Multimodal Conversation Analysis: Exploring the interface between talk and the body (Ringvorlesung Sprache und Kommunikation: verbal, digital, multimodal)

Lorenza Mondada

Starting point and questions

• The importance of the body to make sense in social interaction
• How to consider the entire body (and not only gestures, or nods, or gaze in a separate way) in our approach of action?
• How do people identify and recognize what is going on even when they don’t know the other persons they are about to interact with?

Data

• Chance encounters in public space

• Activists approaching pedestrians to ask for support to an environmental organization

• How encounters emerge in public space, how the convergence of walking trajectories projects an imminent interaction, what are the very first words uttered?

• Both an ordinary mundane practice and an institutional practice (encountering people is a skillful practice that characterizes some professions, like street vendors, activists)

• Reveals the fundaments of communication in social interaction