Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to outline a discussion of the first phase of an ethnographic study of mobile phone use on train carriages. The chapter constitutes a brief exploration of some ordinary features of action and interaction as constitutive features of social action and technology use. As such the discussion is designed to be suggestive of how these initial findings can be analysed and developed further. The analytical orientation is informed by an ethnomethodological approach insofar as it is concerned with the rules of mobile phone use “as instructions for seeing” (Harper and Hughes, 1993) and understanding the “character of interpersonal communication” (Heath and Luff, 1993) in public places.
One wants to make a distinction between “having the floor” in the sense of being a speaker while others are hearers, and “having the floor” in the sense of being a speaker while others are doing whatever they please (Harvey Sacks1)
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© 2002 Springer-Verlag London
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Murtagh, G.M. (2002). Seeing the “Rules”: Preliminary Observations of Action, Interaction and Mobile Phone Use. In: Brown, B., Green, N., Harper, R. (eds) Wireless World. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0665-4_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0665-4_6
Publisher Name: Springer, London
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