1.Introduction

This article explores the ways in which participants organize their activities in order to set up the beginning of a meeting. We focus on video meetings, and in particular on the problem of absent participants, which is often considered a reason for delaying the official beginning of the encounter (Steven et al. 2014Rogelberg, Steven G., Clifton W. Scott, Brett Agypt, Jason Williams, John E. Kello, Tracy McCausland, and Jessi L. Olien 2014 “Lateness to Meetings: Examination of an Unexplored Temporal Phenomenon.” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 23 (2): 323–341. ; Caspi 2020Caspi, Aviv 2020 “Punctuality and Coordination Failures in the Remote Workplace.” Available at SSRN: https://​ssrn​.com​/abstract​=3659642 or ; Lehmann-Willenbrock and Allen 2020Lehmann-Willenbrock, Nale, and Joseph A. Allen 2020 “Well, Now What Do We Do? Wait…: A Group Process Analysis of Meeting Lateness.” International Journal of Business Communication 57 (3): 302–326. ). We investigate one of the resources that the participants have to deal with this problem: that is, reaching the absent participant by phone. We analyze how recourse to the phone is prompted by the moderator and offered by the participants. The recourse to the phone by one of the participants implies that s/he has been authorized to leave the meeting in order to make the phone call. Moreover, we observe how the participant who has left the meeting then returns to it after the call. We study the ways in which departures from, and returns to, the meeting are accomplished.

Over the past twenty years, the use of video conferencing has increased enormously in both professional and private life. Besides Skype (Licoppe and Morel 2012Licoppe, Christian, and Julian Morel 2012 “Video-in-Interaction: “Talking Heads” and the Multimodal Organization of Mobile and Skype Video Calls.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (2): 399–429. ; Harper et al. 2017Harper, Richard, Rod Watson, and Christian Licoppe 2017 “Interpersonal Video Communication as a Site of Human Sociality. A Special Issue of Pragmatics.” Pragmatics 27 (3): 319–350.; Licoppe 2017aLicoppe, Christian 2017a “Showing Objects in Skype Video-Mediated Conversations: From Showing Gestures to Showing Sequences.” Journal of Pragmatics 110: 63–82. , 2017bLicoppe, Christian 2017b “Skype Appearances, Multiple Greetings and ‘Coucou’. The Sequential Organization of Video-Mediated Conversation Openings.” Pragmatics 27 (3): 351–386.), other applications for video communication, such as FaceTime, Google Hangout (Rosenbaum et al. 2016Rosenbaun, Laura, Sheizaf Rafaeli, and Dennis Kurzon 2016 “Blurring the Boundaries between Domestic and Digital Spheres: Competing Engagements in Public Google Hangouts.” Pragmatics 26: 291–314.) or WhatsApp, are being used for interpersonal communication, while specialized software programs such as Adobe Connect, Zoom, or platforms such as Microsoft Teams, are increasingly being used for professional meetings. Recently, the Covid-19 crisis has significantly accelerated this trend. The possibility of video-, audio- or text-based chatting, as well as the easy and safe storage of documents or materials in different formats, and the possibility to share them with others before and during meetings, significantly increases the potential of video-based communication in meetings, so that it becomes a multi-channel, and thus a highly complex, form of digital interaction.

As a normal practice and communicative habitus, together with the possibility to chat, there is the simultaneous or consecutive use of other devices such as smartphones during videoconferences. These devices are employed primarily in order to support the accomplishment of the common task (Beers Fägersten et al. 2010Beers Fägersten, Kristy, Elin Holmsten, and Una Cunningham 2010 “Multimodal Communication and Meta-Modal Discourse.” In Handbook of Research on Discourse Behavior and Digital Communication: Language Structures and Social Interaction, ed. by Rotimi Taiwo, 145–163. Hershey PA: Information Science Publishing. ; Licoppe 2017bLicoppe, Christian 2017b “Skype Appearances, Multiple Greetings and ‘Coucou’. The Sequential Organization of Video-Mediated Conversation Openings.” Pragmatics 27 (3): 351–386., 367), while in private conversations they are also used for other activities carried out at the same time (Licoppe 2017bLicoppe, Christian 2017b “Skype Appearances, Multiple Greetings and ‘Coucou’. The Sequential Organization of Video-Mediated Conversation Openings.” Pragmatics 27 (3): 351–386., 372). As Mlynář et al. (2018Mlynář, Jakub, Esther González-Martínez, and Denis Lalanne 2018 “Situated Organization of Video-Mediated Interaction: A Review of Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic Studies.” Interacting with Computers 30 (2): 73–84. , 7) pointed out, their use creates and connects different spaces, overcoming boundaries between public/private and offline/online domains. Cellphones are particularly useful in the initial phases of videoconferences as means to connect the participants when the problems and delays often caused by technical constraints arise (Mondada 2010Mondada, Lorenza 2010 “Eröffnungen und Prä-Eröffnungen in medienvermittelter Interaktion: das Beispiel Videokonferenzen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr Verlag.; Liddicoat 2011, 53, mentioned in Muñoz 2016Muñoz, Arantxa Santos 2016 “Attending Multi-Party Videoconference Meetings: The Initial Problem.” Language@Internet 13, article 3. , 13).

Our data concern videoconferencing in the context of international teacher-training in German as a foreign language (LEELU project).11.For the research design and the outcomes of the research, see the project website www​.leelu​.eu. The interaction analysis presented in this paper is to be understood as an extension of these findings; it is based on data collected in the course of the project but which were not the concern or part of the LEELU project design. We explore the use of a cellphone in the initial phases of a meeting, and in particular how the participants use a smartphone to manage problems due to the absence of a participant. We examine situations where the moderator takes the absence of a participant as a reason to delay the beginning of the meeting. We observe a recurrent pattern of action whereby one of the participants disengages from the meeting (Szymanski 1999Szymanski, Margaret H. 1999 “Re-Engaging and Dis-Engaging Talk in Activity.” Language in Society 28 (1): 1–23. ) in order to reach the missing person by phone. We focus on the ways in which leaving and returning to the meeting are accomplished by participants in the initial phases of a video-meeting. We argue that the leaving is accomplished by authorizing one of the members to disengage from the meeting, while the return is accomplished by favoring the re-engagement of this participant in the videoconference.

We first describe some of the features of the initial phases of videoconferences. We focus on how problems caused by missing participants are handled by the moderator and how a participant engages in a secondary action. The subsequent sections contain the empirical part of the paper. After presenting the research design (Section 3), we analyze three sequences of international videoconferencing (Sections 4 and 5). These sequences show how a participant leaves the meeting in order to use a smartphone to reach the missing person (Sec. 4). We then analyze how this participant re-enters the video-meeting (Sec. 5). The discussion (Sec. 6) and the conclusion (Sec. 7) highlight the participation in different ‘media spaces’ (Aoki et al. 2006Aoki, Paul M., Margaret H. Szymanski, and Allison Woodruff 2006 “Media Spaces in the Mobile World.” CSCW: 1–5.) established during the meeting (being a participant in the meeting or talking on the cellphone), in order to show how problems at the beginning of a video-conference can be dealt with by the participants, and to give suggestions for further research on communication mediated by more than one connective device.

2.Literature review

Since the seminal work of Boden (1994)Boden, Deirdre 1994 The Business of Talk. Cambridge: Polity Press., there has been a growth of research on video-based formal or professional meetings which mainly relies on microanalytical analysis based on the CA approach (for an overview, see Asmuß and Svennevig 2009Asmuß, Birte, and Jan Svennevig 2009 “Meeting Talk: An Introduction.” Journal of Business Communication 46 (1): 3–22. ; Svennevig 2012Svennevig, Jan 2012 “Interaction in Workplace Meetings.” Discourse Studies 14 (1): 3–10. ; Raclaw and Ford 2015Raclaw, Joshua, and Cecilia E. Ford 2015 “Meetings as Interactional Achievements: A Conversation Analytic Perspective.” In The Science of Meetings at Work: The Cambridge Handbook of Meeting Science, ed. by Joseph A. Allen, Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, and Steven G. Rogelberg. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ; Mlynář et al. 2018Mlynář, Jakub, Esther González-Martínez, and Denis Lalanne 2018 “Situated Organization of Video-Mediated Interaction: A Review of Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic Studies.” Interacting with Computers 30 (2): 73–84. ; Due and Licoppe 2021Due, Brian L., and Christian Licoppe 2021 “Video-Mediated Interaction (VMI).” Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality 3 (3). ). An increasing number of studies adopt a multimodal perspective (see Mondada and Schmitt 2010Mondada, Lorenza, and Reinhold Schmitt 2010 “Zur Multimodalität von Situationseröffnungen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt. Tübingen: Narr Verlag.; Asmuß 2015Asmuß, Brite 2015 “Multimodal Perspectives on Meeting Interaction.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Meeting Science, ed. by Joseph A. Allen, Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, and Steven G. Rogelberg, 277–304. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Veyrier 2015Veyrier, Claire Antoine 2015 “Multiactivité et multimodalité dans les réunions à distance.” Reseaux (6): 11–37.; Due and Licoppe 2020Due, Brian L., and Christian Licoppe 2020 “Video-Mediated Interaction (VMI): Introduction to a Special Issue on the Multimodal Accomplishment of VMI Institutional Activities.” Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies in Human Sociality 3 (3): 1–20.). This literature refers to the large body of studies on interaction during face-to-face meetings in professional contexts, and it focuses on the organization of meetings at the micro-level through the mobilization of various verbal, embodied, material, and technological resources. Different aspects of the organization of meetings have been studied: the recommencement of a meeting (Atkinson et al. 1978Atkinson, Mick A., Edward C. Cuff, and John R. E. Lee 1978 “The Recommencement of a Meeting as a Member’s Accomplishment.” In Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction, ed. by Jim Schenkein, 133–153. New York: Academic Press. ); alignment or misalignment and agreement or disagreement (Asmuß 2002Asmuß, Birte 2002 Strukturelle Dissensmarkierungen in interkultureller Kommunikation. Analysen deutsch-dänischer Verhandlungen [Structural markers of disagreement in intercultural communication. Analysis of German-Danish business meetings]. Tübingen, Germany: Niemeyer. ; Oittinen 2018Oittinen, Tuire 2018 “Multimodal Accomplishment of Alignment and Affiliation in the Local Space of Distant Meetings.” Culture and Organization 24 (1): 31–53. ); leadership in various sorts of meetings (Asmuß 2007Asmuß, Birte 2007 “What Do People Expect from Public Services? Requests in Public Service Encounters.” Hermes – Journal of Language and Communication Studies 38: 66–83.; Svennevig 2008Svennevig, Jan 2008 “Exploring Leadership Conversations.” Management Communication Quartely 21 (4): 529–536. ); ‘management styles’ in work meetings (Schmitt 2006Schmitt, Reinhold 2006 “Interaction in Work Meetings.” Revue française de linguistique appliquée 11 (2): 69–84. ); the management of the transitions between different phases of activities in meetings (Mehus 2005Mehus, Siri 2005 “The Micro-Organization of Taking a Break: Transitions Between Task and Non-Task Activities at Work.” Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Symposium about Language and Society, Austin, April 16–18, Texas, Linguistic Forum 48: 125–137.; Mondada 2006Mondada, Lorenza 2006 “Participants’ Online Analysis and Multimodal Practices: Projecting the End of the Turn and the Closing of the Sequence.” Discourse Studies 8 (1): 117–129. ; Bruxelles et al. 2009Bruxelles, Sylvie, Luca Greco, and Lorenza Mondada 2009 “Pratiques de transition: ressources multimodales pour la structuration de l’activité.” In Méthodologies d’analyse de situations coopératives de conception: corpus MOSAIC, ed. by Françoise Détienne, and Véroniche Traverso, 221–301. Nancy: Presses universitaires de Nancy.); introducing the topic to be discussed (González-Martínez and Giglio 2020González-Martínez, Esther, and Marcelo Giglio 2020 “Introduire les points soumis à discussion lors d’une réunion. Une analyse conversationnelle longitudinale.” Travaux Neuchâtelois de Linguistique 72: 31–61. ); and other aspects, as summarized by Depperman et al. (2010Deppermann, Arnulf, Reinhold Schmitt, and Lorenza Mondada 2010 “Agenda and Emergence: Contingent and Planned Activities in a Meeting.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (6): 1700–1718. , 1702) and by Nielsen (2013Nielsen, Mie Femø 2013 “ʽStepping Stonesʼ in Opening and Closing Department Meetings.” The Journal of Business Communication 50 (1): 34–67. , 35).

Openings in meetings have been the focus of several studies (see Markman 2009Markman, Kris M. 2009 “ʽSo What Shall We Talk Aboutʼ: Openings and Closings in Chat-Based Virtual Meetings.” The Journal of Business Communication 46 (1): 150–170. ; Nielsen 2013Nielsen, Mie Femø 2013 “ʽStepping Stonesʼ in Opening and Closing Department Meetings.” The Journal of Business Communication 50 (1): 34–67. ; Oittinen and Piirainen-Marsh 2015Oittinen, Tuire, and Arja Piirainen-Marsh 2015 “Openings in Technology-Mediated Business Meetings.” Journal of Pragmatics 85: 47–66. ). Mondada (2010Mondada, Lorenza 2010 “Eröffnungen und Prä-Eröffnungen in medienvermittelter Interaktion: das Beispiel Videokonferenzen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr Verlag., 277) distinguishes among the pre-opening, opening, and beginning of a meeting, and the differences in co-presence, contact, and participation during these three phases. The pre-opening is characterized by “a convergent attentional orientation” (Mondada 2010Mondada, Lorenza 2010 “Eröffnungen und Prä-Eröffnungen in medienvermittelter Interaktion: das Beispiel Videokonferenzen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr Verlag., 285), in which the participants position themselves around the computer in various locations, check the image settings, switch the microphones on and off, or even talk, in their respective teams, in their own local language during international discussions (Mondada 2010Mondada, Lorenza 2010 “Eröffnungen und Prä-Eröffnungen in medienvermittelter Interaktion: das Beispiel Videokonferenzen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr Verlag., 285; see also Muñoz 2016Muñoz, Arantxa Santos 2016 “Attending Multi-Party Videoconference Meetings: The Initial Problem.” Language@Internet 13, article 3. , 6). Mondada (2010Mondada, Lorenza 2010 “Eröffnungen und Prä-Eröffnungen in medienvermittelter Interaktion: das Beispiel Videokonferenzen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr Verlag., 278) defines the opening sequence as

the moment in which the participants enter into a common interaction, indicating their willingness to interact, and recognizing and identifying each other, in short: adjust to each other, in order to begin jointly and in a coordinated manner the actual conversational activity. In professional settings the initial phases are managed by the moderator or chair, who welcomes the participants.22.Another distinction is drawn by Muñoz (2016)Muñoz, Arantxa Santos 2016 “Attending Multi-Party Videoconference Meetings: The Initial Problem.” Language@Internet 13, article 3. . She differentiates among three different channels and their interplay in the pre-meeting phases: the technological opening, the interactional opening, and the audio-visual opening.

Greetings or establishing contacts go hand in hand with checking the technical sound and image quality (Mondada 2010Mondada, Lorenza 2010 “Eröffnungen und Prä-Eröffnungen in medienvermittelter Interaktion: das Beispiel Videokonferenzen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr Verlag., 294; Licoppe 2017bLicoppe, Christian 2017b “Skype Appearances, Multiple Greetings and ‘Coucou’. The Sequential Organization of Video-Mediated Conversation Openings.” Pragmatics 27 (3): 351–386., 363). These are the moments when the orientation to the meeting is established and shared by the participants. This orientation becomes visible, for example, through explicit references to the need to wait for other participants and/or through gesturally-conveyed impatience (Mondada 2010Mondada, Lorenza 2010 “Eröffnungen und Prä-Eröffnungen in medienvermittelter Interaktion: das Beispiel Videokonferenzen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr Verlag., 310). The moderator has the task of not only resolving the technical problems and, at best, eliminating them, but also of weighing up whether s/he should start the meeting despite the late arrival of some participants (Mondada 2010Mondada, Lorenza 2010 “Eröffnungen und Prä-Eröffnungen in medienvermittelter Interaktion: das Beispiel Videokonferenzen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr Verlag., 314–315). It is normally only the moderator who overtly notices if someone is still missing. The presence and/or the visibility of all the participants is what is taken to be a preliminary condition for the meeting to begin (Mondada 2010Mondada, Lorenza 2010 “Eröffnungen und Prä-Eröffnungen in medienvermittelter Interaktion: das Beispiel Videokonferenzen.” In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, ed. by Lorenza Mondada, and Reinhold Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr Verlag., 313).

The observation that someone is absent determines a kind of ‘hold on status’ of the meeting in which the moderator must decide whether to continue with the ongoing activity and begin the meeting without one of the participants or to wait for her/him a little longer. In the latter case, there may be attempts to overcome the problem. One such attempt may be the moderator’s open request to procure more information about the reason for the absence addressed to all participants or to one of them who is more likely to be familiar with the expected person.

In our research, we examined how smartphones are used to retrieve information regarding a person missing in a videoconference in order to deal with the problem of his/her absence. Unlike the cases studied by Ruhleder and Jordan (2001)Ruhleder, Karen, and Brigitte Jordan 2001 “Co-Constructing Non-Mutual Realities: Delay-Generated Trouble.” Computer Supported Cooperative Work 10: 113–138. , where the use of cellphones is a hidden activity during videoconferences, we observed the authorized use of a cellphone (for a different case – the self-initiated mobile device used in face-to-face encounters – see Oloff 2019Oloff, Florence 2019 “Some Systematic Aspects of Self-Initiated Mobile Device Use in Face-to-Face Encounters.” Journal für Medienlinguistik 2 (2): 195–235. ). The use of a smartphone to search for the missing participant creates a specific situation in a professional meeting where the (rare) concurrent use of smartphones is normally stigmatized (Asmuß and Svennevig 2009Asmuß, Birte, and Jan Svennevig 2009 “Meeting Talk: An Introduction.” Journal of Business Communication 46 (1): 3–22. , 13) and requires some kind of authorization from the team leader (Egbert 1997Egbert, Maria 1997 “Schisming: The Collaborative Transformation from a Single Conversation to Multiple Conversations.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 30 (1): 1–51. , 44). We observed cases in which the main activity continued while one of the participants was allowed to leave to use his/her cellphone to search for the absent participant. At the same time, we observed how the main activity came to be resumed (Sutinen 2014Sutinen, Marike 2014 “Negotiating Favourable Conditions for Resuming Suspended Activities.” In Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond Multitasking, ed. by Pentti Haddington, Tiina Keisanen, Lorenza Mondada, and Maurice Nevile, 137–165. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ) when the participant previously engaged in a parallel activity (i.e. talking on the phone with the missing participant) was then re-admitted to the meeting (see Relieu 2009Relieu, Marc 2009 “ʽMobile Phone Workʼ: Disengaging and Engaging Mobile Phone Activities with Concurrent Activities.” In The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices, ed. by Rich Ling, and Scott W. Campbell, 215–229. New York: Routledge. for the notion of disengaging and engaging mobile phone activities with concurrent activities).

Studies on meetings have yielded new insights into the notion of participation (Goffman 1963Goffman, Erving 1963 Behavior in Public Places. New York, The Free Press of Glencoe.): that is, the way in which participants take part in the meeting not only by positioning themselves in space with their bodies, but also by actively orienting themselves toward the other participants. Multimodal analyses have shown the multiple resources that participants use in order to actively engage with others to maintain participation in a single ‘interactional space’ (Wasson 2006Wasson, Christina 2006 “Being in Two Spaces at Once: Virtual Meetings and Their Representation.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16 (1): 103–130. ) or to orient themselves to different spaces (Mondada 2009Mondada, Lorenza 2009 “Emergent Focused Interactions in Public Places: A Systematic Analysis of the Multimodal Achievement of a Common Interactional Space.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 1977–97. , 2011Mondada, Lorenza 2011 “The Interactional Production of Multiple Spatialities Within a Participatory Democracy Meeting.” Social Semiotics 21 (2): 289–316. ). Through their movements, gaze, gestures, bodily position and orientation, the participants show involvement in (or detachment from) the situation. Online meetings (Svenning and Ruchinskas 1984Svenning, Jan, and John E. Ruchinskas 1984 “Organizational Teleconferencing.” In The New Media. The New Media: Communication, Research, and Technology, ed. by Ronald E. Rice, 217–248. Beverly Hills/CA: Sage.; Oshima and Asmuß 2018Oshima, Sae, and Birte Asmuß 2018 “Mediated Business: Living the Organizational Surroundings – Introduction.” Culture and Organization 24:1: 1–10. ) are cases particularly interesting for the study of participation, in that the interaction space of the meeting – the virtual meeting space – is different from the local place where the participants are (see Wasson 2006Wasson, Christina 2006 “Being in Two Spaces at Once: Virtual Meetings and Their Representation.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16 (1): 103–130. ).

Through multimodal analysis it is possible to appreciate the delicate interactional work of disengaging from and re-entering a meeting. Disengaging is central to the analysis by Ilomäki and Ruusuvuori (2020)Ilomäki, Sakari, and Johanna Ruusuvuori 2020 “From Appearings to Disengagements: Openings and Closings in Video-Mediated Tele-Homecare Encounters.” Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality 3 (3). , who examined openings and closings in video-mediated tele-homecare. If visual appearing is of key importance in the opening, disengaging is the way that closing is achieved, either by walking away from the screen or by shutting down the connection. We consider engaging and disengaging to be two specular methods to enter and exit the meeting. Entering the meeting has to do not only with the visual appearing of one participant on the screen but also with how participants manage to become ratified members of the meeting by achieving entry into a common ‘interactional space’ (Mondada 2009Mondada, Lorenza 2009 “Emergent Focused Interactions in Public Places: A Systematic Analysis of the Multimodal Achievement of a Common Interactional Space.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 1977–97. ). Exiting from the meeting means more than simply not being seen on the screen: the ‘exit’ requires a series of actions whereby a participant in the meeting visibly leaves it in a ratified fashion.

Another line of research relevant to our paper is the analysis of the methods by which assistance is sought and offered in social interaction (Kendrick and Drew 2016Kendrick, Kobin H., and Paul Drew 2016 “Recruitment: Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1): 1–19. ; Drew and Kendrick 2018Drew, Paul, and Kobin H. Kendrick 2018 “Searching for Trouble: Recruiting Assistance through Embodied Action.” Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality 1 (1). ; Kendrick 2021Kendrick, Kobin H. 2021 “The ‘Other’ Side of Recruitment: Methods of Assistance in Social Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 178: 68–82. ). Recruitment of assistance has been studied as the product of the following sequence: the recognition of the trouble; the generation of a possible solution; and the implementation of this solution (Kendrick 2021Kendrick, Kobin H. 2021 “The ‘Other’ Side of Recruitment: Methods of Assistance in Social Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 178: 68–82. ). It has been shown how the resources with which trouble is put in public view by one person can create the opportunity for another participant in the event to provide assistance. Even if Kendrick and Drew (2014)Kendrick, Kobin H., and Paul Drew 2014 “The Putative Preference for Offers over Requests.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 87–114. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. have demonstrated that there is no preference for offers with respect to requests, we will describe in this article ways in which assistance is offered rather than requested once a problem is brought into public view. Craven and Potter (2010Craven, Alexandra, and Jonathan Potter 2010 “Directives: Entitlement and Contingency in Action.” Discourse Studies 12 (4): 419–442. , 420, referring to Ervin-Tripp’s 1976 study on requests and directives) distinguish six different ways in which a speaker is entitled to request action from a recipient in social interaction. Lindstrøm (2005)Lindstrøm, Anna 2005 “Language as Social Action. A Study of How Senior Citizens Request Assistance with Practical Tasks in the Swedish Home Help Service.” In Syntax and Lexis in Conversation. Studies on the Use of Linguistic Resources in Talk-in-Interaction, ed. by Auli Hakulinen, and Margret Selting, 209–230. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins. claims that requests can be made by means of imperatives, questions, and statements; the various forms display the speaker’s degree of entitlement. In the cases that we examined, no explicit request was made by the moderator to some participant after statement of the trouble; the moderator only set out the problem – made a statement, described the situation, reported the trouble – thereby providing the opportunity for some of the participants to voluntarily offer help.

In this paper we underline how the management of problems in the preliminary phases of videoconferencing is an interactional achievement. We address the ways in which the absence of a person from a video meeting is considered a problem by the participants and consequently delays the start of the meeting. Unlike when technical features and functionalities are generally checked, especially in the pre-opening phase (Arminen et al. 2016Arminen, Ilkka, Christian Licoppe, and Anna Spagnolli 2016 “Respecifying Mediated Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4): 290–309. , 300), it is usually the moderator who overtly notices that someone is missing. Observing that someone is missing determines a kind of ‘hold on status’ in which the moderator must decide whether to begin the meeting without the person or to wait for her/him a little longer. In the latter case, this reporting can generate attempts to remedy the problem. We observed that the remark that someone is absent often triggers an offer by someone in the team to call the absentee (the offer is made by the team member most familiar with the expected person). We will see how the problem of a missing participant (whose absence causes the delay of the official beginning of the video meeting) is brought to the attention of the participant by the moderator, providing an opportunity for one of the participants to offer help (by calling the missing participant).

3.Data collection and design33.Permission has been granted to publish the material for research purposes. All the names have been changed.

The corpus contained eight video meetings of about one hour each, for a total amount of nine hours and four minutes, recorded from November 2017 to March 2018, and involving eight persons aged from twenty-five to sixty-four. The international team consisted of three pre-service and three in-service German teachers at upper secondary schools in Budapest, Palermo, and Utrecht; one moderator (scientific expert for the project) at the University of Vienna; and one assistant (technical collaborator and researcher), who managed the content to be seen on the shared screen: i.e. the agenda, other documents, and the videos regarding what the six teachers had decided to discuss. The topics, selected by the teachers themselves beforehand, on the basis of video sequences recorded during extensive reading as a classroom activity, concerned problems arising during that activity. The meetings took place at prearranged times and had pre-set discussion points. The participants already knew each other. They were either non-native speakers (with different levels of German language competence) or native speakers of German. Thus, the meetings exhibited features of a formal setting, but at the same time, there was a friendly and collaborative atmosphere among colleagues during all the meetings. In general, this hybridity of meetings is the basis for exchanges between teachers and trainers in the context of teacher training, whereas the decision to adopt a non-directive moderation style is theoretically based on the training concept of the project (Dawidowicz et al. 2019Dawidowicz, Marta, Karen Schramm, Roberta Abbate, Doris Abitzsch, Ilona Feld-Knapp, Katrin Hofmann, Sabine Hoffmann, Gabriella Perge, and Ewout van der Knaap 2019 “Erfahrungsbasiertheit, kollegiale Kooperation und videobasierte Reflexion als Prinzipien des LEELULehrerInnenbildungsprojekts.” https://​leelu​.eu​/wp​-content​/uploads​/sites​/164​/2019​/08​/Konzeptpapier​-zur​-Lehrerbildungsmaßnahme​-im​-LEELU​-Projekt​-Endfassung​-2019​.pdf). The meetings took place on the edubreak® platform and were recorded by the assistant, with the consent of the participants.

The computer screens of the participants were occupied by a shared view of documents, while the faces and upper bodies of the participants appeared in different sizes in a bar at the top of the screen. The participants were usually seated at a desk in a room at home, or more rarely, at school; the moderator and the assistant were frequently in their offices at the university.

In these eight international meetings, the initial phases lasted, on average, for about ten to fifteen minutes. The video meetings were opened by the host. From that moment on, participants could enter the room individually, and occasionally pre-service and in-service teachers were present together. After entering the room, the moderator initiated the interaction with the newly-arrived persons, greeting them and engaging in small talk before officially starting the meeting.

We have selected three sequences from the initial phase of the second round of the video meetings. These three sequences are used to analyze, first, how one of the participants offered to call the absent person when the delay in starting the meeting was attributed to her or his absence. Our focus is on how one of the participants, after the statement of the problem, came to offer to call the missing participant, and how s/he managed to leave the meeting to make the call. Then the analysis focuses on how one participant leaves the meeting to call the missing person, accomplishing “coordinated exits from the enclosed boundary of the meeting” (Boden 1994Boden, Deirdre 1994 The Business of Talk. Cambridge: Polity Press., 102). Second, we analyze the ways in which the participant who has called the absentee returns to the meeting.

We have opted for a three-line transcript: the first line is in the original German, the second line is the literal translation word by word (modal particles are specified in italics), the third one – in bold – is the idiomatic English translation. Embodied actions are described with glosses.

4.How to disengage from the meeting to call a missing participant

In the two excerpts that follow, we can see how the absence of one of the participants is made manifest, and what kinds of resources are utilized to deal with the problem. In particular, we are interested in analyzing a particular sequence: the formulation (by the moderator) that one person is absent, followed by the offer by one of the participants to call the absentee, and the acceptance of the offer. We then describe how the participant disengages from the ongoing meeting in order to make the call.

1   MOD   Kerstin, wir warten noch  auf zwei leute,
          Kerstin  we  wait   still for two  persons
          Kerstin, we are still waiting for two persons,

2         und dann geht  s  gleich los. ja?
          and then start it immediately yes
          and then we’ll start (the meeting) immediately. Ok?

3   KER   okay.
          okay.

4         (1.0)

5   MAR   #ich kann ja    kurz    mal   ähm
            I  can  modal quickly modal ehm
            I can quickly ehm
          # fig. 2, 3
          ((approaches the screen))
           
          Fig. 2                         Fig. 3

6         (1.2)

7   MAR   probieren Antje #anzurufen,
          try       Antje   to call
          try to call Antje,
                          ((she takes headphones off))
                           # fig. 4
                           
                           Fig. 4

8   MOD   [(ja, mach mal)]
           (yes do   modal)
          ok, please do it

9   MAR   [weil          ] ich jetzt nicht weiß,
          [because       ] I   now   not   know
          because, I don’t know,

10        ob sie es vielleicht zufällig     vergessen hat.
          if she it perhaps    accidentally forgot    has
          she could have forgotten (the meeting).

11        nicht? ich gehe mal  ganz   kurz=
          no      I  go modal pretty quickly
          no? I will be away for a short time=

12  MOD   =ja, ja, mach doch  mal.  das  ist super.
           yes yes do   modal modal that is  great
          =yes, yes, please go ahead, great.

1   MOD   JA, Barbara fehlt uns noch.
          yes Barbara miss  us  still
          yes, Barbara is still missing.

2         jetzt überlege ich, ob wir starten,(0.4)
          now   think    I    if we  start
          I’m wondering if we start now,

3         aber das  wäre  ja  schade
          but  this would yes pity
          but that would be a pity

4         ohne    die liebe Barbara.
          without the dear  Barbara
          without dear Barbara.

5         #(0.2)
    bir   looks down to her left---->
          # fig 6a, 6b
             
          Fig. 6a                        Fig. 6b

6   MOD   ähm:. ein (.) paar minuten
          ehm   a       few  minutes
          shall we wait for a few minutes
    bir   ----------------------------

7   MOD   warten wir noch ab, oder?=
          wait   we  still     or
          or?=
    bir   --------------------------|

8   BIR   =#ja, ich rufe sie an.
            yes I   call her
          =yes, I’m going to call her.
           # fig. 6c
           
           Fig. 6c

9   MOD   das  wär      gut,  Birgit. danke.
          that would be great Birgit  thanks
          that would be great, Birgit. thank you

1   MOD   ah okay. (-) es ist immer  noch  ein bisschen
          ah okay      it is  always still a   bit
          ah okay, it is still a bit

2         *#schwer  euch zu ver#stehen. (0.8)
          difficult you  to understand
          difficult to understand you.
          *((loud phone ring tone))
          #fig. 8a             #fig. 8b
                  
          Fig. 8a                      Fig. 8b

    ann   #looks briefly down to her left
          then turns back to her screen
          #fig. 9a, 9b
                
          Fig. 9a                     Fig. 9b

3   MOD   also es geht schon,
          so   it goes already
          but,

4         aber es #hallt  es fällt#     immer  so
          but  it  echoes it interrupts always so
          but the echoes and interruptions continue

    ann   ((takes her right and left earphone out))
                  #fig. 10        #fig.11
                       
                  Fig. 10                         Fig. 11

5         ein ganz   klein  bisschen aus.
          an  almost little bit
          a little bit.

6         aber: gut,
          but  well,

7         [wir werden das schon   hinkriegen].
           we  will   it  already manage
          we will manage it.

8   ANN   #[(Lea) ]
            (Lea)
          # fig 12
          
          Fig. 12

9         (1.0)
          ((Anna is answering the phone speaking to Lea))

10  ANN   #hai-, sì,  io ci   sono,
           have  yes  I  here am
           have-, yes, here I am.
          # fig 13((Lea gazes at the screen))
          
          Fig. 13

11        e   tu?
          and you?

5.How to re-engage in the meeting

Thus far, we have seen how the problem of the missing participant may be addressed in video meetings, where one of the participants (usually, the one who is closest, for whatever reason, to the missing participant, usually belonging to the same national team – Mondada 2004Mondada, Lorenza 2004 “Ways of ‘Doing Being Plurilingual’ in International Work Meetings.” In Second Language Conversation, ed. by Rod Gardner, and Johannes Wagner, 27–60. London: Continuum.; see Rasmussen Hougaard 2008Rasmussen Hougaard, Gitte 2008 “Membership Categorization in International Business Phonecalls: The Importance of ‘Being International’.” Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2): 307–332. ) can call the missing participant. Calling someone may pose an interactional, practical problem: how to leave the meeting in order to engage in the parallel task of calling the missing person? We have seen two examples where, after the offer of help and its acceptance, one of the participants is authorized to leave the meeting. The third excerpt shows instead the double orientation – to the meeting and to the call – of the person answering the call that breaks into the meeting. We return to the same data in order to deal with a specular, practical, interactional problem: how can the return to the online meeting be accomplished by a participant who has previously been busy talking on the phone?

12   MOD   Mareike,#hast du  noch
           Mareike  have you still
           Mareike, have you been able

     mar            ((approaches the screen))
                   # fig 18 a, b
                        
                   Fig. 18a                           Fig. 18b

13         Antje   erreichen  können?
           Antje   reach      can
           to reach Antje?

14   MAR   äh war leider        nur  ihre voicemail.
           eh was unfortunately only her  voicemail
           eh, unfortunately, there was only her voicemail.
15         also ich habe jetzt,
           so   I   have now
           so, I have just,

16         ich hab  da    was       draufgesprochen.
           I   have there something recorded
           I have recorded something.

17   MOD   ja, gut, dann würde  ich sagen starten wir
           yes good then would  I   say   start   we
           yes, good, then I would suggest we start

9   MOD   +ah, Birgit,     + da   bist du wieder.
           ah  Birgit there are you again
          ah, Birgit, here you are again.
          +raises the eyebrows+ ((fig. 21a, 21b))

10  BIR   ja,  ich bin hier.
          yes, I   am  here.

11  MOD   und?
          and?

12  RW    ja, ich konnte sie nicht erreichen.
          yes I   could  she not   reach
          yes, I wasn’t able to reach her.

13  MOD   okay. dann fang  wir an. (…)
          okay  then begin we
          okay. then let’s start.

12   ANN   [Lea kommt.                   ]
            Lea comes
           Lea is coming.

13   ASS   [Sarah ist in diese richtung. ]
            Sarah is  in this  direction.

14   MOD   ja  bei mir ist +die:                             +
           yes for me  is   this
                           +laughing and pointing to her left+

15         aber jetzt seh ich euch gut  Klara.=
           but  now   see I   you  good Klara
           but now I see you clearly Klara.=

16         =danke, Anna, dass du  das gelöst   hast.
            thank  Anna  that you it  resolved have
           =thank you Anna that you have solved it.

17         das  ist super.
           this is  great.

18   ANN   danke.
           thank you.
           ((softly laughs))

19   MOD   dann sind wir gleich komplett. sehr schön.
           then are  we  soon   complete  very nice
           then we will be complete. very nice.

20   ANN   sie kommt.
           she comes
           she is going to come.

21   MOD   sehr schön.  ja  perfekt. perfekt.
           very nice.   yes perfect. perfect.

22         (2.0)

23   ANN   vielleicht.
           maybe.

24   MOD   bestimmt. +bestimmt.      +
           sure.      sure.
                     +softly laughing+

25         ich fang  jetzt einfach mal an,
           I   begin now   simply  modal
           now I’m going to start,

26         mit  der vorrede.
           with the preamble.

6.Conclusion

The article has shown the sequences emerging in a video meeting when the participants collaborated in order to deal with the problem of a missing person. We have seen how an announcement issued by the moderator could recruit assistance and elicit an offer of help from a participant, who offered to call the missing participant; ringing someone is at odds with participating in the meeting. The participant left the meeting in order to take parallel action. We have focused on how disengagement from the meeting and re-entry to the meeting are accomplished by the participants, and the role of the chairperson on these occasions. In the three cases we have examined, two parallel courses of action proceeded: the participants had to tackle the challenges presented by being and participating in a virtual space, and they had to coordinate with others their leaving and entry into different interactional spaces (Mondada 2009Mondada, Lorenza 2009 “Emergent Focused Interactions in Public Places: A Systematic Analysis of the Multimodal Achievement of a Common Interactional Space.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 1977–97. ).