To receive lunch, please email Graham Jones (gmj@mit.edu) to RSVP by June 1

Abstract: Smartphones enable social actors to initiate, pause, or resume communication at virtually any time and from almost any location, embedding mobile communication in a wide range of everyday social practices. This workshop takes the ongoing Swiss research project Texting in Time: Communicative Practices of Smartphone Interactions in Process as a point of departure to explore the sociolinguistics of mobile communication, with particular attention to the temporalities and rhythms of everyday messaging. Special emphasis will be placed on screen captures as a data type that allows researchers to “look through the eyes” of participants and trace interaction and multitasking activity as it unfolds in real time. Participants will be introduced to practical workflows for data collection and preparation, and we will critically reflect on the ethical, practical, and analytical challenges that arise when working with this relatively underexplored type of digital data. Exemplary analyses from the Texting in Time project will focus on metapragmatic ideologies related to temporality, multitasking practices in moments of device engagement, and revisions involved in composing text messages.

Bio: Florian Busch is assistant professor at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Bern. His research interests include interactional sociolinguistics, grapholinguistics, digital communication as well as metapragmatics and language ideologies. He co-edited a special issue on “The Sociolinguistics of Exclusion” in Language & Communication and published a book on adolescents’ digital writing. He is the Principal Investigator of the SNSF-funded research project “Texting in Time”, exploring the temporalities of smartphone-based interactions in the mediatized lives of European societies.