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In:Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond multitasking
Edited by Pentti Haddington, Tiina Keisanen, Lorenza Mondada and Maurice Nevile
[Not in series 187] 2014
► pp. 137–166

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Negotiating favourable conditions for resuming suspended activities

Published online: 4 September 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/z.187.05sut
This paper examines how participants in multiactivity situations are able to resume an ongoing activity that becomes temporarily suspended in favour of a locally emergent, competing line of action. Detailed analyses of video data from English and Finnish everyday interactions show that resumptions are not achieved unproblematically at the first suitable transition-relevant slot but involve a gradual, stepwise process of multimodal negotiations, where participants first collaboratively establish favourable conditions for resumption. It is argued that these negotiations represent a local instance of multiactivity in practice, i.e. where organising multiactivity becomes a demonstrable concern for the participants. The gradualness of resumptions provides participants with an interactional resource that can be exploited to flexibly manage activity transitions in complex multiactivity situations.
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