building on data from telemedicine and cross-locational business meetings, this chapter will show how professionals in these encounters adjust or play with visuals, or verbalize them. My analyses of such practices not only contribute to the exploration of the ‘procedural consequentiality of mediation’ (Arminen et al., 2016), but also show professionals’ reflexivity with respect to visual access to their own and co-participants’ spatial arrangements. In the following, visual challenges will be reviewed with respect to the use of gaze, before exploring analytically how participants deal with these challenges in ICT-mediated professional encounters. The social accomplishments of gaze

Gaze is not only used to watch ongoing (potentially parallel) activities in a physical setting, but also to monitor (M.H. Goodwin, 1980), address, invite and even solicit responses from co-participants (cf. C. Goodwin, 1979, 1981; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986; Kendon, 1967; Rossano, 2013; Stivers & Rossano, 2010). By gazing at a co-present person, the interlocutor may find a gazing participant (C. Goodwin, 1979, 1981). This accomplishment has important interactional consequences. For instance, it has been shown that teachers and students negotiate by means of gaze which of the students the teacher will select as the next speaker and a teacher’s (verbal) turn allocation emerges from a student’s availability which, in its turn, may also be displayed by means of gaze, to be selected as the next speaker or not (Mortensen, 2008). Similarly it has been shown how meeting chairs topicalize their gaze direction in order to select the next speaker (Nielsen, 2013a). Gaze, then, is used to project and pre-empt such maneuvers, and verbalization of gaze direction is used to emphasize this as a social action. Interlocutors’ gaze therefore may not only determine co-participants’ projected physical trajectories, but also monitor co-participants gaze (Mortensen & Hazel, 2014). Potential participants to an incipient FTF encounter may monitor, through gaze, other present persons’ display of readiness and availability as interlocutors. Joint object of attention and mutual face engagement (cf. Goffman, 1955) is a collaborative achievement. Participants are therefore also monitoring each other for readiness to make a shift in the interactional framework. For instance, it has been shown how participants to an incipient meeting monitor co-participants’ readiness to make an activity shift when they are making the collective transition from multi-party small talk to business meeting talk. To do so they may show their own readiness to and for the gaze of co-participants (Nielsen, 2012, 2013b). Sometimes they display their readiness via physical signals using objects (e.g. closing/opening laptop or putting away/picking up phone). Participants mutually monitor one another for displays of such signals, and they collaborate in a mutual display of readiness and availability as interlocutors by means of gaze as well as verbal and physical cues (Goffman, 1963; Mondada, 2009a).

194

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

To sum up the fi ndings from studies of the social accomplishments of gaze in interaction, gaze is used to monitor the ‘scene’, display one’s own availability for interaction, ratify others as interlocutors, and negotiate participation framework, turn taking and topic development. The use of gaze is important when moving into interaction and there are different types of gaze. It has been shown how an analytic distinction between ‘a mere look’ and a look that is projecting a move into an emerging focused encounter (Kidwell, 2005) is necessary. Co-participants can be scolded by means of a look from somebody, or they can be approved or even caressed. Since looking at somebody and being looked at has many functions, not being able to look at co-participants and not being able to be looked at may have interactional consequences. The social accomplishments of withdrawing and avoiding gaze

Analogous to gazing, looking away is also a social action. A gaze withdrawn from interlocutors may occur to attend to or move one’s own body, to attend to ongoing parallel activities in the same or another physical setting, or just to ‘perceive the world’ (Rossano, 2013: 324). Withdrawing gaze may be understood as showing disinterest in an ongoing activity (C. Goodwin, 1981, 1984; Rossano, 2013), perhaps in order to engage in another, potentially competing, activity (e.g. checking one’s smartphone or laptop). Withdrawing gaze may also be used to negotiate turn taking (C. Goodwin, 1979; M.H. Goodwin, 1980); for example, it might be taken as reluctance to be selected as the next speaker (cf. Mortensen, 2008) or to be called on when tasks are to be distributed. Withdrawing, or avoiding, gaze may also be used to categorize other persons present as non-persons (Goffman, 1956) and to show one’s own unavailability for face engagement (e.g. in buses and elevators). Generally speaking, one can say that withdrawing or avoiding gaze may postpone incipient interaction or discourage the continuance of an ongoing activity. Analogous to gazing at somebody or something, withdrawing and avoiding gaze is used to negotiate the participation framework. This could happen as preliminary to or in competition with a business meeting interaction. This is analogous to, for example, how ‘walking away’ is closing implicative of a closing and may be done step-wise – an action that may be relevantly placed or misplaced, and which is not responding to, but achieving, closing (Broth & Mondada, 2013). To sum up, withdrawing gaze is used to monitor what is going on outside the scene, to display one’s own unavailability for interaction, to not ratify others as interlocutors by showing them that they are not seen, and to negotiate the participation framework, turn taking and topic management. It can be used to postpone, discourage or show low engagement in ongoing activity.

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

195

Talking to a screen

Cameras and screens in video conference (VC) rooms are often fi xed (to a wall or at the computer/video screen) and will apply/display the ‘politics’ (Suchman, 1994) of social interaction in the sense that they may organize categorical distinctions and resource distribution between participants. The screen, vis-à-vis its placement in the room, is often the main focus point for the interaction, the main object of attention, and it is a communication interface. Thus, meeting participants are interacting with the screen, not just via the screen. Also, there may be predetermined participant seating, potentially having an impact on local participant identities and relations. Video conferencing, as a form of ICT-mediated communication, involves looking at iconic representations on a screen and allowing others to view oneself via a camera, often attached to the screen. Vis-à-vis its placement in the room, the screen/camera is often the main focus point for the interaction; participants may have differential access to the screen due to its physical placement and cameras not always being attached the screen. Similarly, seeing what others can see is not easily accomplished by just looking at the picture-in-picture (PIP) of one’s own setting. Looking at oneself on-screen via the PIP may actually hinder one from interacting with others (Heath et al., 1997: 324), as interlocutors will not know if a remote participant is looking at self or other in the interaction. Videomediated encounters have special allowances compared to FTF interaction, since it seems to be possible continuously and legitimately to look at oneself instead of at other participant(s). This may have an impact on the mutual ratification of participants as interlocutors because one common resource for doing so, mutual gaze, is potentially not available. Interactional consequences of lack of eye contact

In video encounters, participants can choose between monitoring the screen (or something outside the screen) or ‘faking eye contact’ by looking into the camera.

Picture 1 A video meeting participant choosing between looking at the screen or into the camera (Hassert et al., 2016; Nielsen et al., 2014a, 2014b, 2015)

196

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

As shown in Picture 1, participants in video meetings must choose between seeing the interlocutor (by looking at the screen) or giving the interlocutor an impression of having eye contact (by looking into the camera and not seeing what is on the screen) (Hassert et  al., 2016; Nielsen et  al., 2013). This has consequences for the participants’ embodied approach to objects and visuals in an ICT-mediated interaction. One consequence of this is that when a participant looks at the screen not directly in front of them in order to see what is going on, that person may – to the observing eye at the other location – appear as though looking away and thereby showing distance to the interlocutor or low engagement in the interaction or the ongoing activity (Picture 2).

Picture 2 Appearing as if looking away

It has been argued, though, that if a participant is looking into a camera mounted on the screen, gaze may technically speaking be used to select the next speaker, since the idea of direct eye gaze may be conveyed to the candidate next speaker viewing the screen (Raudaskoski, 1999: 213). However, as a consequence, the participant looking into the camera cannot see if their gaze-selecting-next-speaker is actually seen, let alone ratified as a social action, by the remote interlocutor. Again, an illusion of allocating a next turn can be made, but speaker ratification and turn negotiation cannot be made be means of gaze alone. The inexplicable feeling that a person can have in FTF interaction of ‘being looked at’ by someone is probably non-existent in video-mediated interactions. Still, it has been argued that ‘as there are two video frames on the computer screen, it is not only a question of CU-SeeMe

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

197

(See-You-See-Me) but also of What I See is What You Get’ (Raudaskoski, 1999: 184). Of course this is still far from ‘being in another’s shoes’ but we know almost exactly what the other sees of us in the situation. However, we cannot know what the screen on which our video picture is situated looks like, nor do we know if the participants at the other end of the video link are looking at our video picture, although we have some idea of their circumstances if we monitor their video picture(Raudaskoski, 1999: 184). To sum up, it is not possible in video encounters to select, let alone address, a particular next speaker by means of gaze. The ‘mere look’ into the camera does not identify its object of attention. Moreover, strategies for topic management are reduced, since it is not possible to address a talkable by means of gaze alone. The ‘mere look’ into the camera does not identify what it is focused upon, and cannot monitor what that act of looking is accomplishing. Mutual gaze thus can not be depended upon as a resource; ratification often must take place by means of technical equipment and voice, not by means of gaze or a combination of gaze, voice and touch. Moreover, monitoring for availability and ratification is special in ICT-mediated interactions, since persons typically are ratified as participants by means of a technical procedure involving object manipulation, entering digits and producing vocal material for the computer. Only afterwards is that person available as a meeting participant for the others and can then be ratifi ed by co-participants by means of a greeting. Interlocutors must therefore meet the challenges of using other interactional resources to compensate for reduced visibility and lack of eye contact. Pilot studies show this to be a major concern for many practitioners using video meetings regularly (Nielsen et  al., 2013, 2014a). How these and other challenges are met will be explored in detail below. Data and Method

Primary data for the project are video-recordings of ICT-mediated professional interactions: video conferences between departments in a medium-sized Danish IT company; video and/or telephone conferences in virtual teams and between teams in a large Danish-owned global corporation (locations: Copenhagen, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, London, Manila); telemedicine video calls between nurses and patients with chronic illnesses (Denmark); and video conferences with customers and vendors in a large Indian-owned global corporation. Secondary data for the project are quotes from colleagues’ studies of ICT-mediated professional interactions (helpline calls), which are used for exemplification. Tertiary data for the project, which has contributed to my competence as analyst, are

198

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

participant observations of ICT-mediated interactions with colleagues and collaborating partners using different technologies (Adobe Connect, GoToMeeting, WebEx, It’s Learning, Skype, phone). Conversation analytic (CA) methods and a multimodal microsociological approach were used for the analyses. Analysis of participants’ embodied treatment of visuals and non-visuals

In the following I will explore how verbalizing and manipulating visuals in environments of reduced visibility of self and physical actions and objects is performed as a professional practice. Making Self and own material ecologies visually accessible to Other is shown to be an embodied work practice. Adjusting self and objects as visuals for remote co-participants

One particular practice in video-mediated meetings is how participants use themselves as a visual for the eye of the interlocutor. In the following example, a team in India is meeting via video. Four team members located in Mumbai are meeting with one team member located in Pune. At the beginning of the meeting, the head of the team in Mumbai grabs the remote and adjusts something, resulting in a box appearing on the Mumbai screen. Example1

The team member in Pune seems to be able to see this happening on their side in the PIP. Immediately, he tilts his head slightly (see the column of stills to the right for chronology) and enables the participants in Mumbai better visual access to him, freeing his head from being hidden by the box on the screen. They are not topicalizing this, but talking about something else. This practice is linked to the special media and dealing with the difficulties of getting everyone ‘on’ the screen, which additionally may be in need of quality adjustments. Example 2

Another example is from the same meeting where a participant is playing with visuals. At one point, the team in Mumbai is teasing the team member in Pune about his new glasses, in a friendly manner, mocking him for being extravagant. In response, he demonstratively shows his glasses to them, getting closer to the camera and fl ipping the glasses slightly vertically, almost literally in the face of his team members in Mumbai. With a large grin, he plays the character of a man showing off his new glasses and thus demonstratively embodies the topic of their talk.

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

199

Figure 8.1 Man on-screen tilts his head, enabling participants at the other location better visual access to him (to the left is seen the group in chronological order from left to right, top to bottom; to the right is seen the screen picture only in chronological order vertically)

This practice is also known from FTF interaction. Handling objects is mundane to FTF interaction, and making an effort to give interlocutors better visual access to objects is also prevalent in FTF interaction. Both practices are prevalent in the video meetings in our data. Participants spend the fi rst minute or less relating to each other, establishing rapport and connecting as a meeting group, before they move on to talk about professional matters. Informal talk in the opening may be seen as a ramp to more formal talk (M.F. Nielsen, 2016), also known from FTF business meetings, and in video meetings the informal talk is very often

Figure 8.2 Man creates an image to match the talk of the participants at the other location

200

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

triggered by, or designed to be triggered by, the noticing of visuals made available, or not, by the technology. Verbalizing self as a non-visual

In the examples above, participants used themselves as visuals by adjusting images of themselves. Contrastively, in telephone meetings where no visual access is available, an observed strategy is to verbalize self as a local off-screen visual. This is shown briefly in the extract below. Even if the technical equipment of telephone conferences (TCs) may indicate who is participating or which locations are connected to the meeting, letting all participants know who is who and where they are sitting is the participants’ task to accomplish in talk. In TCs between several locations with more than one participant at some of the locations, this is not a simple thing to figure out , as meeting participants do not have visual access to co-participants at other locations. Lack of visual access must then be compensated for by, for instance, verbalizing self as a visual. The following example shows how a meeting participant named Leo is asked about his physical location (Line 2): Example 3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Ro: [( )] Ra: [Leo, (.) ] which part of the (0.5) L: well, I: am in Copenhagen approximately: (.) three feet (1.8) G: ((smiles)) M?: arHH, R?: eh he he, Ra: Well then a good morning ↑to M?: L: ha ↑thank you

world are you in. from Jan↑nick

[you] [hah]

First Leo responds that he is in Copenhagen (Line 4). When he says that he is ‘approximately: (.) three feet from Jan↑nick’, he is verbalizing a physical fact not visibly available to meeting participants at other locations. He makes a joke of it by being very precise in estimating how close he is to another local meeting participant (who has already presented himself) and it is treated as such by meeting participants at the two other locations. Geeta in Mumbai smiles silently and Rashnesh in Chennai laughs. The joke accomplishes more than just using himself as a visual by verbalizing his exact physical location. It has been argued how formulating place may also serve to formulate objects other than place, such as occupation or stage of life, and to do other work in addition to referring

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

201

to places, e.g. accounting, indicating activities, boasting, etc. (Schegloff, 1972). When reporting his proximity to Jannick, Leo may also be indicating that he and Jannick work closely together and might be teaming up in the meeting because they have already aligned the agenda between them. Furthermore, he may be ironic about the necessity for meeting via TC with local colleagues. In this respect, he treats participants at other locations as equals to Jannick, and he sets a light tone for the meeting whereby they can all join in sharing a joke before continuing with the agenda for the meeting. In spite of being two fundamentally different participation frameworks (audio+visual and audio), using self, visually or verbally, is not just making visuals available, but is also a participant strategy for setting the tone of a meeting and connecting with co-participants.

Verbalizing visuals as potential objects of the gaze of a remote co-participant

Another strategy is to verbalize, and possibly lead, the potential gaze of the interlocutor on-screen, thematizing the potential object of visual attention for the remote interlocutor. An example is from the same video meeting as in the extracts above. Note that when the team leader Geeta (G:) in Lines 5–6 says: ‘There’s Geeta. She’s looking good today’, she is talking to Vasu (V:) about herself in the third person, as if she is animating him: Example 4 1 2 3 4

G:

5

G:

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

G: ?: V:

G:

G: M?: ?: G: K?: G: M?:

18 G: 19 M?:

↑(mode)rate now, (0.9) /↑beets vocal only, (1.4) /R’s videosignal is on screen and top of his hair is seen his camera tilts so his face with glasses appears on screen /↑↑the:re’s Gee:ta:= /W passes in front of the screen =she looks so ↑good ↓to[day]. [yeah] /V smiles then gazes at W about to fi nd her seat (.) (u)= =(pretty) H (0.7) (AH) ih (he) ah [#ha ] ha [↑HE] ↓ EH / [eh heh] he [heh] /R has withdrawn gaze, perhaps gazing at video screen /↑ actually (Rami) /G rolls on her chair to the screen, stretches arm forward (?to every?)

202

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

20 G:

/↑T(h)at is Rami, /R smiles widely and looks up to meet G’s eyes grabs a device or remote in front of the screen# #pict. 3

Picture 3 A team in Mumbai is meeting with a team member in Pune, who is appearing gradually on the screen in the Mumbai meeting room 21 22 23 24 25

/.H (H)= /R and G appear to have eye contact /☺=and ↑that’s ↑somephing=☺ /G sitting in front of screen gazing at it /☺=but ↑that’s a ↑fi rst☺ /a box appears on screen in front of R’s face ☺↑isn’t ↓it, ☺ (0.3)

By verbalizing the potential object of attention for Vasu’s gaze when he appears on the screen and has visual access to the others, and especially to Deeta sitting right in front of the screen, what does Deeta accomplish? First of all, she confirms the establishment of the technical connection of the video meeting between him in Pune and them in Mumbai. Secondly, she ratifies him as a participant to the meeting, shows him that she is in his sight/participating in the meeting and shows him to be a relevant next speaker. In this way, verbalizing the potential object of his gaze works to negotiate the interaction order, establish a connection socially between him and her/the group and set an amicable tone for the meeting to follow. She could be seen to be animating his potential thoughts, and when she is using her animation of her guess at his potential observation of her, she shows herself to be able to master an advanced me-ratifying-you-by-playing-you-ratifying-me game. As a social practice, such a manoeuvre is relevant for video meeting participants who cannot automatically know who will be participating from other locations, how they look, where they sit in relation to the

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

203

camera, what mood they are in and who will speak fi rst – i.e. what will immediately meet their gaze once the technical connection is established, or who might be suddenly sitting in front of a participant, filling out the whole screen. Speaker identification and ratification as well as turn taking and negotiation of participation framework is a collaborative interactional achievement. When Deeta’s greeting to Vasu is to tell him who he is looking at, up close and almost personal, and joking about her good looks, she may not only be speeding up his process of figuring these things out, but also providing him with a preformatted response slot and a topic to open the conversation. She is doing identity work, creating an identity for herself as an amicable person with humour and for him as a generous person with social skills, and she is accelerating the pending negotiation of the participation framework. Shared visual reference is crucial to many ICT-mediated professional encounters. When the identification of the object of the gaze of a participant is not available at another location in these interactions, verbalizing the potential object of the gaze is a prevalent practice in other ICTmediated interactions. For instance, a participant in a telephone helpline interaction may verbalize what is to be seen (or not) on the computer screen he or she is looking at (Baker et al., 2005: 54), for example reading aloud messages on a computer screen or a from a piece of paper. A prevalent practice is not just to report about but also to inquire about the object of the gaze of the interlocutor, with questions like ‘are you seeing X’ (Kraan, 2005: 93), in order to determine where they are in the process. The verbalization of visuals gives the interlocutors a shared reference to where they are in the process they are to take separate roles in. Verbalizing non-visual actions and objects relevant to the interaction

Withdrawing gaze and looking away may have interactional implications. In studies of healthcare and technologies, it has been shown how medical records are used (Heath et al., 2003) and how this use shapes the interaction. For instance, a study of general practice consultations shows how doctors turning towards their computers may suspend or continue verbal interaction with the patient by either providing no explanation of turning to the computer or accompanying the shift in orientation with an explicit explanation of the upcoming computer use or with a question to the patient implying the upcoming computer use (S.B. Nielsen, 2016). Turning away from the patient is often treated as accountable. In the sequential environments of withdrawing gaze, accounting work is seen that may serve to pre-empt its having implications with respect to turn taking or topic management. However, in FTF interaction the reason for a participant looking away may be visible to the interlocutor, e.g. if the person withdrawing gaze is visibly engaged in examining an object,

204

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

looking for somebody or monitoring a scene next to the interlocutor. But in video-mediated meetings, the object of the gaze is not obvious for meeting participants at other locations, hence the need for explicit accounting work compensating for looking away from the camera. In the following is seen an example of this from telemedicine. A nurse (speaker’s initials NU) participating in the video meeting is seen on the screen (physically located in a hospital office), and a lung patient is seen located sitting by her dining room table in her home, looking at the video screen (Picture 4).

Picture 4 A lung patient (in her dining room) is meeting with a nurse (on-screen)

Example 5 101 102 fig fig 103 104 fig 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

SP:

(2.5) #det godt that’s good #Pict.5 #Pict.6 (.) #.h jeg .h I’ll #Pict.7 ka’ ↑lige ↑just prøve å se e:h# try and see e:h #Pict.8 (.) #i din journal in your medical report #Pict.9 (.) jeg ka’ >kigger li: her< (i) din journal# I can >ju:st glancing here< (in) your medical report #Pict.10 (0.8)

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 PT: 122 123 SP: 124 125 126 127 128

129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136

te å se om jeg skrev# noget omkring de der to see if I wrote something about those there #Pict.11 (.) #(Algomin) ((name of product)) (0.6) #Pict.12 #proteinindhold protein content #Pict.13 dengang du# back when you #Pict.14 #(blev) (.) udskrevet (were) (.) discharged #Pict.15 (.) jeg kan jo se# I can y’know see #Pict.16 proteinindholdet i blodet#, the protein content in the blood, ja, ° yes, #Pict.17 (1.2)# #Pict.18 °om jeg har skrevet noget der#° °if I have written something there° #Pict.19 det tror jeg ikk’ jeg ↑har# that I don’t think I ↑have #Pict.20 kan jeg li: fi nd’ ud af can I just fi nd out /(HH) *HHm# / clears throat loudly (3.0) #Pict.21 #men du(h) .h, but you(h) .h, (0.8) #Pict.22 du# ha:r hvad hedder de::t you ha:ve what is it ca::lled #Pict.23 >jeg ska’ li: prøv’ å se < >I’ll just try and see < ↑ jouw#, ° ↑ yes/oh yes (.) #Pict.24 ↑ dengang ↑ back then du blev# udskrevet you were discharged #Pict.25 da ↑manglede du ↑faktisk then you in ↑fact were ↑missing en lille smu:le a little bi:t

205

206

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

137 138

(.) protein# protein #Pict.26

Picture 5

Picture 6

Picture 7

Picture 8

Picture 9

Picture 10

Picture 11

Picture 12

Picture 13

Picture 14

Picture 15

Picture 16

Picture 17

Picture 18

Picture 19

Picture 20

Picture 21

Picture 22

Picture 23

Picture 24

Picture 25

Picture 26

When the nurse (NU) in Lines 104 says ‘.h I’ll ↑just try and look/see e:h (.) in your medical report’, she reports an immediately future action and projects a wait for the patient before she will be able to convey what

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

207

she saw in the report. She is accounting for why she is looking away, that she will need to look at the medical report before being able to continue to the next step in the conversation with the patient. Note how looking away could be seen as disengagement. It is interesting to see that when the nurse, after accounting verbally, turns her head to her right and looks away from the patient (Line 103), she slightly turns her torso to her right (Picture 7, Line 104), turns her torso further to her right and looks closer at something to her right (Picture 8, Line 104) and looks up a bit as if aiming at seeing through the bottom field of her glasses (Picture 9, Line 104). By torqueing her body (Schegloff, 1998), the nurse shows her patient that she may be currently involved in more than one activity but that she is also ranking these activities by displaying an orientation to the ‘lesser-ness’ of her interactional engagement (Schegloff, 1998: 551) in what is going on on her computer screen to her right, and the higher priority and stable commitment (Schegloff, 1998: 551) given to her interactional engagement with the patient on the conference screen in front of her. There is no uptake from the patient (PT) and then nurse says ‘I can >ju:st glancing here< (in) your medical report’ (Line 106); she recycles a verbal report of her physical actions, still looking at something to her right, which the patient does not have visual access to. The recycled report serves as an account for not looking into the camera and for not immediately progressing the conversation. She fi xes her gaze until she begins to expand the account with reference to the patient herself (Lines 110) and her own actions at that time (Lines 112). This is responded to by the patient (Line 113). Immediately after that uptake, the nurse returns her attention to her right (Lines 114–115), still verbally reporting to be looking for her written entry, until she marks to have found it (Line 122) and then returns her gaze to the patient on the screen in front of her (Lines 125). Through her embodied and verbal display of retrieving and interpreting visual information, the nurse makes ‘relevant that intelligibility is achieved’ (Heinemann, 2016: 3–4). By ‘engaging in extended and extensive periods of (assisted) looking in order to achieve intelligibility, participants temporarily suspend the progression of interaction’ (Heinemann, 2016: 24) using a change-of-state token (like her the nurse’s ‘ ↑jouw,’) to conclude these sequences of intense scrutiny and return to the interactionin-progress (Heinemann, 2016: 24). If the nurse were not verbalizing her actions, there probably would have been a very long pause (Lines 103– 112). That might not have been a problem for the patient, but by verbalizing her physical actions of seeking and fi nding some entry which entails withdrawal of gaze and doing so in recycled versions, she is also doing identity work. The nurse accomplishes the work of creating transparency with respect to the process by means of online commentary (Heritage & Stivers, 1999). She makes apparent why she is taking so long, that the data

208

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

are not immediately retrievable, that she needs to go into her files and that she is taking care of the patient by being thorough. In this way, she shapes her identity as a professional caretaker. In telephone meetings where no visual access is available, a similar strategy is to verbalize local (physical or social) actions for an interlocutor with no visual access, when these actions serve to prevent the interaction from progressing. The extract below is from a telephone meeting between colleagues in Mumbai and Copenhagen. It shows that when meeting participants do not share visual access to the same screens and documents, they may report their invisible actions when they silently work to retrieve objects relevant to the discussion. In Copenhagen, Thomas (CO_Th in the transcript) puts the conference call on standby saying ‘[↑just a second↓’ (Line 46) (Picture 27). Example 6

45 (0.8) 46 Co _ Th: Yeah ↓eehh: //↑just a second↓# /Mu _ Pr points at something on the screen /Mu _ Sr leans over to see what she points at fig #pict. 27

Picture 27 Colleagues in Mumbai searching for something on a computer screen while participating in a telephone conference with colleagues in Copenhagen 47

/I’m trying to fi nd some documents it is↑ /Mu _ Sr points at the screen, speaks softly, unintelligibly 48 Mu _ Pr: /( ) /pointing to the screen

Thomas immediately follows up with a report that serves as an account. He claims to be looking for something (Line 47 ‘I’m trying to fi nd some documents it is↑’) and he makes it apparent that he will be inattentive while searching. Thomas accounts for not progressing the meeting since the meeting participants in Mumbai do not have visual access to the reasons for his hesitation, which is due to local actions at the Copenhagen location.

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

209

His account also serves to postpone a relevant next action. Verbal formulations of bodily conduct and perhaps even inquiries about the interlocutor’s bodily conduct are necessary in order to make those ‘visible’ for the speaker (Stokoe, 2009: 1887), and turns-at-talk designed to make bodily conduct visible for the interlocutor are necessary and preferable to implicit references (Stokoe, 2009: 1902). This phenomenon is also known from FTF interaction. An example of this from the data is when a local manager says to the field workers setting up the cameras to video-record her conference call: ‘I’m just looking for the number I’m supposed to dial in on (.) I know it’s in some mail somewhere’ (not shown). The meeting participants in Mumbai (Example 6) do not treat this as a disturbance or an unwelcome delay. They are also busy locally, discussing something on the computer screen, but they do not verbalize their local actions for the remote meeting participants in Copenhagen. In fact, they are not responding to Thomas’ account for not progressing the meeting, thereby not only showing themselves not to be attentive to his talk, but also not giving Thomas evidence to have to worry about not progressing the meeting. It seems that participants at both locations are in need of a time-out, which is useful information for a meeting chair. Alternatively, interlocutors will experience a wait, and an account may still be relevant. That phenomenon has been seen in a study of computer helpline interaction mediated by telephone where a call taker and a caller are waiting for the caller to get a certain screen visual available. While they are waiting, the call taker says ‘it always takes longer while you’re sitting here waiting for it doesn’t it’, getting uptake from the caller before there is a long pause and the caller continues with ‘okay I’m just startin’ to get a screen now’ (Baker et al., 2005: 54). The caller and the call taker are waiting to progress the conversation while waiting for a visual on one location to be reported to the other location, and they treat this wait as a nuisance. But the participants are not just accounting for a pause by filling it with explanations of which actions occupy them while not immediately progressing the talk, they are also making transparent that they are in fact taking actions to progress the activity of the encounter. They are topicalizing the fact that they have to wait for the computer to process information and give off visual cues for them to act on, and they are identifying such visuals when they appear in order to signal that the talk about the visuals may proceed. Concluding Discussion

The present study shows a pattern of practices regarding visuals in ICT-mediated meetings. These all concern the visibility, or lack thereof, of interlocutors, actions or objects. Looking at somebody and being looked at as well as deciding what to look at together is an interactionally negotiated accomplishment. Interlocutors to incipient encounters use visuals or the increased visibility of visuals (e.g. of self) and they verbalize

210

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

visuals (e.g. self, actions, object of own or other’s gaze) not visually possible but relevant to the interaction. The first set of practices concerns screen visibility. Participants treat themselves as a visual object by changing bodily position in order to offer increased visual access for co-participants (Example 1). Participants may  also be claiming a specific mental state by means of creating an extra vivid on-screen visual of self for the observing gaze (e.g. when a participant shows his teeth in a donkey grin close to the camera in response to a co-participant reprimanding him). A second set of practices concerns when participants use visuals to accompany storytelling and argumentation. This routine practice seen in all kinds of FTF interactions is replicated in video meetings. Participants may not only create on-screen images matching their own talk (as when a participant shows four fi ngers to the camera and says ‘four men’, or goes to fi nd a glass to show it to the camera and thus create or retrieve visuals to accompany storytelling), but may also create on-screen images matching the talk of co-participants (as when a meeting participant plays with his glasses in front of the camera and thereby embodies the talk of the group at the other location, Example 2). The third set of practices concerns verbalizing the potential object of the gaze of an on-screen-participant (Example 4). Such practices entail the withdrawal of own gaze (Example 5) or inquiring about the gaze of an off -screen participant. These practices all compensate for the fact that eye contact is not possible in video-mediated interactions, that they are not able to use their own gaze to point the interlocutor to a specific object of attention, and that meeting participants at separate locations are not able to identify the object of the gaze of their interlocutor. In Examples 5 and 6 it was seen how withdrawing gaze and/or turning attention to some object while not progressing the talk was accounted for. The fourth set of practices concerns verbalizing self as a local visual for a co-participant with no visual access (Example 3). A routine practice from all kinds of FTF interactions is replicated in video meetings when participants are verbalizing local actions and objects for a co-participant with no visual access. Participants may be telling/reporting visuals outside the interaction (as in ‘it is sunshine outside’ or ‘the place is busy today’). They may be accounting by reference to non-visual objects (as when a participant says ‘dust on the computer’ in response to his co-participant’s complaint that he blows right into the microphone). Another routine practice from all kinds of FTF interactions is replicated in video meetings when participants are verbalizing the status of visual access to visuals. Participants are stating the status of visual access, or lack of such access, as a means to verbalize technical problems (as in ‘now your picture disappeared’, ‘you have no video on’), they may inquire about visuals (‘are you seeing the Hotmail homepage’, cf. Kraan, 2005) or they may simply refer

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

211

to invisible objects/visuals (as when a participant says ‘I can’t hear what you are saying but I think you are fetching it’). Finally, a fi fth set of practices concerns responding to visuals, a practice which is of course not confi ned to video meetings or professional practice. A routine practice from all kinds of FTF interactions is replicated in video meetings when participants are responding verbally to on-screen visuals. They may be stating objects to be visible (as in ‘you have something between your teeth’), they may assess visuals (‘groovy’, continuation of Example 4) and they may infer from visuals on-screen (‘New specs?’, continuation of Example 4), thereby showing the on-screen participant at the other location what is seen and that he/she is ‘seen’. The study points to some important implications of professionals’ adjusting or verbalizing visuals in video meetings, since it serves to: • • • •

compensate for reduced visual access; create joint focus; draw attention to something; account for something missing, e.g. delayed or lacking response.

Therefore, seen in a broader perspective, these practices serve to achieve efficiency in remote collaborative work. Compare this with how lab experiments with human interaction and robot–human interaction show that, in human–human interactions, being able to follow the interlocutor’s gaze allows for more efficient cooperative task performance (Boucher et al., 2012). Furthermore, the study has shown how important social actions may be performed by means of verbalizing the withdrawal of one’s gaze or the action of attending to non-visuals, i.e. to: • • • • •

account for a delay in response; state something as missing; state that a piece of information needs to be retrieved; state that the speaker is in the process of retrieving that information; account for not progressing the talk.

Making visuals available serves to invoke process as such in the meeting practice. It serves to create transparency and show care for the perception of remote participants at other locations. This makes sense as social practices in the material and sensorial ecologies of work practices as these are imbued with asymmetries in knowledge and shared institutional goals, whether it is professionals in a meeting with lay persons or professionals meeting each other from different locations and having different institutional roles. Practices of achieving visibility should thus not only be seen as a procedure for compensating for lack of visibility but also as contributing to shape a participation framework (Goodwin & Goodwin, 2004) from different interactional orientations in a complex mediated setting.

212

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

An important function of visuals seems to be to connect to the interlocutors. A hypothesis is that in the openings of the encounters, the function could be to establish connection and ratify interlocutors (as seen in Examples 1, 2, 3 and 4); in the phase of sorting-out-the-business-of-theinteraction, the function could be to account for non-visible actions and create transparency (as seen in Examples 5 and 6); and in the closings of the encounters, the function could be to collaborate to accomplish closings (examples not shown). With respect to the latter, compare how ‘see you’ is a ritualized way of saying goodbye. This is, however, still highly speculative. However, there is a solid tradition for studying metaphors and idioms concerning the gaze (cf. Coulter & Parsons, 1990) and verbalizing the act of looking and being looked at. Framing of actions may be done by the use of verbs of visual representation (Coulter & Parsons, 1990) like ‘look’, ‘observe’, ‘spot’ or ‘glance’, as in the ritualized ‘look something up’ or ‘take a look at’ as synonyms for checking or reviewing something. Such endeavours bring us to the much broader phenomenon of ‘looking’, ‘seeing’ (Coulter & Parsons, 1990; Gibson, 1979/1986), viewer’s maxims (Sacks, 1972) and of ‘professional vision’ (Goodwin, 1994). Since gaze is used to monitor the degree of visual access, and identify a need for the increased availability of visuals for the gaze of the interlocutor, exploring these phenomena brings us beyond the scope of studying video meetings. Studying participants providing visuals for their co-participants in an encounter brings us to the core of the interaction order – to the role of the eyes for human perception (cf. Merleau-Ponty, 1962) – as well as to the study of participant strategies aiming at achieving intersubjectivity.

References Arminen, I. (2005) Sequential order and sequence structure: The case of incommensurable studies of mobile talk. Discourse Studies 7 (6), 649–662. Arminen, I., Licoppe, C. and Spagnolli, A. (2016) Respecifying mediated interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4), 290–309. Arnfalk, P. and Kogg, B. (2003) Service transformation: Managing a shift from business travel to virtual meetings. Journal of Cleaner Production 11 (8), 859–872. Baker, C., Michael, E. and Firth, A. (2005) Calibrating for competence in calls to technical support. In C. Baker, M. Emmison and A. Firth (eds) Calling for Help: Language and Social Interaction in Telephone Helplines. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Boucher, J.-D., Pattacini, U., Lelong, A., Bailly, G., Elisei, F., Fagel, S., Dominey, P.D. and Ventre-Dominey, J. (2012) I reach faster when I see you look: Gaze effects in human– human and human–robot face-to-face cooperation. Frontiers in Neurorobotics 6 (3), 1–11. Broth, M. and Mondada, L. (2013) Walking away: The embodied achievement of activity closings in mobile interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 47 (1), 41–58. Coulter, J. and Parsons, E.D. (1990) The praxiology of perception: Visual orientations and practical action. Inquiry 33 (3), 251–272.

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

213

Denstadli, J.M., Julsrud, T.E. and Hjorthol, R.J. (2011) Videoconferencing as a mode of communication: A comparative study of the use of videoconferencing and faceto-face meetings. Journal of Business and Technical Communication 26 (1), 65–91. Drew, P. and Heritage, J. (eds) (1992) Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Enfield, N.J. (2005) The body as a cognitive artefact in kinship representations: Hand gesture diagrams by speakers of Lao. Current Anthropology 46 (1), 51–81. Gibson, J.J. (1979/1986) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. Goff man, E. (1955) On face-work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction, Psychiatry XVIII, 213–231. Goff man, E. (1956) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Goff man, E. (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliff s, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Goodwin, C. (1979) The interactive construction of a sentence in natural conversation. In G. Psathas (ed.) Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 97–121). New York: Irvington. Goodwin, C. (1981) Conversational Organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press. Goodwin, C. (1984) Notes on story structure and the organization of participation. In J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 225–246). London: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional vision. American Anthropologist 93 (3), 606–633. Goodwin, C. (2000) Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32 (10), 1489–1522. Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M.H. (2004) Participation. In A. Duranti (ed.) A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 222–243). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Goodwin, M.H. (1980) Processes of mutual monitoring implicated in the production of description sequences. Sociological Inquiry 50, 303–317. Goodwin, M.H. and Goodwin, C. (1986) Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word. Semiotica 62 (1–2), 51–76. Hassert, L.O., Nielsen, M.F. and Nielsen, A.M.R. (2016) Møder via video, web eller telefon. In M.F. Nielsen, B.L. Due, T.L.. Toft, G. Gravengaard and A.M. Nielsen (eds) Kommunikation i internationale virksomheder [Communication in International Companies]. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur. Heath, C. and Luff, P. (1992) Media space and communicative asymmetries: Preliminary observations of video-mediated interaction. Human–Computer Interaction 7 (3), 315–346. Heath, C., Luff, P. and Sellen, A. (1997) Reconfiguring media space: Supporting collaborative work. In K.E. Finn, A.J. Sellen and S.B. Wilbur (eds) Video-mediated Communication (pp. 323–347). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Heath, C., Luff, P. and Sanchez Svensson, M. (2003) Technology and medical practice. Sociology of Health & Illness 25 (3). Heinemann, T. (2016) From ‘looking’ to ‘seeing’: Indexing delayed intelligibility of an object with the Danish change-of-state token n↑å↓ . Journal of Pragmatics 104, 108– 132. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2016.04.003 Heritage, J. and Stivers, T. (1999) Online commentary in acute medical visits: A method of shaping patient expectation. Social Science & Medicine 49, 1501–1517. Hjulstad, J. (2016) Practices of organizing built space in videoconference-mediated interactions. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4), 325–341. Kendon, A. (1967) Some functions of gaze-direction in social interaction. Acta Psychologica 26, 22–63.

214

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Kidwell, M. (2005) Gaze as social control: How very young children differentiate ‘the look’ from a ‘mere look’ by their adult caregivers. Research on Language and Social Interaction 38 (4), 417–449. Kraan, W. (2005) The metaphoric use of space in expert-lay interaction about computing systems. In C. Baker, M. Emmison and A. Firth (eds) Calling for Help: Language and Social Interaction in Telephone Helplines (pp. 91–105). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Lu, J.-L. and Peeta, S. (2009) Analysis of the factors that influence the relationship between business air travel and videoconferencing. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 43 (8), 709–721. Luff, P., Patel, M., Kuzuoka, H. and Heath, C. (2014) Assembling collaboration: Informing the design of interaction spaces. Research on Language and Social Interaction 47 (3), 317–329. Luff, P., Heath, C., Yamashita, N., Kuzuoka, H. and Jirotka, M. (2016) Embedded reference: Translocating gestures in video-mediated interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4), 342–361. Markman, K.M. (2007) Moving in and out of virtual meetings: The intersection of microanalysis, technology, and organizational communication. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Communication Association, Providence, RI, April. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mondada, L. (2007) Multimodal resources for turn-taking: Pointing and the emergence of possible next speakers. Discourse Studies 9 (2), 194–225. Mondada, L. (2009a) Emergent focused interactions in public space: A systematic analysis of the multimodal achievement of a common interactional space. Journal of Pragmatics 41 (10), 1977–1997. Mondada, L. (2009b) Video recording practices and the reflexive constitution of the interactional order: Some systematic uses of the split-screen technique. Human Studies 32 (1), 67–99. Mondada, L. (2010) Eröff nung und Vor-Eröff nung in Technisch Vermittelter Interaktion: Videokonferenzen. In L. Mondada and R. Schmitt (eds) Situationseröff nungen: Zur Multimodalen Herstellung Fokussierter Interaktion. Tübingen: Narr. Mortensen, K. (2008) Selecting next-speaker in the second language classroom: How to fi nd a willing next-speaker in planned activities. Journal of Applied Linguistics 5 (1), 55–79. Mortensen, K. and Hazel, S. (2014) Moving into interaction: Embodied practices for initiating interactions at a help desk counter. Journal of Pragmatics 62, 46–67. Nevile, M. (2015) The embodied turn in research on language and social interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48 (2), 121–151. Nielsen, M.F. (2012) Using artifacts in brainstorming sessions to secure participation and decouple sequentiality. Discourse Studies 14 (1), 64–86. Nielsen, M.F. (2013a) Stepping stones in opening and closing department meetings. Journal of Business Communication 50 (1), 34–67. Nielsen, M.F. (2013b) Interactional challenges in ICT mediated business meeting interaction. Technologies and Techniques. International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (IIEMCA) Conference, 5–8 August 2013, University of Waterloo, Ontario. Nielsen, M.F. (2016) Uformel og formel interaktion. In M.F. Nielsen, B.L. Due, T.L.W. Toft, G. Gravengaard and A.M. Nielsen (eds) Kommunikation i internationale virksomheder [Communication in International Companies]. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur. Nielsen, M.F., et al. (2013) An intercultural study of off shore project interaction between India and DK. Oral presentation, University of Copenhagen.

Adjusting or Verbalizing Visuals in ICT-mediated Professional Encounters

215

Nielsen, M.F. (2014a) Not meeting your eyes. Paper presented at Skype and the Gaze of Family and Friendship Conference, 3–4 June, Microsoft Research Cambridge. Nielsen, M.F. (2014b) Video mediated interaction in offshore project interaction between UK and DK. Oral presentation, University of Copenhagen. Nielsen, M.F. (2015) Verbalizing the gaze in video mediated business meetings – looking and being looked at. ALAPP 15, 6–8 November 2015, Milan. Nielsen, S.B. (2016) How doctors manage consulting computer records while interacting with patients. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1), 58–74. Raudaskoski, P. (1999) The use of communicative resources in language technology environments. A conversation analytic approach to semiosis at computer media. PhD dissertation, Åbo Akademis tryckeri. See http://www.hum.aau.dk/~pirkko/pirkkosphd.pdf. Rossano, F. (2013) Gaze in conversation. In J. Sidnell and T. Stivers (eds) The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (1st edn). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Sacks, H. (1972) On the analyzability of stories by children. In J.J. Gumperz and D. Hymes (eds) Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (pp. 325–345). New York: Rinehart & Winston. Schegloff , E.A. (1972) Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In D. Sudnow (ed.) Studies in Social Interaction (pp. 75–119). New York: Free Press. Schegloff, E.A. (1998) Body torque. Social Research 65 (3), 535–596. Stivers, T. and Rossano, F. (2010) Mobilizing response. Research on Language and Social Interaction 43, 3–31. Stokoe, E. (2009) ‘For the benefit of the tape’: Formulating embodied conduct in designedly uni-modal recorded police–suspect interrogations. Journal of Pragmatics 41, 1887–1904. Streeck, J. (1996) How to do things with things: Objets trouvés and symbolization. Human Studies 19, 365–384. Streeck, J. (2011) The changing meanings of things: Found objects and inscriptions in social interaction. In J. Streeck, C. Goodwin and C. LeBaron (eds) Embodied Interaction: Language and Body in the Material World (pp. 67–78). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Streeck, J. and Kallmeyer, W. (2001) Interaction by inscription. Journal of Pragmatics 33 (4), 465–490. Suchman, L. (1994) Do categories have politics? The language/action perspective reconsidered. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 2, 177–190. Svenning, L.L. and Ruchinskas, J.E. (1984) Organizational teleconferencing. In R.E. Rice (ed.) The New Media (pp. 217–248). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

9 Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction Spencer Hazel and Kristian Mortensen

Introduction

Engaging students as active contributors in classroom interaction is important for a number of reasons. It promotes classroom participation, with teachers being able to draw on student input as a source for topic generation and development. It encourages students to remain focused on the activities, as they may be called upon to provide an account of the subject matter being discussed. It affords the teacher access to a student’s operational mastery of the target of instruction and, as a consequence, presents opportunities to better guide students towards proficiency where this is deemed necessary. This is embedded within the assumption that student verbal contribution is essential for learning, for example mastery in a target language. However, not every contribution is treated as appropriate, or in line with the situated moral order of the classroom (Hazel & Mortensen, 2017; Mortensen & Hazel, 2017). Indeed, teachers may seek to constrain the types of contribution offered at any given stage of the classroom activities and pedagogical focus. Policing students’ talk not only involves a restraining of students’ contributions, but it also entails the eliciting of contributions that are deemed relevant to the business-at-hand (Seedhouse, 2004). In this chapter, we look at second language (L2) classroom interaction and in particular how inscribed objects are used by teachers as tools for eliciting particular contributions from students. More specifically, we look at how participants orient to what we here call designedly incomplete objects as providing a framework for designing upcoming actions. For instance, in cases such as gap-fi ll tasks where in some printed matter a section of text is left intentionally empty, the graphic structure of the layout provides a framework around which the interactionally accomplished activity is organized. This is done by indexing a specific part of 216

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

217

the inscribed object as relevant for the activity at hand, most typically through bodily visual displays that act as deictic gestures (Goodwin, 2003). Such artifacts, included in hand-outs or as text in a textbook or as emergent graphic structures on a whiteboard, provide participants with incomplete objects of shared attention. The study adds to a growing body of interaction research that investigates the ways in which material artifacts are embedded within courses of interaction (Nevile et al., 2014) and the ways in which objects are worked up as components of turn-design (e.g. Day & Wagner, 2014; Keisanen & Rauniomaa, 2012; Mondada, 2007). More specifically, it adds to current work on paper documents, notepads and whiteboards as not just material artifacts, but as sites for inscription (Day & Mortensen, forthcoming; see also papers in Mondada & Svinhufvud, 2016). In doing so, we build on previous research on objects in social interaction (e.g. Nevile et al., 2014; Streeck, 1996; Streeck & Kallmeyer, 2001), a body of work which has demonstrated how objects are constituted by and constitutive of interaction. Nevile et al. (2014) describe objects: […], as either practical accomplishments, emerging as the outcome of processes of interaction (e.g. in craft, cooking, surgery), or as situated resources, somehow involved in and even enabling social interaction for whatever it is participants are doing. (Nevile et al., 2014: 44)

In our study, we focus on objects that are drawn on as situated resources, here mobilized to organize contributions by other co-participants in the interaction. We are, however, interested in a particular design feature of this category of objects, which can be either preformatted in classroom materials, or in structures produced as practical accomplishment in situ, an outcome of the processes of pedagogically focused activities. As such, we deal both with ‘bounded objects’ (Star & Griesemer, 1989) – namely objects that can be transported from one event to another (for example, graphic objects included in classroom textbook materials) – but also those objects that are produced locally to address a unfolding pedagogical task, and which have no life beyond the event for which they were occasioned. We describe how specific graphic structures – produced on different types of layout (books, papers and whiteboards) – are indexed through participants’ verbal and bodily conduct as relevant sites of orientation, which in turn serve as elicitation devices for determining a next relevant action. We note how the objects in question are mobilized in such a way as to elicit particular contributions from the students, whose input results in the ‘completion’ of the structures. This chapter demonstrates how participants display an orientation to the ‘noticeable absence’ or incompleteness of such graphic objects, and argues that members’ orientation to this absence projects an understanding of a desired trajectory of the emergent pedagogical activity.

218

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

‘Incompleteness’ and ‘absence’ as pedagogical tools for elicitation

Within an ethnomethodologically inspired conversation analytic (hereafter CA) framework, ‘noticeable absence’ refers to participants’ displayed orientation to something being missing, and is in particular linked to the notion of conditional relevance. In his 1968 paper on conversational openings, Schegloff poses the analytic question: ‘How can we, in a sociologically meaningful and rigorous way, talk about the “absence” of an item; numerous things are not present at any point in a conversation, yet only some have a relevance that would allow them to be seen as “absent”.’1 That is, absence refers to what participants treat as absent – for instance the lack of an answer following a question – thereby orienting to the social norm of the prior action and what it makes conditionally relevant to perform in the next sequential slot. In this chapter, we will refer to absence in the same way; that is, we aim to show how participants show an orientation to some inscribed object as incomplete, i.e. there is something absent in it, typically by orienting to writing or suggesting the annotation of graphic material that completes some linguistic or graphic structure.

Turn construction and turn allocation

In interaction, turns-at-talk deliver social action, and the ways in which linguistic, prosodic and embodied resources are composed and combined have a long research tradition within interaction studies. In their seminal paper, Sacks et al. (1974) propose a ‘machinery’ through which participants in ordinary conversation take turns in an orderly, systematic way. They describe two interactional components: fi rst, turn constructional units (TCUs), which are primarily linguistic but also prosodic, pragmatic and embodied units whose completion provides a position in which transition to another speaker may be relevant; and secondly, a turn-allocation component that describes how transition to another speaker is organized – the current speaker selects the next-speaker or a next-speaker self-selects. Once a speaker launches a turn-at-talk, or more specifically initiates a proper TCU (Sacks et al., 1974; see also Schegloff, 1996), its beginning provides clues as to what type of (linguistic) TCU is emerging and thus an idea of what it might take to bring it to a possible completion – a position in which turn-transition may be relevant. In this way, once a TCU has been initiated, co-participants are able to project roughly what it takes to bring it to a possible completion. This projection provides co-participants with a rich resource for preparing and designing a possible next-turn. For instance, a next-speaker may start on the next-beat following the possible completion of the ongoing TCU or slightly before (Jefferson, 1984), engage in a collaborative completion (Lerner, 2004) by providing the final (possible) linguistic elements, typically word or words, and so on and so forth.

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

219

Of particular relevance to the aim of this chapter is the observation that speakers may indicate that abandoning a TCU prior to a possible completion is not a position in which turn-allocation is relevant, for instance during word searches (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1986). In a similar fashion, a speaker may abandon the incrementally emergent TCU prior to its possible completion and mark that turn-allocation is relevant. Koshik (2002) has referred to this as ‘designedly incomplete utterances’, and our use of ‘designedly incomplete objects’ builds on her study. Koshik describes a practice through which teachers enlist students’ participation in the completion of an initiated language form by formatting it in such a way that it is recognizable as incomplete and requiring the student to continue where the teacher left off. The suspension of the language form – such as a sentence or noun phrase – mid-production, coupled with particular formatting features such as flat or raised intonation and a stretching of the fi nal vocalization, allows this suspension to be recognizable as a particular social action, one that makes a complementary action on the part of the student conditionally relevant. Here, what is treated as a relevant next action is that the student identifies what it takes to complete the suspended language form, and produces this as an increment to the teacher turn. For example, in the following extract from a beginner-level Danish class, the teacher (LEC) is eliciting the Danish word i går ‘yesterday’ within a plenum discussion of past tense verb forms. Extract 1: CALPIU-DK-M1-e5-C-00-CI: teacher: LEC; students: Stu1 and Stu2 25 →

LEC:

26 → 27

STU2: LEC:

28

STU2:

29 30

LEC: STU1:

31

STU2:

32 33 34

LEC:

38

STU1:

39 40

LEC:

if it wasn’t i morgen if it was probably iyeah i::, tomorrow ye::, i gør? ((mispronounces vowel)) i går? yesterday? i går? yesterday? mn? i går. yesterday. i går? yesterday? so: so:: (1.3) er can you: (0.4) i was bicycling yesterday. (2.3) ((lines missing where new student arrives and takes her seat)) i: i går? (.) cyklede jeg:; hjem? yesterday?(.) I cycled home? er yeah here we also have inversion. we- ((clears throat)) i går cyklede jeg hjem yesterday I cycled home

In Line 25, we see how the teacher produces a turn that elicits from the students a contrastive Danish term for i morgen ‘tomorrow’, targeting the term for yesterday, or in Danish i går. In the elicitation format that he uses here, he introduces i morgen, framed here as the term they were not looking for, then subsequently introduces the fi rst part of the contrastive term

220

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

(which would be i går), albeit suspended mid-structure. The suspension is further formatted with ‘continuing’ and flat intonation, and is stretched, as has been described by Koshik as formatting components identified elsewhere in her data in these sequential positions. In Line 26, Student 2 produces a try-marked candidate in the form of i gør, approximating the correct term, albeit using the vowel sound for ‘ø’ rather than ‘å’. The teacher responds by acknowledging the answer, while performing an embedded correction in Line 27 (Jefferson, 1987) of the pronunciation of the term. We see the student repeating the word with correct pronunciation in the next position. Having secured the correct term, the teacher moves to have the students incorporate it into a full sentence, with the use of a verb in its past tense form. The example illustrates how participants orient to a linguistic structure not being complete at the point of what is being treated as a transition-relevant place (TRP), and that in the slot immediately following the suspension of the utterance it is for the co-participant, here the student, to take up the baton and bring the formulation to completion. It must be stressed, however, that it is not the structure on its own that invites an additional increment on the part of the student. Even the most cursory look at instances of natural talk-in-interaction shows how utterances are often not brought to full grammatical completion, in the traditional sense of constituting fully formed linguistic structures (see, for example, Chevalier, 2008; Drake, 2015). Yet when this occurs, there appears to be no onus on co-participants to complete the structure on behalf of the speaker. Rather, in these classroom data, it is how co-participants format the turn-fi nal item that constitutes the place of suspension and subsequently treat the act of completion as a relevant next action that evidences a particular elicitation-response turn organization. Of particular interest to us in this chapter is the graphic incompleteness of the structure as indexed by participants’ verbal and bodily displays of orientation through what Mondada (2014) has referred to as a complex multimodal gestalt. In producing action formats such as these, both parties treat the space beyond where the utterance is discontinued not simply as empty, but as constituting some form of absence that requires resolution. Embedded within a larger pedagogical activity involving teacher- and student-participants, the sequences are teacher initiated and appear to follow similar principles to the known-information question or display question formats found in classroom discourse (Banbrook & Skehan, 1990; Mehan, 1979) where we see teachers typically asking questions to which they already know the answer. With the teacher producing the first component of the linguistic structure, participants orient to the absence of relevant structural materials, and the utterance is treated as incomplete, or rather as to be completed by the student(s). Consequently, this affords teachers one elicitation device for encouraging student participants to contribute

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

221

actively to the production of some linguistic structure, be it anything from a single word (or part of word) to a full sentence. Our current study builds on observations of these elicitation devices in other types of action sequences where we see a similar orientation to how some structure is brought to completion during pedagogical activities. Here, however, our interest is in how other types of classroom materials, namely graphic structures, are treated as being incomplete and in need of additional input from students to bring them to their full realization. In investigating interaction within L2 classroom settings, a number of objects appeared to be produced within similar sequential environments, as devices that encouraged students to contribute materials in order to complete the structure (Mortensen & Hazel, 2011). Although similar incomplete objects in other pedagogical settings can include such inscriptions as graphs and other pictorial materials that require completion, the L2 classroom setting of the current study foregrounds an orientation to the completion of target language associated structures such as syntactical units or noun phrases. We turn to these below. Data and Method

The data for the study are pooled from a number of data sets of videorecorded adult L2 classroom interaction in Luxembourg and Denmark, with English and Danish both featured as target languages and a variety of first languages (L1s) among the participants. The subset of Danish L2 classroom data includes recordings from four proficiency levels, ranging from beginner to advanced classes, and included three teachers. The Luxembourg subset concerns beginner classes in English. For both data sets, successive lessons were recorded over a longer period of time. The data included in the current chapter are taken from the recordings of a beginner module 1 (equivalent to the Breakthrough (A1) level of The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, Council of Europe (2001)). The recordings were produced using three stationary cameras, in order to cover as large an area as possible in the classroom. A collection of illustrative extracts was transcribed in CLAN, 2 a tool which allows for close integration between transcript and digital media fi les. This in turn enables researchers to remain sensitive to the sequential organization of the unfolding talk as well as the embodied features that co-constitute the interaction (MacWhinney & Wagner, 2010). Transcripts of the vocal conduct have been produced using transcription conventions modified from those common in CA research (Sacks et al., 1974) and attributed to Gail Jefferson (e.g. 2004). Where visual features judged relevant to the activities are included in the analysis, supplementary video-stills are provided. As such, readers will be in some, albeit limited, position to reference the visual features described, and to judge the strength of the claims made.

222

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Analyses Designedly incomplete objects

Koshik (2002) shows how written sentences are read aloud by teachers, but that during this activity a sentence, phrase or word is suspended in a non TCU-completion position with ‘continuing’ intonation as a designedly incomplete turn-at-talk, which is treated as a prompt for the student to self-correct a mistake in the written sentence. As such, it is not the written text itself that functions as an elicitation device, but rather the way in which what is missing from the written sentence is made publicly salient in and through the formatting of the turn-at-talk. Elsewhere, Chazal (2015) describes how inscriptions on pedagogical artifacts such as chalkboards and PowerPoint presentations are mobilized as resources through which to manage students’ second turn responses in language classrooms. In her data from L2 French classrooms, she demonstrates how self-corrections are elicited from students, where teachers suspend the writing up of a student’s response on the chalkboard or PowerPoint presentation, and orient to the missing component through embodied displays such as deictic gestures. In the same way, we will show that it is not only the graphic layout or physical placement of some visible text or graphic structures that marks something as ‘incomplete’. However, through participants’ public orientations to vacant space itself in a particular visuospatial relation to the structure, they index this space as constituting an absence, and consequently treat the graphic structure as requiring further material to bring it to its full realization. The objects in question are manifold, can be prefabricated or produced as emergent structures, and can be found contained in and on such regular classroom materials as textbooks, hand-outs and the classroom black- or whiteboards. In some instantiations, students appear to identify from the outset what the projected next actions are from the layout of the materials, while in others this is done through how a teacher constitutes the incompleteness through various embodied resources and drawing on vocal, gestural and postural resources, as well as material resources at hand. We will discuss this with the help of a number of extracts from our L2 classroom data. In what follows, a variety of inscribed objects are brought to bear on the classroom business-at-hand, and students demonstrate an orientation to these as elicitation devices relating to the completion of some element of the publicly available graphic structure. Identifying tasks in the materials

In the fi rst fragment from the Luxembourg data set, we see how the teacher projects a new activity by distributing a hand-out to each of the students (Lines 16–17), which has the header ‘TALKING ABOUT

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

223

HOLIDAYS’ (Figure 9.1). At this point, the students are filing their papers and thereby closing down the prior activity. Once they receive the handouts, we see the students orienting to them as relevant for the upcoming activity as they arrange them within their visual fields. Extract 2 15 TEA: that’s enough. 16 /(1.6) //#(3.1) /TEA passes handout to AND with right hand /TEA passes handout to CAM and SAB with both hands /AND holds handout in front of him and looks at it #pict. 2

Picture 2A 17 CAM: /thank ↑you /CAM and SAB receive the handout 18 ///(10.0) /(1.0) /CAM places the handout on the desk, and rearranges her papers /SAB holds the handout in lf until she has rearranged her textbook /AND continues to hold handout in front of him /SAB places the handout on the desk in reading position 19 TEA: okay/↑holida:ys:. /SAB positions pen in writing hold at the handout it’s a very good subject. 20 21 /(2.2)//(2.2)/(1.0) /TEA monitors the three students as they prepare their papers /AND folds textbook away, places handout on desk in writing position /CAM places handout on desk in writing position /AND taps pen and places it in writing hold at the handout 22 TEA: °yeah° 23 and the instruction it says, (0.2) 24 /a- a friend has holiday. /CAM places pen in writing hold at the handout 25 (1.4) 26 TEA: he has just (0.3) returned from his holiday. 27 (2.7) 28 TEA: and you ask him some questions. 29 (0.5)

Already during the teacher’s repositioning of his chair, Sabine rearranges her surrounding objects – textbook, hand-out and pen, so that she ends up with the hand-out in front of her with the pen in a ready-to-write position (see Line 18). A moment later, the teacher marks the beginning of a new activity with a boundary marker, ‘okay’, and verbally announces the upcoming pedagogical activity with ‘holidays’ (Line 19) and an

224

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

assessment of the topic, ‘it’s a very good subject’ (Line 20). Following this, Camilla readjusts her position on the chair, puts the papers she was sorting through aside and moves the pen from her left to her right writing hand (Line 21). To her left in turn completion position, André closes the textbook, puts it aside and grabs a pen with his right hand. All three students end up with the hand-outs placed flat on the table in front of them, all gazing at the hand-out and with pens in their writing hands (Picture 2B), either close to or touching the document; that is, they orient to writing as relevant to the upcoming activity, as the teacher is announcing the topic of the upcoming activity. If we look at what is actually printed on the hand-out we see the title of the task written in capital letters at the top of the page, and two lines of instructions. Although the instructions provide the students with a clue about the emerging activity, the hand-out could be used in many other ways and therefore requires that the teacher make explicit what the task is. Below the instruction is a set of word combinations on the left side of the paper, and an empty line to the right of each, with a question mark at the end of the line (as represented in Figure 1). The line which is marked on the far left with ‘1’ provides an example – on the left it says ‘where | go’ and on the right ‘where did you go?’. The text thereby provides an example for how the two items fit together and provides a framework for the students’ upcoming task – to turn the key words on the left into full ‘questions’ on the lines to the right. This might be further indicated by the handwritten font on the right side of the paper suggesting that students should write something here and, consequently, on the ‘empty’ lines below. Note that the vertical line between ‘where’ and ‘go’ on the left might suggest that these two elements are not syntactically arranged but relevant components to be included in the pedagogical task. Indeed, the task is made explicit by the teacher as he reads aloud the first sentence of the instruction (Line 24) and reformulates the second sentence (Line 28), but only at the end of the extract, and therefore only after the students have ended up in a configuration in which they all orient to the paper in front of them with pens at the ready. It may thus be argued that the graphic layout of the hand-out – and, indeed, the very distribution of it – is immediately recognizable as indexing a certain kind of pedagogical task: a task that consists of the students producing inscriptions or completing graphics on what is marked as

Figure 1 Schematic representation of hand-out task

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

225

incomplete, and therefore to-be-fi lled-out in the area of the horizontal lines on the right side of the document. The printed matter could be said to constitute a kind of puzzle, the different components of which – the word sets, the underline, the question mark, the different fonts and the two instruction lines – provide cues for what the students are projected to do with the artifact. We see in this case that their analysis of the printed matter leads the students each to orient to fi lling in the space between the lines as being the appropriate next action before the task is both indexed and explained by the teacher. Furthermore, the task initiation is oriented to as contingent on the classroom interactional organization. It is as the teacher displays a readying of himself to start the activity that all three students take up writing positions. Textbook gapfill tasks

Classroom interactional organization is similarly at stake in the next extract, this time with another pre-produced artifact: a classroom textbook. Hand-outs such as the one featured in the previous extract are often produced in-house by the language school or by the teachers themselves, and are often designed for the particular composition of the classroom, i.e. the adjudged needs of the specific classroom students, and the activities in which the artifact may possibly be used by the participants. The language teaching textbook, on the other hand, is commonly produced by publishers unconnected with the teaching institution by (supposedly) drawing on more general ideas and theories on pedagogy and (language) learning. Here, teachers are given some structure to the pedagogical procedures, but are also constrained by the included materials, and must activate the different sections of the textbook as class-internal tasks. One type of task, the gap-fill or fill-in-the-blanks category of task design, leaves sections of text blank, and task engagement involves students analyzing the surrounding text with a view to adding appropriate linguistic material to the empty space to render the text complete. In the beginning of the next extract, the teacher projects and initiates a new activity (Line 1). Extract 3

Picture 3A

1 TEA: °okay° (.) good,

226

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

2 3 TEA:

4

5

6 TEA:

7 8 TEA: 9 TEA:

/(11.0) /TEA rises, takes the textbook in his left hand and holds his right hand in a horizontal position /remember. /(1.0) be very careful /TEA holds up textbook page, facing front at an incline towards him /SAB and CAM gaze towards TEA /have a look at /question cee here. /SAB gazes at textbook, moves it to the left. Moves pen towards top of the page /TEA points to ‘c’(pict. 3A) /(4.5) /TEA scratches his nose, holds book towards ss, retracts to earlier position /CAM gazes at her textbook, moves book and writes on the top of the page °kay° (0.7) eh (0.2) /do:? (0.5) /does, (0.3) and /don’t./ /TEA points to ‘do’; see #pict. 3A /AND moves pen to the top of the page /TEA points to ‘does’, looks up at ss /TEA points to ‘don’t’ /TEA looks to SAB /(1.0) /TEA raises and lowers the book °kay° the first one Sabine is a /#. /TEA points to ‘c’ #pict. 3B

Picture 3B

10 (0.6) 11 TEA: #what’s the answer. #pict. 3C

Picture 3C

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

(0.2) SAB: iyes. (0.8) SAB: don’t you like sush[i, CAM: [no:. (2.7) TEA: it’s a question. (1.8) AND: do (.) you like (0.2) # sushi. #pict. 3D

Picture 3D

21 (.) 22 TEA: /# do you [like sushi,] /TEA makes gestural beats #pict. 3E 23 SAB: [°do you like su]shi,° 24 (0.4)

Picture 3E

25 26 27 28 29

SAB: °mmm° (2.3) TEA: (an[-] SAB: [no i don’t↘ TEA: #the answer (.) negative↘ (.) /no i: /TEA makes gestural beats #pict. 3F

227

228

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Picture 3F

30 CAM: don’#[t. 31 TEA: [don’t #pict. 3G

Picture 3G

During the pause in Line 2, the teacher puts down his pen on the table in front of him after having signed the students’ attendance lists, takes hold of the textbook, stands up straight and holds the textbook in front of his torso with the task-relevant page facing towards the students. During these stages, the teacher remains mobile, taking recurrent steps back and forth (Line 2), and rocking side to side (Lines 3–5, 7–9). During this, his right hand is lifted into a horizontal position, which appears to be the preparation phase of some kind of hand gesture (Kendon, 2004; Streeck, 2009: 196ff.). At this point, the students are sorting their papers from the previous activity, clearly oriented to the closing of the prior activity. As Sabine puts her attendance document in her folder, the teacher says ‘remember’ (Line 3), which here works as an attention-getting device, a summons that attracts the gaze of Sabine and Camilla. He then points at the relevant section at the

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

229

top of the page while prefacing the upcoming activity with a ‘be very careful’ (Line 3). Sabine turns the gaze to the textbook on the table in front of her, moves the book slightly to the left so that the relevant page is in front of her, and moves the pen to the top of the page. Only then does the teacher locate the activity in the textbook with a softly produced ‘have a look at question c’ (Line 3). He then pauses and scratches his nose. The pause is taken by the students as getting ready for the upcoming activity and we see how Camilla slides the textbook in front of her, moves her pen in a readyto-write position and makes an annotation at the top of the page. The teacher then highlights the pedagogical focus (the use of do, does and don’t) (Picture 3A). As he does so, André briefly gazes towards the teacher’s textbook and moves his own pen to the top of the page on the textbook in front of him. At this stage, all three students are now sitting with their pens in a ready-to-write position and the open textbook in front of them, thereby displaying an orientation to writing as relevant to the emerging pedagogical activity. However, the teacher does not say that the activity is about making sentences with the highlighted words; that is, he relies on the students being able to recognize the graphic layout of the activity as a gap-fill exercise. During the 1-second pause in Line 7, TEA gazes at Sabine and raises and lowers the book slightly, thereby re-presenting the relevant page to her, with his index fi nger in a precision grip marking the relevant section of the activity in question. He builds on this with ‘the first one Sabine is a question’ (Line 9), thereby selecting Sabine as next-speaker, while keeping his fi nger on the fi rst line. After a pause, he produces a question that works as an elicitation for Sabine – to produce an answer to what the teacher has identified as ‘the first question’. Sabine takes this as filling in the gap for the first sentence, and her answer correctly suggests one of the graphically highlighted words as fitting the demarcated gap in the text and producing a grammatically correct sentence. However, she immediately receives a negative evaluation from Camilla in Line 16. In classroom interaction, it is common to fi nd some evaluative TEA response at this position. However, here he withholds any immediate feedback, but after a lengthy pause he provides a prompt (‘it’s a question’, Line 18), thereby building on Camilla’s negative evaluation that the question formulated by Sabine was not the one he was after. After another pause, André selfselects and stresses the word ‘do’ (Line 20) and brings the sentence to completion. In a transition-relevance place, the teacher releases the grip of the pointing gesture (Picture 3E) and repeats André’s answer while providing gestural beats that correspond to the syntactic construction of the sentence. Note that Sabine repeats André’s answer in overlap with the teacher, but after the teacher has produced the linguistic element in focus, do. In this way, the class works up the proper way of completing the task – a way that, as we have seen, extends the boundary of what is linguistically correct. Indeed, although several answers might be deemed as

230

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

linguistically correct, including Sabine’s answer in Line 15, here it is the task progression in and around the graphic structures including the highlighted focus elements that work as resources for what is treated as a proper answer. Next, the teacher points to the subsequent sentence in the textbook and gazes at Camilla, thus selecting her as next-speaker. His verbal turn is constructed through making the link to the previous sentence (‘the answer’), a clue as to the linguistic format (‘negative’) and reading aloud the beginning of the sentence as a designedly incomplete utterance. Here, Camilla provides a next turn by inserting the relevant ‘don’t’ in the blank position, displaying an understanding of herself being the next tobe-selected student to respond to the next teacher prompt, following a round robin organization (see Mortensen & Hazel, 2011). Again, as the teacher confirms the answer, he releases the gesture and makes a series of beat gestures to match each syntactic component of the turn. In this way, pointing to a specific part of the page works as an elicitation device but leaves it to the students to work out a relevant way of responding to the elicitation. That is, the teacher relies on the graphic layout of the page and the sentences with clearly marked blanks for the students to provide pedagogically relevant turns. Extract 3, continued 32 33 34 35 36

(2.7) TEA: °okay° and andré a second question, (0.3) TEA: /what food, /TEA beating gesture with palm up --> #(1.8) #pict. 3H

Picture 3H 37 38

AND: does you like; /(1.0) /TEA retracts gesture and moves hand to hip, negative face mimic

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

231

AND: °no,° (0.9) AND: hhh[h SAB: [Hh TEA: >DOES< you; SAB: °hu huuu° (0.3) SAB: what food [do you like?] AND: [(what food) ] AND: do you like; TEA: what food (0.3) (.) TEA: okay, (0.2) TEA: good.

The announcement of the ‘second question’ is done in a similar way to that in Line 28. The initial part of the written sentence ‘what food you like?’ is read aloud as a designedly incomplete utterance, ‘what food’ (Line 35) with a continuing intonation that leaves the selected speaker André to complete the sentence after ‘food’. The vocal production of the designedly incomplete utterance is given an additional formatting component here, with the absent material made ‘visible’ through the teacher’s extended arm held in a clearly suspended gesture, see Picture 3H (Cibulka, 2016) – a position that is only released upon completion of the second pair part by André . This format not only relies on students being able to relate text and talk, but also on the two prior written sentences providing a framework for how to respond to the teacher’s elicitations. In sum, we observe how the orientation to incompleteness is also witnessable in the teacher’s visual conduct. Whereas he is prone to be physically quite mobile during the opening stage of the activity and during the elicitations, he suspends this movement as part of each elicitation, that is, in a sequential position in which a second pair part of a student is relevant and expectable. In this way, what is graphically marked as incomplete and to-be-fi lled-out in the textbook is enacted by the teacher through the suspended movement of his torso, gestures taking on a holding position and deictic hand gestures to the ‘blanks’ on the page, and by reading aloud the parts of the written sentences that lead up to the suspended constructions and which mark them as designedly incomplete linguistic structures. Once he receives a satisfactory response from a student, this suspended hold is released, and we see him revert to more dynamic bodily movement as he transitions to the next step in the task. Emergent structures

The designedly incomplete objects used in the first two analyses concern pre-manufactured artifacts that have been brought into the class by the teacher, and which form some of the many graphic and material

232

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

objects used by teachers as pedagogical resources through which to build classroom activities. In the following two sections, we turn to designedly incomplete objects produced in situ – here two different structures produced on a whiteboard (Pitsch, 2007). At the start of the next sequence, we observe how the students each have in front of them a copy of a printed hand-out, one which contains a number of pictures set out in a grid (Picture 4A). Each document is aligned in front of the student in a similar orientation, albeit with Camilla holding hers in her hands (in a position that projects her viewing of it), André who has positioned his hands across the bottom of the page, with his upper body alignment in line with the document, while Sabine’s is lying on her desk in front of her. At this stage, it has not as yet been made clear what the function is of the hand-out, but the students do already project in their postural orientations that it will be a relevant artifact for an upcoming stage in the classroom activities. Extract 4

Picture 4E

1 TEA: ‘kay remember /it’s a student, /TEA begins writing ‘a student to’ 2 /(2.5) /TEA fi nishes writing 3 TEA: from the /ve:rb, (.) #↑to:, /TEA turns towards ss #pict. 4A

Picture 4A

4

#(4.8) #pict. 4B

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

Picture 4C

5 TEA: yeah- (.) /Andre (.) to, /TEA inviting gesture 6 (1.0) 7 CAM: °stjudy;° 8 (0.2) 9 CAM: °°non°° 10 /(1.2) /(0.8) /TEA turns to ss and leans towards Camilla /TEA cups right hand to right ear 11 TEA: °Camilla (.) I didn’t hear,° 12 (0.2) 13 CAM: to student; 14 //(1.1) /TEA turns to whiteboard /TEA starts writing ‘stud’ 15 CAM: °to #student;° #pict. 4C

Picture 4D

16 TEA: 17 18 AND: 19 20 TEA:

to:, (1.4) study; (0.2) #study::; #pict. 4D

233

234

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Picture 4E

21 (0.2) 22 CAM: aich: 23 TEA: °okay,°

With the students displaying attentional orientation to the hand-out, the teacher turns to the whiteboard, picks up a marker pen, and as he starts writing ‘a student to’ on the left side of the board, he prompts the students to ‘remember’ that it is ‘a student’ (Line 1), with ‘a student’ produced in a markedly slower velocity than the preceding imperative prompt (Mortensen, 2013). We note also that he places increased stress on the indefi nite article ‘a’ and that following the subsequent noun ‘student’ he produces a pause. At this point it could be projected that this is not the start of a full sentence (‘a student walks into a bar’), but that he is to introduce some contrastive form, along the lines of a formulation such as ‘remember it is a student, but an assistant’ or ‘remember it is a student, and many students’ (compare Lerner, 1991). This is further reinforced by the visual gap on the board that he marks out between ‘a student’ and ‘to’, which could be a preposition (to the bar), an indefi nite marker (to order a drink) or even an adverb (he pulled the door to). Whereas its use as preposition within the inscription on the board would be possible, inviting a student, for example, to consider what could fit in the gap between ‘a student’ and ‘to’ (‘a student opted to continue her studies elsewhere’, ‘a student sought to overturn his low grades’), this would not, however, align with the accompanying contrastive formulation produced by the teacher. Once written on the board, the teacher torques his body, rotating his upper torso towards the students while keeping his lower body oriented towards the board. Drawing on Schegloff ’s (1998) observations regarding this twisted body configuration, we may surmise that this configuration indicates that the board is being displayed as the primary orientation, with addressing the students being the secondary orientation, acting to coordinate a link between them and what is inscribed on the whiteboard. At this point, he also produces a verbal indication of what the compound

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

235

construction projects: ‘from the ve:rb, (.) to:,’ (Line 3), with ‘verb’ produced with slight stress, elongated and with rising intonation. He then verbalizes the written inscription ‘to’, elongated and with flat intonation. As he does so, he turns towards the students, and brings his left hand to immediately below where the word has been written (Picture 4B), upon which he moves it to the space on the board immediately to the right of the word (Picture 4C), the space where the infi nitive form of a verb would normally be written. At the same time as suspending the progression of the phrase (which would arguably be ‘from the verb to study’) he produces a full-hand deictic gesture to the empty space, and the absence of the infi nitive form on the board (Pictures 4B and 4C). At this point, all three of the students have now focused their gaze on the board, and André has also physically disengaged himself away from the document in front, leaning back in his chair while attending to the board work (not shown in transcript). In Koshik’s (2002) research, the slot following the suspension of the turn, marked by a lengthening of the fi nal word(s), is oriented to as requiring material from the co-participant to complete the phrase. We appear to see something similar here. With the students’ lack of uptake here, the teacher pursues a response, thereby treating the absence of a second pair part from the students as accountable. Keeping his hand positioned in the same area and the body torqued, he produces a slight lean in the direction of the students and, when Sabine produces a facial gesture appearing to suggest her inability to answer, the teacher produces a smile, and reproduces the prompt. This time, however, it is accompanied by an otherselecting of André as next-speaker, formatted with what can be seen as gestural encouragement (Line 5). 3 The teacher then starts rotating his upper torso back to the board, this time bringing the marker pen back into play by moving it towards the empty space indicated previously. Camilla then offers a candidate completion to the verb form, the sotto voce formatted ‘stjudy’ (Line 7). The teacher suspends the trajectory of the writing hand being brought to the board, and rotates again towards Camilla, eliciting a second try from her by cupping his hand behind his ear (Mortensen, 2016) and a verbal repair initiation that marks the trouble as related to hearing the prior turn. Here she opts for ‘to student’ (Line 13). In response, the teacher moves the pen towards the board and starts writing ‘study’ as he re-produces the flat elongated form ‘to:’ (compare Seedhouse, 1997). Finally, André produces the correct form (Line 18), and this is accepted by the teacher in an evaluative third turn position. At this point, we see that the three students all redirect their gaze away from the board and back to the paper hand-out in front of them. In some artifacts and graphic structures used in the examples above, there are ready-made inscribed elements that, incrementally, can be brought to bear on the emergent practice of the classroom interaction (e.g. in the textbook example and the hand-out example). And as we saw in

236

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

this example, there are other graphic structures that are created in situ as part of the unfolding task. Diagrammatic objects

Although up to now all extracts have involved textual artifacts, these are not the only types of visual structures used by teachers in our data. They can also include such diagrammatic objects as grids, family trees, and other types of visually organized representation, each of which can then act as a blueprint for an emerging graphic to be co-constructed between the participants. In these instances, an incomplete graphic generated by the teacher may act to prompt students to contribute to its development and completion. The following sequence concerns a vocabulary exercise designed as an activity to review lexical items relating to the category ‘family members’. In it, the teacher develops the graphic depicting a family tree on the whiteboard, and students take turns adding the lexical items to the emerging graphic (see also Mortensen & Hazel, 2011). Extract 5: Lux-pl090610 ((The TEACHER draws a stick-figure on the whiteboard, writes TEA’s name under it (#pict. 5A), turns to the students))

Picture 5A 01 02 03 04 05 06

TEA: it’s /me /TEA points to stick-figure /(5.1) /TEA turns to board and adds another 2 stick-people, female and male to the graphic TEA: sabine who is (.) /that /TEA points to the male of the stick figures SAB: /°him° /TEA raises hand and points to andré, then returns it to desk /(5.3) /TEA raises fi nger again, indicating andré and mouthing "him" TEA: that’s /me, (0.5) who’s /#that; /TEA points to lower figure /TEA points to upper figure #pict. 5B

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

237

Picture 5B 07 08

/(5.4) /SAB points again to AND, then whispers something to CAM, CAM whispers back TEA: let’s start again (1.4) (°voila°)

At the start of the sequence, the teacher draws a stick-figure in the center of the whiteboard, and writes his name beneath it. He then turns to the students and tells them ‘it’s me’ (Line 01), making a brief pointing gesture to the pictograph. He subsequently returns to the board and draws a three-part zigzagging line above the figure, adding another stick-figure at its end, this time female, with the figure positioned directly above the first. Another horizontal line of an equivalent length is then added off in the opposite direction, where a male stick-figure is drawn. At this point, the teacher points to the second male figure, and prompts Sabine to identify who it is (Line 03). Sabine responds with a sotto voce ‘him’, producing a deictic gesture in the direction of André. The teacher looks back towards the board, and then returns his gaze to Sabine, who repeats the gesture towards André, and can be seen mouthing ‘him’ (Line 05). It seems apparent from this that Sabine has not yet been able to identify the graphic as constituting the beginnings of a family tree. Rather, she has read the pictograph as a representation of the class, perhaps depicting its layout. The teacher has a second attempt, this time linking the initial figure representing himself to the target figure, ‘that’s me, who’s that;’ (Line 06) and picking out the figures again with two deictic hand gestures. Sabine in turn repeats her deictic gesture to André. Unsuccessful, the teacher announces that they will restart the task, and he redraws the graph lower down on the board, this time adding the phrase ‘My family’ towards the top. Extract 5, continued: Lux-pl090610 09 10 TEA: 11 12 TEA:

(11.8) /remember this is my family uh? /TEA writes ‘my family’ at top of whiteboard (4.0) /okay (0.4) so (.) that’s me? /TEA points to lower stick-figure

238

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

13 14 SAB: 15 16 TEA: 17

(0.5) ye↑s: (0.3) /who’s this /TEA points to top stick-figure /#(1.3) /TEA writes ‘Paul’ next to bottom figure #pict. 5C

Picture 5C

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

SAB:

boy (1.3) SAB: heh TEA: no SAB: huhhuh (3.5) CAM: father /#(5.9) /TEA draws a line and writes ‘father’ near the top figure #pict. 5D

Picture 5D

By providing the additional indexical token ‘My family’ as a header to the graphic (Line 10), the teacher provides the pictograph with a framing device that indexes the reading of the graph. With Sabine still unable to grasp its significance, Camilla self-selects in Line 24, providing a candidate response to the teacher’s question (‘father’). This shows that she at least has been able to identify the graphic structure as part of a family tree. Having secured this response, the teacher proceeds to anchor this family tree to his own family, eliciting from the students the relationship of the figure to him, albeit as part of a third person possessive structure.

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

239

Extract 5, continued: Lux-pl090610 26 27 28 29

TEA:

30

TEA:

CAM:

uhm, (0.2) what’s missing, (8.7) ↑you:r; (0.3) ↑your father; /(0.9) /(0.5) /(2.3) /(1.6) /(2.4) /TEA rotates to board with extended index fi nger /points to the name ‘Paul’ under the initial stick-figure /torques body towards students /rotates back to board, bringing marker into writing position at the start of underline /writes ‘Paul’ along the line pau/l:, /removes pen from board, slowly torques body to students #pict. 5E

Picture 5E 31 32 33 34

CAM: AND:

(1.5) [paul’s] [paul’s] /(2.5) /TEA rotates to board and adds apostrophe and ‘s’ to the end of Paul

With Camilla having displayed recognition of the type of diagram that he has started to produce, the teacher proceeds to elaborate on the initial structure with additional building blocks, each constituted of a package of either a male or a female stick-figure, a straight vertical or horizontal line connecting the figure to the larger diagrammatic body, and a descriptor detailing a familial relationship written next to the stick-figure. However, we note how these task instructions are collaboratively produced between the teacher and students with the use of a number of designedly incomplete objects (Lines 29–34). In Line 26, the teacher provides a partial acceptance of Camilla’s suggestion ‘father’, and prompts a continuation of the answer as he specifies that there is something missing from the form: he draws a horizontal line to the right of the stick figure, writes ‘father’ at the end of it (Picture 5D), then moves his writing hand back to the line, lingers there for a beat, and says ‘uhm’. He then torques his body and gaze to Camilla and asks ‘what’s missing’, thereby making it explicit that the line represents the absence of some relevant linguistic material. Camilla then expands on her initial bid with one possessive pronoun, which she subsequently fits to the descriptor: ‘↑you:r; (0.3) ↑your father;’ (Line 28). The teacher withholds any verbal

240

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

response to this, but instead turns to the board, points to the name ‘Paul’ written next to the initial stick-figure, looks round to the students, and subsequently turns back to the board and writes ‘Paul’ along the line preceding ‘father’. Rather than providing the full linguistic form that would link the initial ‘Paul figure’ with the ‘father figure’, i.e. ‘Paul’s father’, the teacher suspends the writing after the name, leaving the possessive marker absent from the form. He utters the name, slightly lengthened and with flat intonation, keeps the pen in a writing grip and still directed at the relevant gap between ‘Paul’ and ‘father’, then slowly torques his body to the students. In overlap with each other, Camilla and André complete the soughtafter component by adding the possessive marker to the name (Lines 32, 33), which is in turn accepted by the teacher, as he turns back to the board and adds the missing material to complete the structure. We see how the particular target form that will feature as the linguistic focus in the upcoming task is worked up by the participants, without any explicit instruction having been formulated by the teacher. Rather, the teacher manages to elicit contributions from the students by treating structures inscribed on the whiteboard as being incomplete: fi rst the stickfigures in the diagram are treated as requiring descriptors; the familial relationship descriptor is treated as incomplete and requiring a possessive form as part of the target form; and the third person possessive structure is constructed as incomplete by leaving the possessive marker off the name. In each case, it is the students who orient to being the ones who must fi nd the appropriate materials to complete the sought-after structural properties constituting the task focus. With the task properties having now been made clear, the teacher builds on this in the next elicitation. Now he is able to point to a stickfigure that is drawn as part of the larger structure, and to simply ask ‘who is this?’ (Line 35). Extract 5, continued: Lux-pl090610 35 TEA: /yeah (0.5) okay (.) sabine who is /this? /takes step back from board /fi nger points to stick-figure on left 36 /(0.6) /TEA moves hand to the left of figure, rotates marker pen from hold grip to writing grip, pos#itions pen at board #pict. 5F

Picture 5F

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

241

37 CAM: paul’s mother; 38 /(0.7) 39 SAB: mother, 40 /(4.0) /TEA writes ‘Paul’s mother’ to the right of the stick-figure 41 TEA: okay:, andre /who is (.) this:, ((name sounds like ‘and’)) /TEA draws 2nd vertical line down from the horizontal line 42 /(2.0) /(1.0) /TEA draws male stick-figure at the end of it, /torques# to the students, revealing the stick-figure to the students #pict. 5G

Picture 5G

43 CAM: his: broth/er; /TEA rotates towards the students 44 (0.2) 45 TEA: /↑is your name /#andre; /TEA rotates fully towards the students /places hands on his hips #pict. 5H

Picture 5H

46 47 48 49

CAM: ah excusez m[oi;] AND: [yeah] AND: °hah hah hah hee° •hhhh AND: er paul’s er bro/ther; /TEA rotates back to board, brings pen to writing grip 50 TEA: o↑kay 51 /(3.7) /TEA writes ‘Paul’s brother’ under the stick-figure

By pointing to an unidentified stick-figure and asking who it is, the teacher now appears to take the family tree diagram as understood by the students, and as a diagrammatic blueprint the students should now be able to read the larger structure and its component features, as well as what

242

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

type of material is missing from each ‘branch’. The teacher moves his writing hand to the space adjacent to the female stick-figure, and holds it there in a ready-to-write position (Line 36, Picture 5F). Camilla displays that she has now understood the language game at hand, and provides the descriptor ‘Paul’s mother’, which the teacher then writes on the board. He then proceeds to add another connecting line and stick-figure, and again asks who this is, torqueing his body to the students (Picture 5G). Again, it is Camilla who provides a candidate answer, thereby bypassing the teacher’s selection of André as next-speaker.4 However, she appears to build on her preceding contribution by providing an anaphoric ‘his’ in place of the name (Line 43). The teacher proceeds to repair the intended turn allocation with what is treated as a jocular admonishment (Hazel & Mortensen, 2017; Mortensen & Hazel, 2017; Picture 5H), following which André produces the target form ‘er paul’s er brother;’ (Line 49). This is accepted by the teacher, who then adds it to the space adjacent to the focus stick-figure. In what follows, the participants continue along these lines, building the family tree until it covers most of the whiteboard (see Picture 5I). The extract shows how, by providing an initial pictorial representation of himself and his parents in a diagrammatic drawing on the whiteboard, the teacher has been able to produce a designedly incomplete object, with the students subsequently orienting to their contributions being relevant to its development. Although a single family unit could be represented by the initial three figures, an extended family structure would also include parents of parents, possible siblings, and the like. Here we note, for example, how the teacher’s initial representation is reproduced further down the board, thereby making more space available above it, which ends up being filled with representations of grandparents. The students contribute to the building of this graphic on a stepby-step basis, while organizing the order of their contributions

Picture 5I

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

243

accordingly (Mortensen & Hazel, 2011), the teacher providing the next prompt when the appropriate designation for the family member has been provided by the student and when the teacher has added the next part of the emerging family tree to the graphic. The indexical labeling of a stickfigure in its respective place within the graphic is treated as a constitutive feature of the structure, and in its absence the object remains incomplete. Of course, for this to be able to work, it is incumbent on the students that they understand how a family tree representation works and what one looks like, so that they can use this as a blueprint for the emerging graphic. When a graphic gap is not indexed as incomplete

In the fi nal extract, we would like to demonstrate how the ‘empty’ slot or slots are not always constituted as ‘absence’, i.e. as some component in the structure that implies incompleteness, and where a relevant next action would be the providing of materials to complete the structure. In this extract, one student is oriented to producing the Danish form for ‘I came to Denmark two months ago’, or in Danish ‘jeg kom til Danmark for to måneder siden’. Extract 6: CALPIU: teacher: TEA; student: Stu1 1

STU: er: jeg kom:: (0.5) um (1.3) to::: (0.9) måneder, er I came um two months, 2 (0.6) 3 TEA: siden; ago; 4 STU: siden; ago; 5 TEA: så jeg kom, so I came, 6 (1.3) 7 two months ago, for, 8 //(0.7) /TEA walks over to the board /Students switch gaze from STU to TEA 9 for, 10 (3.1) 11 øh (0.8) for, 12 /(4.3) /#TEA writes ‘for _ _ _ _ _ _ siden’ on the blackboard #pict. 6A

Picture 6A

244

13

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

for (0.2) #ago? /(.)/and then we /can, / /two students look down to their notepads /pen click /pen click /two students look down to their notepads #pict. 6B

Picture 6B

14

/(5.9) /TEA writes ‘to måneder’ on the board immediately below the dotted line 15 TEA: to (.) måneder (.) siden jeg kom for to måneder siden, two months ago I came two months ago,

The student’s apparent difficulties with the phrase display her as an early learner of Danish. The turn is produced incrementally, with each step demarcated by relatively lengthy gaps, and includes stretched components and hesitation markers. The teacher offers some assistance in completing the correct linguistic form by offering siden ‘ago’ following the pause in Line 2, with the student repeating this in next position. The teacher treats this as a slot for highlighting the structure of the linguistic form. In a så/so-prefaced formulation, he starts repeating the student’s prior turn (‘så jeg kom’, Line 5), then switches to English, where he provides a translation of the structure that the student had difficulties producing. This may act to make more explicit to the students which linguistic component his upcoming comment will address. The switch to English is also oriented to by the other students as indexing the larger group as recipients, and we see them withdraw gaze from Student 1 and their gaze follows him as he makes his way to the blackboard. Producing a pre-speech token as he picks up some chalk and raises his hand to the board (Line 11), he vocalizes the initial part of the target structure (‘for’) as he writes it on the board. He then draws a horizontal dotted line to its right and then writes ‘siden’ at the end of it. We note then that here he has left out the temporal phrase ‘two months’/’to måneder’, with the dotted underline drawn in its place, in

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

245

much the same way as we observe others use this device in what we have described as ‘designedly incomplete structures’. However, in this case there is no orientation in how he configures his body posture at the board, nor in his use of the writing utensil, nor in any suspension of movement that we observed earlier, nor in how he formats his turns (with flat intonation and lengthened vocalization), that could be indicative of him treating the structure as requiring students to complete it. Rather, he appears here to be directing the students to attend to the structural components on either side of the underline. Indeed, the students appear to confirm this as they move to write in their notes at the point the teacher fi nishes writing siden’ and translating it (Line 13). the two-word structure ‘for This, we note, is before the teacher proceeds to give a candidate for the slot in between the words, here ‘to måneder’ written immediately below the underline. Conclusion

The preceding analysis has been concerned with artifacts that are mobilized by teachers in the eliciting of contributions from students in classroom activities, here drawing on data from L2 classrooms. Two of the graphic objects were prefabricated – sections of a hand-out and a textbook – and two produced in situ as part of the classroom interaction between teacher and students – here, visual structures incrementally produced on the classroom whiteboard. We have shown how in each case the classroom participants understand and treat the structures as being incomplete. More importantly, we note how at these junctures the participants orient to these structures as requiring students to produce linguistic material to resolve this absence of some structural component. When a section of a material object – e.g. a whiteboard or a hand-out – is marked out as constituting a location where additional material could bring an adjacent partial structure to completion, students treat this as a deficiency that requires remedial work on their part, a puzzle which they are to solve. As such, the contribution adds to previous research on action formation by providing an example of how participants’ orientations to material and inscribed objects feature as central components around which participants fashion orderly sense-making practices, that is, what Goodwin (2000) has referred to as contextual configurations. Of course, there are any number of sections of the same objects that do not contain graphic material, that are void of inscriptions, graphs or visual images. Indeed, at times an entire whiteboard may remain unoccupied for large sections of a lesson, without anyone in attendance treating this as a deficiency in the object that calls for materials to be added. In cases where a partial structure can be identified in an inscription contained on a page of a book or a chalkboard (as in Extract 6), even here we note that participants do not necessarily treat it as incomplete and in need

246

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

of remedial contributions from the students. This observation led us to consider what work teachers engage in in order to constitute some vacant space adjacent to or contained within the inscribed structure as requiring additional contributions from students. The way an orientation to absence, or the incompleteness of a structure, is worked up relies on aggregates of resources – verbal, vocal, visual and material – being brought into play as embodied elicitation devices, with both teacher and student participants mutually monitoring one another and the teaching materials, be they inscriptions on the board, hand-outs, family trees, graphs, and the like, as well as the sequential organization of how and when they are being brought to bear on the interaction. Designedly incomplete objects are therefore not simply layouts where some part might be recognized ‘from the outside’ as something to be completed. Rather, participants attend to the incompleteness as projecting an upcoming activity, for instance by making the incompleteness relevant through deictic displays that make it a salient feature to attend to, preparing to write in the space and complete the incompleteness, or in other ways that index the incompleteness as relevant to a next action. As such, absence or incompleteness in the way we talk about it here is ‘embodied into being’ (Hazel & Mortensen, 2014) by the participants’ publically available displays to graphic incompleteness in relation to surrounding or accompanying text or other kinds of graphic representation. Schegloff ’s (1968) discussion of ‘noticeable absence’ describes sequential environments where members treat an item as being missing, for example a second action in an adjacency pair. Our concern has been with members producing artifacts that are purposefully designed as incomplete, with a view to eliciting some complementary material from an interlocutor. We fi nd parallels in Koshik’s (2002) observations of how teachers design utterances as incomplete in order to elicit a particular correction from a student in read-aloud activities. Chazal (2015) has also described inscriptions on pedagogical artifacts such as chalkboards and PowerPoint presentations that serve to manage students’ second turn responses. She shows how students are prompted to self-correct where teachers suspend the writing up of the response on the chalkboard or PowerPoint presentation. Our study contributes to this further by demonstrating that these designedly incomplete objects are not only produced or used by teachers to prompt particular self-corrections from students, but are also used in the design of turns that elicit other types of contribution, such as in initiating pedagogical task activities (Extracts 2 and 3), focusing on particular linguistic forms (Extract 4) or building categories of lexical items (Extract 5). By designing some artifact – whether it be an inscribed sentence, a graph or a piece of text – as incomplete, and drawing attention to the absence of material that would bring the artifact to its full completion, teachers are able to produce this as a fi rst pair part, the relevant next

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

247

action of which would be to work out what needs to go into the highlighted space to bring the artifact closer to its full form, and to contribute this as a candidate suggestion. However, as we have seen, students orient to relevant next-action even prior to the teacher’s verbal elicitation. In this way, they orient to the teacher’s noticing and indexing of the graphic absence as more than just that (Sacks, 1992: Vol II, Part II, Lecture 1), namely as information that in the context of the classroom is taken by the students as projecting a future activity or task. Notes (1) See also Schegloff (1993: 106): ‘For not every place that something may not be found is a place at which it is missing.’ (2) CLAN is a free software tool, which among other things allows researchers to produce transcripts with continual linkage between transcript and the audio or video data (http://dali.talkbank.org/clan/). (3) It is not clear why the teacher selects André at this point; there appears to be no indication that André wants to be selected. (4) Is it possible that Camilla mishears the name André as and?

References Banbrook, L. and Skehan, P. (1990) Classrooms and display questions. In C. Brumfit and R. Mitchell (eds) Research in the Language Classroom (pp. 141–152). London: Macmillan. Chazal, K.C. (2015) Pedagogical artifacts in teacher-initiated response pursuits: A conversation analytic study of interaction in the French foreign language classroom. PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Chevalier, F.H.G. (2008) Unfi nished turns in French conversations: How context matters. Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (1), 1–30. Cibulka, P. (2016) On how to do things with holds: Manual movement phases as part of interactional practices in signed conversation. Language and Linguistics 16 (4), 447–472. Council of Europe (2001) Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, D. and Mortensen, K. (in review) Inscribed objects. Special Issue of Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice. Day, D. and Wagner, J. (2014) Objects as tools for talk. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T.  Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 101–124). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Drake, V. (2015) Indexing uncertainty: The case of turn-fi nal or. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48 (3), 301–318. doi:10.1080/08351813.2015.1058606 Goodwin, C. (2000) Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1489–1522. Goodwin, C. (2003) The body in action. In J. Coupland and R. Gwyn (eds) Discourse, the Body, and Identity (pp. 19–42). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Goodwin, M.H. and Goodwin, C. (1986) Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word. Semiotica 62 (1–2), 51–75. Hazel, S. and Mortensen, K. (2014) Embodying the institution – object manipulation in developing interaction in study counselling meetings. Journal of Pragmatics 65, 10–29.

248

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Hazel, S. and Mortensen, K. (2017) The classroom moral compass: Participation, engagement and transgression in classroom interaction. Classroom Discourse 8 (3), 214–234. Jefferson, G. (1984) Notes on some orderlinesses of overlap onset. In V. D’Urso and P. Leonardi (eds) Discourse Analysis and Natural Rhetoric (pp. 11–38). Padua: Cleup Editore. Jefferson, G. (1987) On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. In G. Button and J.R.E. Lee (eds) Talk and Social Organization (pp. 86–100). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Jefferson, G. (2004) Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G.H. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation (pp. 13–31). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Keisanen, T. and Rauniomaa, M. (2012) Organization of participation and contingency in pre-beginnings of request sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (4), 323–351. Kendon, A. (2004) Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koshik, I. (2002) Designedly incomplete utterances: A pedagogical practice for eliciting knowledge displays in error correction sequences. Research on Language and Social Interaction 35 (3), 277–309. Lerner, G.H. (1991) On the syntax of sentence-in-progress. Language in Society 20, 441–458. Lerner, G. (2004) Collaborative turn sequences. In G. Lerner (ed.) Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation (pp. 225–256). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. MacWhinney, B. and Wagner, J. (2010) Transcribing, searching and data sharing: The CLAN software and the TalkBank data repository. Gesprächsforschung – OnlineZeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 11, 154–173. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning Lessons: Social Organization in the Classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mondada, L. (2007) Multimodal resources for turn-taking: Pointing and the emergence of possible next speakers. Discourse Studies 9 (2), 194–225. Mondada, L. (2014) The local constitution of multimodal resources for social interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 65, 137–156. Mondada, L. and Svinhufvud, K. (2016) Writing-in-interaction: Studying writing as a multimodal phenomenon in social interaction. Language and Dialogue 6 (1), 1–53. doi:10.1075/ld.6.1.01mon Mortensen, K. (2013) Writing aloud: Some interactional functions of the public display of emergent writing. In H. Melkas and J. Buur (eds) Proceedings of the Participatory Innovation Conference PIN-C 2013 (pp. 119–125). Lahti: Lappeenranta University of Technology. Mortensen, K. (2016) The body as a resource for other-initiation of repair: Cupping the hand behind the ear. Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1), 34–57. doi: 10.1080/08351813.2016.1126450 Mortensen, K. and Hazel, S. (2011) Initiating round robins in the L2 classroom: Preliminary observations. Novitas-Royal 5 (1), 55–70. Mortensen, K. and Hazel, S. (2017) Navigating the moral maze: Order and transgression in language classroom participation. In G. Schwab, S. Hoff mann and A. Schön (eds) Interaktion im Fremdsprachenunterricht: Beiträge aus der empirischen Forschung (pp. 113–132). Münster: LIT-Verlag. Nevile, M., Haddington, P., Heinemann, T. and Rauniomaa, M. (eds) (2014) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pitsch, K. (2007) Unterrichtskommunikation revisited. Tafelskizzen als Interaktionale Ressource. Bulletin Suisse de Linguistique Appliquée 85, 59–80.

Designedly Incomplete Objects as Elicitation Tools in Classroom Interaction

249

Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation (ed. G. Jefferson). Oxford: Blackwell. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A. and Jefferson, G. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50 (4), 696–735. Schegloff, E.A. (1968) Sequencing in conversational openings. American Anthropologist 70, 1075–1095. Schegloff, E.A. (1993) Reflections on quantification in the study of conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 26 (1), 99–128. Schegloff, E.A. (1996) Turn organization: One intersection of grammar and interaction. In E. Ochs, E.A. Schegloff and S.A. Thompson (eds) Interaction and Grammar (pp. 52–133). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E.A. (1998) Body torque. Social Research 65 (3), 535–596. Seedhouse, P. (1997) The case of the missing ‘no’: The relationship between pedagogy and interaction. Language Learning 47 (3), 547–583. Seedhouse, P. (2004) The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom: A Conversation Analysis Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell. Star, S.L. and Griesemer, J.R. (1989) Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science 19 (3), 387–420. Streeck, J. (1996) How to do things with things. Human Studies 19 (4), 365–384. Streeck, J. (2009) Gesturecraft: The Manu-facture of Meaning. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Streeck, J. and Kallmeyer, W. (2001) Interaction by inscription. Journal of Pragmatics 33 (4), 465–490.

10 Olfactory Objects: Recognizing, Describing and Assessing Smells during Professional Tasting Sessions Giolo Fele

Introduction: The Case for Professional Tasting, Olfaction  and Objects

In professional tasting, the features of an object of taste are made relevant in order to be recognized and assessed by participants. My focus is on the work that professional coffee tasters do when they have to assess the olfactory characteristics of cups of coffee. This work is part of a research program opened up by Ken Liberman (2013) on the ways in which practical objectivity is achieved in coffee tasting. My chapter deals with the ways in which professional tasting during a professional coffee tasting session is organized. The tasting session considered is a context in which expertise is exercised by experienced tasters who are working in a group. I want to analyze the specific olfactory practices that the tasters employ in order to provide an adequate description and an appropriate evaluation of the coffee at hand. I will show that smelling an object of taste in order to test the flavor and quality of a ground coffee is only one small part of a complex procedure in which seeing, smelling and even touching play a greater part. Contrary to some commonsense received notions, the activity of smelling is not a private affair with an ineffable zest, but rather a public and social business, where discursive elements mesh inextricably with the acts of smelling and the manipulations of objects, and have roots in the interactional organization of the event. During a tasting session, through the competent use and manipulation of objects and the exertion of specific practices of smelling and tasting, the qualities and characters of the coffees are rendered mutually scrutinizable, understandable, verifi able and adjustable. These 250

Olfactory Objects 251

practices, among others, contribute to the constitution of a professional perceptual field of coffee tasters, that is, an interactional organization of personal experiences aimed to achieve an adequate intersubjective and resistant, which is to say objective, account of a particular flavor. The work of professional tasters consists of the analysis, description and assessment of the characteristics and qualities of the coffee they taste. The practice of tasting for the professional tasters is more than simply putting the coffee in the mouth and then rendering a judgement. Besides being observed, moved and manipulated, objects of taste need to be identified and recognized through the active operation of all the senses, in particular through seeing and smelling. One important source of information regarding the qualities of the coffee is a very preliminary procedure, when the professional tasters smell the coffee freshly made (Clarke, 1986). The data upon which the chapter is based come from a video-recording of a professional coffee tasting session led by professional tasters in Italy. The session was tasked with recognizing, identifying and describing the constituent features of a variety of coffees. The aim of the chapter is to show the ways in which the olfactory features of a cup of coffee come to be pointed out, made salient and relevant, and analyzed, through an olfactory analysis that is collectively and publicly shared among the participants. I consider the ways in which the sensorial qualities of an object of taste are reflexively constituted in the tasting session and the ways in which the olfactory characters, qualities and features of a substance are mutually highlighted, identified, accepted, discarded and modified in the actual course of the tasting experience. This chapter is part of a research program concerned with the ways in which a judgement of taste takes the form of a professional assessment of an object of taste. Beyond the concerns of sensory science and the food industry (Lahne, 2016; Philipps, 2016; Shapin, 2016) for the formal measurement of the taste in order to achieve a real objectivity (Liberman, 2013: 222), I am interested in showing the practical ways in which professional tasters achieve a convergence and intersubjectively shared judgement on the basic attributes and defining descriptors of a certain taste object (Shapin, 2012). Olfaction has been a longstanding topic for sociological, anthropological and historical analysis (Corbin, 1986; Howes, 1987; Largey & Watson, 1972; Low, 2005). So far, studies of the senses at work have often taken an individualistic point of view. However, often the tasters do not work alone; they work collaboratively to assess the property of a substance. It is part and parcel of their professional culture that their assessment should be continuously checked with their colleagues. Professional tasters in each tasting session teach each other what to fi nd in an object, confirm with each other the appropriateness of the judgement, and share their senses and perceptions. I examine the relevance of ‘olfaction’ for professional work. Whereas other studies focus on the use of olfaction by professional people using ethnographic methods (Muniesa & TrébuchetBreitwiller, 2010), semiotics (Alač, 2017), focus groups (Cerulo, 2018) or

252

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

laboratory studies (Royet et al., 2013), I address the in vivo olfactory work of tasters exercising ‘professional smelling’ (similar to the notion of ‘professional vision’ by Goodwin, 1994 or ‘professional touching’ by Mondada, 2016a, 2018) by examining how an object of taste is analyzed by professional tasters through the sense of smell and through pointing to the intersubjective features of shared experience in the actual production of their work. In this way the chapter is also a contribution to the studies of the ways in which objects feature in specific courses of (professional) action and interaction (Hindmarsh & Heath, 2000; Nevile et al., 2014). Conceptually, the chapter invites us to abandon a conventional notion of object (as something solid, non-transparent, with borders that delimit a presence in the surrounding space). Olfactory sources and olfactory events are considered as olfactory objects as they present information to our senses (see Batty, 2014; Gottfried, 2010; Young, 2016). I take the notion of an olfactory object to be similar to that of a ‘vague object’ (Burnham & Skilleås, 2012), or of a ‘mutable object’ (Fasulo & Monzoni, 2009) in that the defi nitive, certain and stable character of the object is something to be sought for all practical purposes, instead of being the property of the object itself. Professional tasters have to fi nd in their own smelling the stability of the olfactory object and its distinct properties which are not revealed or transparent in advance. The Scene

The tasting session I have recorded involves seven tasters (including the owner of the company that organized the session), besides the researcher. The session is organized around a table on which various coffee samples (15) were placed (see Picture 1).

Picture 1 The tasting session table

The tasting session lasted an entire afternoon. It consisted of different tasting tasks accomplished in various phases. First of all, the ground coffee contained in hermetically sealed paper cups was subjected to

Olfactory Objects

253

olfactory judgement. Then the ground coffee was placed in glasses, five glasses for each type of coffee, resulting in 75 glasses of coffee on the table. Hot water of a given temperature was then poured into the glasses. After a little while, a layer of ground coffee like a crust solidified. The ground coffee crusts were then subjected to olfactory judgement (see Picture 2).

Picture 2 Professional coffee tasters doing olfactory work

The crusts were then removed from the glasses and the actual tasting phase began. The different coffees are usually brought to the mouth by means of a teaspoon. The coffee contained in the teaspoon is then aspirated (with a peculiar suction technique, similar to that also used by professional oil tasters), left in the mouth for a while, and then spat into sinks or cups. The tasters’ professional practice, of not ingesting the object of taste, spitting it (like sommeliers) is the paradigmatic example of that explorative attitude detached from the ordinary aim of drinking, namely a renunciation of the object of taste according to its natural use in ordinary contexts, as nutrition or sensual involvement (Hennion, 2004). By not ingesting the substance, the professional taster concentrates on the character of the object, not on proprioceptive sensations of sensual satisfaction. The assessment of the different properties for each coffee is then written on an evaluation form (see Picture 3).

Picture 3 The evaluation form; arrow points at the space for ‘Olfactory notes’

254 Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Only after the examinations of the coffees by each taster are completed do the tasters share their assessments. The tasters are to work alone in tasting the coffees. This is part of an ‘ideology of tasting’, where working alone is considered to be a work practice better equipped to prevent what they call reciprocal ‘bias’ (see Jackson, 2016: 210). Nonetheless, there are interactions between them during the tasting session, moments in which the tasters share their perceptions or identifications about particular features of particular coffees. In the tasting session that I analyze I focus on a couple of these situations where two ground coffees are smelled for an olfactory analysis. Odor tests are carried out at different times in the session. The episodes that I analyze are related to the very first odor test, that on ground coffee. A tasting session could be considered a ‘continuing state of incipient talk’ (Berger et  al., 2016; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973; Szymanski, 1999), given that the tasters repeatedly come back to the objects to be tasted, and the assessment of them is part of this activity. Moreover, ground coffee gets smelled many times by different tasters, and in this way tasters may collaborate to share their knowledge of the smelled object. But the organization of tasting (and smelling) is based on having personal access to the object of taste. Only when the object of taste has been experienced can the taster describe the olfactory notes. The Case

The fi rst case concerns the fi rst olfactory evaluation of two different ground coffees, both of which seem to reveal, for one of the tasters, rather special and unusual characteristics compared to what could reasonably be expected from coffees. First I examine what happens when a taster makes public his first judgement regarding the olfactory notes of two ground coffees, one after the other, and then what happens about seven minutes later in the tasting session, when a second taster smells the same two ground coffees and discusses the olfactory evaluation made by the colleague seven minutes earlier. In all the occasions I examine, only three of the tasters are involved – Paolo, Giorgio and Mario (see Picture 4).

Picture 4 The three tasters

Olfactory Objects 255

The video-recorded data have been transcribed following the conventions laid out at the beginning of the volume. For more detailed transcription of embodied action, I follow Mondada (2014). The key to this notation is as follows: Gestures and descriptions of embodied actions are delimited between two identical symbols (one symbol per participant). In the transcript below: pao gio mar

(Paolo) = * (Giorgio) = % (Mario) = §

Gestures and descriptions of embodied actions are synchronized with correspondent stretches of talk, e.g. 05 PAO: posso mette%re gas§pacio? can I write gazpacho? gio %looks at Paolo §looks at Paolo mar

and the action described continues (even across subsequent lines) until the same symbol is reached, e.g. gio >…%smells inside >%

>> ---> > ….. ---,,,,, pic

the action described begins before the excerpt’s beginning; the action described continues after the excerpt’s end; action’s preparation; action’s apex is reached and maintained; action’s retraction; the exact moment at which a screenshot has been taken is indicated with a specific sign, # (+ picture number), showing its position within turn-at-talk.

Not included in Mondada’s conventions is the following to indicate timing in actions without speech: 03

(1.2) ┌——————————————————————————————————————————————-┐ pao *#expressionless face, retreat from the cup ———————*>

where the amount of time in seconds is given within parentheses (1.2) and actions within this span of time are marked with box drawings and hyphens, e.g. ┌————┐ Due to this, a description may be placed on multiple lines, e.g. pao

>———————* *standing—————> not looking at GIO

256 Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Initial Assessments ‘Can I write gazpacho?’

In the first extract we see Paolo, Giorgio and Mario rather close together on one side of the table, but busy with individual independent tasks (see Picture 4). Each taster is focusing his attention on different (olfactory) objects. Paolo is going to grab Cup 11, Giorgio is dealing with smelling the contents of Cup 13, whereas Mario is writing in his evaluation form his olfactory notes regarding Cup 14 (he has already smelled the contents of Cup 14). Extract 1 01

(1.7) ┌---------------------------------┐ pao *writes in the evaluation sheet --> gio %shakes cup 12----------------------> 02 (2.5) (1.5) ┌——————————————————————————————┐ ┌——————————————┐ pao >……*reaches cup 11*> >*shakes cup 11*> >…*smells cap11*,,,> #pict. 5a gio >…%smells inside >%closes the lid >%shakes cup 12 ————> #pict.5b

Picture 5a 03 pao gio

Picture 5b

(1.2) ┌———————————————————————————————————————————————┐ *#expressionless face, retreat from the cup ———————-*> #pict. 6a #pict. 7a #pict. 8a %#notices - %#look at Paolo - turns toward Paolo & %#smiles% > #pict. 6b #pict. 7b #pict. 8b

Picture 6a

Picture 7a

Picture 8a

Olfactory Objects 257

Picture 6a 04 mar gio pao 05 PAO: gio mar 06 pao gio

Picture 7a

Picture 8a

(7.0) ┌—————————————————————————————————------------------------┐ .§turns to Giorgio >§talks to Giorgio ((not transcribed))—————-> …%smells cup 12————————> %turns to Mario and talks with him ————> >…*shakes …*smells *closes lid …*put back …*turns to cup 11 cup 11 cup 11 evaluation sheet posso mette%re gas§pacio? can I write gazpacho? %looks at Paolo §looks at Paolo *(0.3) %(0.9) ┌—————┐ ┌———————┐ *#laughs ————#———> #pict. 9 #pict. 10 %smiles ->

Picture 9

Picture 10

07 MAR: (è quella coi) pomodori, (that one with) tomatoes §smiling ———————————————> pao >laughs—————————————————> #pict. 11 gio >looks at Paolo, smiles——>

Picture 11

258 Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

08

l’orto[frutta, (e via dicen§do)] fruits and vegetables, (and so on) §smiling ——————————§ ,,,,, ….§smells cup 14 pao >laughs ———————————————————————> gio >smiles ———————————————————————> 09 PAO: [*sa di pomodori e di: ], it smells like tomatoes and *points to cup 11 —————————> >laughs ————————————————————————> gio >smiles ————————————————————————> 10 di peperoni *, questo qua peppers, this one >points to cup 11* gio >smiles —————————————————> > 11 >Paolo writes in the sheet-> >

I focus on Paolo’s action. Paolo is occupied with catching the appropriate olfactory notes of Cup 11. He smells the contents of Cup 11 a fi rst time (Line 2). Just after the first smelling he makes a face, which immediately catches Giorgio’s attention (Line 3, Pictures 5–8). The face is a way for Paolo to show his affective stance towards the olfactory experience he has just had (Peräkylä & Ruusuvuori, 2006). Showing a ‘perplexed face’ is a way for Paolo to embody a response to the experience: not exactly an assessment, but a bodily expression suggesting a puzzling or unexpected experience. With a face, and the way he moves his torso away from the cup, he displays his puzzling, unexpected reaction to the object just smelled, which is possibly accompanied by a very soft vocal comment (not hearable in the recording, but possibly caught by the closest colleague). The raising of Paolo’s torso away from the cup immediately catches Giorgio’s attention. Giorgio turns his gaze to Paolo and then begins to smile. In this way Giorgio shows, by his smiling, his orientation to a possible humorous, playful understanding of Paolo’s reaction (Pictures 6b–8b). With his deployed face and in catching Giorgio’s gazing, Paolo’s reaction after the smelling has begun to change the participation framework of the tasting. Where there were three different interrelated individual tasks, now a shared attention framework (Mondada, 2009) is established (Pictures 12–13).

Picture 12 Paolo smells Cup 11

Picture 13 Giorgio looks at Paolo’s ‘face’

Olfactory Objects 259

Mario begins to talk to Giorgio (not transcribed, Line 4), while Paolo smells the contents of Cup 11 a second time (Line 4). After putting Cup 11 on the table, Paolo writes on his evaluation sheet, while Mario and Giorgio return to their initial individual tasks (Picture 14).

Picture 14 Mario, Giorgio and Paolo return to their individual tasks

It is at that point, when Giorgio has just finished talking with Mario, that Paolo produces his turn (posso mettere gaspacio? ‘can I write gazpacho?’, Line 5), which is followed by open laughter. The way in which the olfactory note is characterized (gaspacio ‘gazpacho’) can be heard as an unusual analogy, that is, that of capturing a feature of one thing through like features of another, very different or unexpected, thing (on hyperbole, ‘doing non-literal, and extreme case formulations’, see Edwards, 2000; Norrick, 2004; Pomerantz, 1986). This is a method of highlighting a rather peculiar, unusual and out-of-theordinary flavor – in this case, of the ground coffee. Moreover, Paolo’s remarks that the smell of Cup 11 is similar to that of ‘gazpacho’ has properties close to the notion of ‘prospective indexical’ examined by Goodwin (1996: 383–384) and to the notion of ‘projection’ analyzed by Liberman (2013: 225–226). In the case I am examining here, Paolo’s loud remark (the turn is designed as a question) seems to be a device that anticipates some peculiar character of the olfactory object, projecting a further characterization of the strangeness of the smell. Characterizing the flavor of the coffee as ‘gazpacho’ permits them to highlight first some character of the ‘strangeness’ of the smell, foreshadowing a more detailed unpacking of (or an account for) the original assessment. That the experience of smelling something unexpected should be taken as a laughable is demonstrated by Paolo’s subsequent action. Paolo starts laughing, and his extended action shows all the semiotic characters of an intense laughter (Ford & Fox, 2010): he leans forward and back, bends his torso, turns away his face, shows lips spreading wide and produces laughing particles (Pictures 9–11). In this way, Paolo instructs the other colleagues to frame his loud remark on the olfactory note in the cup just tasted in a playful way.

260

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Paolo’s assessment Posso mettere gaspacio? ‘Can I write gazpacho?’ and his bodily exhibition has several consequences for the organization of the tasting. First of all, both Mario and Giorgio orient their gaze towards Paolo (Picture 15).

Picture 15 Mario and Giorgio look at Paolo

With Paolo’s remark, the participation framework appears to have been completely restructured, from three different interrelated individual tasks to a joint task focusing on Paolo’s loud remark, accompanied by laughing. The focus of attention is now jointly addressed to the (rather peculiar) olfactory properties of one cup (Cup 11). This shift of the focus of attention is mutually accomplished. Secondly, the response obtained by Paolo’s humorous remark and his laughing is not a co-laughing but a smiling (see Picture 16). Smiling can be considered a milder form of laughter in response to laughter (Glenn, 2003: 67; Haakana, 2010). Smiling allows the participants to orient towards the laughable, but refrains from taking the same stance. This has an interesting epistemic signifi cance, in the sense that both Giorgio and Mario do not have the same (recent) access to the object of taste as Paolo has. Smiling conveys at the same time an orientation to a humorous, playful mode of a previous assessment of an object of taste, without sharing the same evaluation in terms of the description of the smelling. Smiling as a response to laughter permits affi liation while at the same time avoiding taking a position (as when endorsing the description provided). The participants, when smiling in response to laughter, display their different positions regarding their access to the object of taste on the occasion of the other participants’ fresh access. By smiling, while showing affi liation, participants may convey insufficient knowledge that impedes sharing the same emotional stance producing the laughter.

Olfactory Objects

261

Picture 16 Mario and Giorgio smile at Paolo’s laughing

Paolo’s loud remark also engenders a verbal response from Mario. Mario’s response is oriented to the inventive flavor characterization made by Paolo. Mario’s response is formatted in terms of unpacking (Jefferson, 1985) or explaining the reasons for this rather unusual smell, where the ‘gazpacho’ odor/flavor is connected to particular odor components (è quella coi pomodori, l’ortofrutta ‘that one with tomatoes, fruits and vegetables’, Lines 7–8). 07 MAR: (è quella coi) pomodori, (that one with) tomatoes 08 l’orto[frutta, (e via dicendo)] fruits and vegetables, (and so on) 09 PAO: [ sa di pomodori e di: ], it smells like tomatoes and 10 di peperoni, questo qua peppers, this one

In this way, Mario can show his understanding of the kind of odor assessment given by Paolo. The apparent unusual and unexpected flavor is traced back to a possible origin, turning an apparent puzzle in the detection of the odor into an expected and usual flavor, given those components. Giving a rationale for a ‘strange’ detected odor is a method for the participants to share understanding regarding the task that they are doing and, perhaps more importantly, a way to get his part of the job done. The assessment of the odor character detected by one of the tasters was completed and integrated with the comment given by another taster. That the assessment is in some sense ‘shared’ is made visible not only with the adoption of the same participatory framework by the three tasters (smiling together to a humorous remark), but also through verbal means, where one of the recipients of the initial assessment gives an explanation for the practical puzzle posed by the initial remark. It is a case of a normalizing device for an extraordinary perception. Mario’s response is given not after independent access to the olfactory object, but to an appeal to the normal and usual way some coffees can smell under certain circumstances (those coffees having tomatoes and fruit and vegetable components in them could smell that way). Mario is not claiming to have had access to the olfactory

262

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

object Paolo has assessed, but is only explaining the olfactory exhibited strangeness through an invoked general rule. What Mario does is not a second assessment (he has not sensed the coffee as Paolo has) but an account of how Paolo’s surprise at the smell could in some way be explained. Let us now see the way in which Paolo’s characterization of the smell of Cup 11 continues to be elaborated. Paolo’s remark that the ground coffee sa di pomodori e di peperoni ‘smells like tomatoes and peppers’ (Lines 9–10) provides a more technical way of describing coffee flavor. Exaggerating the way in which the odor has been perceived highlights the ‘strange’ character of the odor, while foreshadowing at the same time the need for a technical depiction and explanation of this ‘strangeness’. We have something that is not an ‘assessment’, but some other interactional object entirely – an object that sets something up for an expert, i.e. professional, inquiry. In addition to his extensive depiction of the smell of the olfactory object, Paolo produces a deictic (questo qua ‘this one’, Line 10), pointing manifestly to the cup just assessed with his extended arm and the pen (see Picture 17).

Picture 17 Paolo’s gesture pointing to Cup 11

The deictic term questo qua ‘this one’ together with the pointing gesture invites the other participants to identify the cup Paolo is referring to (Goodwin, 1986; Mondada, 2016b; Monzoni & Laury, 2015). Thus, in using the deictic term ‘this’ while bodily showing the object to the other closest participants, Paolo creates an interactional space where other tasters are invited to participate. Initial assessments by the tasters contribute, together with bodily movements and pointing, to create a shared participation framework, a joint appreciation space in which personal sensorial evaluations are brought to the fore. Initial assessments have at the same time a retrospective and prospective value: on the one hand, they refer to what has been experienced and are evaluations of the olfactory properties of the object; on the other hand, they are indexical pointers, highlighting only a generic

Olfactory Objects

263

definitional issue that projects a next and more elaborated depiction of the sensory (olfactory) experience. The way in which this defi nitional trajectory is designed relies on an array of complex interactional matters, well beyond a private sensorial interaction between a single taster and the object to be assessed. ‘It smells like ragout’

The second episode of initial assessment of the olfactory property of the ground coffee, less than half a minute later, concerns Paolo smelling a next cup (Cup 12). Paolo has just fi nished telling a story to Giorgio related to a tasting session he has had in the past. There the smell of a cup of coffee was described by a highly respected taster as Campbell’s tomato soup. Paolo ends the telling of the story with an exclamation (the telling of the story is not reported in the extract). The end of the story marks the return for both Paolo (the teller) and Giorgio (the recipient of the story) to their activities in the session, a situation of absence of talk in a shared spatialconfigurational space (Hoey, 2015; Mondada, 2013). Whereas Giorgio puts Cup 14 back on the table and grabs Cup 15, Paolo begins to smell the ground coffee in Cup 12 (Lines 27–30). When we approach what happens at the beginning of the sequence, the tasting session is displaying the usual organization, where each taster is oriented to work independently from the other, addressing different cups with different tasks (Picture 18).

Picture 18 Paolo smells Cup 12 while Giorgio and Mario work independently

Extract 2

27

* (0.9) * * (1.0) * ┌— — — — — — — — — — — — — ┐ ┌——————————————┐ pao …>*smells cup 12*,,, ..*rotates cup 12*,,> gio …>%smells cup 14 ———————————————————>

264

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

*# (0.5) * *(0.3)% (0.4)* ┌——————————————┐ ┌—————————————-┐ pao …*smells cup 12*,,, ..*rotates cup 12*,, gio >——————————————————————% *(0.5)% (0.5)* * (0.6) * ┌——————————————┐ ┌——————————————┐ pao …*smells cup 12*,,, ..*rotates cup 12*,, gio %closes lid, put cup 14 back on the table--> (0.4)* ┌——————————————┐ pao …smells cup 12*,,, gio >%———————————— > PAO: *anche se %questo mi sa da ragù* though this (cup) smells like ragout for me *…rotates cup 12*,,, gio >——————% *(0.4) * *(1.0) ┌———————————┐ ┌———————┐ pao *smells cup 12* >*laughs-> gio . . . reaching cup 15 GIO: non %è che hai fame? are you hungry by any chance? %looks at pao— > pao >*——————————————————————> (0.7) $(0.1) ┌-------------┐ ┌------┐ pao >*--------------------- > $smells cup 12 gio >%------------% (1.0) (0.8) ┌-------------┐ ┌------------┐ pao >*---------------------------> >$---------------------------> gio %smiles >&gaze away back to cup----> (0.6) & &$(0.2) ┌-----------┐ ┌------┐ pao >*--------------------> >$lid on cup 12 Gio >&---------& &smells cup 15-> (0.9) & (0.4) ┌---------------┐ ┌-------┐ pao >*-------------------------> >$-------------------------$ gio >&-------------& (0.7) (1.0) ┌--------------┐ ┌-----------------------┐ pao >*--------,,, *smiles----------------> > >$cup 12 on table $,,,writes evaluation--> > gio >&smells cup 15---------> >

Olfactory Objects

265

Just after the ending of the story telling, Paolo gets set to smell Cup 12. He does it repeatedly (four times) (Lines 27–30). Precisely at the end of the fourth smelling, Paolo erupts again with a noticing of the odor property of the ground coffee he is assessing: anche se questo mi sa da ragù ‘though this (cup) smells like ragout for me’ (Line 31). The onset of Paolo’s turn is designed with a connection to the story just told. Paolo is saying that, even if a cup of coffee having odorous features similar to a Campbell’s tomato soup could be heard of as weird, the ground coffee he is smelling now does have the olfactory notes of a ragout. That weird character of the smell makes the experience particularly noticeable, i.e. a visibly, hearable and intensified practice (Kääntä, 2014). Here again, as in the first extract, the loud noticing by Paolo is accompanied by laughter, suggesting that not only is it to be heard by the others, but also to be interpreted in a particular, ironic way. Even if comparing the smell of a coffee to the smell of a ragout is something of an overstatement of its more realistic olfactory characteristics, at the same time with this exaggerated noticing Paolo is highlighting that that coffee has something of it. Paolo’s noticing is constructed in such a way that it indexes his particular subjective experience (questo mi sa da ragù ‘this (cup) smells like ragout for me’, Line 31), not as referring to the qualities of the olfactory object (like in the fictitious ‘it smells ragout’) (see Edwards & Potter, 2017; Wiggins & Potter, 2003). The way in which Paolo’s noticing is made relativizes his evaluation of the smelling experience: it is produced as a matter of personal opinion (mi ‘for me’, Line 31) rather than revealing something proper of the smelled object, something that is there to be appreciated by everybody. Here we see again how the loud noticing ‘mobilizes a response’ (Stivers & Rossano, 2010) and restructures the participation framework: ‘Like a question, a noticing makes relevant a response – typically agreeing or disagreeing – to the noticed claim’ (Szymanski, 1999: 5). Giorgio is kept away from his task. He orients towards Paolo and offers a response to his noticing: non è che hai fame? ‘are you hungry by any chance?’ (Line 33 and see Picture 19).

Picture 19 Giorgio looks at Paolo

266

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

In Giorgio’s response to Paolo’s noticing, we see in which ways someone who does not have access to the assessed referent can account for the ‘strangeness’ of the same referent. Giorgio’s response is not addressed to the character of the smelled object, and does not agree or disagree with the noticed claim. Giorgio’s response does not challenge the description of the smelled object offer by Paolo. Giorgio does not claim any alternative personal access to the smelled object. Giorgio’s response is addressed to the fact that Paolo’s noticing was based on personal feeling. In this way, the apparently weird olfactory note is explained by Giorgio’s response with reference to the subjective state of the taster, not to the character of the object. Giorgio refrains from advancing any depiction of the olfactory qualities of the objects but instead points to the taster’s personal experience. When a category is used in order to specify the olfactory qualities of an object, it is up to the other professional to tell what is right and what is wrong regarding the chosen category, what there is to be agreed upon, what there is left to be further specified and what could be considered exhausted and completed. Any description or assessment exhibits personal experience. When a ‘weird’ category is used, the right to counter (or modify or specify) this description is based on an independent access to  the sensed object. One way to account for the strangeness of the experience (or to something unexpected) is to refer to the subjective state of the taster. After the verbal exchange (the completion of the pair composed by noticing and response), the interaction is brought again to the format of individual tasks and is no longer a focused verbal exchange. Both tasters disengage progressively (Szymanski, 1999) from a state of talk and mutual engagement to their individual and independent tasks. Paolo, while still laughing, goes back to the task of smelling Cup 12 (Line 34); Giorgio, while smiling to Paolo’s laughing, turns his gaze away from Paolo, and turns to the task of smelling Cup 15 (Lines 34–36). Paolo downgrades his laughing to a smile and starts to write on his evaluation sheet (Line 38). Together with expert ways of seeing and perceiving, making distinctions and recognizing characteristics, the professional tasters master a full array of conceptual categories in order to give names to their experiences. Professional ways of perceiving and professional modes of description rely on an interactional architecture in which either perceptions and descriptions are mutually elaborated, socially shared and jointly achieved, even with a diff erential access to the sensed object. Unusual characterizations of an olfactory object can be the occasion for a peculiar collective sharing of personal experience. Playing with the balance between subjective states and objective characterization of the qualities, tasters can highlight the unusual aspects of the object. Using irony, playful attitudes and an intensified characterization, the initial

Olfactory Objects

267

assessment makes visible and shareable some unusual qualities of an olfactory object, which can project further characterization but which can be challenged, modified or agreed upon only on having the same experiential ground. Through the ways in which it is formatted, the initial noticing restructures the participation framework of the tasting, even when the other tasters do not share the same access to the olfactory object. The tasting session turns into a social situation which is no longer a sum of individual and independent tasks but a joint activity in which the attention of the participants is brought to focus on a common object and where subjective perceptions are socialized and made understandable. Second Assessments ‘Green pepper, not red’

In this section I would like to give an account of the ways in which initial assessments or characterizations or descriptions of an olfactory object can be responded to by other co-participants in a tasting session. I focus on the ways in which the two initial assessments by Paolo analyzed above get responded to by Giorgio about seven minutes later in the tasting session. At the beginning of this new extract, Giorgio is taking care of Cup 11, the same cup Paolo was addressing with his loud ‘gazpacho’ noticing seven minutes before. Paolo draws close to Giorgio, as in the previous extract. Extract 3

40

41

42 43 44 45

%(3.3) %(1.4) % ┌----------------------┐ ┌--------┐ gio >%grabs cup 11 shakes it %smells% pao *…approaching -> #pict. 20 % (0.9) % ┌-----------------------┐ gio %closes lid turns to pao% pao >-------* *standing-----> not looking at GIO GIO: cioè,*(0.1) peperone verde, però, that is, *(0.1) green pepper, though, pao *turning to GIO non rosso not red (0.3) PAO: eh?=

268

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

46 47

GIO:

48

PAO:

49

GIO:

50

PAO:

51 gio 52

PAO:

53

gio GIO:

54

55 56

pao PAO:

57 gio 58 59

gio PAO: gio

=peperone verde =green pepper peperone verde green pepper nodding [sì yes nods [e anche pomodoro un po’ acerbo and also tomato rather unripe m nods (1.0) %(0.3) ┌--------------┐ ┌--------------┐ >%lifts the lid %smells cup 11-> nods secondo me eh, è %gas[pacio according to me eh, it’s gazpacho >---------------------% [sì yes #pict.24 %il pe- peperone::, *l’ho sentito anch’io the pe- pepper, I’ve tasted it too %…looking at PAO,,,looking away *…smiles--------,,,* quelli più piccolini those smaller ones sì yes %(2.3) ┌-----------------------------------┐ % >closes lid …puts cup 11 on table-> %(0.2) ┌-------------┐ %>grabs cup 12- > vedi come (ci troviamo) see how (we get together) >…shakes cup 12 ------>

As usual in the tasting session, the task of assessing the fl avors and recognizing the odors of the olfactory object is accomplished through the exercise of the senses by each taster in isolation from the others. The different individual tasks are unrelated to each other. At the beginning of the extract Giorgio is occupied with smelling the ground coffee inside Cup 11 (Line 40 and Picture 20). Just after having completed the task of smelling Cup 11 and closing its lid (Line 41), Giorgio turns his head and slightly bends his upper body towards Paolo, addressing him as the recipient of the comment that he is going to issue (Line 42 and Picture 21).

Olfactory Objects

Picture 20 Giorgio smelling Cup 11

269

Picture 21 Giorgio addressing Paolo

The way in which Giorgio’s fi rst turn in this sequence is designed (Lines 42–43) shows several interesting features. First of all, the turn’s beginning (cioè ‘that is’) is marking a connection between the actual saying with a previous turn. Secondly, this beginning projects a possible continuation which provides an elaboration on what apparently seems to have been said so far. Thirdly, it contains the name of a fruit (peperone verde ‘green pepper’, Line 42) which is a description of the olfactory note that has just been found in the cup; the assessment of the smell is rendered as a description of the property of the object (Garfi nkel & Liberman, 2007), not as a sensorial effect of the subject’s perception. In Extract 1, Paolo defi ned the smell in Cup 11 as ‘tomatoes and peppers’ (Extract 1, Lines 9–10). Fourthly, the present description is constructed as if it were a clarification, an elucidation or a revision of a previous description (però ‘though’). That the turn is a possible correction of a previous turn is also rendered explicit with a description of what the olfactory object is not (that is, green pepper, non rosso ‘not red [pepper]’, Line 43). It is also worth noting here that, although he disagrees in terms of which pepper is notable, by assessing it in this way Giorgio aligns with Paolo, essentially saying ‘it’s not just you’ who is smelling something peculiar and possibly weird (the gazpacho flavor in a cup of coffee). In this sense Giorgio’s assessment reinforces the sharedness of the evaluation (i.e. it is something not purely subjective/individual), while at the same time better specifying the individual components of the ‘gazpacho’ flavor in terms of ‘green peppers, not red’. What might have been an assessment of the olfactory qualities of an object by an isolated and autonomous taster has instead become a description that is embedded in the local history of the tasting session, strongly connected with a previous evaluation (about seven minutes before!) by his colleague. Now it is interesting to see in which ways a shared description of the olfactory object is first reached and then secured by the tasters. Paolo shows first a lack of an adequate understanding of Giorgio’s previous turn with an open class repair initiator (Drew, 1997) ‘eh?’ (Line 45). Paolo was not part of a shared participation framework with his colleague. Giorgio’s remark turns Paolo’s attention towards him (see Picture 22) and towards the olfactory evaluation of the ground coffee just smelled by Giorgio.

270 Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Picture 22 Paolo looking at Giorgio

Paolo immediately confirms Giorgio’s rendering of the olfactory note contained in Cup 11 with a repetition (peperone verde ‘green pepper’, Line 46), accompanied by an evident nodding. The words are repeated again by Giorgio (peperone verde ‘green pepper’, Line 47), and finally confirmed again by Paolo (sì ‘yes’, Line 48, accompanied again by an evident nodding). In this sequence, the tasters work quickly to reach a shared alignment with a description of the olfactory notes of the object to which they are mutually oriented. They are able to rapidly establish a joint reference, and to reach an agreement concerning the qualification of the previous depiction of the olfactory object. Paolo has already pointed to Cup 11 (Extract 1), describing his assessment of the cup’s olfactory note as sa di pomodori e di peperoni questo qua ‘it smells like tomatoes and peppers, this one’ (Extract 1, Lines 9–10). Now the two tasters are reaching an agreement on the fact that the smell of the object is not that of generic ‘peppers’, but ‘green peppers’, ‘not red’. The two tasters now agree on the new, more precise description of the olfactory note, which is an elaboration of the description of the same olfactory note provided before. The tasters both converge towards a shared description of the olfactory properties of the object based on an analogy with more recognizable, docile olfactory objects, as green peppers, which appears for the tasters to be a more adequate description than that of ‘gazpacho’. The description of the olfactory object is further detailed by Giorgio with an additional specification (e anche pomodoro un po’ acerbo ‘and also tomato rather unripe’, Line 49), which in turn is also confirmed by Paolo with a minimum sign of acknowledgement (‘Mm’, Line 50), along with a slight nodding. Remember that the smell of Cup 11 has been characterized by Paolo as ‘tomatoes and peppers’ (Extract 1, Lines 9–10). So, also in this case, the ‘tomato rather unripe’ specified by Giorgio is a further elaboration on the olfactory notes of the object from just the ‘tomatoes’ provided by Paolo in his first definition (seven minutes before). With Paolo’s acknowledgement (‘Mm’, Line 50), an agreement is reached between the two tasters. So far the assessment of the olfactory notes is formulated as being based on ‘objective’ qualities, not on personal stances or subjective

Olfactory Objects 271

experiences. If we proceed further ahead in the episode we can see in which ways a subjective stance is used in the assessment sequence. After having reached a better, shared depiction of the olfactory object through specification of its olfactory characters, Paolo turns back to Cup 11, smelling its contents again (see Picture 23 and Lines 51–52).

Picture 23 Paolo: according to me eh, it’s #gazpacho (Line 52)

During Giorgio’s smelling, Paolo turns back to his previous depiction of the olfactory content of the cup as ‘gazpacho’, repeating this same overstated and jocular description, but prefaced with a qualification of his perceptual sensation (‘according to me, it’s gazpacho’, Line 52). In this way Paolo is conveying that he is advancing a personal feeling, not giving a general description of the object. It is more a personal way of describing his sensitivity than a verbal device to refer to an object’s property. Furthermore, Paolo is affirming epistemic uncertainty and downgrading, in the sense that, with this hedging, he is implying that he can be wrong in his depiction and his assessment is more of an opinion (which can be discredited) than an assertion as a valid description of a matter of fact. In a sense, Paolo’s qualification is sequentially implicative: in offering a limited perspective as a first assessment, Paolo makes relevant a possible disconfirmation and projects a possible disagreement. At the same time, the possible disconfirmation and the possible disagreement can have only a limited import, in the sense that subjective feelings remain undiscussed (nobody can object to subjective feelings). Just after having smelled the contents of Cup 11, Giorgio offer a confirmation (with a ‘yes’, Line 53 and Picture 24).

Picture 24 Giorgio: yes (Line 53)

272

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

The sequential positioning of this confi rmation makes for the tasters an occasion for a possible misunderstanding. Giorgio’s confi rmation is positioned in overlap with the fi nal beats of Paolo’s previous turn where the fi rst part of his turn is instead plainly audible (secondo me è gas‘according to me it’s gaz-’, Line 52). For Paolo, that could be a confirmation of the figurative way in which he described the olfactory property of Cup 11. Paolo starts smiling (Picture 25), projecting a participation framework where the assessment of the olfactory object is done through the jocular character of his description, a figurative way of depicting the olfactory character of the object (Glenn, 1991; Holt, 2011).

Picture 25 Giorgio: the pe- pepper Paolo smiles (Line 54)

Giorgio’s confirmation is instead a product of his direct access to the object of experience, claiming certainty regarding the assessment of what he has just double-checked fi rst hand as il peperone ‘pepper’ (Line 54 and Picture 25). Giorgio turns away his gaze from Paolo (Picture 26), showing that he does not align with a figurative way of depicting the olfactory object and with the smilable character of that description. In this small sequence there is more than just doing assessments; it is more like fi nding out which sorts of assessments are possible and, among those, which are closer to giving the fullness of the experience.

Picture 26 I’ve tasted it too Giorgio turning away his gaze from Paolo (Line 54)

Having turned away his gaze from Paolo and showing a self-reflective face (looking in front of him, in no particular direction), Giorgio adds to his olfactory object depiction: l’ho sentito anch’io ‘I’ve tasted it too’ (Line 54 and Picture 26). Giorgio’s fresh second assessment highlights the olfactory properties of the object through a particular sensorial

Olfactory Objects

273

awareness. Giorgio’s assessment qualifies the depiction of an external object’s olfactory notes with his personal stance or subjective experience, which in this case reinforces not a limited and partial view on the matter but a shared defi nition of what characterizes the olfactory note of the object. As a way of reinforcing the shared sensation of ‘pepper’ as a more adequate description of the object’s olfactory note than that of ‘gazpacho’, Giorgio refers to quelli più piccolini ‘those smaller ones’ (Line 55), with a gesture addressed to Paolo where the size of the pepper is represented with a visual depiction made by the right hand, see Picture 27). Paolo’s ‘serious’ face (absence of smiling) aligns with Paolo’s elaborated description with a minimal sign of acknowledgement (‘yes’, Line 56).

Picture 27 Giorgio: those smaller ones (Line 55) Paolo’s ‘serious face’

Through the subjective and personal ways of hedging the assessment (secondo me ‘according to me’, l’ho sentito anch’io ‘I’ve tasted it too’), the tasters arrive at a shared depiction of the olfactory object. The personal feeling and the subjective attitude through which the description of the object characteristics are framed serve as an additional confi rmation of the value of the assessment, bringing epistemic certainty to the discovery of a rather peculiar olfactory character of a ground coffee. Instead of implying access limitations to the features of an olfactory object, revealing the olfactory features obtained through personal access validates the description of a matter of fact. Both tasters agree on that note. Alignment on the assessment has been established. As a way of summarizing, the assessment issue in this section revolves around two interrelated issues. One is the way in which ‘objective’ characterization of the olfactory object is reached through a subjective stance indexed in the descriptions and assessments of the object. When ‘objectivity’ is an institutional goal, it seems that ‘subjective’ assessments could be objected to on grounds of relevance (i.e. what counts as a reasonable evaluation based upon professionalism). The second issue is the way in which

274 Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

the olfactory object is step-by-step identified, described and jointly defi ned. Instead of considering the recognition and the assessment of an olfactory object as an individual task (which it is, after all), I have considered the ways in which this personal experience is characterized as oriented to the object and not to the interoceptive sensations of the tasters. At the same time, the ways in which the object is described and presented are the outcome of a joint endeavor between different tasters. Each taster provides only partial aspects of a whole characterization of the object, which in turn is elaborated upon, appreciated and agreed upon by the others. The fi nal result is a fully fledged description of an olfactory object which is collective and mutually constructed. ‘I make the ragout differently’

In this fi nal section I examine another case of an initial characterization of an olfactory object and its response by another co-participant in the tasting session. Extract 4

60

61 62

63

64

65 66

(0.4) ┌----------------┐ gio >%shakes cup 12-> pao >looks at the cups PAO: e lì c’è il ra%gù and there, there is the ragout gio >---------% (0.3) (1.6) ┌-------┐ ┌-----------------┐ gio lifts lid %…smells cup 12,,, pao * >smiles—————> (0.2) ┌------------┐ GIO: lo faccio diver&so I make it differently shaking head &looking at pao pao > ---------------------------> (0.1) (3.0) ┌-------┐ ┌---------------┐ pao > $laughs----------------> *walks away----> gio &smiles -------> MAR: e ma noi qua usiamo il %cervo, but here we use venison, pao %looks at mar una roba un po’- # something rather#pict.32

Olfactory Objects 275

67

68

mar gio GIO:

69

MAR:

70

GIO:

71

mar

72 73 74 75 76

MAR:

77

GIO:

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 gio 86 87

PAO: gio

(1.3) (3.0) ┌-------------┐ ┌---------------┐ >grabs cup 16-> smiles >lifts lid cup 12 smells--------> dici c’è della selvaggina you say there is game meat eh shaking cup 16 però, è pu§lito.= but, it is clean.= §smells cup 16 =di solito quando c’è sel=usually when there is gac’è selvaggina, c’è, there is game meat, there is, (1.1) gio closes lid posso dire, an%che, un po’ di animale I can say, also, some gamey taste %shakes cup 12 [ma anche un po’ dibut also some[selvatico wild sì. yes. e invece non è:: however that is not. >…lifts lid (2.2) gio smells inside cup 12 così: such (0.6) gio closes the lid cioè è cotto. I mean, it’s cooked. (0.8) nodding frollato↑, matured, (0.6) (0.9) ┌------┐ ┌-------------┐ nodding turns to pao-> shakes cup 12 mancan le patate. but no potatoes here. guarda che siamo regi%strati look that we are recorded %smells cup 12

At the beginning of the extract we fi nd Giorgio grabbing Cup 12, shaking its contents, and starting to smell inside it. Paolo recalls aloud the smelling he has found before in that cup (e lì c’è il ragù ‘and there, there is the ragout’, Line 61), accompanied by a humorous face. Waiting for the

276 Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

comment or a reply or a second assessment or a response, Paolo continues to look at Giorgio busy at his olfactory task (see Picture 28).

Picture 28 Paolo: and there, there is the ragout (Line 61)

Paolo with his utterance anticipates the olfactory content Giorgio is possibly going to find in Cup 12. Paolo has already tasted Cup 12. Paolo’s turn projects a second, in this case a reply or response from his colleagues. Any comment, evaluation or response from Giorgio must be made with reference to Paolo’s remark on the smell of that ground coffee. Moreover, the ‘strange’ flavor of that cup of ground coffee (that of a ragout) is going to be tested, checked, corrected, elaborated, teased out. The humor implied in this ‘strange’ description of the odor seems to be an invitation to share an agreement regarding the odd and eccentric properties of the ground coffee. Nothing in terms of evaluation or assessment of the quality of the coffee is implied: both tasters are oriented to discover ‘what this is’, to identify and share this ‘strange’ property and, if possible, to disentangle its components (given that a ragout is made of different possible ingredients). After having smelled Cup 12, Giorgio gives his response. He answers, po-faced (Drew, 1987), lo faccio diverso ‘I make it [the ragout] differently’ (Line 63 and see Picture 29). Paolo starts to laugh. Giorgio looks at Paolo and smiles (Picture 30), also continuing to smile when Paolo, still laughing, moves slightly away from his position (Picture 31).

Picture 29 Giorgio: I make it differently (Line 63)

Picture 30 Giorgio smiles at Paolo’s laughing

Olfactory Objects 277

Picture 31 Giorgio smiles, Paolo walks away while laughing

It is interesting in this episode to see in which ways subtle appreciations of the olfactory objects are made in a somewhat complex fashion. In this case, the evaluations of the olfactory properties of the object are made in a jocular mode. Let us see what the jokes accomplish in this case. Giorgio’s response is connected to the depiction of the olfactory object made by Paolo in a somewhat overdone or exaggerated fashion (that the coffee smelled like ragout). Through jocular mockery Giorgio is able to show his alignment or disalignment with the previous depiction of the olfactory object done by Paolo. Giorgio’s response combines elements of a serious uptake of the previous evaluation and a mockery stance towards the fi rst hyperbolic formulation. How the assessments in question are framed by one of the tasters and interpreted by the other is crucial to establishing that the mockery is interactionally achieved as a funny and witty comment, together with being a possible serious depiction of the object’s olfactory properties. On the one hand, Giorgio’s response follows the interpretative frame opened up by Paolo’s initial remark (something not exactly to be taken seriously). On the other hand, through that frame it is possible to introduce elements of disalignment from the previous assessment, without appearing to openly disagree. With his jocular mockery, Giorgio is pointing to some olfactory features of the object: in a sense, that it is true that the ground coffee contains ‘strange’ olfactory suggestions of a ragout. At the same time, however, those olfactory notes are peculiar and cannot be reduced to that of a ragout. Giorgio, through his jocular stance, is advancing a nuanced specification of what has been defi ned before by Paolo’s assessment.

278 Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

That kind of appreciation of the features of an object, that is, the ability and the capacity to discriminate differences and nuances of smell, to perceive even small traits of the olfactory qualities of the object, disguised as jocular and playful comments, continues in the following exchange. Now it is for Mario, a third taster on the scene, to intervene (e ma noi qua usiamo il cervo, una roba un po’- ‘but here we use venison, something rather [heavy]’, Lines 65–66 and see Picture 32).

Picture 32 Mario: here we use venison, something rather [heavy] (Line 66)

Mario’s contribution is oriented to explaining why Giorgio didn’t fully recognize the smell of the ground coffee as similar to ragout – which is apparently due to the particular ingredients that are used ‘here’ for making ragout, that is, local ingredients that are supposed to be different from those used for ragout where Giorgio lives. Giorgio again smells Cup 12, seemingly in order to fi nd out whether the real flavor of the cup matches the characteristics of the olfactory object highlighted by Mario. Following this, Giorgio produces an elaborated and sophisticated analysis of the flavor of the cup. He acknowledges that in the cup there is a peculiar meat odor (dici c’è della selvaggina ‘you say there is game meat’, Line 68), but at the same time he specifies that the smell here è pulito ‘is clean’ (Line 70) and does not have the animale ‘gamey taste’ (Line 74) of wild animal. The resulting smell reminds one of something cotto ‘cooked’ (Line 82), frollato ‘matured’ (Line 84). Giorgio’s olfactory depiction ends with a concluding pun, which looks back to the original ‘ragout’ defi nition (mancan le patate ‘but no potatoes here’, Line 86), being proffered again with a po-face. If it is difficult to say whether the sophisticated olfactory analysis should be taken seriously or if it is a continuation of a joke; nonetheless it

Olfactory Objects

279

is an exercise of a very refi ned and granular analysis, oriented to a specification of an object’s properties. There is more than a simple joke as shown by how the depiction of the olfactory properties of the object are sequentially and interactionally constructed. The taster is in constant contact with the object to be assessed, so that any assessment is strongly related to having had sensorial access to it. Assessments are less a matter of opinion, orienting towards subjective preferences and individual likings, than being faithful in providing descriptions of what the characters and features of the object are. Here another central feature of the work of professional tasters is revealed. Professional smelling requires a particular skill and expertise which enables the taster to disentangle and fi nely discriminate what with ordinary perception appears to be a unique ensemble, an inextricable mixture of flavors and odors. As Batty (2014) says: Olfactory experience is largely synthetic – that is, the various properties of the stimulus produce a largely irreducible experience. […] For example, the stimulus that gives rise to the ‘coffee’ olfactory experience is such a mixture. Sniffi ng coffee provides a unique kind of olfactory experience; but it is not one where we are able to discriminate the over 600 volatile compounds that constitute the ‘coffee odor’. (Batty, 2014: 5)

Here we have an example of the ways in which a first characterization of the flavor of a ground coffee (as that of a ‘ragout’) can be disentangled and teased out (and shared) in its many components: not oriented to listing some of the 600 volatile compounds (compared to a chemical analysis, the sensorial analysis would be poor and limited), but to reach a practical ‘objectivity’ in sharing the description of a flavor. Not only can ‘subjective’ assessments be objected to in regards to relevance, but also ‘real’ objectivity, for a reasonable evaluation based upon professionalism.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have been concerned with the ways in which professional tasters assess objects of taste. I have started with the basic observation that when something is tasted or smelled, this experience is not always brought to the fore. We continuously breathe, for example, but only under certain conditions do we notice a particular smell and only in particular cases do we pay attention to what we inhale. Tasting or smelling requires instead perceptual attention (Hennion, 2004: 136). Professional tasting has been considered a perspicuous setting in which these phenomena of taste and smelling can be particularly clear. Professional tasting sessions are settings where tasting practices occur on a regular basis; these practices and these phenomena are the focus of the professional taster’s work. Professional tasters rely on an array of professional knowledge and expertise to assess their objects of taste. Often knowledge and expertise

280

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

have been studied only as the result of the workings of individual minds. Here professional knowledge and expertise are instead the shared outcome of situated interaction as an effortful accomplishment. Sensory exploration, personal perceptions and individual sensations come to be presented and offered as a way of describing the characteristics of external objects made available to intersubjective scrutiny, rather than as a way of characterizing subjective attitudes (Shapin, 2012). This exercise of an object’s analysis is mutually elaborated, confirmed, discussed and specified in social interaction. We have seen that even if a sensory exploration of an olfactory object requires an individual effort of concentration and an independent engagement with the object scrutinized, this task reveals important interactional and ecological aspects. In addition to that, deictic terms together with pointing gestures and bodily involvement create an interactional space where other tasters are invited to participate and repeatedly come back to the objects to be tasted. Odor objects are a particularly interesting case for this kind of analysis. Precisely because of being unstable, flimsy, and not readily delimitable within discrete limits in the surrounding space, as well as being only temporarily available, odor as ‘something’ (as an object, as an event, with defi nite characters and qualities) is only shaped and constituted through and by the professional work practices. I have considered how these practices constitute ‘professional smelling’ which, similar to ‘professional vision’ (Goodwin, 1994: 606) and ‘professional touching’ (Mondada, 2016a, 2018), are socially organized ways of categorizing the object of olfactory perception which are answerable to the distinctive interests of a particular social group. When we talk about the exercise of professional tasting, we are not talking about passive sensations, as though the properties of the objects should just be reproduced mechanically. Instead, we are pointing to an active research practice focused on educated perceptions and on the sophisticated exercise of the senses, through the use of embodied resources which are temporally organized and sequentially shaped. This chapter is also a contribution to the studies of the ways in which objects feature in specific courses of action and interaction (Hindmarsh & Heath, 2000; Nevile et al., 2014). It shows the ways in which an olfactory object is created, shaped and defi ned within and for a professional tasting session. I have shown how the olfactory object is oriented to and described step-by-step, in a sequential implicative manner, by professional tasters as their professional work. The olfactory object is made relevant in the tasting session through participants’ pointing and made always available ‘each next fi rst time’ (Garfi nkel, 2002: 182) through experiential access and sensorial exploration (smelling). When the taster comes back again to tasting the same object, the repetition of the experience does not reveal something radically new or different (except in exceptional cases). The repeated experience of tasting the same object for a professional taster aims to deepen the understanding of the object, to gain a better

Olfactory Objects

281

defi nition of the object, to highlight more clearly aspects that were not evident during the fi rst tasting, and to defi ne more precisely what were rather vague and less defi ned perceptions. Instead of considering the recognition of an olfactory object as an individual task, I emphasize here the ways in which this personal experience is characterized as oriented to the object and not to the private sensations of the tasters. The taster needs to have access to the object in an independent way, but his assessments also show how the features and characters of an olfactory object are pointed out. At the same time, the ways in which the object is described and presented are the outcome of a joint endeavor among different tasters. Each taster provides only partial aspects of a whole characterization of the object, which in turn are elaborated, appreciated and agreed upon by the others. The fi nal result is a fully fledged description of an olfactory object which is collective and mutually constructed. Assessments are integral part of this activity of sensorial exploration. Assessments reflexively constitute the object of taste in a way that is rather peculiar for professional work. It is not only that assessments are produced as result of participation in an event, but assessments also produce and reproduce the object that is assessed. Professional tasting is the activity of constituting objects through assessments. We have seen how initial assessments can have both a retrospective and a prospective value. On the one hand, they refer to what has been experienced and are evaluations of the olfactory properties of the object. On the other hand, they are indexical pointers, highlighting only a generic definitional issue that projects a next and more elaborated depiction of the sensory (olfactory) experience. The way in which this defi nitional trajectory is designed relies on an array of complex interactional matters, well beyond a private sensorial interaction between a single taster and the object to be assessed. Evaluations or assessments are not merely descriptions of objects of the social world, but also social actions and stances that are responded to, aligned with, or elaborated or specified during a tasting session. First assessments build a participation framework that is prepared for the purpose of gaining one or more recipients’ attention oriented towards an assessable. Initial assessments may seem rather abrupt in a tasting session, where tasters are supposed to work individually, silently and in isolation. Tasters use a range of verbal and non-verbal resources in preparing, launching and designing their assessments. There is much interactional and embodied work in preparing, launching and designing assessments on the objects that are smelled. Finally, this work is a contribution of a research program on the ways in which practical objectivity is achieved in coffee tasting (Liberman, 2013). The phenomenon of the objective reality of social facts is a longstanding ethnomethodological topic (Garfi nkel, 2002: 119). This study is about objectivity as a social achievement, as practical objectivity, in the

282

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

ways in which professional tasting is the search for the ‘objective’ qualities of an object of taste for all practical purposes. Judgements of taste based on olfaction seem far from what we can call ‘objective’ judgements. As pointed out by Korsmeyer (1999: 129), smell draws attention to ‘the body of the perceiving subject’. Here judgements of taste based on olfaction produced by professional coffee tasters during a coffee tasting session are intersubjectively sealed and validated. Together with expert ways of seeing and perceiving, making distinctions and recognizing characters, the professional tasters master and share a full array of conceptual categories in order to give names to their experiences. Beside those ‘categorial unities achieved by means of […] congregational produced accounts that get ratified and objectivated’ (Liberman, 2013: 230), my interest has been in showing how the professional ways of perceiving and professional modes of description rely on an interactional architecture in which both perceptions and descriptions are mutually elaborated, socially shared and jointly achieved. References Alač, M. (2017) We like to talk about smell: A worldly take on language, sensory experience, and the internet. Semiotica 215, 143–192. Batty, C.E. (2014) Olfactory objects. In S. Biggs, M. Matthen and D. Stokes (eds) Perception and its Modalities (pp. 222–246). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Berger, I., Viney, R. and Rae, J.P. (2016) Do continuing states of incipient talk exist? Journal of Pragmatics 91, 29–44. Burnham, D. and O.M. Skilleås (2012) Wine as a vague and rich object. In D. Burnham and O.M. Skilleås (eds) The Aesthetics of Wine (pp. 35–63). Malden (MA): John Wiley. Cerulo, K. (2018) Scents and sensibility: Olfaction, sense-making, and meaning attribution. American Sociological Review 83 (2), 361–389. Clarke, R.J. (1986) The flavour of coffee. Development in Food Science 3B, 1–47. Corbin, A. (1986) Le Miasme et la Jonquille: L’odorat et l’imaginaire social, xviiie-xixe siècles. Paris: Flammarion. Drew, P. (1987) Po-faced receipts of teases. Linguistics 25 (1), 219–253. Drew, P. (1997) ‘Open’ class repair initiators in response to sequential sources of troubles in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 28 (1), 69–101. Edwards, D. (2000) Extreme case formulations: Softeners, investment, and doing nonliteral. Research on Language and Social Interaction 33 (4), 347–373. Edwards, D. and Potter, J. (2017) Some uses of subject-side assessments. Discourse Studies 19 (5), 1–18. Fasulo, F. and Monzoni, C. (2009) Assessing mutable objects: A multimodal analysis. Research on Language and Social Interaction 42 (4), 362–376. Ford, C.E. and Fox, B.A. (2010) Multiple practices for constructing laughables. In D. Barth-Weingarten, E. Reber and M. Selting (eds) Prosody in Interaction (pp. 339– 368). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Garfi nkel, H. (2002) Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkheim’s Aphorism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Garfi nkel, H. and Liberman, K. (2007) The Lebenswelt origins of the sciences. Human Studies 30 (1), 3–7. Glenn, P.J. (1991) Current speaker initiation of two-party shared laughter. Research on Language and Social Interaction 25 (1–4), 139–162.

Olfactory Objects

283

Glenn, P.J. (2003) Laughter in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C. (1986) Gestures as a resource for the organization of mutual orientation. Semiotica 62 (1–2), 29–49. Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96 (3), 606–633. Goodwin, C. (1996) Transparent vision. In E. Ochs, E.A. Schegloff and S. Thompson (eds) Interaction and Grammar (pp. 370–404). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gottfried, J.A. (2010) Central mechanisms of odour object perception. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11, 628–641. Haakana, M. (2010) Laughter and smiling: Notes on co-occurrences. Journal of Pragmatics 42 (6), 1499–1512. Hennion A. (2004) Pragmatics of taste. In M. Jacob and N. Hanrahan (eds) Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture (pp. 131–145). London: Blackwell. Hindmarsh, J. and Heath, C. (2000) Sharing the tools of the trade: The interactional constitution of workplace objects. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 29 (5), 523–562. Hoey, E.M. (2015) Lapses: How people arrive at, and deal with, discontinuities in talk. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48 (4), 430–453. Holt, E. (2011) On the nature of ‘laughables’. Pragmatics 21 (3), 393–410. Howes, D. (1987) Olfaction and transition: An essay on the ritual uses of smell. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie 24 (3), 398–416. Jackson, R.S. (2016) Wine Tasting: A Professional Handbook. London: Academic Press. Jefferson, G. (1985) On the interactional unpackaging of a ‘gloss’. Language in Society 14 (4), 435–466. Kääntä, L. (2014) From noticing to initiating correction: Students’ epistemic displays in instructional interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 66, 86–105. Korsmeyer, C. (1999) Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lahne, J. (2016) Sensory science, the food industry and the objectifi cation of taste. Anthropology of Food 10. See http://aof.revues.org/7956. Largey, G.P. and Watson, D.R. (1972) The sociology of odours. American Journal of Sociology 77 (6), 1021–1034. Liberman, K. (2013) The phenomenology of coffee tasting: Lessons in practical objectivity. In K. Liberman (ed.) More Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 215–266). New York: SUNY Press. Low, K. (2005) Ruminations on smell as a sociocultural phenomenon. Current Sociology 53 (3), 397–417. Mondada, L. (2009) Emergent focused interactions in public places: A systematic analysis of the multimodal achievement of a common interactional space. Journal of Pragmatics 41, 1977–1997. Mondada, L. (2013) Interactional space and the study of embodied talk-interaction. In P. Auer, M. Hilpert, A. Stukenbrock and B. Szmrecsanyi (eds) Space in Language and Linguistics: Geographical, Interactional and Cognitive Perspectives (pp. 247–275). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Mondada, L. (2014) Conventions for Multimodal Transcription, v. 3.01. See https:// franzoesistik.philhist.unibas.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/franzoesistik/mondada_ multimodal_conventions.pdf(accessed Feb 2019). Mondada, L. (2016a) Challenges of multimodality: Language and the body in social interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics 20 (3), 336–366. Mondada, L. (2016b) Multimodal resources and the organization of social interaction. In A. Rocci and L. de Saussure (eds) Verbal Communication (pp. 329–350). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Mondada, L. (2018) The multimodal interactional organization of tasting: Practices of tasting cheese in gourmet shops. Discourse Studies 20 (6), 743–769.

284

Part 4: Objects as Interactional Accomplishments

Monzoni, C. and Laury, R. (2015) Making referents accessible in multi-party interaction. Eesti ja soome-ugri keeleteaduse ajakiri. Journal of Estonian and Finno-Ugric Linguistics 6 (2), 43–62. Muniesa, F. and Trébuchet-Breitwiller, A.S. (2010) Becoming a measuring instrument: An ethnography of perfume consumer testing. Journal of Cultural Economy 3 (3), 321–337. Nevile, M., Haddington, P., Heinemann, T. and Rauniomaa, M. (2014) On the interactional ecology of objects. In M. Nevile, P. Haddington, T. Heinemann and M. Rauniomaa (eds) Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity (pp. 3–26). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Norrick, N.R. (2004) Hyperbole, extreme case formulation. Journal of Pragmatics 36 (9), 1727–1739. Peräkylä, A. and Ruusuvuori, J. (2006) Facial expression in an assessment. In H. Knoblauch, B. Schnetter, J. Raab and H.G. Soeffner (eds) Video Analysis: Methodology and Methods. Qualitative Audiovisual Data Analysis in Sociology (pp. 127–142). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Phillips, C.J. (2016) The taste machine: Sense, subjectivity, and statistics in the California wine world. Social Studies of Science 46 (3), 461–481. Pomerantz, A. (1986) Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims. Human Studies 9 (2), 219–229. Royet, J.-P., Plailly, J., Saive, A.-L., Veyrac, A. and Delon-Martin, C. (2013) The impact of expertise in olfaction. Frontiers in Psychology 4, Art. 928. Schegloff, E.A. and Sacks, H. (1973) Opening up closings. Semiotica 8, 289–327. Shapin, S. (2012) The sciences of subjectivity. Social Studies of Science 42 (2), 170–184. Shapin, S. (2016) A taste of science: Making the subjective objective in the California wine world. Social Studies of Science 46 (3), 436–460. Stivers, T. and Rossano, F. (2010) Mobilizing response. Research on Language and Social Interaction 43 (1), 3–31. Szymanski, M. (1999) Re-engaging and dis-engaging talk in activity. Language in Society 28 (1), 1–23. Wiggins, S. and Potter, J. (2003) Attitudes and evaluative practices: Category vs. item and subjective vs. objective constructions in everyday food assessments. British Journal of Social Psychology 42 (4), 513–531. Young, B.D. (2016) Smelling matter. Philosophical Psychology 29 (4), 520–534.

Postscript: Thing and Space Aug Nishizaka

In this collection, the authors address the organization of interaction in which ‘things’ play specific roles. Although the contexts and types of things the authors discuss are diverse, there are some common features. First, they are things locatable in a particular space; they are ‘spatial things’. Secondly, they are real, not imaginary; they are ‘sensory things’. That is, they are visible, tangible, audible, scentable, and the like. Thirdly, they are artifacts, material things invented for a purpose. They have structures that are suitable for a certain distinctive activity, although these structures can serve purposes beyond their original design. In this postscript, I attempt to outline what this volume contributes to the development of the study of how things with the above-mentioned features are perceived in interaction. I fi rst present theoretical characterizations of sensory things whose meaning is emergently constituted in the temporal unfolding of interaction. Next, a holistic view of space as a temporal arrangement of multiple bodies that exhibit orientations to each other and things in the environment of their interaction is presented. In conclusion, I suggest in which directions studies of things in interaction can be further developed. Sensory Things

One encounters sensory things in the world through perception. One sees, touches, hears, tastes and smells things. When one sees a thing, an artifact, one does not first see its shape, color, and the like, and then judge from these that a specific thing is there. One directly sees a pin (Nevile’s chapter), Post-it ® (Day & Rasmussen’s chapter), forklift (Nevile & Wagner’s chapter), a cup of coffee (Fele’s and DeStefani’s chapters), and the like. Perception is an achievement not a process, as Ryle (1949) observed. Therefore, investigation into the perception of any modality should not be into a process (i.e. interpreting, judging or whatever) that occurs somewhere, whether in the mind or in the brain. Rather, what is seen, felt, heard, tasted or smelled is exhibited (and becomes ascribable) in various activities involving the manipulation, observation or inspection of things. In particular, when using an artifact, such as attaching a Post-it® 285

286 Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

somewhere and writing something on it, putting a pin on a dress under preparation or riding on a forklift, the user’s grasping of intrinsic structures of the thing that differentiate between the front and back, the top and bottom, the grip and tip, and the like, is also exhibited: a Post-it ® has a surface but does not have a grip or tip, and a pin has the grip and tip but does not have a front or back. Various ‘aspects’ of things relevant to each ongoing activity are addressed by the authors in this volume. Wittgenstein (1953) distinguished between two kinds of seeing: The one: ‘What do you see there?’ – ‘I see this’ (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: ‘I see a likeness between these two faces’ – let the man I tell this to be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself. (Wittgenstein, 1953: 193)

One can directly point to a thing that one sees, say, a pin, with ‘this’ before mentioning its name or describing its various structural features, or one can show others the thing that one sees by drawing its picture. However, one cannot directly point to the likeness between two (photographed) faces with ‘this’, or one cannot show the recipient the likeness that one sees by copying these two faces. In this manner, the recipient may be shown these two faces, but not the likeness. One can offer the recipient some explanations of why and how one sees the likeness there, and these explanations may induce the recipient’s seeing the likeness although there have not been any changes in the faces. The latter type of seeing is called ‘aspect-seeing’. The same Post-its®, pins or textural formats are perceived under different aspects relevant to each stage of the temporal unfolding of a distinct activity. For example, the position of a pin put on a dress under preparation may be perceived as part of the proposal for the location to sew, prospectively relating to the upcoming development of the current interaction, or as marking the decision, retrospectively relating to its past development (Nevile’s chapter). The sentential format with a blank part on the board may be perceived as an incomplete sentence to be prospectively completed by students, or as a complete format that retrospectively sums up the point of the lesson being fi nished (Hazel & Mortensen’s chapter). When Garfi nkel (1967) noted the role of temporality, among others, for the accomplishment of common understanding, he appears to have addressed grasping various aspects of pieces of talk in interaction that are relevant to the temporal development of conversation. The events that were talked about were specifically vague. Not only do they not frame a clearly restricted set of possible determinations but the depicted events include as their essentially intended and sanctioned features an accompanying ‘fringe’ of determinations that are open with

Postscript: Thing and Space

287

respect to internal relationships, relationships to other events, and relationships to retrospective and prospective possibilities. (Garfi nkel, 1967: 40–41, emphasis added)

The meaning of each piece of talk must be achieved contingently in the unfolding development of conversation. Aspects also emerge in spatial, as well as temporal, arrangements of the things in question and bodies in certain settings. For example, when one, on entering a particular setting, say, a shoe repair shop, holds shoes with one’s hands instead of wearing them on one’s feet, the shoes are perceived under the aspect of needing repair, deprived of their ordinary use (Heinemann & Fox’s chapter). When forklifts in a setting with materials to be transferred are positioned in a specific manner relative to the materials, they are perceived under the aspect of being ready for moving in a particular direction (or being ‘warnable’) (Nevile & Wagner’s chapter). When coffee cups, with coffee in them, are positioned at certain locations on the counter, they are perceived under the aspect of being ready for customers who ordered coffee (DeStefani’s chapter). A mirror held by an assistant close to a hairdresser working on a customer’s hair at a certain sequential position is perceived and treated under the aspect of being ready for use by the hairdresser (Horlacher’s chapter). Artifacts, certain types of sensory things, may be detached from contexts of their use and become objects of inspection in a specific way. The structural features of an injector that usually stay in the background come to the foreground, as focuses, in the activity of instructing how to use it (Monzoni et al.’s chapter). Olfactory features, artificially separated from other features, come to the foreground as focuses to be coded in the quality control of coffee production (Fele’s chapter). Such changes of the constellation of the foreground and background (or ‘figure’ and ‘ground’) are also features of aspect perceptions. As Wittgenstein (1953) observed, seeing an aspect is not any type of interpretation; rather, it is a direct vision. For example, Wittgenstein (1953: 212) argued, regarding seeing-as, that: ‘[w]hen we interpret we form hypotheses, which may prove false. – “I am seeing this figure as a …” can be verified as little as (or in the same sense as) “I am seeing bright red”.’ When one sees a duck-rabbit picture (see Picture 1), for example, one does not fi rst have a specific visual experience of the figure and then interpret it in a certain way, that is, as a duck or rabbit (see Wittgenstein, 1953: 193–194). Rather, one cannot see a duck-rabbit picture without seeing it under the aspect of a duck or rabbit. One sees an aspect directly, and one’s grasping of an aspect is also exhibited in performing a distinct activity in the temporal and spatial extension, rather than as a hidden mental or nervous process. The studies in this volume demonstrate organizations of aspect-grasping publicly accessible in interaction.

288 Objects, Bodies and Work Practice

Picture 1 Duck-Rabbit

Spatial Things

Sensory things that are also spatial things are located at the depth in which we live. Merleau-Ponty (1964) argued that one cannot call such depth the ‘third dimension’. First, if it [depth] is a dimension, it would rather be the fi rst one; there would be no certain forms nor planes unless I could defi ne at what distance from me their different parts are found. However, such a fi rst dimension that contains all the other dimensions is not one dimension. … Depth, as conceived this way, is rather the experience of the reversibility of dimensions, the experience of a global ‘locality’ where everything is there, from which height, largeness, and distance are only abstracted, or the experience of the voluminosity which means precisely that there is a thing. (Merleau-Ponty, 1964: 65, emphasis added)

The space in which we encounter things is not abstractly defi ned as the extension along three axes perpendicular to each other. One way to conceive of the ‘experience of the voluminosity’ where we encounter things may be to consider our lived space as a temporal configuration of publicly displayed orientations, publicly displayed differentially in various body postures, body movements, gaze directions, touch, talk, and the like. As Scheflen (1973) and Kendon (1990) observed, human bodies are hierarchically structured in terms of the order of strength and acuteness of displayed orientations. The eyes display the acutest orientation; the face and the index finger also display a strong acute orientation. The front of the upper body may display a weaker orientation; the front of the waist displays a weaker, but the most basic orientation, and the like, although this order is cancellable depending on the current context (e.g. when one sits in front of a loudspeaker system with one’s back towards it and one’s eyes closed, a stronger orientation is displayed on one’s back than on one’s front). Each posture embodies a distribution of such differentially displayed orientations relevant to the current activity (see Schegloff, 1998). Touching a thing with one’s hand also displays a strong orientation towards the thing. Moving may display an orientation in the direction of the movement. We encounter various things under various aspects in temporal configurations of such orientations. One simple example may be a case in point. The example is excerpted from an interaction between a professional therapist, who is also a university professor, and her student at a sand play

Postscript: Thing and Space

289

therapy session. Sand play therapy is a type of psychotherapy based on Jungian psychoanalysis. Clients create a miniature scene with sand in a box and various miniature toys (such as trees, houses and animals). According to the theory, touching the sand in the box artificially induces a regression and invites clients to discover their egos that were concealed from themselves. The therapist in the example told me that this type of therapy also applied to ordinary persons who did not have any particular complaints; it would be an opportunity for them to reflect on their egos. As the example begins, the student finished a miniature scene in the sand box. Transcript 1 TH: therapist; ST: student client1 01 TH: momotani san wa kore wa: doko na↓no ka[↑na?] PN Ms P this P where JD IR Ms. Momotani, what place is this? 02 ST: [eh