„oh isch FIND_s nich;“

Abstract

This paper adds to the growing field of conversation analytical research on smartphone-use in face-to-face interactions. Whenever smartphones are used in mobile-supported sharing activities – e.g. to show a picture to co-present others – the smartphone user needs to search for and find the "searchable object" in the World Wide Web, an App or on the device's local memory. Analyzing audio-recordings of naturally-occurring conversations, this paper identifies two types of practices of speech that explicitly orient to ongoing smartphone-supported searches: Collaborative search (cf. Brown/McGregor/McMillan 2015) and search-accompanying commentary by the smartphone-user. Both practices verbally provide for the accountability of the otherwise opaque device use. They differ in the way they produce opportunities for co-present others to substantively contribute to the progression of the search as well as the degree to which they produce the search as an interactionally public event.