Halting the Decay of Talk

Abstract

We investigate how people with atypical bodily capabilities interact within virtual reality (VR) and the way they overcome interactional challenges in these emerging social environments. Based on a videographic multimodal single case analysis, we demonstrate how non-speaking VR participants furnish their bodies, at-hand instruments, and their interactive environment for their practical purposes. Our findings are subsequently related to renewed discussions of the relationship between agency and environment, and the co-constructed nature of situated action. We thus aim to contribute to the growing vocabulary of atypical interaction analysis and the broader context of ethnomethodological conceptualizations of unorthodox and fractured interactional ecologies.

Keywords

• technologically mediated communication
• atypical interaction
• virtual reality
• multimodal conversation analysis