Showing objects in Skype video-mediated conversations: From showing gestures to showing sequences

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ScienceDirect Journal of Pragmatics 110 (2017) 63--82 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Showing objects in Skype video-mediated conversations: From showing gestures to showing sequences Christian Licoppe I3-SES, CNRS, Télécom ParisTech, Université Paris-Saclay, 75013 Paris, France Received 10 August 2016; received in revised form 3 December 2016; accepted 11 January 2017 Available online 9 February 2017

Abstract This paper focuses on sequences in which participants show one another a personal object in video-mediated communication. First, it brings some order into the diversity of showing practices by making a distinction between ‘gestural showings’ in which the display of an object is a gestural contribution to ongoing talk, and ‘showing sequences’, in which the visual display of the object becomes the focus of the interaction, with different ‘gestalt contextures’ of talk and embodied conduct. Second, regarding showing sequences, it introduces a further and important distinction, between ‘informative showings’ which enact a recipient without relevant knowledge regarding the showable, and ‘evocative showings’, which enact instead a knowledgeable recipient. Finally, this systematic understanding of the organization of showing practices is used to account for the recurrent production of showing sequences involving personal objects (which index familiar and intimate territories) in video-mediated interpersonal conversations, and to show how such sequences can constitute a powerful resource to perform ‘intimacy-at-a-distance’. © 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Keywords: Gesture; Showing; Multimodal interaction; Video-mediated communication

In the course of a study of naturally occurring, interpersonal video-mediated calls, it can be observed that coparticipants often bring ordinary objects to the view of co-participants, i.e. to the camera, and that wherever they formulate such practices in their conversations, they account for them as instances of ‘showing’ things. The point of this paper is to make sense of this type of everyday practice, and to understand its specific relevance to video-mediated communication. Common to all kinds of such showings, one can find a generic organization for gesture (McNeill, 2014: 25--26), adapted to a concern with showing objects: (a) Preparation: a previously invisible (or poorly visible) object is brought into view, i.e. in a position suitable for it to become a focus of joint attention. (b) Stroke: the object is held in this ‘show position’ for it to be ‘viewed’ by a co-participant. (c) Retraction: the object is withdrawn from the showing position. However, when viewed from a praxeological perspective, it soon appears that ‘showing an object to a co-participant’ must be understood as an indigenous gloss covering a set of different practices and sequences, all involving this particular gestural organization, though adjusted to the particulars of the interaction setting. This paper aims to build on the seminal research on the sequential organization of showings by young children (Kidwell and Zimmerman, 2007) (a) to provide a more precise sense of how showings by adults are sequentially organized, and on the basis of such organization may be achieved so as to do various things, and (b) on the basis of this understanding, to account for their particular relevance in interpersonal video-mediated conversations.

E-mail address: [email protected]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.01.007 0378-2166/© 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.

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In showings, a particular domain of the environment (the showable) is collaboratively made interactionally relevant through ‘environmentally coupled gestures’ (Goodwin, 2007: 197--198). As such, showings and pointings (which have been much more extensively researched) have many pragmatic properties in common. First, some material feature is assembled for the occasion and collaboratively constituted as a domain of scrutiny and joint attention, elaborated on a moment by moment basis within a dynamically evolving ‘gestalt contexture’ weaving together multiple and mutually elaborative semiotic fields (Goodwin, 2000, 2013; Hindmarsh and Heath, 2000a,b). Second, the production of such a deictic gesture is tightly articulated to the sequential organization of talk, whether with respect to turn-taking (Mondada, 2007) or turn completion (Goodwin, 2007). However, showings differ from pointings and similar deictic gestures with respect to the question of visual access. In pointings, ‘‘participants assume that when they point toward an object, their coparticipant has, at least potential, access to that object’’ (Hindmarsh and Heath, 2000a: 559), whereas showings highlight instead prior limitations in visual access to their target domains, hence the need to make these visible. In video-mediated environments, showings may thus be achieved either by turning the camera to the domain of interest (Licoppe and Morel, 2014), or in the case of handheld ‘showables’, by bringing them manually into a recognizable show position. There are only a few studies which address showing practices in co-present settings. These reflect three directions of research. The first involves the study of the way children with (yet) limited speech abilities rely on showing objects to other children or to caregivers in the kindergarten as an important interactional resource for engaging others into interaction. In such showing sequences, which project an uptake by the recipient, children also display an awareness of the availability constraints of show recipients (Lerner and Zimmerman, 2003; Kidwell and Zimmerman, 2007). Because of the speech limitations of the children, these studies pay less attention to the articulation of embodied conduct and talk-in-interaction than will be needed here to do to account for the showing of objects in adult video-mediated conversations. In addition, these studies highlight a phenomenon which is important in co-present showing: the possibility that the initiation of the showing ‘pivots’ into an actual transfer of the object (Lerner and Raymond, forthcoming). However, in the video-mediated conversations which are studied here, such a possibility is of course inhibited, so the focus will be more on the interplay of visuality and talk which is characteristic of various showing practices. A second stream of research has involved adults and teenagers discussing and showing their mobile phones to one another, a situation in which the possibility of just referring to something on the mobile screen, of showing it and/or of transferring it is salient (Weilenmann and Larsson, 2001; Aaltonen et al., 2014). One last direction for research has come from an interest in assessments in conversation analysis (Lindstrom and Mondada, 2009) and has focused on showing sequences as an occasion for the development of assessments, with embodied conduct as a crucial resource in the production of the ‘assessable’, whether the setting is that of someone showing an item of clothing during a fitting session (Fasulo and Monzani, 2009), or the customer's new haircut to the customer (Oshima and Streeck, 2015), or something on one's smartphone (Raclaw et al., 2016). The aims of this paper are two-fold. First, I develop a systematic and general frame of analysis for sequences involving the showing of an object to a co-participant, the relevance of which extends beyond the particular case of videomediated communication. In particular an important distinction is introduced, between ‘gestural showings’ in which the display of an object is done so as to be recognizably relevant to ongoing talk (something which could metaphorically be described as ‘talking-and-showing’), and ‘showing sequences’, in which the display of the object is the focus of the interaction (that is, metaphorically, ‘showing-and-talking’). This first distinction will be deployed to understand further differences within these two distinctive ‘showing interaction orders’. I will show how ‘gestural showings’ can be connected to the current research on gesture-in-interaction and how they can be accomplished as ‘gesticulations’ (Kendon, 1980) and as ‘co-expressive gestures’ (McNeill, 2014) or as communication moves, i.e. environmentally coupled actions which may complete (see also Goodwin, 2007) or fully substitute for an expected turn-at-talk as a form of non-verbal response. With respect to showing sequences, it will be shown to be a fruitful move to distinguish ‘informative showing sequences’ from ‘evocative showing sequences’, on the basis of the kind of epistemically oriented recipient design which is made relevant to their initiation in each case. While showing sequences in general are done so as to recognizably project an uptake, the kind of assessment sequence which has been studied in previous research will be shown to be a relevant and well adapted type of response to the systematic organization of informative showing sequences. With respect to the developing interest for research on embodied interaction (Streeck et al., 2011), this effort to systematically describe one type of object-centered sequence opens the way to the extension of such a systematic analysis to other kinds of recognizable embodied sequences of interaction, and to comparative research on the organization of such sequences. Last, such analyses of the organization of showing practices will be used as resources to understand their specific relevance to interpersonal video-mediated conversations, and what they are used for there. On the one hand I will argue that the dynamically evolving ‘fragtured ecologies’ (Luff et al., 2003: 53) which characterize video-mediated communication and from which such sequences may unfold offer a kind of ‘perspicuous setting’ (Garfinkel, 2002: 181--182) for showing practices. On the other hand, with prior interview-based research coming from different perspectives suggesting that video-based interpersonal conversations are used by family and friends to sustain a sense of ‘intimacy-at-a-distance’ (Kirk et al., 2010; Neustaedter and Greenberg, 2011; Madianou and Miller, 2012), I will show

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empirically how showing personal objects in the course of such conversations constitutes a powerful resource for collaboratively achieving a sense of intimacy and closeness. 1. Data collection and corpus A corpus of naturally occurring interpersonal video-mediated conversations between family and friends was constituted for the purpose of this study. Fourteen primary participants were recruited (nine of whom were native French speakers), who agreed to take part in the study, and the consent of about 30 of their Skype correspondents to use their Skype-based conversations with the primary participant was obtained. They were shown how to record conversations through a video capture software system (Camtasia), in their usual conditions of Skype use (on their own computer, with their own version and configuration of Skype). Because of variations in their digital set-up, there was some variation in the video communication affordances available to them, but this could be overlooked for it did not bear directly on the sequential organization of showings, which is the phenomenon I study here. However the particulars of their ecological set-up may have influenced some practical choices, for instance bringing objects to the screen to make them visible rather than turning the camera toward them, which is an other way to show things in video communication (Licoppe and Morel, 2014). The final corpus involves a little over 40 Skype conversationalists (about 1/3 male and 2/3 female), 75 h of recorded video conversations, 180 naturally occurring conversations which the conversationalists elected to make available for study. The main configurations of active Skype conversationalists in this corpus involved geographically distant couples or partners (4 cases), parents and adult children (5 cases), siblings (3 cases), and close friends (7 cases). After carefully watching the corpus, 90 instances in which objects were brought and held to the camera were isolated, which indicates that this is a recurrent practice (once in every other conversation on average). The items which were thus visible were mostly clothes (worn or not), furniture and items related to interior design, multimedia devices and especially smartphones, cuddly toys, and objects related to current activities (e.g. documents one is working on, objects related to domestic chores, to surrounding young children, etc.). A common feature of such objects is that they are recognizable as relevant to personal territories or ‘territories of the self’ (Goffman, 1971), i.e. domains over which the show-er is understood to have special claims and rights. 2. Video-mediated communication and showings Research on video-mediated communication in the human--computer interaction (HCI) domain has shown the importance of the video channel for collaboration within distributed groups, noting in particular its relevance for ‘‘showing and manipulating three-dimensional objects’’ (Tang and Isaacs, 1993: 193), while stressing that the establishment of some common ground remained a recurrent concern for distributed video-mediated collaboration (Olson and Olson, 2000). In video-mediated settings, co-participants operate in ‘fragmented ecologies’ (Luff et al., 2003), in which they mutually appear through the mediation of cameras and screens. A crucial feature of such settings is the fact that large parts of their immediate surroundings, lying beyond the frame of a given video shot, remain invisible to distant co-participants. Such an asymmetry of perspectives makes pointing gestures potentially troublesome when their target is off screen (Heath and Luff, 1993). Studies of Skype uses have noted some specific features, such as innovative linguistic behavior in educational contexts (Brunner et al., 2016), but to the best of my knowledge, they have not dealt with issues such as showing or pointing. Unlike the users of earlier video communication systems, the Skype users in the corpus presented here did not engage in instances of troublesome pointing, thus displaying some skill at managing the constraints of video-mediated communication (VMC) settings, in line with some earlier forecasts (Dourish et al., 1996). One thing they did commonly enough was to show one another various features of their surroundings. The initiation and collaborative accomplishment of such showings display their awareness of the local ‘evidential boundaries’ (Goffman, 1974) which characterize video-mediated settings, and their capacity to use them as a resource for interaction. Indeed, with many off screen features of the environment being easily retrievable so as to be brought into view, video-mediated settings appear to be congenial environments for showing gestures. Coparticipants seem to orient toward the production of showings as a set of routine and relevant practices in videomediated communication, as shown in Extract 1. Extract 1. A mistaken showing Amy and Bea are two sisters used to keeping their Skype connection on for long periods of time while they work (they are both students). At the start of the sequence, they have not been talking for longer than 40 s, and Bea has been working at her computer.

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During a lapse in the conversation, an object which Amy holds becomes visible in Bea's screen (Line 1, Image 1.1). Moreover the image is frozen for a brief moment, giving the impression that the object is maintained in this salient state of visibility, before it is moved off screen again (Line 3, Image 1.2). Bea responds by inquiring about what Amy might have been showing her (Line 5). She thus displays her orienting and attending to the visual appearance of the object as the possible consequence of a potential showing project, explicitly labeling the inferred activity as showing or ‘‘montrer’’. The design of the noticing as a question suggests there may be a problem with the inference. Indeed her co-participant denies that she is showing her anything (Line 7). Despite this, the two participants actually use this failed noticing of a showing as an occasion to actually show the object in an emergent fashion (not shown in the excerpt). I will return later to the reasons for which Bea makes perceptible her doubts regarding whether this is actually a showing or not, and will focus here on what her inferential display suggests, i.e. that video-communication settings are environments in which objects may visually appear, and that they routinely do so when they are shown. It is noticeable that while the alleged show-er denies that she is showing something, she does not challenge the plausibility of this interpretation, i.e. that she might have been showing something. Bea's mistaken inference shows how the unheralded appearance of an object, held visible on screen for a significant stretch of time may be treated as the sign of an intentional and recognizable activity, i.e. a ‘showing’. By making explicit their orientation toward accounting for such visual appearances as potential instances of a ‘showing’, the participants display how they intersubjectively

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experience video-mediated communicative environments as ‘perspicuous settings’ (Garfinkel, 2002) for showing activities. It is important to note that the showing of objects in video-mediated settings differs from the showing of objects in copresence, in that in video-mediated settings the actual transfer of an object is not possible. Video-mediated showings are usually done in one of two ways. One way is for the show-er to move his computer or smartphone so as to orient the camera toward a potential target domain for a showing. This type of showing is highly relevant when co-participants are using mobile terminals (Licoppe and Morel, 2014) and when the visual target cannot be easily moved. The other way is for an object to be retrieved and manipulated so as to be made to appear in the visual field of the camera, and to be held there for the duration of the showing. In what follows, the focus will be on this second set of practices, which will be glossed in this paper as the ‘showing’ of objects in video-mediated communication. 3. Showing objects as a gestural contribution to ongoing topical talk: talking-and-showing The showing of an object can only be understood within the multimodal contexture in which and as which it unfolds. In particular, the sequential environment ‘‘in which the other is encouraged to look at an object constrains the potential ways in which that object might be appropriately attended to’’ (Hindmarsh and Heath, 2000a: 546). With the class of ‘gestural showings’, a turn-at-talk is either under way or projected at the moment in which the object is shown, and the gesture is recognizably done so as to be intelligible as a contribution to such talk. Such showings can be described as ‘gestural showings’, which may also be glossed as ‘talking-and-showing’. 3.1. Showing an object as a co-expressive gesture In my first example, Al and Ben are two close friends engaged in a video call (Image 1). Extract 2. Producing the mobile phone as support for an account

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While Ben is talking (Line 1), he receives a call and looks down at his phone (Image 2.2), then he looks back up (Image 2.3) and provides an announcement referring to the incoming call (Line 2), followed by an instruction to wait. Al understands the announcement as an account, and the instruction as an indication that he is about to take the call, and gives a go ahead (Line 6), with Ben already orienting away from the screen and toward his phone (Lines 7--9). Of particular interest is the way he makes his mobile phone visible while referring to this incoming phone call, and particularly the synchronization of his gesture with his verbal account. The preparation phase of the showing is done as he starts the account (Line 2), and leans toward the screen (Image 2.4). The restart in Line 2 shows how his evolving turn-at-talk is sensitive to the way the gesture unfolds, for it coincides with the moment the phone becomes visible. The phone is then held besides his face (still framed as a ‘talking head’) for the duration of the account. At the end of the account, as he provides a suspensive instruction projecting his disengagement from the video call, he briefly puts the phone down so that it disappears (Image 7), before bringing it up to his ear a moment later. Through this finely tuned timing of talk and embodied conduct, the showing is produced as a ‘co-expressive gesture’ (McNeill, 2014), which complements the verbal account. The recipient orients to it as such, for he does not refer to any visual features of the phone, but provides a go-ahead (Line 6), thus treating the combination of talk and gesture as a kind of pre-sequence. During the stroke of the gesture, the screen is mostly occupied by Ben's talking head (he has even come closer to the screen) with the phone kept close to his face and slightly below. In video-mediated communication, the video images are accountable as a visual formulation of relevant participation frames (Licoppe and Morel, 2012; Licoppe, 2015). The visual frame produced by Ben constitutes a relevant ‘semiotic field’ (Goodwin, 2000), which highlights and enacts the centrality of Ben's status as a speaker as he is producing his utterance (he even leans in so that his head appears bigger) and the complementarity of the gesture (the showable is small and held beside his talking head, instead of for instance being held in front of it). So the placement and timing of the showing with respect to the talk, the embodied conduct, the positioning with respect to the screen, and the object itself compose a ‘gestalt contexture’ (Goodwin, 2000, 2013) of ‘talking-and-showing’ in which the showing, i.e. the embodied conduct through which the mobile phone is made visible, is collaboratively achieved as a co-expressive gesture, co-emergent with the talk and tightly articulated to it. In this particular instance, the utterance has a self-standing meaning. In other cases of showings as co-expressive gestures in this corpus, the articulation between the talk and the co-expressive showing may be reinforced by a combination of verbal deictic reference and pointing gestures targeting the showable (see also Hindmarsh and Heath, 2000b). 3.2. Showing objects as a communicative move My second example provides a different configuration, in which the showing of the object contributes to the ongoing talk, sequentially and topically, not as a co-expressive gesture, but as a communicative action per se. In that respect, my analysis relates to earlier research on embodied completion of turns (Olsher, 2004), which showed for instance how a turn-at-talk with a missing reference could be completed by an ‘environmentally coupled gesture’ (Goodwin, 2007), and on

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the production of non-verbal actions in response to a turn (Rossano, 2010). It can be seen here how the showing of an object may be designed and oriented to as a responsive, non-verbal turn.

Extract 3. Showing an object as a non-verbal turn

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At the start of the extract, the two girls are trying to find a way to transport small objects in an air trip which Ann is about to make to rejoin Bo. The repaired, grammatically incomplete instruction in Line 1 is incomplete, and projects the provision of a solution to this query, with the pair of question-answers which follows aiming to clarify additional points (Lines 2--5 and 7--9). So when Ann rises and disappears from screen (Line 10), the provision of a solution to their initial concern (what lines 1 leaves incomplete, and a topic which the clarification sequence, lines 5--9, did not touch) is still relevant, and provides a frame for understanding Ann's subsequent actions. When Ann reappears, she holds an object in her hand and she brings it into visual and interactional salience (maintaining it at the center of the screen and in front of her), i.e. she crafts her appearance as a showing of that object. By putting her face into the frame, she makes relevant her participation status as a speaker. She also frames the showing as temporary by standing and just leaning into the screen, a position somewhat analogous to a ‘‘body torque’’ (Schegloff, 1998), which

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cannot be sustained, and projects some upcoming completion and an unelaborated response. Moreover, the lack of any preface to her silent reappearance and showing recipient designs the co-participant as someone who is in a position to make sense of her silent, embodied conduct on its own. Finally, after holding the object into view for a moment without Bo responding, Ann swings the object repeatedly (Images 3.5 and 3.6). She thus provides a kind of ‘beat’ (McNeill, 2014:15), which highlights here the meaningfulness of the shown object. More significantly, it displays and upgrades her expectation of a response. It is one type of practice through which showers undertake ‘‘the pursuit of another's attentional focus, and thus a response’’ (Kidwell and Zimmerman, 2007: 599). Indeed, she stops the beat and widens her smile as soon as Bo starts to answer (Line 14, Image 3.7). It is interesting to note that in the kinds of showings discussed in the next section, when there is a delay in the response and it is treated as a potential problem, a common remedial action is to rearrange the object so that it may be better viewed (e.g. bringing it closer to the screen, centering it, etc.). This is not the case here: with her beat, the show-er thus indicates that a response can be provided with the object exactly in the same position, so viewing it better is not a concern. To summarize, Ann is bootstrapping multiple semiotic fields to design her actions as the showing of an object sequentially organized so as to work potentially as a non-verbal answer to the initial query. Bo's assessment at Line 14, followed by her subsequent instruction (Line 18), is designed as an instance of ‘recipient response’ (Goodwin, 1986: 30), i. e. a response to the gesture in itself as an event, which targets the shown object as a solution to their joint inquiry. It therefore orients to the gestural showing as a self-standing non-verbal reply to the incomplete question started in Line 1. Moreover, Ann treats Bo's response as relevant, by moving off the screen to put away the tube, thus effectively bringing her gestural showing to an end (Images 3.8--3.10). These two examples (Extracts 2 and 3) provide us with instances of ‘gestural showings’ which span one side of ‘Kendon's continuum’ (Kendon, 1980): (a) the showing of an object as a ‘gesticulation’, i.e. a co-expressive gesture complementing and contributing to a turn-at-talk with the production of which it is finely coordinated, and (b) the showing of an object as a communicative gesture per se, which completes by itself a sequence of talk-in-interaction. What is common to these gestures is that the initiation, the design and the communicative function of the showings have to be understood with respect to the organization of ongoing talk; the gesture does not constitute the central feature of a distinct sequence but a contribution to topical talk within an ongoing conversational sequence. In the next section, I will deal with a different type of showing sequence, that is object-centered sequences in which the showing is achieved so as to constitute the focus of the joint interaction. 4. Showing sequences: showing objects as a topic and an activity In the configuration which is discussed now, the bringing of an object into a focus of joint visual attention is achieved in the course of a recognizable sequence in its own right, with a systematic organization. A sequence can be defined as a ‘‘vehicle for getting some activity accomplished’’ (Schegloff, 2007a: 2). With ‘showing sequences’ it is the showing of some artifact which is construed as the object of such sequences: participants demonstrably orient and attend to the developing visual event as what makes relevant responsive video-mediated talk, hence the metaphorical gloss ‘showing-and-talking’ (or even ‘showing-then-talking’) rather than ‘talking-and-showing’, as with gestural showings. In such showing sequences, the visual consideration of a ‘showable’ becomes a kind of joint ‘topic’ for the video encounter, provided the notion of topic is defined more broadly than has been the case before (Maynard, 1980; Maynard and Zimmerman, 1984; Button and Casey, 1984, 1985). Topical talk had hitherto been used to describe to some recognizable stretch of ordinary conversation, with the same sequential organization as ordinary conversation. If ‘topic’ is taken more generally as the focus of a stretch of interaction, then other sequences such as showing sequences may be ‘topical’ in that extended sense. The link with the traditional notion of topic becomes particularly useful when one considers the initiation and the sequential build-up of showing sequences, which are closely tied to the problem of managing topical shifts in conversation. For at transition-relevant points for topical shifts, not only can topic shifts occur (in the traditional sense), but also other types of conversation-relevant sequences. Showing sequences in video calls are, unlike gestural showings, initiated at sequential positions in which topical shifts may be relevant, with such a sequential positioning being part of what makes them recognizable as such. This formal sequential equivalence with topics also accounts for the fact that showing sequences, just like new topic initiations, may work as resources for sustaining the development of a (videomediated) ordinary interpersonal conversation, the use of which displays the involvement of the co-participants in that larger project. Another constitutive feature of showing sequences is the kind of work done by the participants to jointly establish the relevance of showing something, which involves constituting some object as both showable and ‘show-worthy’ for the occasion. While ‘showability’ relates to visual access, ‘show-worthiness’ involves recipient design, and it is usually framed in two different and distinctive ways. In the relative majority of cases, an object is deemed worthy of being shown because it is introduced and visually produced as related to something ‘new’ in the life of the show-er: (a) things recently obtained, recent changes in the material design of one's home, etc. (b) items related to or indexing biographical events (such as for

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instance a newly acquired driving license); (c) items related to ongoing activities which are currently under way, and therefore ‘discoverable’, ‘mentionable’ and ‘showable’ in the course of a call (e.g. domestic activities such as cooking, cleaning or ironing; document-related activities from the consultation of pictures on a smartphone to writing, etc.). The common feature to all such ‘informative showings’ is the presupposition of a deficit of knowledge on the part of the recipient. At the other visual-epistemic extreme, there are what could be called ‘evocative showings’ where the showing is initiated and done in a way which presupposes that the recipient is knowledgeable about what is shown, or at least knowledgeable enough to ‘see’ the showable in an adequate way. The boundary between these two ways of framing showing sequences is a dynamic one, which may be reworked collaboratively in the course of the interaction by reshaping the recipient's epistemic status (Heritage, 2012). Such showing sequences may occasionally be initiated by actions from show-recipients (such as requests or noticings), but for lack of space, the focus will be here on the preferential and more common case in which the showings are initiated by the show-ers themselves. 4.1. ‘Informative’ showing sequences 4.1.1. Initiating the showing at a relevant point for topical shifts When the showing of the object is done so as to become the focus of the ongoing interaction, whether it be informative or evocative, the initiation of the sequence involves a shift with respect to what the current interaction is about. Unlike gestural showings, which are initiated at a moment when topical talk is either under way or projected, the initiation of showings-as-activities is done at sequential positions where a topical shift may be relevant, and so as to achieve and display such a shift. In Extract 1 for instance, the object which would mistakenly be treated as shown appeared in a state of incipient (video) talk after a 45 s lapse in the conversation. In Extract 4 below, the showing is initiated at a recognizable point of relevance for a topical shift. Extract 4. The boot

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Ali first provides a transition marker, the ‘‘bon’’ in Line 1 which retrospectively marks the prior topical talk as possibly closed, and prospectively works as a reorientation signal (Schiffrin, 1987). This provides a setting for her to utter a generic topic initiation elicitor (Button and Casey, 1984), which projects some responsive stretch of topical talk. However, she does not wait for an answer, but provides another orientation marker (‘‘so’’, Line 3), followed by an attention-getting device and an instruction to look (‘‘here’’, Line 5). The latter can be heard as preliminary to a showing, for it projects her making something visible and relevant to the interaction. Such a prospective orientation is reinforced by a gesture, done so as to be finely synchronized with the production of the instruction (Images 4.1--4.3). She brings and briefly holds her hand up during the attention-getting device ‘‘here’’, and she starts to move her hand down in a circular gesture as she starts to say ‘‘look’’ (Line 5) so that the hand reaches her lowest point at the end of the instruction and then she starts to turn back. The brief freezing of the hand reinforces the attention-getting power of the first TCU (‘‘here’’) while the circular motion iconically represents the action of bringing something from ‘‘there’’ to ‘‘here’’ (i.e. in the joint interactional space). The initiation of a showing is achieved here as a finely designed embodied performance of a choreographed gesture and talk-in-interaction. The instruction does a kind of action-oriented self-repair (Drew et al., 2010), for it transforms in the course of an ongoing utterance an initial topic elicitation into an instruction which projects an upcoming showing. Not only is the showing initiated at a sequential placement where a topical shift is relevant, but it is done here explicitly in lieu of topic initiation. That is why the notion of ‘topic’ might be extended beyond the sole domain of talk, to encompass these situations in which other activities such as showing become the focus of the interaction even though they may involve a different gestalt configuration of talk and embodied conduct than topical talk: the instruction to look precisely highlights the particular importance of visual semiotic fields for the developing sequence of interaction.

4.1.2. Prefaces to showings As shown initially by Sacks in the case of story-telling (Sacks, 1992), prefaces are powerful resources for the establishment of a joint orientation toward forms of interaction which differ from ordinary conversation in the details of their organization. It is not surprising that the initiation of showings by show-ers systematically involves some prefatory work, with one type of exception discussed later. Prefaces make visible the kind of concerns participants might have in initiating a showing sequence, and provide resources for co-participants to ‘see’ and ‘make visible that they see’ the object from a joint perspective. Instructions, whether instructions to look, but also often suspensive instructions (for instance to wait) are a common component in showing prefaces. Such instructions display a concern with the particulars of showing sequences as gestalt configurations, and especially the forms of articulation of talk and visuality which are relevant to showings as accomplishments. The looking instruction invites to ‘look’, but to look in a certain, specific way: for instance, in the previous example, the co-participant was already turned toward the screen and in a sense was already ‘looking’, so the instruction projects a different mode of visual perception as relevant. It also makes further talk conditionally relevant to the achievement of such a different way of ‘looking’ and provides a situated criterion for displaying ‘‘competence as a participant’’ (Nevile, 2004: 459) by not talking until it is possible to produce the kind of talk which is relevant to that ‘looking situation’. Another component of informative showing prefaces is the naming or the categorization of the ‘showable’. Extract 5 provides a typical example.

Extract 5. ‘‘My new wallet’’

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As with the previous extract, the showing is initiated after a pause in the conversation. It starts with the utterance of a term of endearment, ‘‘my love?’’ (Line 2), which is used as an attention-getting address term (through its placement after a pause and the upward prosody), but which also makes relevant a standard relational pair: lovers. The prefacing turn is done without instructions, with the showing being timed so as to be done at the same time as the preface (Line 5, Images 5.2--5.3), displaying a strong sense of the entitlement on the part of the show-er. In that example the preface names the showable, thus providing the show recipient with a cue to determine when a showing has been recognizably achieved, and when and how he can talk in relation to the showing. But by predicating the showable as her ‘‘new wallet’’ (Line 5), she frames this object as one that the show recipient has never seen, and the showing as an informative one. The show-er's prefatory work, and the way she shows her object during the preface without waiting for a go-ahead enacts the recipient as the kind of person for whom it is particularly relevant to see this new and personal object of hers at the first opportunity after it has been mentioned. The way the showing is initiated therefore enacts their intimacy, and the kind of standard relational pairing (Sacks, 1992) to which such degree of intimacy is category-bound, i.e. a range of categories among which partners and lovers figure as the most prominent representatives. Conversely, the fact that they are young partners and lovers, provides some ground for doing the showing with such a flourish of entitlement, and her use of the ‘‘my love’’ address term in Line 2 precisely provides that kind of membership categorization-based support. This is a more general feature of the showing of objects in this corpus of video-mediated communication. The very fact of launching a showing sequence frame the show recipient as that kind of person for whom being shown this object at that moment in the interaction is relevant. Showing personal objects enacts the kind of relational proximity and intimacy which provides for such relevance. The following instance with the boot provides similar relational work, though with slightly more elaborate categorization practices. The excerpt below comes just after the segment of interaction with the boot I have analyzed in the previous section, as the showing sequence develops. Extract 4. The boot (continued)

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After having instructed her co-participant to look, Ali turns away, picks up the boot, and turns back toward the screen. As she is bringing the boot to a show position, she utters another preface component ‘‘let's talk about girl stuff’’ (Line 13). This provides a ‘formulation’ of the way they might talk about what is thus to be looked at. The formulation is done at a moment when the object is barely starting to become visible, so that it can be recognized as doing prefatory work: -- It provides the show recipient with some criteria for recognizing what might be a showable and when a showing might be recognizably done (i.e. when some relevant showable for whom it is relevant for girls to talk about together as ‘‘girl stuff’’ has been made visible in an adequate way). -- It offers a slot for the recipient to say something regarding the showing project. -- It projects the further production of talk, which is conditional to the achievement of a showing, as well as a frame to assess the relevance of such talk (the kind of talk girls produce when discussing that kind of showable as ‘‘girl stuff’’). Categorization devices are generated here both through the showing itself, and through its prefatory announcement. Initiating the showing enacts the participants as the kind of relational pair for whom it is relevant to show and see that kind of personal object, what could be called a ‘showing-generated’ categorization device, or perhaps more aptly a range of potential categorization devices, since the implicit dimension of such categorization processes allows for some degree of ‘promiscuousness’ in the potentially relevant categorization devices (Schegloff, 2007b; Stokoe, 2012). In this instance, the object being a newly purchased item of clothing, ‘friends’ is one of the most salient categorization among those possible. However, the show-er also explicitly invokes the gender characterization devices, making relevant the standard relational pair girl--girl, framing the showing and the kind of talk it may occasion to come as the kind of thing which female friends do together. This is a more general feature of these showing sequences involving personal items in interpersonal videomediated conversations. Not only do such environments provide ‘affordances’ for the showing of objects (because of camera-based visual affordances and shots, many objects in one's surroundings become potential showables) while highlighting physical separation (for instance by inhibiting the possibility of transferring the object, which is characteristic of co-present showings), but the initiation of such showing sequences enacts participants as categorically related in a way which is made relevant by such showings, with the personal character of the objects indexing closeness and intimacy. Showing personal objects on video thus appears to constitute a powerful resource for ‘doing-intimacy-at-a-distance’.

4.1.3. Responding to showings: assessment sequences Any kind of object can be recruited and described in a potentially infinite number of ways. In the course of an interaction, when objects are referred to, they are dynamically assembled for the occasion, to be apprehended under a certain relevant perspective (Smith, 1996; Hindmarsh and Heath, 2000a,b). This observation extends to the way we perceive the objects which may be referred to, pointed at, shown, etc. With respect to showing sequences, there is an infinite number of ways of visually apprehending a given object, which are not captured by our ordinary descriptions of perception (Coulter and Parsons, 1990). So in a showing sequence, the object and the way it might be seen are simultaneously constituted for that very occasion, for that very moment. The beginnings of video-mediated showing

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sequences, and especially their prefaces, attend to such constitutive processes by framing the relevance of the object. Previous research mostly focused on the response to informative showing sequences (though it did not identify them as such, lacking the general frame of analysis developed here), and on the way participants achieve and display their joint visual perception and joint understanding of the object at hand in showing sequences (Fasulo and Monzani, 2009; Oshima and Streeck, 2015; Raclaw et al., 2016). As will be discussed now, such sequences also figure prominently in video-mediated environments. Extract 4. The boot (continued)

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After an identification-oriented question--answer sequence (Lines 15--18) made relevant by the fact that in this instance the preface did not name the kind of showable in play, Bree provides a visual assessment of the boot (Line 20). Bree's assessment is a generic visual one. Ali's response, a simple repeat of her previous turn with a downward prosody (‘‘it's a boot’’, Line 22) marks it as slightly inadequate, framing it as uninformative with respect to the earlier identification of the object as a boot. This inadequacy might be related to the relative lack of enthusiasm displayed in the design of the assessment (‘‘not too bad [for] a boot’’), but also to its genericity, which does not qualify for the kind of talk one might expect from girlfriends when they talk together of a new boot. Bree might be aware of this because she produces a new assessment in overlap (Line 23). The latter is more specific, and displays a more specific perception of the object, i.e. as an item which visually evokes a certain (western) style of clothing. Ali brings back the book in her lap and looks down at it (Images 10--12). By postponing her answer to the assessment she indicates some potential trouble, and through her embodied conduct she points to the kind of visual apprehension of the showable which the assessment displays as the source of trouble: she produces a kind of ‘body gloss’ (Goffman, 1971) which makes publicly visible and dramatizes her ‘seeing’, i.e. here her ostensibly careful consideration of the boot as an effort to see it in the way which the previous assessment has made relevant. This is followed by a flat rejection of the assessment (Line 29), repaired into a partial alignment (Line 31). Bree reads this as a sign of disagreement with her assessment, for she corrects Ali's interpretation, making the sewing and not the heel the origin of her previous evaluation. This extract displays how showing sequences project responsive talk which displays some potentially ‘adequate’ visual orientation of the show recipient with respect to the showable. Such noticings and assessments by the show recipient are interpreted as displaying the latter's particular way of viewing the object at that moment, giving rise to characteristic assessment sequences with two most likely trajectories: (a) the retraction of the object (with or without confirmative talk by the show-er), which is an effective way of closing the showing sequence and confirming that visual intersubjectivity regarding the showable has been achieved; (b) the production of disaffiliative assessments and/or the further manipulation of the object to change the perspective under which it may be viewed and attend to perceived inadequacies in the prior noticing or assessment and what it displayed in terms of visual reception, which also projects further talk. As observed more generally in object-centered sequences, the ‘‘participants’ orientations toward particular objects ongoingly provide a resource for their interlocutors to ascertain whether they are indeed looking at the same object in the same way. That is to say, each and every subsequent action by the recipient provides further evidence for their co-participant to establish whether they are looking at the same object, and vice versa.’’ (Hindmarsh and Heath, 2000a,b: 550). In showing sequences, show-ers thus often move the object into the frame, or closer to the camera to provide the kind of perceptive display which could guide a show recipient toward ‘seeing’ the object in a given way and confirming that he or she actually sees it this way, thus ratifying a joint viewing of the showable. Such manipulations work as a kind of visual ‘repair’ with respect to the kind of visual understanding displayed in the previous talk: it operates in the visual domain, and it is oriented toward a change in the visual disposition of the coparticipant with respect to the showable. Bree does something of the sort, but with respect to her own perception of the object, when she moves it for her own consideration of it, thus making visible her own effort to see it in a certain way. Such sequences may evolve into a kind of assessment ‘dance’ of which the boot case is a good example (it goes on for longer than can be analyzed here) in which talk (mostly noticings and assessments) and embodied conduct (manipulation of the object with respect to the screen to enhance certain visual features) are used as resources to deal with perceived procedural issues in the course of the progression of the showing sequence (see also Oshima and Streeck, 2015: 559) and for exploring new possibilities to achieve some form of projected visual intersubjectivity. This particular sequential organization accounts for the way showings done as an activity in itself may function as a kind of ‘relational bid’ in interpersonal video-mediated communication. Achieving alignment on a joint way of ‘seeing’ the showable is not only intelligible as that, but also as a way to confirm the participants as incumbents of the kinds of standard relational pairs which the prefaces to showing sequences made relevant. 4.2. ‘Evocative’ showing sequences While the same sequential organization is relevant in both cases, evocative designs differ in the way the ‘show-worthiness’ of a potential showable is crafted at the beginning of the showing sequence. Here, the show recipient is framed as knowledgeable with respect to the kind of visual and object-related relevancies enacted in the showing. The next extract is a striking example of such a configuration. Ann and Bix are a recently formed couple; they live in different towns and Skype together on an almost daily basis. When the extract starts, they are in an incipient state of talk, not having been speaking for a moment, and Ann is visibly involved in unpacking her shopping bags (Image 1).

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Extract 6. The biscuit box

Ann looks down into the bag, picks up an item (Images 6.2--6.3), and starts to turn toward the screen (Image 6.4). While looking at the screen, she brings a biscuit box to the screen (Images 6.5--6.6), so that the ‘‘BIO’’ (organic) label becomes visible (Image 6.7). After holding it thus for the briefest of moments she slides the box slightly to her left so that the image of the biscuit becomes distinctly recognizable (Image 6.8). She then provides an attention-getting instruction (‘‘look’’, Line 6), holding the box in a show position for the duration of the sequence, so that the target visual domain indexed by her

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instruction is obviously the biscuit box. Bix is already looked up at the screen when she does this, so the instruction, done after the gesture, may be oriented toward the production of an uptake relevant to a showing sequence. He provides a minimal response (Line 7). This is different from the kind of noticing and assessments one finds in response to informative showings (it does not attend explicitly to visual features of the showable). It is hearable in French as marking both alignment and amusement. Here it can be understood as displaying that he feels he understands the point of such an unprefaced showing gesture. She hears it as such, for she then moves the biscuit box away, and turns back to her shopping bag, thus bringing the showing sequence to an end. In Extract 1, participants were shown to orient to the visual appearance of an object in the video frame during an incipient state of talk as a possible instance of a showing. Extract 5 provides a similar situation, though in this case there is no misunderstanding regarding the interactional status of such an appearance. Since there is no preface at all, the very initiation of the showing gesture frames the recipient, not only as able to recognize that a showing is underway on the basis of the visual appearance of the object at a suitable sequential position, but also as knowledgeable enough (a) to realize by himself the relevance of that particular object being shown at that particular moment, and (b) to ‘view’ it under an acceptable perspective, to be displayed in some recognizably responsive move. Conversely, it is only when the show recipient has provided such a response that the whole thing may be confirmed as a jointly achieved showing sequence, with the show recipient competent enough to grasp the potential point of the showing. As can be seen here, a minimal response, displaying some recognition but without making explicit what that recognition might be about, may be treated as adequate enough. In Extract 1, the inability to provide even such a minimal token of recognition was the origin of the trouble the show recipient experienced and signaled in her question (‘‘What is it that you’re showing me?’’). An object had appeared on screen and looked like it was being held there during a pause in the conversation, so that it was plausible for the recipient that a showing sequence (and considering the lack of preface, necessarily an evocative showing sequence), was under way. However, the viewer had no clue about the object on screen, hence the trouble. Because of the kind of epistemic work which characterizes them, evocative showings may dispense completely or partially with prefaces. This potential laconicism is a constitutive feature of their design. When there is a preface, it may mark some particular concern of the show-er with respect to the potential recognizability of the evocative showing and may attend to it. What kind of knowledge is the recipient supposed to have in order to be able to make sense of such evocative showings? First, that knowledge must be shared (co-participants are both framed as knowing, and knowing that they know). Second, it is the kind of knowledge which may be indexed by the showable. Third, in these Skype interpersonal conversations the vast majority of the objects are personal objects, or objects made personal by association, i.e. by dwelling in familiar domestic territories. While not a personal object in itself, as the boot was, the biscuit box is made so by its capacity to index some everyday personal consumption and nutritional habits, or the shared memory of a particular moment. Moreover, the very fact that it is being shown evocatively highlights the personal character of the object, or some feature of it. Fourth, because it is a personal object, localized in some ‘territory of the self’, the kind of shared knowledge it indexes and which an evocative showing makes relevant in the way it is designed enacts relational categories, i.e. those kinds of relational pairings for which that kind of knowledge and the capacity to recognize it in the showable are relevant. Finally, such a design for the showing projects both a response and criteria to assess it: an adequate response should show that the recipient has got the gist of the implicit reference, and just doing this may be enough. I had the opportunity to interview Bix and show him that particular sequence a few months after the fact. He remembered the exchange, and for him the story behind it was that they had met recently, and he was trying to convince her to eat more organic food. Moreover, that particular brand of organic biscuits was his favorite, and she knew it. Showing she had bought it was for him both a sign that she had payed attention to his nutritional recommendations, and also that she cared enough about him to buy his favorite brand of organic biscuits. This shows the potential richness and intimacy of the shared knowledge and experiences which an evocative showing may make salient with a great economy of words and gestures. Of course his retrospective account constitutes only a post hoc gloss, most of which was not made explicit in the interaction, and the relevance of which cannot be assessed from a conversation-analytic perspective. However, the intimacy the showing sequence enacts might be perceptible in an indirect way to a third party analysis. Because it is designed as an ‘insider gesture’ (Koschmann and LeBaron, 2002), which presumes a rich repository of shared personal knowledge between the co-participants, such laconic evocative showing sequences also presuppose that such shared knowledge or experiences are salient enough for the recipient to get the point without any further help. They enact the participants as intimate enough, and caring enough about one another that they can expect their shared histories to be present enough in their minds so that evocative showing sequences of objects which index such shared histories can be produced, recognized and made sense of, almost at a glance. ‘Successful’ evocative showings constitute the participants as intimate (what could be called a ‘showing-generated category’, to paraphrase Sacks). Evocative Skype showings are therefore powerful resources for performing ‘intimacy at-a-distance’, though through different forms of recipient design and categorization than informative showings.

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5. Conclusion The analysis has focused on a set of understudied everyday practices, recognizable and ‘glossable’ as the showing of an object. First some analytic order was brought into the diversity of showing practices by making a distinction between ‘gestural showings’ in which the display of an object is relevant to ongoing talk, and ‘showing sequences’, in which the visual display of the object becomes the focus of the interaction. Gestural showings are initiated at places where some talk is relevant, and they are designed and understood as a contribution to the talk-in-interaction. They can be accomplished as ‘co-expressive gestures’ or as communication moves, for instance as a non-verbal turn. Showing sequences are initiated as sequences in their own right, at sequential positions where topic initiation is relevant, and done so as to project some uptake. Gestural showings and showing sequences are characterized by different gestalt contextures of talk, gesture and sequence organization involving showings. Second, the focus of the paper was moved toward showing sequences. The fact that objects are assembled for the occasion of the showing, to be talked about and viewed in relevant ways, was used as an analytic resource to introduce a further and important distinction with respect to showing sequences, that between ‘informative showings’ which enact a recipient without any relevant knowledge with respect to the showable, and ‘evocative showings’, which enact instead a knowledgeable recipient. This distinction was shown to be sequentially consequential. Informative showing sequences, but not necessarily evocative ones, are initiated through prefaces, while the kind of assessment sequence studied in previous research appears to constitute a type of response particularly well suited to informative sequences. This systematic understanding of the organization of showing practices was eventually used to account for the recurrent production of showing sequences involving personal objects (which index familiar and intimate territories) in video-mediated conversations. On the one hand such conversations unfold in fragmented ecologies which constitute ‘perspicuous settings’ with respect to showing practices. On the other hand, through recipient design, showing sequences enact categorical relevancies for the show recipient. The recipient is framed on the one hand as someone for whom it is relevant to interact at that moment (at which topic initiation is relevant, so that showings display an orientation toward sustaining the video conversation), and relevant to show that particular object assembled for the occasion so as to be apprehended from a particular perspective. 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Coordinating talk and practical action. The case of hairdressing salon service assessment. Pragmat. Soc. 6 (4), 538--564. Raclaw, J., Robles, J., Didomenico, S., 2016. Upgrading epistemic access through mobile devices in face-to-face interaction. Res. Lang. Soc. Interact. 49, 362--379. Rossano, F., 2010. Questioning and responding in Italian. J. Pragmat. 42, 2756--2771. Sacks, H., 1992. Lectures on Conversation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Schegloff, E., 1998. Body torque. Conversation 65 (3), 535--596. Schegloff, E., 2007a. Sequence Organization in Interaction. A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Schegloff, E., 2007b. A tutorial on membership categorization. J. Pragmat. 39, 462--482. Schiffrin, D., 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Smith, D., 1996. Telling the truth after Post-Modernism. Symbolic Interactionnism 19 (3), 171--202. Stokoe, E., 2012. Categorial systematics. Discourse Stud. 14 (3), 345--354. Streeck, J., Goodwin, C., LeBaron, C., 2011. Embodied Interaction. Language and Body in the Material World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Tang, J., Isaacs, E., 1993. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, vol. 1. pp. 163--196. Weilenmann, A., Larsson, C., 2001. Local use and sharing of mobile phones. In: Green, N., Harper, R., Brown, B. (Eds.), Social and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. Springer Verlag, Godalming/Hiedelburg, pp. 99--115. Christian Licoppe, is currently a professor of sociology at the Social Science Department at Telecom Paristech. Among other things he has worked in the field of mobility and communication studies for several years. He has used mobile geolocation and communication data to analyze mobility and interactional patterns of mobile phone users. He has studied extensively many location aware mobile applications and the rich configurations of augmented encounters these may support. He has also developed ethnographic approaches of complex activity systems relying on innovative use of communication technologies, at the intersection of sociology of work, organization studies and anthropology of activity. He has extensively studied patterns of interaction in call centers and legal activities (such as courtroom hearings relying on the use of videoconference), and is currently developing a general analysis of interactions in telepresence settings.