1.Introduction

Business meetings today are frequently organized between people in different geographical locations. Previous studies show that engagement by participants in multiple interactional spaces (see e.g. Mondada 2013Mondada, Lorenza 2013 “Embodied and Spatial Resources for Turn-Taking in Institutional Multi-Party Interactions: Participatory Democracy Debates.” Journal of Pragmatics 46 (1): 39–68. ) affects the ways in which participation frameworks are organized at the beginning of meetings (Heath and Luff 2000Heath, Christian, and Paul Luff 2000 Technology in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Muñoz 2016Muñoz, Arantxa S. 2016 “Attending Multi-Party Videoconference Meetings: The Initial Problem.” Language@Internet 13.; Markman 2009Markman, Kris M. 2009 ““So What Shall We Talk About.” Openings and Closings in Chat-Based Virtual Meetings.” Journal of Business Communication 46 (1): 150–170. ; Oittinen and Piirainen-Marsh 2015Oittinen, Tuire, and Arja Piirainen-Marsh 2015 “Openings in Technology-Mediated Business Meetings.” Journal of Pragmatics 85 (8): 47–66. ; Rintel 2013Rintel, Sean 2013 “Tech-Tied or Tongue-Tied? Technological versus Social Trouble in Relational Video Calling.” 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3343–3352. ) and become reshaped at other junctures in meetings, e.g. in moments of interactional trouble (Oittinen 2018Oittinen, Tuire 2018 “Multimodal Accomplishment of Alignment and Affiliation in the Local Space of Distant Meetings.” Culture and Organization 24 (1): 35–53. ). However, findings on the ways distributed work groups end their encounters are scarce. In face-to-face meetings closings include initiating and traveling through a “closing track” (Button 1991Button, Graham 1991 “Conversation-in-a-Series.” In Talk & Social Structure. Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, ed. by Deirdre Boden, and Don Zimmermann, 251–277. Cambridge: Polity Press.), shifting from one turn-taking format to another, i.e. from meeting talk to multiparty talk (e.g. Boden 1994Boden, Deirdre 1994 The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action. Cambridge: Polity Press.; Nielsen 2013Nielsen, Mie F. 2013 “ ‘Stepping Stones’ in Opening and Closing Department Meetings.” Journal of Business Communication 50 (1): 34–67. ), and doing the actual leave-taking. All these stages require the mutual coordination of talk and embodied actions that are produced in conjunction with each other and the ongoing activity (see LeBaron and Jones 2002LeBaron, Curtis E., and Stanley E. Jones 2002 “Closing Up Closings: Showing the Relevance of the Social and Material Surround to the Completion of Interaction.” Journal of Communication 52 (3): 542–565. ). In technology-mediated settings, where the participants have limited or no visual access to each other’s environments and conduct, the joint utilization of interactional resources and bodily configurations for the sequential work of closing is more challenging. The present study investigates the situated affordances and multimodal resources that the chair and participants draw on to manage this practical problem when ending audio-based multiparty meetings.

The data comprise ten intracorporal business meetings that were video-recorded in one of the offices of a large international company. The meetings involve participants in different geographical locations who use the Microsoft Live Meeting software to connect with each other. They have an audio connection but cannot see each other, albeit the agenda, participant list, and other relevant materials can be shared in an online workspace and projected on wide screens in the meeting rooms. The recordings depict the events from the physically co-present, local participants’ site, illustrating the ways in which they renegotiate the frames and conditions for their involvement in multiple interactional spaces: the local space, overall meeting space, and potentially, other adjoining spaces (Oittinen, 2020Oittinen, Tuire 2020 Coordinating Actions in and across Interactional Spaces in Technology-Mediated Business Meetings (Doctoral dissertation, University of Jyväskylä, Finland). Retrieved from https://​jyx​.jyu​.fi​/handle​/123456789​/69067; cf. Mondada 2013Mondada, Lorenza 2013 “Embodied and Spatial Resources for Turn-Taking in Institutional Multi-Party Interactions: Participatory Democracy Debates.” Journal of Pragmatics 46 (1): 39–68. ). The study uses conversation analysis (CA) to examine the moment-by-moment organisation of coordinated exits. The analysis shows closings as intricate, collaborative accomplishments that require specialized practices to manage crucial junctures and advance the closings’ overall trajectory: (1) when closing becomes relevant as the next step, (2) when opportunity spaces to move out of the closing track emerge, and (3) when departure needs to be negotiated. This progression is established in concert with verbal and bodily-visual practices, and it involves mutually achieved alignment(s) by which the context for closing and leaving the overall meeting space is (re)configured. Orientation towards the screen, monitoring the list of participants, and rendering physical actions reflexively relevant and intelligible via the screen function as important constituent elements in the unfolding of the activity. Overall, there is variation in the ways the meetings end depending on contextual factors: e.g. the number of parties, the situated affordances available to the participants, and the physical location of the chair. This study extends earlier research on the organizational properties of technology-mediated interaction (e.g. Hutchby 2001Hutchby, Ian 2001 Conversation and Technology: From the Telephone to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity.; Due and Licoppe 2020Due, Brian, and Christian Licoppe 2020 “Video-Mediated Interaction (VMI): Introduction to a Special Issue on the Multimodal Accomplishment of VMI Institutional Activities.” Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality 3 (3). ; Mlynář et al. 2018Mlynář, Jakub, Esther González-Martínez, and Denis Lalanne 2018 “Situated Organization of Video-Mediated Interaction: A Review of Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic Studies.” Interacting with Computers 30 (2): 73–84. ), highlighting the complexities of coordinating actions via material and embodied resources in multiparty meetings that are audio-based.

2.Closings

Closings of turns and sequences have been extensively studied via conversation analytic methods (e.g. Schegloff and Sacks 1973Schegloff, Emanuel A, and Harvey Sacks 1973 “Opening up Closings.” Semiotica 8 (4): 289–327. ; Schegloff 2007Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Button 1987Button, Graham 1987 “Moving out of Closings.” In Talk and Social Organization, ed. by Graham Button, and John R. E. Lee, 101–151. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters., 1991Button, Graham 1991 “Conversation-in-a-Series.” In Talk & Social Structure. Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, ed. by Deirdre Boden, and Don Zimmermann, 251–277. Cambridge: Polity Press.). As suggested by Schegloff (2007Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 118), sequence-closing sequences in general comprise three turns: an initial turn, recipient’s aligning turn with which s/he indicates collaboration or agreement, and a final token that ratifies the mutual understanding to close (also called a “sequence-closing third”). Similarly, reaching alignment is central when negotiating closings of encounters. In face-to-face situations there are various resources, such as body movement, that are typically mobilized in conjunction with talk to achieve a collaborative closure (LeBaron and Jones 2002LeBaron, Curtis E., and Stanley E. Jones 2002 “Closing Up Closings: Showing the Relevance of the Social and Material Surround to the Completion of Interaction.” Journal of Communication 52 (3): 542–565. ). The way closings unfold depends on the interlocutors’ mutual orchestration of their verbal and embodied alignments which are often simultaneously pursued (Ticca 2012Ticca, Anna C. 2012 “Reconfiguring the Interactional Space: Organising the Closing of Encounters in an Italian Travel Agency.” Bulletin Suisse de Linguistique Appliquée 96: 91–116., 99; see also Mondada 2011Mondada, Lorenza 2011 “Interactional Space and the Study of Embodied Talk-in-Interaction.” In Space in Language and Linguistics: Geographical, Interactional, and Cognitive Perspectives, ed. by Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, 247–275. Boston: De Gruyter.; Broth and Mondada 2012Broth, Mathias, and Lorenza Mondada 2012 “Walking Away: The Embodied Achievement of Activity Closings in Mobile Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 47: 41–58. ). Sometimes this may involve upholding the conversation while bodily indicating its imminent end. In his study on closings of in-car-interactions, Haddington (2019)Haddington, Pentti 2019 “Leave-Taking as Multiactivity: Coordinating Conversational Closings with Driving in Cars.” Language & Communication 65: 58–78. illustrates the complexity of mobile settings, namely drop-offs, which require subtly negotiating two parallel yet intertwined activities: a conversational closing and the actual leave-taking. In addition, he shows how attentiveness to the interactional contingencies and monitoring the physical environment become key in advancing the overall closing trajectory.

Previous studies show that whereas informal meetings tend to end when key members leave the room (Boden 1994Boden, Deirdre 1994 The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action. Cambridge: Polity Press., 102), closings in formal meetings are governed by the pivotal role of the chair. However, they also require the participants to display mutual alignment towards being on a closing track (Button 1991Button, Graham 1991 “Conversation-in-a-Series.” In Talk & Social Structure. Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, ed. by Deirdre Boden, and Don Zimmermann, 251–277. Cambridge: Polity Press.). An essential part of creating the context for closing is shared attentiveness towards its imminence, which might be drawn by preclosing sequences, such as summaries, back-references, appreciations, solicitudes and arrangements (Button 1987Button, Graham 1987 “Moving out of Closings.” In Talk and Social Organization, ed. by Graham Button, and John R. E. Lee, 101–151. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters., 1991Button, Graham 1991 “Conversation-in-a-Series.” In Talk & Social Structure. Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, ed. by Deirdre Boden, and Don Zimmermann, 251–277. Cambridge: Polity Press.). In her study on departmental meetings, Nielsen (2013)Nielsen, Mie F. 2013 “ ‘Stepping Stones’ in Opening and Closing Department Meetings.” Journal of Business Communication 50 (1): 34–67. introduces further steps that model closings, comprising four chairperson’s techniques: topic bounding or preclosing, concluding remark/moral/lesson, last call for new mentionables and declaring closure by thanking the participants. In addition, she identifies two participant’s techniques: showing readiness to close and passing the opportunity to talk. Overall, key in the accomplishment of closings is whether the co-participants align with the proposed closing-implicative action(s) or take advantage of sequentially suitable slots, namely opportunity spaces, to continue discussing a topic (Button 1991Button, Graham 1991 “Conversation-in-a-Series.” In Talk & Social Structure. Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, ed. by Deirdre Boden, and Don Zimmermann, 251–277. Cambridge: Polity Press.; Schegloff and Sacks 1973Schegloff, Emanuel A, and Harvey Sacks 1973 “Opening up Closings.” Semiotica 8 (4): 289–327. ).

Recent conversation analytic research has focused on embodied practices and the use of material objects as interactional resources during the different phases of meetings (e.g. Deppermann et al. 2010Deppermann, Arnold, Reinhold Schmitt, and Lorenza Mondada 2010 “Agenda and Emergence: Contingent and Planned Activities in a Meeting.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (6): 1700–1718. ; Ford and Stickle 2012Ford, Cecilia, and Trini Stickle 2012 “Securing Recipiency in Workplace Meetings: Multimodal Practices.” Discourse Studies 14 (1): 11–30. ; Hazel and Mortensen 2014Hazel, Spencer, and Kristian Mortensen 2014 “Embodying the Institution – Object Manipulation in Developing Interaction in Study Counselling Meetings.” Journal of Pragmatics 65: 10–29. ; Mondada 2006Mondada, Lorenza 2006 “Participants’ Online Analysis and Multimodal Practices: Projecting the End of the Turn and the Closing of the Sequence.” Discourse Studies 8 (1): 117–29. ; Nielsen 2012Nielsen, Mie F. 2012 “Using Artifacts in Brainstorming Sessions to Secure Participation and Decouple Sequentiality.” Discourse Studies 14 (1): 87–109. ). As part of her progressive model, Nielsen (2013Nielsen, Mie F. 2013 “ ‘Stepping Stones’ in Opening and Closing Department Meetings.” Journal of Business Communication 50 (1): 34–67. , 50) introduces a set of physical actions that indicate participants’ readiness to close a meeting, i.e. being in a “meeting preclosing phase”, such as gazing at one’s wristwatch, packing belongings and collecting empty coffee cups. Mondada (2006)Mondada, Lorenza 2006 “Participants’ Online Analysis and Multimodal Practices: Projecting the End of the Turn and the Closing of the Sequence.” Discourse Studies 8 (1): 117–29. observed how a simple activity like putting aside a printed form may function not only as a gestural anticipation of a sequence closure but also as an opportunity space for others to either align with the closing invitation or elaborate on the previous topic. Physical co-presence thus enables meeting participants a wide repertoire of multimodal resources with which to accomplish activity shifts and enact their institutional roles (see Hazel and Mortensen 2014Hazel, Spencer, and Kristian Mortensen 2014 “Embodying the Institution – Object Manipulation in Developing Interaction in Study Counselling Meetings.” Journal of Pragmatics 65: 10–29. ). It also provides them the opportunity to monitor each other’s conduct in real time, namely the ways the frames and (pre)conditions for interaction, i.e. interactional space, are constructed, maintained, and (re)configured (e.g. Mondada 2011Mondada, Lorenza 2011 “Interactional Space and the Study of Embodied Talk-in-Interaction.” In Space in Language and Linguistics: Geographical, Interactional, and Cognitive Perspectives, ed. by Peter Auer, Martin Hilpert, Anja Stukenbrock, and Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, 247–275. Boston: De Gruyter., 2013Mondada, Lorenza 2013 “Embodied and Spatial Resources for Turn-Taking in Institutional Multi-Party Interactions: Participatory Democracy Debates.” Journal of Pragmatics 46 (1): 39–68. ; see also Raclaw et al. 2016Raclaw, Joshua, Jessica S. Robles, and Stephen M. DiDomenico 2016 “Providing Epistemic Support for Assessments for Mobile-Supported Sharing Activities.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4): 362–379. ; DiDomenico and Boase 2013DiDomenico, Stephen M., and Jeffrey Boase 2013 “Bringing Mobiles into the Conversation. Applying a Conversational Analytic Approach to the Study of Mobiles in Co-Present Interaction.” In Discourse 2.0 Language and New Media, ed. by Deborah Tannen, and Anna M. Trester, 119–132. Georgetown University Press.). However, in meetings where participants cannot see each other, recognizing these configurations and closing-relevant behaviours is challenging. In the data for the present study, the local participants frequently orient to the distant parties’ silences during closings as alignment, although competing involvements can easily occur.

3.Closings in technology-mediated environments

Research on the interactional practices of technology-mediated meetings has formed an area of interest that continues to grow (e.g. Hutchby 2001Hutchby, Ian 2001 Conversation and Technology: From the Telephone to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity., 2014Hutchby, Ian 2014 “Communicative Affordances and Participation Frameworks in Mediated Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 72: 86–89. ; Luff et al. 2016Luff, Paul, Christian Heath, Naomi Yamashita, Hideaki Kuzuoka, and Marina Jirotka 2016 “Embedded Reference: Translocating Gestures in Video-Mediated Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4): 342–361. ; Markman 2009Markman, Kris M. 2009 ““So What Shall We Talk About.” Openings and Closings in Chat-Based Virtual Meetings.” Journal of Business Communication 46 (1): 150–170. ). Some studies have found that successful meeting interaction, including mutually accomplished transitions such as openings, requires making the overall meeting space a number one priority (i.e. ceasing other activities) and adopting a shared orientation to the activity at hand (see Markman 2009Markman, Kris M. 2009 ““So What Shall We Talk About.” Openings and Closings in Chat-Based Virtual Meetings.” Journal of Business Communication 46 (1): 150–170. ; Muñoz 2016Muñoz, Arantxa S. 2016 “Attending Multi-Party Videoconference Meetings: The Initial Problem.” Language@Internet 13.; Oittinen and Piirainen-Marsh 2015Oittinen, Tuire, and Arja Piirainen-Marsh 2015 “Openings in Technology-Mediated Business Meetings.” Journal of Pragmatics 85 (8): 47–66. ; Wasson 2006Wasson, Christina 2006 “Being in Two Spaces at Once: Virtual Meetings and Their Representation.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16 (1): 103–130. ). As participants in distant meetings coordinate their actions in multiple interactional spaces, verbally established junctures have special relevance (cf. Raymond and Zimmerman 2016Raymond, Geoffrey, and Don H. Zimmerman 2016 “Closing Matters: Alignment and Misalignment in Sequence and Call Closings in Institutional Interaction.” Discourse Studies 18 (6): 716–736. ).

Previous literature shows that asymmetrical access to co-participants’ physical environments can sometimes be consequential for the sequential unfolding of interaction (e.g. Arminen et al. 2016Arminen, Ilkka, Christian Licoppe, and Anna Spagnolli 2016 ”Respecifying Mediated Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4): 290–309. ; Heath and Luff 2000Heath, Christian, and Paul Luff 2000 Technology in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Rintel 2013Rintel, Sean 2013 “Tech-Tied or Tongue-Tied? Technological versus Social Trouble in Relational Video Calling.” 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3343–3352. ). In cases where only an audio connection is used, the most problematic features are delays that can interfere with the conversational structure (Olbertz-Siitonen 2015Olbertz-Siitonen, Margarethe 2015 “Transmission Delay in Technology-Mediated Interaction at Work.” PsychNology Journal 13 (2–3): 203–234.). Scholars working on video-mediated interaction have further concluded that even with video-mediated co-presence, procedures for turn-taking and transitions can be challenging, but they can also result in newly established practices (see Hjulstad 2016Hjulstad, Johan 2016 “Practices of Organizing Built Space in Videoconference-Mediated Interactions.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4): 491–498. ; Licoppe and Dumoulin 2010Licoppe, Christian, and Laurence Dumoulin 2010 “The ‘Curious Case’ of an Unspoken Opening Speech Act: A Video-Ethnography of the Use of Video Communication in Courtroom Activities.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 43 (3), 211–231. ; Licoppe and Morel 2012Licoppe, Christian, and Julien Morel 2012 “Video-in-Interaction: ‘Talking Heads’ and the Multimodal Organization of Mobile and Skype Video Calls.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (4): 399–429. ; Oittinen 2020Oittinen, Tuire 2020 Coordinating Actions in and across Interactional Spaces in Technology-Mediated Business Meetings (Doctoral dissertation, University of Jyväskylä, Finland). Retrieved from https://​jyx​.jyu​.fi​/handle​/123456789​/69067). In their study on distant meeting openings and closings in a holding company, Ruhleder and Jordan (2001)Ruhleder, Karen, and Brigitte Jordan 2001 “Managing Complex, Distributed Environments: Remote Meeting Technologies at the ‘Chaotic Fringe’.” First Monday 6, http://​firstmonday​.org​/ojs​/index​.php​/fm​/article​/view​/857​/766 [2/11/2019]. give one example of this, highlighting the absence of “liminal” phases that usually function as transition spaces between informal and formal phases in meetings. They found that especially closings tend to be abrupt, since there is no “dusk” period that usually contains interpersonal multiparty talk, and because the conversational closing is managed concurrently with the technological closing. Overall, in both audio- and video-mediated meetings, technology seems to create special frames and conditions for achieving coordinated entries and exits, but the progression must still be jointly accomplished in situ (cf. Muñoz 2016Muñoz, Arantxa S. 2016 “Attending Multi-Party Videoconference Meetings: The Initial Problem.” Language@Internet 13.).

Markman’s (2009)Markman, Kris M. 2009 ““So What Shall We Talk About.” Openings and Closings in Chat-Based Virtual Meetings.” Journal of Business Communication 46 (1): 150–170. study on chat-based meeting closings proposes that reaching the end of interaction is a two-stage process, including an initial “so”-prefaced turn and a second turn that projects future action. However, due to the lack of vocal and bodily-visual cues, the process can easily be derailed because of overlapping turns appearing linearly on screen. The present study builds on these empirical investigations and seeks to find out, on the one hand, how co-located and distant participants’ orientation towards both the affordances and constraints in audio-based meetings affect the coordination of closings (cf. Rintel 2013Rintel, Sean 2013 “Tech-Tied or Tongue-Tied? Technological versus Social Trouble in Relational Video Calling.” 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3343–3352. ). On the other hand, it contributes to a better understanding of the contextual “structuring resources” (Mondada 2013Mondada, Lorenza 2013 “Embodied and Spatial Resources for Turn-Taking in Institutional Multi-Party Interactions: Participatory Democracy Debates.” Journal of Pragmatics 46 (1): 39–68. , 270) that the chair and participants have at their disposal when dissolving the meeting structure and the shared interactional space.

4.Data and methods

This study draws on video-recorded data of ten meetings collected in one of the offices of an international company in Central Europe. These meetings total ten hours of recoded footage, and they are part of a larger data set from a 14-hour corpus collected in 2012 and 2013, which includes also co-present and video-mediated meetings. The participants in the data come from different geographical locations, and they speak English as a lingua franca, which is also the official company language. The recorded meetings can be characterized as formal: i.e. they are pre-scheduled, planned events in which the chair and participant roles are predetermined (see Boden 1994Boden, Deirdre 1994 The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action. Cambridge: Polity Press.). The chair can be either a local or a distant participant, which means that he or she is not always visible on camera. All participants gave their consent to be audio- or video-recorded either prior or at the beginning of each meeting. The study also adheres to the bilateral agreement made with the company representatives and follows all ethical guidelines. In the transcripts, pseudonyms are used to secure the participants’ identities.

The meetings were arranged using Microsoft Live Meeting, which enables audio-connection between all participants and the distribution of the agenda and other relevant materials (e.g. Word files, charts) in the shared workspace. Everyone participating in the meetings with a laptop or computer can individually utilize the mute function, however, in larger meetings, there is typically one person in the party who controls the devices. In the absence of video-collected data from the distant locations, it is still challenging to know which of the participants are muted. Exceptions form those meetings in which the list of participants is projected on a wide screen in the meeting room(s) during the closing phase. In these cases, the use of the mute function is also visible to the co-present participants and the researcher, who stayed in the room for the duration of all recordings.

The data were analyzed using conversation analysis (CA), which enables close examination of the ways in which verbal and embodied resources are both temporally and sequentially organized in the social and material environment (see Streeck et al. 2011Streeck, Jürgen, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis E. LeBaron 2011 Embodied Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; Hazel et al. 2014Hazel, Spencer, Kristian Mortensen, and Gitte Rasmussen 2014 “Introduction: A Body of Resources – CA Studies of Social Conduct.” Journal of Pragmatics 65 (1): 1–9. Nevile et al., 2014Nevile, Maurice, Pentti Haddington, Trine Heinemann, and Mirka Rauniomaa 2014 Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ). CA’s focus on the moment-by-moment unfolding of interaction makes it possible not only to detect the junctures where closing negotiations become relevant but also to view how concurrent, parallel activities contribute to the process of achieving coordinated exits. The data excerpts were chosen as illustrative of the vocal, material, and embodied resources the chair and participants commonly deploy when accomplishing closings, also showing other features that fashion their typical progression. Although having video footage from only one location could be seen as problematic for the in-depth analysis of closings, the study yet provides an emic perspective on the co-located and distant participants’ conduct: i.e. how they themselves orient to the absence of visual access and draw on “the assemblage” of situated affordances (Arminen et al. 2016Arminen, Ilkka, Christian Licoppe, and Anna Spagnolli 2016 ”Respecifying Mediated Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4): 290–309. , 301). The data extracts were transcribed adapting the conventions by Jefferson (2004)Jefferson, Gail 2004 “Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, ed. by Gene H. Lerner, 13–31. Amsterdam: Benjamins. and Mondada (2001Mondada, Lorenza 2001 “Conventions for Multimodal Transcription.“ https://​franz​.uniba​.ch​/fileadmin​/franz​/user​_upload​/redaktion​/Mondada​_conv​_multimodality; see Appendix). The distant participants are marked in the transcripts with capital letters.

5.Accomplishing closings via vocal, material and embodied resources

Distant meeting closings are progressively accomplished through mutually coordinated actions in and across the physical environments. The first Subsection (5.1) examines how the first transition is initiated and closing made relevant as the next step. The second Subsection (5.2) illustrates the emergence of opportunity spaces and the chair and participants’ ways to manage them. The third Subsection (5.3) analyzes the terminating sequence and the moment when departure needs to be negotiated. The analysis shows that verbal practices, such as audibly achieved junctures by the chair, are important for the joint accomplishment of closings (see also Asmuß and Svennevig 2009Asmuß, Birte, and Jan Svennevig 2009 “Meeting Talk: An Introduction.” Journal of Business Communication 45 (4): 408–429.; Boden 1994Boden, Deirdre 1994 The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action. Cambridge: Polity Press.), but they also require multimodal turn constructions and the use of various resources, such as gaze, gestures and manipulation of material objects. Orientation and alignment towards the closing activity are achieved and maintained through a skilled organisation of these constituent features. Due to the lack of visual access between the parties, using the screen to render physical actions reflexively relevant and intelligible is important in that it not only reconfigures the context for current and next actions but can also demarcate one phase from another. However, as it is typically the chair who controls the devices, this affordance is not available to everyone.

5.1Initiating the closing of meeting proper

Verbal contributions that anticipate the end of meetings, e.g. boundary markers, declarations, and summaries, are considered important for bringing closings into shared interactional focus (Button 1987Button, Graham 1987 “Moving out of Closings.” In Talk and Social Organization, ed. by Graham Button, and John R. E. Lee, 101–151. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters.). These central means for making the imminence of closure explicit are typically deployed by the chair, but the first step is still collectively accomplished. The analysis illustrates that transitioning from meeting proper to the closing track includes bodily (re)arrangements in the meeting room(s) that contribute to reconfiguring the context, and the chair’s manipulation of material objects. Although embodied displays cannot be communicated between the distributed parties, actions on the screen(s) (e.g. typing) have an important function. They can become visual signposts for the transition (cf. Hazel and Mortensen 2014Hazel, Spencer, and Kristian Mortensen 2014 “Embodying the Institution – Object Manipulation in Developing Interaction in Study Counselling Meetings.” Journal of Pragmatics 65: 10–29. ), being thus very much embedded in the local interactional ecology.

The first extract comes from a meeting with six distant participants from diverse locations and two local participants, Hans and Marja, who sit opposite each other in a small meeting room. The agenda is displayed on a wide screen. Prior to the extract, the chair, Hans, has given an update about implementing new company practices and shared his PowerPoint presentation with the others. Once he reaches the end of his last slide, he first self-corrects a spelling mistake on the screen, a “visual repairable” (Greiffenhagen and Watson 2009Greiffenhagen, Christian, and Rob Watson 2009 “Visual Repairables: Analyzing the Work of Repair in Human-Computer Interaction.” Visual Communication 8 (1): 65–90. , 66), and then produces a concluding statement that launches the verbal transition (Lines 7–9). Concurrently, he clicks and opens the participant list on the screen, where it becomes visible to the other local participant, Marja. The excerpt shows that the closing is made relevant as the next phase via the chair’s multimodal turn construction and through his use of the screen: he signposts the way towards the closing track. The co-participants contribute to the transition via aligning vocal and visual behaviors.

Extract 1.

              ((Marja orienting to wide screen, Hans to laptop))

1   Hans      six: uh number six the (op)s buying from the
              workshops need of course to follow these: (.) 

2   Hans      (p)+(o)+(1.0)
    Hans         +frowns
    Hans             +lifts upper body, hand on mouse --->

3   Hans      (A)s (.) sorry about that °↑one°

4             +(1.0) +# (1.7)
    Hans      +types +manipulates mouse ---->+ l.12
    fig               #1

5   Hans      which are valid in the respective countries,

6             /(2.8)
    screen    /cursor moves from bottom right to upper left
              corner on ‘save’ icon

7   Hans      <that /basically wha- (.) was 
    screen          /changes saved to ppt

8   Hans      *what I had    *(.) on my (.)>
    Marja     *rubs right arm*

9   Hans      list +now (0.2) open, 

10  Hans      /#fo:r, (0.4) questions (.) and: (0.5)
    screen    /name list opens on screen 
    fig        #2

              
                                                         
                                                    
              Figure 1. Hans orients to laptop.                 Figure 2. Name list opens on screen.

11  Hans      remarks:+
    Hans          --->+

12            (2.2)*(0.2)+#(3.2)
    Marja          *stretches neck
    Hans                 +grins -->
    fig                  #3
                                                   
                                                    
                                                   Figure 3. Hans grins.

13  EINO      Eino +here (.) one comment, the planning side ---
    Hans           +--->glances down at keyboard

The extract begins when Hans mentions the last point of implementation listed on his last slide. He notices a problem with spelling of an acronym to which he orients by frowning, putting his hand on the laptop mouse and suspending his verbal display after uttering the first two letters, “p” and “o” (Line 2). When uttering the last letter, he initiates self-repair, an apology that anticipates his engagement in remedial work during the ensuing silence (Lines 3–4). His reference to “that one”, i.e. what he is apologizing for, functions as a specification of his noticing of the typo that everyone can now see being corrected on the screen (Line 3). Maintaining his orientation towards the laptop, Hans finalizes his on-screen operations and produces a concluding assessment on the topic (Line 5). After this, there is a silence of 2.8 seconds, during which Hans moves the cursor from the end of the line to the upper left-hand corner and clicks on “save”. Marja, who has been looking at the wide screen all along, monitors the cursor’s trajectory via gaze and thus displays her orientation to Hans’s multimodal turn construction along with the interlude that the saving activity occasions (Hazel and Mortensen 2014Hazel, Spencer, and Kristian Mortensen 2014 “Embodying the Institution – Object Manipulation in Developing Interaction in Study Counselling Meetings.” Journal of Pragmatics 65: 10–29. , 19). When Hans begins to formulate what reads as a closing-implicative summary (Line 7), a notification box appears momentarily on the screen, informing that the changes to the ppt have been successfully saved.

By stating that he is finished with the official topics of the meeting and using a clear boundary-marking pre-start, “now”, (Lines 7–9), Hans reinforces his role as the chair and initiates the transition into the next phase: preclosing. Despite some movement in her seat, Marja maintains her focal orientation towards the wide screen and shared interactional space (Figure 1). With his subsequent abridged verbal invitation, a prepositional phrase, Hans opens the floor explicitly for questions and comments (Line 9–11). Concurrently, he puts his hand again on the laptop mouse and opens the participant list on the screen that also shows whether the others have their microphones on or off (Figure 2). With these actions, he marks the beginning of the “question phase” and grants himself and Marja access to monitor the distant parties’ state of availability. During the long silence that ensues, Marja continues to look at the wide screen and Hans his laptop screen, and by doing so, they both orient to the distant participants as potential organizers of the next action (Line 12; see Deppermann et al. 2010Deppermann, Arnold, Reinhold Schmitt, and Lorenza Mondada 2010 “Agenda and Emergence: Contingent and Planned Activities in a Meeting.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (6): 1700–1718. , 1707). The change in Hans’s facial expression after 2.2 seconds, namely his grin, indicates his orientation to the long silence as potentially problematic (Figure 3). Moreover, it makes the liminal stage of opening the floor for questions relevant and having a particular institutional and organizational function: it is not expected to be let pass. When Eino finally takes the floor with a verbal identification marker by stating his name and frames his upcoming turn as a comment, Hans resumes a more neutral facial expression and orients to listening.

The extract shows that the shift towards the closing phase is accomplished through the chair’s multimodal turn construction and rendering actions on the screen intelligible in and across the physical environments. Whereas Hans’s verbal initiations are crucial, his simultaneous mobilisation of other resources and alignments creates the space for implementing a visual demarcating practice that distinguishes one activity phase from another. Overall, Hans’s role is pivotal in transitioning into the closing phase in that he controls the devices and turn-taking, depicting the typical conditions of the setting and the responsibilities that the chair has in the organisation of closings.

The next extract illustrates a case in which closing is initiated by a participant who is not physically in the same room with the chair. As minimal visual cues cannot be used to project turn-taking (cf. Ford and Stickle 2012Ford, Cecilia, and Trini Stickle 2012 “Securing Recipiency in Workplace Meetings: Multimodal Practices.” Discourse Studies 14 (1): 11–30. ), prompting the transition becomes a practical problem. There are three local participants, Erkki, Marja, and Cleo, and two distant participants, Bert and Andy, of which the latter is also the meeting chair. Half a minute before the excerpt begins, Cleo has grabbed his smartphone from the table and at this point, where discussion on the budget is ongoing, he is still engaged with it. In the extract, Marja begins to orient to closure because of another meeting. She makes the emergence of this aspect relevant via bodily reorientations and object manipulations in the local space (Line 5–10), but because of the visual barrier between her and Andy, she must find another way to bring it also into shared interactional focus. What makes verbal intervention necessary is foremost Marja’s role in controlling the devices in this end: her laptop is used to enable the connection between the local and distant environments, and she cannot leave without interrupting the meeting.

Extract 2.

1    ANDY     so then they just (.) <know> (this) can come 

2             *from the (company) 
     Marja    *turns gaze to screen

3    ANDY     or [(0.2) or (.) 
4                [((buzz from Erkki’s phone))

5             *them it’s: uh stemming up to *#our (.) 
     Marja    *turns gaze to E’s phone      *turns gaze to screen 
     fig                                     #4 

6    ANDY     our figure+s
     Erkki              +turns gaze to middle of table 

7    BERT     >okay so we make< separate (cupboards) plans which
              are *#being incorporated 
     Marja        *turns gaze down to wrist watch
     fig           #5

8    BERT     *into one ( ) cupboard
     Marja    *straightens posture, begins to neaten
              sleeves --->*