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Object transfers: An embodied resource to progress joint activities and build relative agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2019

Sylvaine Tuncer  and
Pentti Haddington
Sylvaine Tuncer*
Affiliation:
Stockholm University, Sweden
Pentti Haddington
Affiliation:
University of Oulu, Finland
*
Address for correspondence: Sylvaine Tuncer, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Postbox 7003, 164 07 Kista, Swedensylvaine@dsv.su.se
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Abstract

This article builds on ethnomethodological, conversation analytic research on object transfers: how participants hand over objects to one another. By analyzing video recordings of mundane (cars) and institutional interactions (laboratories), we focus on situations where an object is central to and talked about in the joint course of action. We focus on different organizations of object transfer and show that one embodied move is decisive, either a sequentially implicative ‘give’ or an arm extension designed as a stand-alone ‘take’. We examine the interrelationship between the organization of the object transfer and the broader course of action (e.g. request or offer sequence), which is either overlapping or intersecting. We demonstrate that by making the decisive move, either the participant initially holding the object or her recipient critically influences the progression and trajectory of the activity, and displays agency. (Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis, multimodal interactions, objects in interaction, object transfers, agency)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 61 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable insights and help to improve this manuscript; all remaining limitations are ours. We would also like to thank Gene Lerner, whose visit to Oulu in 2016 partly prompted the present research. Finally, we would like to thank Eric Laurier for letting us use the Habitable Cars corpus, and for his generous companionship through the years.

References

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