Tactility as a Resource for the Organization of Interaction

• In Event: 564 - Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversational Analysis Paper Session. Studies of Healthcare Work

Abstract

Since visual recordings of interaction became available to interaction researchers, they have attempted to study the interplay of talk and gesture, or other visual resources for organizing interaction. However, tactility still remains an understudied resource modality for organizing interaction. Drawing on the analysis of video-recordings of 11 massage therapy sessions and particularly focusing on organization of the massagers' announcements of the procedural transitions, I demonstrate that the analyst can see how touch is deployed in interaction to accomplish distinct activities. The sequentially developing configurations of vocal, visible and touching behaviors provide one analytic locus for the sequential organization of activities in interaction. These configurations created by the temporal and spatial arrangement of talk, bodies and features in the environment are analyzable and describable.

Author

• Aug Nishizaka, Meiji Gakuin University