This project investigates the use of visuals, such as photographs or pictures, for social interaction in private and institutional settings. Visuals can be different in accordance with their affordances and structures, e.g. static paper-based or screen-based photographs, line drawings and pictographs, as well as animations and video-clips. This project focuses on visuals that picture a thing, a person, an idea or an episode and that can be manipulated by hand. Employing a multi-modal ethno-methodological conversation analytic approach the project investigates how co-participants organize their interaction as they format ACTIONS, i.e. manipulate, hold on to, let go of the visual, while they (may) structure their talk and eventually draw upon what the visual pictures. It investigates in specific how the visuals change status from being just ‘material objects’ or ‘raw materials’ (Hazel, Mortensen and Rasmussen 2014) to becoming a resource that augments, alternates and enhances social interaction involving persons with communication impairments.
Gitte Rasmussen