HYBRID ETIQUETTE: THE PRODUCTION OF NORMS FOR SMARTPHONE-INVOLVED INTERACTION IN EVERYDAY CONVERSATION
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https://doi.org/10.32523/3080-1281-2026-156-3-152-166Keywords:
phubbing; hybrid etiquette; co-presence; smartphone; multimodal conversation analysis; ethnomethodology; interactional order; sequential organisationAbstract
This article examines how participants in everyday conversation combine live talk with attending to a smartphone without breaking the interactional order of the encounter. Phubbing (ignoring the interlocutor for accessing one’s phone) is usually treated in the psychological literature as a symptom of addiction; here it is analysed as a locally produced practice governed by its own rules – a 'hybrid etiquette'. The data are two video recordings of naturally occurring café conversation between close friends (about two hours in total; 17 sequences; 11 self-initiated smartphone moves), transcribed with Jeffersonian conventions and annotated following Mondada's multimodal notation in ELAN. The analysis identifies three coordinated moves: timing the smartphone move to a structural pause in the talk; multimodal compensation for the withdrawal of gaze through sustained torso orientation, supportive vocalisations, and brief returning glances ('eye pings'); and disarming the device in step with the resolution of the current topic. The baseline norm is not concealment but visible, silent co-presence: the phone stays screen-up on the table. The study contributes a fine-grained, empirically grounded account of a practice which existing accounts of phubbing rarely examine at this level of detail, and hypothesizes that the repertoire of resources used depends on social distance between interlocutors. The findings are discussed as a preliminary indication of a broader cultural shift in everyday norms of attention, co-presence, and personal boundaries among young adults, warranting further cross-cultural investigation.
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