Moving Out of View: Managing Participation and Visibility in Family Video-Mediated Communication

The technological affordances of video-mediated communication (VMC) allow family members to sustain relationships at a distance. In this paper, based on 45 hours of video recorded family video calls in the US and China, we use the methodology of Conversation Analysis to examine one recurrent activity in our corpus: people moving out of camera view and becoming not visible during their video calls. We show how, depending on interactants’ current involvement in the call, temporarily suspending visibility occurs in tandem with suspending participation, but not always. This study makes unique contributions to reconceptualizing the relation between the technological affordances of visibility and people’s mobility and participation in family video calls, furthering the notion of what “open” connections look like in practice.

Moving Out of View

The technological affordances of video-mediated communication (VMC) allow family members to sustain relationships at a distance. In this paper, based on 45 hours of video recorded family video calls in the US and China, we use the methodology of Conversation Analysis to examine one recurrent activity in our corpus: people moving out of camera view and becoming not visible during their video calls. We show how, depending on interactants’ current involvement in the call, temporarily suspending visibility occurs in tandem with suspending participation, but not always. This study makes unique contributions to reconceptualizing the relation between the technological affordances of visibility and people’s mobility and participation in family video calls, furthering the notion of what “open” connections look like in practice.

Taking a detour before answering the question: Turn-initial okay in second position in English interaction

10.1016/j.langcom.2020.09.005Language & Communication7647-5

The Gratitude Opportunity Space

This paper examines the situated use of expressions of gratitude and demonstrates how their precise timing matters for coordinating actions and managing relationships in social interaction. Focusing on activities that involve object passing, we introduce the concept of the gratitude opportunity space, a standard time for expressing gratitude. We explicate three discernable phases within the gratitude opportunity space for simple recruitment sequences involving an object pass (pre-delivery, on-delivery, and post-delivery positions) and explore how the gratitude opportunity space is dynamically recalibrated according to the activity underway in other activities that involve object passes (i.e., remote offers of objects and gift giving). Data are American and British English

The Gratitude Opportunity Space: The timing of gratitude expressions in object passes

This paper examines the situated use of expressions of gratitude and demonstrates how their precise timing matters for coordinating actions and managing relationships in social interaction. Focusing on activities that involve object passing, we introduce the concept of the gratitude opportunity space, a standard time for expressing gratitude. We explicate three discernable phases within the gratitude opportunity space for simple recruitment sequences involving an object pass (pre-delivery, on-delivery, and post-delivery positions) and explore how the gratitude opportunity space is dynamically recalibrated according to the activity underway in other activities that involve object passes (i.e., remote offers of objects and gift giving). Data are American and British English