Cover not available
Article published In:
Polymedia in Interaction
Edited by Jannis Androutsopoulos
[Pragmatics and Society 12:5] 2021
► pp. 756–781

The metapragmatics of mode choice

| University of Copenhagen
| University of Copenhagen
In this article, we investigate the use of social media in contemporary family interaction from a linguistic ethnographic perspective. Inspired by Auer’s (1998) work on code-switching in conversation, we study how family members choose and sometimes alternate between digitally mediated and face-to-face modes of communication in various family settings. Based on ethnographic observations, the participants’ metapragmatic reflections, and their interactional orientations to mode choices, we show how such choices serve social and metapragmatic functions in the interaction between family members who are present in the same house or even in the same room. Accordingly, we argue in favor of situating peoples’ polymedia repertoires in a broader framework of communicative repertoires.
Keywords: mode choice, multimodality, digitally mediated interaction, social media, family interaction, communicative repertoires, polymedia, linguistic ethnography
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Multimodal interaction and polymedia repertoires
  • 3.Mode choice and communicative repertoires
  • 4.Data and methodology
  • 5.Mode choice in everyday interaction
    • 5.1Texting at home as a convenient choice
    • 5.2Negotiating norms for at-home texting
  • 6.The metapragmatics of mode choice
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 7 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.20050.can
References (33)
References
Androutsopoulos, Jannis, and Andreas Stæhr. 2018. “Moving Methods Online – Researching Digital Language Practices”. In The Routledge Handbook on Language and Superdiversity, ed. by Angela Creese and Adrian Blackledge, 118–132. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Auer, Peter. 1988. “A Conversation Analytic Approach to Code-Switching and Transfer”. In Codeswitching: Anthropological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, ed. by Monica Heller, 187–213. Berlin. Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1995. “The Pragmatics of Code-Switching. A Sequential Approach”. In One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Code-Switching, ed. by Lesley Milroy and Peter Muysken, 115–135. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.). 1998. Code-Switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Clark, Lynn S. 2013. The Parent App. Understanding Families in the Digital Age. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Copland, Fiona, and Angela Creese. 2015. Linguistic Ethnography. Collecting, Analysing and Presenting Data. London: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drotner, Kirsten. 1999. “Dangerous Media? Panic Discourses and Dilemmas of Modernity”. Paedagogica Historica 35(3): 593–619. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gershon, Ilana. 2010. “Media Ideologies: An Introduction”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 201: 283–293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1955. “On Face-Work: Psychiatry”. Journal of Interpersonal Relations 181: 213–231.Google Scholar
. 1963. Behavior in Public Places. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
. 1971. Relations in Public: Micro-studies of the Public Order. London: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press.Google Scholar
. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie H., and Asta Cekaite. 2018. Embodied Family Choreography: Practices of Control, Care, and Mundane Activity. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hutchby, Ian. 2001. “Technologies, Text and Affordances”. Sociology 35 (2): 441–456. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jewitt, Carey (ed.). 2009. The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jones, Rodney H. 2009. “Technology and Sites of Display”. In The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis, ed. by Carey Jewitt, 114–126. London and New York: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Jones, Rodney. H., Alice Chik, and Christoph A. Hafner (eds.). 2015. Discourse and Digital Practices. Doing Discourse Analysis in the Digital Age. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jørgensen, Kristian M. 2016. “The Media Go-along. Researching Mobilities with Media at Hand”. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research 601: 32–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multimodality. A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ling, Rich, and Jonathan Donner. 2009. Mobile communications. Cambridge: Polity PressGoogle Scholar
Madianou, Mirca, and Daniel Miller. 2012. Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Madsen, Lian M. forthc. “Media panic, medical discourse and the smart phone”. In: Spaces of upset in the Nordic region: Sociolinguistics beyond cohesion and consensus in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. International Journal of the Sociology of Language.
Makoni, Sinfree, and Alastair Pennycook. 2006. “Disinventing and reconstituting languages”. In: Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages, ed. by Sinfree Makoni and Alastair Pennycook, 1–41. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mortensen, Kristine K., and N. N. Brotherton. 2020. “Faces in Snapchat. Selfies and social media aesthetics”. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, # 266. London: King’s College London.Google Scholar
Norris, Sigrid. 2013. “What is a Mode? Smell, Olfactory Perception, and the Notion of Mode in Multimodal Mediated Theory”. Multimodal Communication 2(2): 155–159. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rampton, Ben. 1995. Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben, Karen Tusting, Jannet Maybin, Richard Barwell, Angela Creese, and Vally Lytra. 2004. UK Linguistic Ethnography: A Discussion Paper. Paper published at [URL]
Rampton, Ben, and Louise Eley. 2018. “Goffman and the Everyday Interactional Grounding of Surveillance”. Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, # 246. King’s College London.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. “Shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description”. In Meaning in anthropology, ed. by Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby, 11–55. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
. 1985. “Language and the Culture of Gender”. In Semiotic mediation, ed. by Elizabeth Mertz and Rick Parmentier, 219–259. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1993. “Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function”. In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, ed. by John Lucy, 33–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. 2013. “The Medium is the Meta-Message”. In Discourse 2.0: Language and New Media, ed. by Deborah Tannen and Anna M. Trester, 99–117. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by (8)

Cited by eight other publications

Lyons, Agnieszka & Caroline Tagg
2024. Post-Digital Connectivities: Framing Offline Encounters in a Digital Prospection Space. Applied Linguistics DOI logo
Oloff, Florence & Katharina König
2024. Face-to-Face & digital: Die interaktive und multimodale Herstellung digitalisierter Handlungsräume in Kopräsenz. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 52:1 ► pp. 150 ff. DOI logo
Stæhr, Andreas Candefors
2024. Texting, teens, and parental challenges in practices of family socialization. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 34:1 ► pp. 107 ff. DOI logo
Tagg, Caroline & Agnieszka Lyons
2024. Conversational rhythm as a disconnective practice among middle-aged adults in situated mobile-messaging interactions. Journal of Pragmatics 229 ► pp. 56 ff. DOI logo
Møller, Janus Spindler
2023. ‘One is allowed to show the reality’: The creation of panoptic structures in social media communication. Language in Society ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Palviainen, Åsa & Tiina Räisä
2023. Digital communication as part of family language policy: the interplay of multimodality and language status in a Finnish context. Language Policy 22:4 ► pp. 433 ff. DOI logo
Madsen, Lian Malai
2022. Media panic, medical discourse and the smartphone. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2022:275 ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
Stæhr, Andreas Candefors, Janus Spindler Møller & Marie Maegaard
2022. Youth language. In Handbook of Pragmatics [Handbook of Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 199 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.