IMPEC Group

The IMPEC working group conducts research on screen-based interactions. Drawing on different disciplines (primarily linguistics, cognitive science, and communication science and computer technology), we study different situations:

• Taking traditional analytic paradigms (discourse analysis, conversational analysis, interactional linguistics) and “putting them to the test” in particular “screen situations”;
• Using a concrete phenomenological approach to study real life as it exists for participants who live these situations.

Regardless of the type of analysis conducted, we always focus on linguistic production (in a very broad sense) of people who live “screen experiences.” Thus, we base our results on lived experience:

• “usages” (Jouët) studied using observable behavior (dynamic screen captures, video recordings, etc.);
• verbalizations or other forms of action produced by users (during or after a studied sequence).

We consider diverse situations that can be individual (telephone, video games, etc.) or collective (in co-presence with screens or from a distance: conferences, webinars, network games, museum visits). These situations can take place in a professional environment, with “classic” or specialized (with a control panel) screens, or in a private environment. They can concern general or specific (children, young adults, elderly people) types of users. These situations are most often multimodal in a broad sense: different channels of perception and interaction, multimodality of communication between people (verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal) and modality of content and information (text, audio, fixed and mobile images) present on screens.