In recent years, conversation analysis has become increasingly involved in multimodal research in different interactional environments (cf., e.g., Haddington et al., 2024; Haddington et al., 2023), amongst others in medical interaction (cf., e.g., González-Martínez, 2024; Weatherall et al., 2021). However, there are hardly any studies on how multimodal resources are used by patients in medical conversations to describe symptoms or countermeasures. Therefore, we apply multimodal conversation analysis to more than 20 natural video recordings of German medical history-taking interactions with children (Frank-Job et al. 2021). The patients suffer from neurological diseases like seizures, with symptoms that are inherently difficult to describe (Gülich 2012). At their young age, they hardly have linguistic routines for these unusual experiences, but the diagnosis requires very detailed descriptions. Under this communicative pressure, the patients frequently make use of multimodal resources. In our talk, we will show how a patient’s embodied resource might lead to a dynamic process of reusing the embodiment during the course of the interaction. Thus, the participants intersubjectively establish a ‘multimodal Gestalt’ (Mondada 2014), to which they can refer in an abbreviated form for different communicative purposes.

References
González-Martínez, E. (2024). Senior staff member walks ahead, nursing intern follows: Mobility practices in hospital corridors. In S. Keel (Ed.), Medical and healthcare interactions: Members’ competence and socialization (pp. 73–101). Routledge.
Haddington, P., Eilittä, T., Kamunen, A., Kohonen-Aho, L., Oittinen, T., Rautiainen, I., & Vatanen, A. (Eds.) (2024). Ethnomethodological conversation analysis in motion: Emerging methods and new technologies. Routledge.
Haddington, P., Eilittä, T., Kamunen, A., Kohonen-Aho, L., Rautiainen, I., & Vatanen, A. (Eds.) (2023). Complexity of interaction: Studies on multimodal conversation analysis. Palgrave Macmillan.
Frank-Job, B., Knerich, H., Schaller, B., & Opp, J. (2021). Klinische Gesprächslinguistik: Linguistische Beiträge zur Differenzialdiagnostik. In H. Müller (Ed.), Sprache in Therapie und neurokognitiver Forschung (pp. 185–213). Stauffenburg.
Gülich, E. (2012). Conversation Analysis as a new approach to the differential diagnosis of epileptic and non-epileptic seizure disorders. In M. Egbert & A. Deppermann (Eds.), Hearing aids communication: Integrating social interaction, audiology and user centered design to improve communication with hearing loss and hearing technologies (pp. 146–158). Verlag für Gesprächsforschung.
Mondada, L. (2014). The local constitution of multimodal resources for social interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 65, 137–156.
Weatherall, A., Keevallik, L., La, J., Dowell, T., & Stubbe, M. (2021). The multimodality and temporality of pain displays. Language & Communication, 60, 56–70.

Multimodal communication in word searches involves the use of both verbal and nonverbal resources to resolve lexical retrieval difficulties. Word searches occur when a speaker struggles to retrieve a word or phrase, often employing multimodal strategies to signal the search and invite assistance from others (Henricson 2008). These searches are considered collective activities, where participants collaborate by suggesting words, providing clues, or confirming suggestions (Steensig 2001). Reichert and Liebscher (2012) define word searches as relational actions, emphasizing their social nature, as participants negotiate and position themselves in the conversation, especially concerning expertise.

The aim of this study is to examine what multimodal aspects are used by L1- and L2-speakers of Swedish when they search for words. I will further examine the possible quantitative and qualitative differences between the L1- and L2-speakers in the use of the multimodal in word searches. The main focus is on the initiator of the word search. The results show that both L1- and L2-speakers use several linguistic and bodily strategies when they struggle to retrieve a word. They mobilize gaze and other bodily signals to either invite others to help or to provide an outcome by themself.

Material for the study is video-recorded and transcribed group discussions of L1- and L2-speakers of Swedish. The participants, who are not art experts, familiarize themselves with selected artworks and discuss them in small groups.

This presentation shows how preschool groups organize their interaction in the proximity of street crossings. While teachers and children engage in phatic talk while walking through town, approaching a crossing often results in a reorientation to matters of traffic, displaying teachers’ constant orientation to the contingencies and demands of traffic.
Moving through urban areas, preschool groups are in a state of continuous multiactivity (Haddington et al. 2014): they walk as a mobile formation while also talking to each other. Though much of the talk is not traffic-related, their movement through the environment regularly occasions talk about traffic. A collection of cases where the preschool group approaches a street crossing while talking was analyzed through multimodal conversation analysis. Data comprise 28 preschool walks in urban areas, recorded with two 360 cameras, three GoPro cameras worn by teachers and microphones worn by children.
The analysis shows how teachers orient to traffic in two distinct ways. To prepare for an imminent crossing, teachers may a) withhold further sequential development in conversation with a child or b) interrupt a child’s ongoing turn at talk. Their accounts for these actions explicate the demands of traffic to the children. In this way, our analyses offer further empirical evidence of how the sequential organization of conversation is contingent on the socio-material surround, specifically pointing towards teachers’ orientation to matters of safety as an omnipresent and omnirelevant concern.

Reference
Haddington, P., Keisanen, T., Mondada, L., & Nevile, M. eds. (2014). Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond Multitasking. John Benjamins.

When a shared meal is over and yet uneaten food remains on the table, the possibility of taking more is present. Our analytical concern is with what happens when extra food is added unilaterally by a child, after the collective closing of a preschool lunch. Moreover, we are interested in understanding the institutional constitution and moral ordering of preschool activities when faced with a lone child continuing to eat after the meal has been ended. The action of taking a post-meal item of food is raised as a problem with the child around satiety, completion, and being left behind at the table. In this paper, we examine the collective work around, and responsive to, the child who continues to eat: questioning their actions, clearing the dishes, fellow diners leaving the table, and children filing out of the room. Finally, we examine the regurgitation and mishandling of food by the eater, once un-monitored by others. The recording is taken from a large corpus of video-recorded preschool lunches in Sweden. Our ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA) approach describes responding to the disruption of what would otherwise have been a collective departure from the table. The child taking an extra piece of food raises issues around allowing or denying more, recommencing eating in the face of potential satiety, yet also, food waste. The analysis of a post-closing actions is comparable to other recognisable collective responses, such as from vehicles to a pedestrian who is still crossing after the light has gone red.

Young children frequently use their bodies, especially hands and fingers, to represent numbers in early mathematics learning. This paper examines how normative representations of number are established through finger counting in preschool mathematics interactions. Using conversation analysis, we analyse approximately 115 hours of video-recorded data from three English preschool settings, focusing on group learning interactions with 3–4-year-old children in the UK. These interactions take place in activities such as circle time, group singing sessions, and sand play. Our analysis identifies that and how practitioners orient to children’s finger-counting in ways that make tacit norms explicit. Specifically, we find that practitioners treat particular ways of positioning hands and fingers to represent numbers as incorrect. However, they do not always explicitly address the deviation and sometimes positively reinforce it. We discuss how practitioner responses contribute to the social construction of mathematical norms in early childhood education, shaping children’s understanding of number concepts and influencing their engagement with mathematical learning. These findings also provide a basis for practitioners to critically reflect on their role in balancing conventional numerical representations with opportunities for creative thinking. By highlighting the social negotiation of mathematical norms, this research informs best practices in early childhood mathematics education. Data are in British English.