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Participation cues: Coordinating activity and collaboration in complex online gaming worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2010

Elizabeth Keating  and
Chiho Sunakawa
Elizabeth Keating
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, Austin, Texas 78712-0303ekeating@mail.utexas.edu
Chiho Sunakawa
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, Austin, Texas 78712-0303chihos@mail.utexas.edu
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Abstract

The development of digital communication technologies not only has an influence on human communicative practices, but also creates new spaces for human collaborative activity. In this article we discuss a technologically mediated context for interaction, computer games. Closely looking at interactions among a group of gamers, we examine how players are managing complex, shifting frameworks of participation, the virtual game world and the embodied world of talk and plans for action. Introducing the notion of participation cues, we explain how interactants are able to orient to, plan, and execute collaborative actions that span quite different environments with quite different types of agency, possible acts, and consequences. Novel abilities to interact across diverse spaces have consequences for understanding how humans build coordinated action through efficient, multimodal communication mechanisms. (Computer-mediated communication, language and technology, gaming, gesture, participation, multimodality)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , June 2010 , pp. 331 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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