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Mobile Eyetracking: New avenues for the study of gaze in social interaction
Edited by Elisabeth Zima and Anja Stukenbrock
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 351] 2025
► pp. 210–243

Chapter 8
Laughter and gaze among talkers on a walk

 | University of Freiburg
 | University of Freiburg
While the functions of gaze in (other types of) F-formations have been the focus of a considerable amount of research, the gaze patterns found in side-by-side constellations have remained largely unexplored. In this chapter, we look at a particularly frequent, but also highly complex type of side-by-side constellation, i.e. people walking and talking together. Whereas participants in a circular or vis-à-vis F-formation typically and frequently look at each other during verbal interaction, gazing at the co-walker, and even more so mutual gaze between walkers, is the exception rather than the rule. This exceptional character of gaze at co-participant raises the question of when and why participants diverge from their usual pattern of gazing forwardly while talking. We zoom in on one of the most recurrent patterns in our data, i.e. speaker-gaze at recipient in the context of a candidate laughable. The study is based on 12 dyadic walks through a national park and uses mobile eye-tracking for recording the walkers’ verbal and nonverbal practices.
Keywords: laughter in interaction, laughables, speaker-gaze, walking and talking, mobile interactions, side-by-side f-formation, eye-tracking
Article outline
  • 1.Gaze patterns in side-by-side constellations
  • 2.Gaze and walking
  • 3.Laughter and laughables
  • 4.Data and methods
  • 5.Laughables and gaze during mobile interaction
    • 5.1Overview
    • 5.2Type 1 — speaker’s laughter combined with gaze at recipient
    • 5.3Type 2 — no speaker’s laughter but gaze at recipient
    • 5.4Type 3 — no speaker’s laughter and no gaze, but recipient laughter
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Author queries
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
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