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In:“You can say you to me”: Address in German
Edited by Heinz L. Kretzenbacher, Horst J. Simon and Christa Dürscheid
[Topics in Address Research 7] 2026
► pp. 176–197

Chapter 9
Summoning by name in co-present interaction

On its temporality, sequentiality, and multimodality

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Abstract
The central site in which persons are summoned by name is co-present interaction. Based on video and audio recordings of non-elicited interactions among co-present speakers of German, this chapter explores how participants use their co-participants’ names to establish mutual attention. Adopting multimodal Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics, it offers a fine-grained analysis of how summoning by name is embedded to different degrees within sequential and material contexts, and how names and embodied resources are accountably arranged to build summonses. The analysis demonstrates that bodies are crucially involved in this organization, and that participants adapt their summonses to situational and material contexts. The study advances address research by offering insight into context-sensitivity of address terms as a resource for social action.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research
    • 2.1Address terms in interaction
    • 2.2Challenges of multimodal interaction
    • 2.3On the multimodal organization of mutual attention
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Exposed formats
  • 5.Partially embedded formats
  • 6.Fully embedded formats
  • 7.Discussion
  • References
  • Appendix
References (55)
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