Handheld microphones as a resource in videoconference pre-trial hearings
Résumé
Videoconference in courtrooms setting cannot be reduced to a point-to-point setting between a prison and a court. It involves in fact a multiparty setting where at least three or more participants are relevant in the side of court. This makes salient specific concerns regarding the production of relevant videoconference frames (Verdier and Licoppe 2011; Licoppe, Verdier, and Dumoulin 2013), but also the management of sound to maintain a joint participation framework. In some settings, like telepresence, the microphones are made invisible (Relieu 2007) but do not exclude issues (Bonu 2006). The use of handheld microphones in videoconference is evocated (Heath and Luff 1992; Meier 2003) but has not been studied systematically. This presentation discusses specific issues of talking through handheld microphones in a multiparty remote setting. This presentation is based on a video recorded corpus of French pre-trial hearings in a regional Court of Appeal in France. We produced a collection of sequences where the manipulation of a handheld microphone is made relevant by the participants for different range of actions. As far the use of microphone is unnecessary for intra-site interaction, we analyze the work of participants and of the president of the court to maintain a participation framework with the remote site. The use of handheld microphone object makes visible the pre-selection of next speaker and transition relevance place. We show how members topicalize and use this feature as a resource to keep the floor (anticipating relevance of next speaker) or to select next speaker (by passing or prompting to use the microphone). The manipulation of the microphone by the president of the court (by keeping holding close to the mouth or posing the microphone) displays some non-verbal projection on the type of turn expected (rather long or not) when distributing the floor. The asymmetry between participants reinforces the institutional dimension of the organization of talk in pre-trial hearings.