A young child’s use of multiple technologies in the social organisation of a pretend telephone conversation

This chapter contributes understandings of how a young child constructs her simultaneous use of multiple technologies so that her orientation to one occasions and informs her use of another. It illustrates the interplay between technologies as they are used by the child to socially organise and produce a pretend telephone call. Data are drawn from a video recording made by the child’s mother in their home. In the recording, the child views a Barbie™ YouTube video while simultaneously constructing a pretend telephone conversation with Barbie on a toy mobile phone. The sociological perspectives of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis are used to produce detailed descriptions of the child’s talk and embodied actions using the technologies. Analysis reveals how the interplay between technologies is developed in the child’s orientation, via gaze, gesture and talk, to each device. Discussion establishes that the child’s meaning-making of the video is integral to her construction of her telephone conversation. It highlights how the child displays interactional competencies and knowledge of how people interact over the phone to accomplish her social world.