Julien Morel

Video-in-Interaction: “Talking Heads” and the Multimodal Organization of Mobile and Skype Video Calls

In this article, we report a study of the uses of mobile video telephony based on the collection and analysis of naturally occurring mobile and Skype video exchanges, with a focus on camera motions. We provide evidence for a set of phenomena characteristic of the organization of “video-in-interaction”: (a) mobile and Skype video calls are patterned, often alternating between a “talking heads” arrangement, in which both participants are on-screen and facing the camera, and moments in which they are producing various shots of their environment in line with their current interactional purposes; (b) openings occur almost always in the talking heads arrangement; (c) the video images on either side are produced and expected to be scrutinized with respect to their relevance to the ongoing interaction; (d) the talking heads arrangement is oriented to a default mode of interaction, with the implication that when there is nothing else relevant to show, the participants should show themselves on-screen; (e) in multiparty interactions, the party who is handling the video communication apparatus has an obligation to put other speakers on-screen when they talk, and the video callers orient to their appearance on-screen as making a distinctive participation status relevant. We show how these phenomena all derive from an orientation toward a single maxim, “put the face of the current speaker on-screen,” which plays a foundational role in the organization of video-in-interaction and its articulation with that of talk-in-interaction.

Grindr casual hook-ups as interactional achievements

One pervasive use of the Grindr mobile application is the initiation and accomplishment of pseudonymous sexual encounters between gay strangers based on location awareness. Not only are such encounters oriented towards quasi-immediate sexual gratification, but they are collaboratively done so as to preclude repeat encounters and relational development, with the protagonists supposedly left unaffected emotionally, relationally and socially by their meeting. This creates a rather special – and analytically interesting – interactional dilemma when Grindr users initiate a social contact with potential partners, usually through the chat function integrated into the mobile app. This article describes the way Grindr users have developed a particular ‘linguistic ideology’, which casts ordinary conversation as an interactional activity that is performed between (potential) friends and enables relational development. As such, it is unsuitable for one-time sexual encounters, the production of which is a distinctive and accountable interactional accomplishment. This article analyzes the special interactional practices based on profile-matching sequences which Grindr users have developed to circumvent the relational affordances of electronic conversation. These practices constitute Grindr users as a particular form of speech community, adjusted both to their orientation towards initiating ‘purely’ sexual encounters and to the socio-material design of the Grindr mobile application.

La référence aux lieux et à la proximité mutuelle et l'émergence de projets de rencontre dans les conversations mobiles

L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser la facon dont les rencontres sociales sont collaborativement organisees depuis des conversations sur telephone mobile. Apres avoir discute de l’utilisation de pre-sequences verifiant la disponibilite en vue de projets de rencontre, nous examinerons des conversations sur mobile ou sont traites des problemes pratiques analogues. Ces communications permettent d’examiner la facon dont les participants s’engagent dans un travail de co-localisation, comment ils formulent les lieux en tant que seuils entre mobilite et contextes d’activite, et se positionnent eux-memes comme entites mobiles ou immobiles ; et comment un tel travail collaboratif de co-localisation peut generer la reconnaissance mutuelle d’une co-proximite dans un delai approprie de disponibilite. Ceci peut etre produit au sein d’un tour de parole et via differents procedes, comme une mention explicite et une evaluation de la proximite mutuelle des participants, ou l’usage de deictiques de lieux qui localisent finalement les participants dans une zone proximale et connue en commun (se trouver « a proximite » ou « dans le quartier », par exemple). Enfin, nous montrons comment une telle reconnaissance promulgue l’importance d’une rencontre en face a face ; l’emergence d’une co-proximite est traitee comme la premiere partie d’une pre-sequence projetant une invitation, une proposition, une annonce ou une demande de se rencontrer comme une issue pertinente.