The coordination of online L2 interaction and orientations to task interface for epistemic progression

The role of knowledge in social interaction has been a recent research concern across several fields and the emergence of epistemics as a concept to understand information exchanges has been facilitated mainly through conservation analytic investigations (Heritage, 2012a,b). Relative epistemic status of speakers (Heritage, 2012a) has appeared to be a layer in the multidimensional body of action and knowledge co-construction (Goodwin, 2013). Although the nature of knowledge exchange processes in mundane talk and learning settings has been described in a number of studies, such an understanding has been explored to a lesser extent in technology-mediated and online interactional environments. With this in mind,, we draw on multimodal conversation analysis to describe online video-based interactions based on a single case analysis that represents a larger corpus of 70 h of screen recordings. The findings reveal the incorporation of online interaction, screen orientations, and knowledge co-construction for task accomplishment purposes. The participants coordinate their interactions with their orientations to the task interface to enact epistemic progression, which consequently turns the interface into a layer, a semiotic field, and a screen-based resource in the course of knowledge co-construction. The results have important implications for research on online interaction and epistemics as well as for an understanding of coordination of multiple actions in geographically dispersed settings. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.