Editorial

 

Welcome to Volume 3, issue 2 of Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality.

The format for academic articles varies from journal to journal and includes such aspects as layout and reference style. Although reference management software such as EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley make it relatively easy to change references from one style to another with just a few clicks, authors typically spend a lot of time formatting the paper prior to submission. If you change your mind about where to submit your paper -or if the paper is rejected- you usually need to reformat the manuscript to fit the formatting guidelines of another journal.

For this reason, it is our pleasure to announce that Social Interaction now adheres to format-free submissions. This means that you no longer need to worry about layout and formatting constraints, as long as you include everything necessary for the paper to be properly reviewed. Read more about the format-free submission policy here.

 

The current issue features five articles that look at such diverse settings as outdoor walking, computer gaming, second-language learning, home interaction using Norwegian sign language, and broadcast shows.

 

Maximilon Baddeley explores an ethnomethodological respecification of ‘gestalt-contextures’ to describe how two artists and a social researcher organize themselves to navigate river terrain. He provides novel insights into how an art object takes on many meanings within the ongoing context.

 

Fredrik Rusk and Matilda Ståhl present a CA perspective on ‘kills’ and ‘deaths’ in the computer game Counter-Strike. They show how the social organizational structure of game play connected to Kill- and Death-events in CS:GO can be described as a set of “rules” that participants orient to.

 

Jenny Gudmundsen and Jan Svennevig analyze multimodal displays of understanding in vocabulary-oriented sequences. Based on data from second language interactions they argue that understanding is displayed not only by change-of-state tokens, but typically by a more encompassing multimodal gestalt involving facial expression, gestures, and torso movements. They introduce the concept of change-of-state face, which is constituted through raised eyebrows and widened eyes, produced while the head and/or the torso is raised upwards.

 

Kristian Skedsmo provides an overview of formats and subtypes of other-initiation of repair employed in Norwegian Sign Language (NTS). Special attention is given to the implicit open-class repair-initiation: the “freeze-look”. The results show a high degree of overlap with formats found in spoken languages, but also highlight features that seem to be unique to signed languages.

 

Jürgen Streeck argues that self-touch is often perhaps wrongly understood as a form of interactional disengagement. Instead he shows how self-touch can also be a cooperative action, displaying the deeply social nature of the human body

 

We hope you will enjoy this and future issues of Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality and look forward to new submissions.

 

The editors,

Kristian Mortensen, University of Southern Denmark

Brian Due, University of Copenhagen