Multimodal methods for managing deontic rights in interdisciplinary trials

This paper focuses on interdisciplinary trials as a multiparty and multiactivity setting in which different professions are needed for students with mobility disabilities to try out robot-assisted gait training. Through an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic approach to multimodal interaction analysis, we investigate how a research team collaborates with the employees at a sports high school to get students who are wheelchair users to walk. The paper provides an analysis of the professionals’ employment of multimodal resources for managing deontic rights when organizing interdisciplinary trials. It examines how the professionals initiate and negotiate their own and others’ actions necessary for preparing the student for walking. Based on video recordings, the paper focuses on the professionals’ deontic claims concerning co-participants’ actions and analyzes their temporal and spatial contingencies. Building on prior research on deontics, this paper contributes to our understanding of the interactive accomplishment of deontic authority and its sensitivity to contextual features.