Language and Interactional Spaces

Organisers: Prof. Dr. Peter Auer, Dr. Anja Stukenbrock

Internal / Junior Fellow of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

Workshop II: Language and Interactional Spaces

Dates: 16.-18.11
16. - 18.11. Seminarraum FRIAS

Thematic foci

When humans participate in focussed interaction, they create an interaction space. This is achieved, first of all, through their visual behaviour (body movements, posture, gaze, gesture). This space provides shelter for the interactional episode which develops, although its boundaries are not impermeable (sideplay, etc.; a typology is given by Goffman). Interactants adapt to the physical surroundings but are not constrained by them. Interaction spaces also have an impact on perception: within such spaces, monitoring is intense, while the space beyond the interaction space is not visible or only monitored peripherally. Participants can establish visual domains of scrutiny by identifying spaces inside or outside the interaction space (a typical example for the latter is route direction giving). This is usually accomplished by forms of deixis, i.e. by a specific coupling of gestural and linguistic means.
The meeting will address the following questions:
-    How are interaction spaces construed in face-to-face interaction?
-    How are interaction spaces construed in other, electronically mediated forms of interaction, such as on the internet, in machine-supported communication, or in the mass media?
-    How are perceptional spaces outside or inside the interaction space identified and maintained by the use of deixis?
-    How do special tasks and special environments (e.g. surgery, flight control) have a bearing on the ways in which interaction spaces are organised?

In addition to linguists, the meeting will include anthropologists and sociologists.

THE FRIAS LANGUAGE AND SPACE WORKSHOPS >> more

>>Program

FRIAS Workshop: Language and Interactional Spaces
November 16-18, 2009