Abstract
This paper studies how participants start social navigation in cars. It draws on audiovideo recordings of social interaction inside cars and on a methodology that studies situated multimodal social actions as they sequentially unfold in interaction. The paper studies what kinds of actions initiate or are treated as making navigation relevant, and how and when an initiating action is produced. The analysis shows that the design of the initiating action is indicative of the participants' situated understandings in a particular semiotic context of whether some driving action is required in the more distant future or right now. The analysis suggests that routes are not always planned before, nor do navigational plans always work. Navigation is also a social and collaborative activity that emerges from the requirements of the driving situation and in which co-participants display their understandings of the situation in a reflexive relationship with the semiotic environment and the events in it.
About the author
Pentti Haddington (b. 1970) is a researcher at Universities of Helsinki and Oulu 〈pentti.haddington@oulu.fi〉. His research interests include multimodal interaction analysis, conversation analysis, gesture studies, and interactional linguistics. His publications include “Identity and stance taking in news interviews: A case study” (2006); “The organization of gaze and assessments as resources for stance taking” (2006); “Positioning and alignment as activities of stance taking in news interviews” (2007); “Turn-taking for turntaking: mobility, time, and action in sequential organisation of junction negotiations in cars” (2010); and “Technologies, multitasking and driving: Attending to and preparing for a mobile phone conversation in the car” (with M. Rauniomaa, 2011).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
