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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. 227–246

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A body and its involvements

Adjusting action for dual involvements

 | University of California, Santa Barbara
 | University of California, Santa Barbara
Published online: 4 September 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/z.187.08ray
This chapter investigates some of the ways participants use adjusting actions to produce a range of emergent relationships between distinct courses of action. It describes body-behaviourally realised practices for the management of two intersecting courses of action. We first show how the continuing realisation of two courses of action can be preserved moment-by-moment with only negligible adjustments. We then describe how two adjusting actions – suspending and retarding – can be deployed to sustain visible commitment to an ongoing course of action while pursuing a second course of action, thereby realising the second course of action as interjected into the first. In summary, this chapter shows how forms of ‘multiactivity’ emerge as practical solutions to dual involvements in interaction with others.
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