The overarching theme of my sabbatical research project is the role of language use and interaction in a mico-sociological project informed by the oeuvre of E. Goffman. Particular emphasis is placed on the constitutive role of bodily actional behavior. The project is organized in 5 sub-projects.
- Theoretical Foundation: The first project offers a conceptual and programmatic exploration of Erving Goffman’s notions of co-presence, frame and footing, multi-modally aligned to a conversation analytic perspective, as laying the groundwork for empirical sociolinguistic enquiry. The focus is both on Goffman's theoretical contributions as a sociological project and a project of interactional analysis.
- Embodied Interaction: The second study applies the framework to situational data where bodily actions drive the verbal interaction.
- Mediated Representations in “podium events”: The third study investigates how interactional features are selectively appropriated and conventionalized in audio-visual portrayals of dramatic interaction, bridging everyday communication and mediatized stylizations.
- Interactional Feedback Loops: The fourth project raises the question of mediated co-presence and investigates in particular how stylized representations of interaction—such as memes—are re-integrated into face-to-face communication, creating “recursive loops” between mediated and face-to-face interaction.
- Body actional coordination during performance: The fifth and final article explores the coordinating function of body actional cues in the sequential unfolding of musical and theatrical performance, offering insights into the multimodal orchestration of collaborative artistic expression.