Mondada2023i
| Mondada2023i | |
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| BibType | INCOLLECTION |
| Key | Mondada2023i |
| Author(s) | Lorenza Mondada |
| Title | Mobile body arrangements in public space: revisiting “withs” as local accomplishments |
| Editor(s) | Lorenza Mondada, Anssi Peräkylä |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Withs, Goffman, Mobility, Public Space |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Year | 2023 |
| Language | English |
| City | New York |
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| Pages | 241–275 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781003094111-13 |
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| Howpublished | |
| Book title | New Perspectives on Goffman in Language and Interaction: Body, Participation and the Self |
| Chapter | |
Abstract
One of the most inspiring insights of Goffman concerns the management of co-presence in public space, prior to any focused interaction (1963a, 1971). Co-presence relies on forms of unfocused coordination, made possible by the intelligibility of spatial trajectories of “vehicular units,” which are constituted either by mobile individual persons or more than one person that Goffman calls “withs” (1971). This chapter builds on Goffman’s insights about the accountability of co-presence for reflecting on how participants methodically “see” and “oversee” each other in public space, and they exploit these visible features to orchestrate the transition from unfocused to focused interactions. More particularly, the chapter focuses on how modes of co-presence of “withs” in public space are identified, monitored, and exploited by another party to enter into interaction. Using video-recorded data in an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic (EMCA) perspective the chapter shows that the public visible accountability of “withs” can be exploited by other parties to organize a convergent trajectory toward them and engage in interaction with them. This enables us to extend current EMCA approaches of categorization, participation, and interaction in a way that considers individuals in co-presence even before they engage in focused interactions, that is, before they possibly become co-participants – in the pre-openings of interactions – and as their participation status changes within the course of the interaction. By so doing, the chapter brings together Goffman’s insights about space, co-presence, (un)focused interactions between vehicular units, and contemporary video-based reflections in EMCA about the organization of mobile actions, trajectories and projections, the constitution of embodied forms of participation, and the emergence of incipient interactions.
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