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Organizing a remote state of incipient talk: Push-to-talk mobile radio interaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2006

MARGARET H. SZYMANSKI AND ERIK VINKHUYZEN  and
PAUL M. AOKI AND ALLISON WOODRUFF
MARGARET H. SZYMANSKI AND ERIK VINKHUYZEN
Affiliation:
Palo Alto Research Center, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, Peggy.Szymanski@parc.com
PAUL M. AOKI AND ALLISON WOODRUFF
Affiliation:
Intel Research Berkeley, 2150 Shattuck Ave., Ste. 1300, Berkeley, CA 94704
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Abstract

This study investigates the organization of conversational interaction via push-to-talk mobile radios. Operating like long-range walkie-talkies, the mobile radios mediate a remote state of incipient talk; at the push of a button, speakers can initiate, engage, disengage, and reengage turn-by-turn talk. Eight friends used the mobile radios for one week; 50 of their conversational exchanges were analyzed using conversation analytic methods. The findings describe the contour of their conversational exchanges: how turn-by-turn talk is engaged, sustained, and disengaged. Similar to a continuing state of incipient talk in copresence, opening and closing sequences are rare. Instead, speakers engage turn-by-turn talk by immediately launching the purpose of the call. Speakers disengage turn-by-turn talk by orienting to the relevance of a lapse at sequence completion. Once engaged, the mobile radio system imposes silence between speakers' turns at talk, giving them a resource for managing a remote conversation amid ongoing copresent activities.We are grateful to Mimi and her friends for making it possible to collect this data. We also thank Jim Thornton, Marilyn Whalen, Paul Drew, Bob Moore and Luke Plurkowski for their helpful insights.

Keywords

continuing state of incipient talkconversation analysisreengaging and disengaging talkmobile radio communication
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 2006 , pp. 393 - 418
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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