Lifting the pen and the gaze: embodied recruitment in collaborative writing

Abstract This article investigates sequences of collaborative writing that are part of classroom interaction in student dyads and triads working with a digital device and a paper worksheet. In analyzing instances from a corpus of 18 h of video recordings made in five high-school classrooms through an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic approach, I focus on two embodied practices which do the work of recruiting assistance during the course of inscribing: lifting the pen and lifting the gaze. These practices are viewed as ordinary digressions from the basic posture of the writing body. I demonstrate that lifting the pen as a recruitment practice can be done as a brief stopping of the pen in its movement, as wrist rotation, or as hand elevation. Lifting the gaze can have varying temporal properties and occur synchronously with hand-on-face gestures. I conclude that collaborative writing underlines the indeterminacy of bodily practices as either recruitments, requests or contributions to joint courses of action. I also suggest that the identified practices may be further investigated as components of the specific speech-exchange system inherent to the activity of writing together.