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Human beings employ an array of communicative symbols to craft selves, identities, groups, and reality more generally. This graduate seminar is dedicated to examining the myriad ways humans create and negotiate realities and identities through social interaction. As such, we will attend to the individual, groups, cultures, larger social formations, and the inter-­relationships among these arenas. Studies of social interaction are interdisciplinary and emerge from an array of research methodologies. Consequently, our readings reflect a diversity of perspectives on disciplinary and methodological levels.

There has been a remarkable revival of interest in how we conduct social actions in interaction – particularly in requesting, where recent research into video-recorded face-to-face interaction has taken our understanding in novel directions. This collection brings together some of the latest, cutting-edge research into requesting by leading international practitioners of Conversation Analysis. The studies trace a line of conceptual development from 'directive' to 'recruitment', and explore the acquisitional, cultural, situational and species-specific differentiation of forms for requesting in human social interaction.They represent the latest explorations into the complexities and controversies associated with the apparently simple but essential matter of how we ask another to do something for us.

This paper presents two pilot studies of sharing situations in orangutans and human infants. We report on the communicative behaviors that elicit food transfers, the contingencies associated with gesture selection and the (relative) success in obtaining food. We focus on the sequential unfolding of these interactional projects, on the timing between an initial action and the responsive move, and on the semiotic features that allow a participant to recognize (a) when a request has been produced, (b) when it has been unsuccessful and, (c) in the absence of success, when to pursue it further. We

This paper studies the relevance of social interactions among the unemployed. Identification is based on a salient and selective extension of the potential duration of unemployment benefits. If social interactions are important, ths policy change affects entitled individuals not only directly, but also indirectly by altering the duration of unemployment in the reference group. Moreover, this spillover effect of the policy should also be observed in the non-entitled group. Results indicate that there are strong indirect effects on the entitled, strong positive spillovers on the non-entitled, and the social interactions are about as important as the direct effects of the policy change.

Sociological analyses of social interaction have been primarily directed toward human-to-human exchange. Recently, some have begun to actively question that stance. Challenges are found in new theoretical ideas and in empirical study—experimental, field, and survey data on people's attitudes and behaviors toward nonhumans. Such developments are leading many scholars to carve out a more central role for animals, objects, images, and both memories and projections of the self and others in the study of social interaction. In this article, I review these innovative ideas, pursuing four specific tasks. First, I briefly review the theoretical grounds that eliminated nonhumans from studies of social interaction. Next, I present new theories and empirical studies that construct a role for nonhumans in social interaction. Third, I review surveys that document popular perceptions of human/nonhuman interaction. I conclude by proposing some conceptual guidelines that might bring nonhumans into our contemporary analytic frames.

This investigation explores the question, when is social media use social interaction? The results of three studies indicated that social media use was rarely considered social interaction. After using social media for 5 or 10 minutes, Study 1 ( N = 116) demonstrated that infrequent, directed social media behavior (e.g. chatting, commenting) predicted having a social interaction and feeling related. Study 2 ( N = 197) used event sampling to examine participants' social interactions with friends ( n = 2388) and found 96.5% of social interactions did not take place on social media. Study 3 ( N = 54) used experience sampling to record participants' experiences over 5 days ( n = 1332). Social media use and social interaction occasionally co-occurred, but only 2% of social interactions took place through social media. Social interactions through social media were usually talk-focused, one-on-one exchanges with closer relational partners, and rarely undifferentiated, broadcasted, or passively consumed information shared with acquaintances.