LORENZA MONDADA

This project contributes from an interactional perspective on language and social interaction—building on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA), as well as interactional linguistics—to current debates about changing weather and climate crisis. It does so by focusing on how ordinary people practically address, reason and talk about weather in situ, within social interactions, as well as how they possibly relate these in vivo experiences to broader concerns of climate change. EMCA and interactional linguistics provide an original framework insisting on the importance of language and the body in social interaction for addressing societal issues. Although this framework has never been mobilized to study weather and climate issues, the project aims to show that it can cast light on the detail of situated practices escaping until now to mainstream studies in this area. Moreover, the project shows how an interest in changing, anomalous and sometimes extreme weather conditions contributes to new conceptualizations of social interaction itself, as situatedly sensitive to the material, ecological and atmospheric contingencies of its context.

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Considering that climate change is not a future eventuality but a crisis we are experiencing right now in our everyday lives, the project examines how people integrate weather conditions into their ordinary activities, decisions, experiences and choices. It studies how ordinary people not only speak about the weather but reason in terms of, debate about, and interpret weather conditions as crucially affecting their activities here and now; it also studies how people interact together while experiencing noticeable, unexpected or acute weather conditions, and how these, in turn, affect the organization of their interaction.

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Thus, the project’s aim is twofold: a) it seeks to provide original empirical insights into everyday interactions, reasoning about, and experiences of changing weather conditions; b) it aims to lay the foundation for expanding our understanding of the situatedness of social interaction. In other words: it encourages us to rethink social interactions’ material, environmental, and atmospheric contexts, thus enriching our knowledge of the diversity of contingencies that can shape them. The first point contributes to current debates on weather and climate crisis, the second contributes to current discussions about embodiment, ecology and sensoriality in social interaction—including weather conditions, which have not yet been addressed at all in EMCA.

 

TEAM:

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PI: Lorenza Mondada

2 research assistants and PhD candidates: Alejandra Borrero and Elisa Metz

1 post-doc researcher (tba)