Gesture Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

This edited collection is concerned with talk and activity inside cars, with examining the interior of a car as socially rich and meaningful. The papers here are concerned with both social interaction as the intertwining of multiple modalities of language, the body, and artefacts of the interior material world of the car, as well as with how the car’s movement in time and space through particular external physical surroundings contributes to, or is accomplished by, social interaction. Methodologically, the papers are primarily informed by principles and insights of conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, and multimodal interaction analysis.

In this collection the car is considered as a ‘place’ or ‘space’ for meaningful and mediated activities. The papers examine how the physical and spatial configuration of the car, and its possibilities for mobility, can constrain or afford particular interactional practices, social activities and understandings, and impact upon language and processes of interaction. Interaction in cars creates particular demands, opportunities and orientations for its participants, as the car moves through the semiotically rich external environment. Generally, the papers consider driving as not merely a requisite competence for accomplishing travel from point A to point B, but as occurring itself as a situated activity that is integrated with ordinary conversation.

Most research on driving and automobility follows one of two broad directions: driving safety research; and the social and cultural meanings of automobility and driving. Driving safety research, on the one hand, is mostly dominated by studies conducted within a psychological and cognitive scientific framework. In social sciences and human geography, on the other hand, such dominant approaches to driving and drivers have increasingly been critiqued for undermining the cultural and sociological meanings of automobility and driving. Consequently, with the emergence of ‘mobility studies’, scholars have begun to study the social, cultural, and ideological meanings and discourses of the car, car cultures, driving cultures, driving practices, automobility, road systems, and traffic systems, as parts of modern life.

The papers in this special issue can therefore contribute to interdisciplinary dialogue between social scientific and psychological driving research. Further empirical knowledge is needed of how people organize their talk and embodied activities for social activity in cars, and relative to the contingencies of the driving situation and the physical and spatial layout of the car. By drawing on a specific empirical research methodology that relies on recorded data collected from real-life situations inside the car, the papers of this collection can add to the important interdisciplinary discussion that surrounds driving, safety and automobility, and provide food for thought by addressing central issues, raising questions, and perhaps even by providing some answers.

The chapters are:

Pentti Haddington, Maurice Nevile, and Tiina Keisanen
'Meaning in motion: Sharing the car, sharing the drive'

Eric Laurier, Barry Brown, and Hayden Lorimer
'What it means to change lanes: Actions, emotions, and wayfinding in the family car

Pentti Haddington
'Movement in action: Initiating social navigation in cars'

Maurice Nevile
'Interaction as distraction in driving: A body of evidence'

Tiina Keisanen
' “Uh-oh, we were going there”: Environmentally occasioned
noticings of trouble in in-car interaction'

Lorenza Mondada
'Talking and driving: Multi-activity in the car'

Marjorie Harness Goodwin and Charles Goodwin
'Car talk: Integrating texts, bodies, and changing landscapes'

Elizabeth Keating and Gene Mirus
'The eyes have it: Technologies of automobility in sign language'

Chaim Noy
'Inhabiting the family-car: Children-passengers and parents-drivers on the school run