Les limites de la coprésence à distance: Le guidage sur téléphone mobile

From an ethnomethodological perspective, we propose to examine how mobility becomes a reflexive feature of the concrete experience of participants in a course of action. In search of a ground allowing to track mobility, not upstream to the action as a determinant of activity or a type of context, but downstream, as an emergent feature of a situated activity, we selected direction giving conversations. After a synthesis of studies of route instruction giving in the field of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, we examine sequences from a corpus of natural conversations on mobile phones. The sequences components are location formulations (such as "I'm in front of X") and instructions (such as "turn right"). We examine modifications of the sequential organization of guidance and distribution of turn types between the guide and the requestor. We show that the the requestor introduces numerous locations which become conversational practical issues. Treatment of these locations by the participants is achieved by continuous adjustment between local and remote resources that gives a precise meaning to the concept of mobile conversation.