While ethnomethodological conversation analysis has been interested in the minute details of talk-in-interaction for quite a few decades already, the consideration of embodied conduct in and for social action is a more recent development. This is not only linked to the relatively recent improvements in data collection and processing technologies, but also due to new analytical challenges that this holistic approach to communication practices implies, such as the production of increasingly complex transcripts, or the interplay between different temporalities of audible and visible conduct. However, there is no doubt that a multimodal approach is necessary if we wish to truly understand the situated nature of language use and social action (Deppermann/Streeck 2018; Mondada 2016, 2018; Streeck et al. 2011). In my talk, I will first sketch the foundations of multimodal interaction analysis. I will then

illustrate how video recordings of naturally occurring social encounters and their systematic analysis can lead to a reconsideration of mainly talk-related concepts, such as turn-taking and repair, and to the discovery of new interactional phenomena, such as multiactivity (Haddington et al. 2014). More specifically, I will delve into “mundane multiactivity”, i.e., the fact that in everyday encounters we constantly coordinate and manage multiple co-present participants, tasks, and objects (Heinemann et al. 2014; Tuncer et al. 2019). Due to their ubiquity and their “polymedia” qualities (Madianou/Miller 2012), handheld devices such as smartphones and their use in face-to-face interactions represents a particularly interesting case of multiactivity. While it is often assumed that mobile devices distract participants and therefore impede communication, participants’ smartphone uses are frequently sensitively adjusted to the ongoing talk and sequence (Brown et al. 2013; Oloff 2019, 2021). Using excerpts from video recorded social interactions (mostly in Czech or German), I will show that technology use in face-to-face encounters is largely unproblematic and routinely coordinated with other social activities.

Florence Oloff is Professor for German Linguistics and Multimodal Interaction at the University of Mannheim and in the "Pragmatics" department the Leibniz Institute for the German Language in Mannheim, Germany. Drawing on multimodal conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, she is interested in the study of language and social interaction in mundane as well as professional settings in various languages. Among other things, she has been working on embodied practices related to turn-taking, simultaneous talk and joint utterance formulation, multilingual practices in professional settings, and object use and space in social interaction.