Why Skype? Explorations in the Grammar of ‘Being in touch’:
From Locke to Wittgenstein, from SMS to Skype
Richard Harper
(Forthcoming) in Katz, J. & Floyd, J. (Eds) The Philosophy of Emerging Media:
Understanding, Appreciation and Application, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Abstract
This paper explores why it is that people Skype, and considers whether there is a logic or
social grammar to doing so. Reviewing anthropological and sociological empirical studies, it
argues that the key property of this logic is an interrogative stance that makes seen objects
both the reason for and the topic of Skype communications. This makes such
communications quite demanding, necessitating things to show and the careful management
of the visual field by the participants in ways that is collaborative; both or all parties negotiate
what to look at and it is these ‘see-ables’ that are the basis of what is talked about.
Preamble
Why does someone ‘Skype’? – assuming, of course, that one will allow a noun to be used as
a verb. Is it merely to see another? Is there some special value in seeing? Is seeing better,
say, than writing, instant messaging, texting? ‘Skyping’ needs to be understood, it seems to
me, in terms of the reasons people have for such communications. This seems obvious – a
truism. But what are those reasons? How many are there? What does it mean to say that
people have reasons? Does one always need a reason to Skype? Surely some human
relationships are such that no reasons are needed to call. One Skypes ‘just because’.
This playful preamble sets up the purpose of this paper. It proposes that there are two basic
ways of treating acts of communication between people. One view, grossly speaking, looks
at those acts in terms of theoretical constructs devised by commentators external to those
acts. A whole plethora of such theories can be noted – from Media Theory approaches right
the way through to, let us say, Speech Act Theory. All, in various ways, look at what people
do when they communicate through an external theoretical lens. This approach has all sorts
of merits, not least of which is its fecundity: one could write book after book attempting to
summarise all the currently fashionable theories accounting for communication, for example,
and doing so would attest to that very fertility.
The other approach, much less often deployed, ignores ‘external theory’ and examines,
instead, what those in acts of communication themselves create and deploy that gives those
same acts of communication the shape and form they have. Here too there will be found
things that look like ‘theoretical orientations’, concepts and interpretative tools as well as
much more prosaic ‘maxims of conduct’ but these are participant’s own theories, tools and
concepts, not those of the observer. It is these endogenous or reflexive views that this second
view examines.
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For those familiar with the first view, this second perspective can make them very ill at ease
– it can often seem to them that this second view privileges lay theorising as much as expert
theorising; it appears, in their understanding, to place science alongside ‘common sense’, the
parochial with the widespread, the objective. Those who are more familiar with this second
view know, however, that such a concern is egregious, and that the purpose of looking at
how people themselves reason is not to contrast that with some other presumed order of
reason – a scientific one say. The purpose is simply to gather empirical evidence about how
the world works given that that world is evidently accomplished by those who live in it.
This summary is obviously gross, and the contrast necessarily elides important distinctions.
But that said, this second view can be said to be, broadly speaking, the view of Harold
Garfinkel, as espoused in his seminal book, Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967). This view,
in turn, has echoes in or, rather, has echoes of, the analytical philosophy of Wittgenstein,
particularly his Philosophical Investigations (1958), and the attempts to bring a social
scientific application of his views by, for example, Peter Winch in The Idea of a Social Science
(1958). Garfinkel’s concerns resonate too in the work of Levinson, particularly his book
Pragmatics (1983), and in Harris, who published The Language Myth in 1981. Albeit from
different starting points, each of these authors argue that to understand communication, to
understand what people are about when they communicate to each other, is not most
effectively done through the espousal of external theoretical tools but can also be done, and
often done in profitable ways, through careful examination of the in vivo purposes of those
involved. Most importantly, to understand the meanings people articulate and orient to,
requires, to paraphrase Wittgenstein’s famous aphorism, looking at use. Words are to be
understood by their deployment, not their dictionary definitions; acts of communication in
the doing of them, not in accounts of them (though as with dictionaries, accounts are an
important tool that can aid understanding of the doing and of course are doing in their own
right).
This is no simple thing - looking at use. Winch’s book is famous – some would say notorious
- for its exploration of the problem of doing ethnography of ‘other cultures’; he explains (and
shows through reference to E.E. Pritchard’s work) that the conceptual apparatus of common
language in one culture is all too easily misapplied in another; ‘use’ in one setting might
confuse use in another and can, moreover, blind the ethnographer from seeing. Levinson,
meanwhile, explores the thorny relationship between studies of actual language practice (or
use) and a concern for theoretically deduced models of language itself (and hence the
discipline of linguistics) which seem to demand rules and systematicities in language use that
no amount of evidence can provide. This begs the question of how proofs of theories might
be tested, Levinson noted; even what is to be looked for in studies of use. Harris, the third
case, explored how linguistically rooted conceptual muddles enwrap philosophical theories
of communication (and hence the philosophy of communication). As a case in point, Harris
shows that the seventeenth century philosopher, John Locke, set modern philosophy on the
wrong foot with his notion that communication is all about information exchange;
communication between persons is conveyed through the conduit of words, in Locke’s view.
This merely echoes the implied grammar of words like ‘exchange’, ‘giving’ and ‘listening’,
Harris explains, and is evidently wrong. Even so some contemporary philosopher’s make the
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same mistake – Skyrms comes to mind (2010), despite the efforts of some to bring clarity to
the area (See Sandis 2012; Tanney 2013).
The resonance this has with more contemporary theories of communication in information
science (and computer science especially) hardly needs stating, though the consequences of
it maybe more startling. In my own research, presented in Texture (2011), I noted the
difficulty of articulating the ‘what of everyday communicative practice’ in engineering
cultures that resonate with machine-like communication metaphors. These crowd out
important distinctions, I explained. In everyday life communication is, for example, not
always about information exchange; it can sometimes be an act that declares a relationship
– affirming friendships say, reviving them, recalling them. In other words, the metaphysics of
computer science populates the landscape of communications technology with Turing
defined logic machines where such subtleties in human acts of communication are driven
out, their diverse performative values (to coin an Austinian phrase) replaced with the
mechanics of information processing.
The peculiarities of corporate research settings notwithstanding, contemporary social theory
does seem to have moved away from an excessive concern with theory and has started to
avow a greater concern with the ‘just what’ of how people themselves appropriate the
affordances of communications tools and technologies. This is especially so with the so-called
turn to ‘practice’. In this regard, research by the likes of Papacharissi as represented in her
collection, A Networked Self (2011, see especially pp304-18), would seem to articulate
Garfinkel’s position (and hence the other authors I mention) even though she does not
mention ethnomethodology (or Wittgenstein). But careful examination of Papacharissi’s
work shows that irrespective of any merits it might have, and they are many, the current
swathe of studies looking at practice in communications are essentially driven by theoretical
concerns. An interest in the everyday serves merely to allow elaborations of the theory. In
Papacharissi’s case (and the edited collection she concludes), the theory is all about identity,
and how identity can be said to evolve as socio-technical structures of communication shift.
The approach I am interested in exploring in this paper, one inspired by the ordinary language
philosophy of Wittgenstein and through him to Garfinkel, is however to report on just what
one finds does comes to matter to those who are involved in specific acts of communication,
regardless of theory. I am particularly interested in the praxiological character of those
endeavours. In this view, meaning is reflexively tied to, and given agency, through activity.
Identity and its evolving form may well come out in praxis, though it may well have different
nuance and character to Papacharissi’s conception.
My goal is not to contrast what one finds, the theoretically more elaborate ideas about
identity in A Networked Self, say, and the mundane, more ad hoc theorising of the everyday,
though. I am simply interested in what is going on for those who are doing communication –
what are the matters that are made a concern in and through that communication, identity
or otherwise. The language with which I am framing the task at hand is beginning to get
taught, so let me ease the narrative by saying that all I am interested in is exploring the
ordinary ways that ordinary people do Skype. Presumably, and picking up the point from the
first paragraph, what one will find, if one does look, is that there is some logic behind this use
of Skype – this ordinariness. One imagines too that the ‘reasons for Skyping’ will be,
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somehow, incarnate in what is being sought for in Skyping – something about the intentions
of those involved, the relationships articulated and so forth, will be articulated. These
concerns may be part of the set of reasons that in part describe and explain the actions in
question – the choice to make a call, the topics selected, the things looked at. One imagines
as part of this also that concerns to do with rights to look (at another) will be found in the
acts themselves. All this and more will make up the gestalt of Skyping.
Evidence
Of course, this is all conjecture; one is imagining this gestalt - although one can hardly claim
to be totally unfamiliar with the topic. After all, who hasn’t Skyped sometime or other? The
real question is what evidence has been brought to the scientific community about this
practice. What can one say ‘evidentially’ about what people do do in and through Skype?
One of the first things one might say about the evidence is that it seems a bit curious. There
are, for example, some remarkable statistics about Skype. It is often noted that Skype is used
for approximately 40% of the minutes constitutive of trans-national telecommunications.
Surveys by Skype itself suggest that it is also known and used by virtually everybody, as
indeed I have just remarked.
It would appear that Skype is then part of normal life, part of the fabric of living in much the
same way that mobile phones are, tablets and PCs. It is commonplace. The name of the
product has now even become eponymous with the use of any and all video connections –
running Skype or otherwise (there are now numerous competing technologies). We live
inside a world in which Skyping is part of our vocabulary. And yet there is no large literature
on Skyping, on the connections that Skype enables and sustains. This is one of the reasons
why I say the evidence is curious.
That this is so is all the more startling given how much research – and how many books –
were written reporting the widespread adoption of a prior communications technology that
became equally ubiquitous some years ago. Katz’s Magic in the Air (2006) was published
about the same time as some of my own books, Wireless World (2002) and Inside Text: Social
Perspectives on SMS (2006). How mobile phones were altering the fabric of being in touch
was a considerable scholarly concern at that time. And, yet, today, when Skype is similarly
ubiquitous, no such equivalents are to be seen – as far as I am aware, there are no books on
Skype and everyday life.
Perhaps there is a reason for this, and this might have to do with what Skype affords.
Whereas the mobile altered the mechanics of availability in ways that some said altered the
socio-spatial geometries of the world (Massey, 2005), Skype seems to let people
communicate as they would do ordinarily, naturally, without the corrupting intermediation
of technology. After all, it lets people see those they are talking with. One of the catch phrases
of my own company, even if it is infelicitous, says it all: natural interaction. Is it in this sense
that Skype is uninteresting – because it’s not strange; being normal, the natural way of
communicating, albeit over distance?
It is not entirely clear. Whatever the reason for the apparent dearth of research this doesn’t
mean that Skype isn’t addressed in the literature. It is, but when Skype is considered it is
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treated as an element, and often only a minor one at that. Madianou and Miller’s Migration
and New Media (2012) is one such inquiry. Here we learn how contemporary international –
or transnational - employment migration trends are resulting in many families finding that
‘Mum’ works and lives far from home – abroad no less. This is particularly so for Filipino
families, the book’s chosen community and culture, where Madianou and Miller’s show how
Skype is used by mothers working in London (and elsewhere, though London is the primary
site) to keep in touch with their families back in the archipelago. The book explains that these
connections are highly sought after - desired if you will - because these mothers are remote
from family members that are often quite young. It’s these mothers’ kids who are being
looked after by grandparents and aunts. Madianou and Miller explain that it is via Skype that
the young children in question can come to recognise what their mother looks like; Mum
thus comes to be more than a mere idea conveyed in the written word or through the sound
of speech on a phone. Seeing Mum via Skype lets Mums be recognised when they come
home, as they walk out of the airport gates into the arms of children who no longer need
prompting by aunts who in the past might have had to say ‘there she is’ - as if the lady in
question were a stranger. Mothers find they relish this recognition: they delight in it. It
negates the grief of not been recognised at all.
Yet it is perhaps in this respect that Skype is doing something obvious yet something that it
is not best treated as ‘natural’, and hence worth little commentary as I suggest. For it seems,
according to Madianou and Miller’s evidence, that Skype gives greater importance to the
visual in social relations. Many prior communications emphasised the auditory and the
textual. The valence of Skype, of Skyping (certainly in in the context Madianou and Miller
report), is not merely that seeing allows recognition, it is rather that it brings an erotic
element to family connections. By erotic I mean a concern in this regard for the sensual
aspects of the body and all that ensues: through Skyping, mothers can feel the adoring gaze
of their loved ones; they can delight in knowing that the one they cuddle at the airport has
not been told to cuddle but does so since they see ‘It is Mum!’
This echoes the work of Peters who argues, in Speaking into the Air (1999), that the
widespread prevalence of vision-delivering tools in contemporary communication
technology is making the body more important than the mind when people seek to
communicate. It is shifting expectations and the experiences that people are delighting in.
Seeing has become part of the requisite of the modern form of life, where distributed,
fragmenting families solidify themselves not through articulating what they think, but by
letting each other recognise each other’s shape, their form, their body. This is altering the
connection between place and emotion and the visual. To see Mum is the sought for value;
not to, say, receive a letter that lets one understand Mum’s subjectivity – what Mum thinks
and feels ‘inside’. Indeed one could suggest that the change is even stronger than this:
whereas once a letter would be treated by the recipient as a gift of sorts, today the
relationship between sender and recipient, absent and present person, is altered. It is
recognising someone on their return after a long absence that is the gift that is sought for.
To see is the mechanism that allows recognition; we become our pictures (or at least as we
are seen through Skype’s codecs), not our thoughts or inner reflections, our looks become
us, not our words.
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From constructive theory to praxiological detail
Yet if this is so, what is the form of action in and through a Skype call? What is the gaze that
seems so vital to mother’s made of, how is it constituted? How do people separated by
distance come to manage the problem of ‘looks’, a name for what it might be that is
recognised when one see’s another? How does one Skype so as to learn what another looks
like? Migration and New Media doesn’t answer these questions – detailed as they are,
obvious though they might be. This is not a fault in the book since Skype is not really the
concern, it’s what its use points to that is. And that is essentially to do with contemporary
anthropological theory: abstract notions of family, and relatedly, abstracted notions of
obligation and absence and their connection to ‘capitalism’.
I should say again, I am not being critical of such an approaches – one that delves into
empirical matters to service theoretical topics. By way of further illustration, if Skype had
been part of Papacharissi’s empirical topics, then one would imagine that she would have
approach Skype from the angle of identity, with that theoretical object in mind; as I say that
is the centrepiece of A Networked Self.
I am saying there is another way of examining what happens in and through Skype where the
burdens of theory are not so great or invasive. One might add that though this other
approach might not encumbered by theory, what it uncovers might nevertheless be rich and
evocative, suggestive, in the empirical shape of the material uncovered, the complexities of
modern lives where the work of being in touch its experiential consequences so profound. It
may also supplement and even echo some of the more theory-driven research.
There are now beginning to appear some papers that take the view I am interested in and
indeed some of these do provide a neat resonance with studies such as Madianou’s and
Miller. These studies have looked at, for example, the opening sequences of Skype
communications, others at what happens within them, whether this relates to greetings and
introductions or topics and agitations, even problems with the technology – ‘troubles talk’
in the encompassing sense.
Take Sunakawa and Bono’s paper on greetings in Skype (forthcoming). Though one would
think that Skype connections would begin with a summons answer sequence – one standard
format of openings in face to face conversation – this research shows that in practice many
Skype calls are part of already underway communications. Skype calls don’t start talk, they
are part of ongoing tele-mediated acts; part of talk that is ongoing not in some gross sense –
as in ‘I am always in contact‘ – but in real, adjacent turn-taking that happens to be across
different technological platforms. In the families Sunakawa and Bono studied, SMS, instant
messaging and Facebook postings are used to co-ordinate Skype calls right up to the time
that Skyping commences.
To see, in this context, is to see at the right time. This does not mean merely and only when
the technology is set up to do so, when the Skype clients have been switched on and
connections made to the Internet and so forth. Rather they commence when the parties
themselves are ready to be seen and to see. This means, and this evokes Madianou and
Miler’s book, when the participants have, say, the kids at hand and hence ‘ready to pick up
and show’, or when new clothes and jewellery are nearby so that these same kids can pick
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up and show them to the remote party. These may be the gifts that they have received from
the remote other – their Mum say. It’s not that they have them that is the issue, it is showing
them that is. This is why Sunakawa and Bono argue that Skype is like theatre; for, like actors,
users of Skype require some warming up and preparatory work, but here the actors and the
audience are as one, the crucial thing being to get them all ready for the performance itself.
Licoppe and Morel (forthcoming), meanwhile go even further and show how these openings
and greetings becoming multi-staged. They consist not just of the pre-call arrangements, on
SMS, Facebook or whatever, but then, once a Skype connection is made, an initial greeting,
when a call starts, and then a further, subsequent greeting when everyone is arranged so as
to do what the participants themselves sometimes call a ‘proper greeting’ – as in ‘We are all
here now, say hello everyone!’. Getting to a place where the body of those concerned when
Skype connections are sought and undertaken requires, then, lots of work and joint moral
commitment, an interactional order between both parties, caller and receiver.
Part of this work, if work it is, entails not only getting things ready to see, but how to deal
with opportunities for greetings that are serendipitous, or at least sometimes staged so as
that they seem to be. For Licoppe and Morel not only report on the multi-staged form of
openings (see also Rilieu, forthcoming), they also report on what they call greetings which
are massively bound up with the seeing of others, when it is the actual act of seeing that
becomes the salient aspect of the greeting. As it happens the French have a word for this:
they are called coucou moments. Coucou is a vernacular for saying ‘See you’ when seeing is
very much the thing being alluded to – when someone sees a friend on the other side of the
metro station, say, when someone eventually finds a person in a busy public place even
though they have been talking with them on the phone as they seek them out. Coucou is like
a word that one would use in the family game of hide and seek at that moment when
someone is found – though of course, there is no English vernacular for it – ‘found you!’
hardly does it.
In their studies of Skyping, Licoppe and Morel find that coucouing tends to take over the
orientation of users. People make a point of not being seen at the very start of a Skype call,
for example, only to give greater gravity, more importance and fun to the actual moment
when they are seen, somewhat after the commencement of the connection – this is the
coucou moment. When a coucou has been done, delayed or otherwise, Licoppe and Morel
show that participants talk about it. People note such things as what might have been
peculiar about the seeing in question (‘oh you look fat’ was one of the surprisingly
unendearing phrases that one Parisien said to another she had just coucoued in Licoppe and
Morel’s data). When such a moment is reached prematurely it creates fluster and giggles;
when it is deliberately done for a subsequent time (somehow, but I leave the reader to
imagine how), it becomes a focal point, a topic itself, like the thread of double entendres in
jokey conversations, a coucou leading to another in an flush of ‘seeings’. Licoppe and Morel
also report those coucou moments that are experienced not as constructed by the
participants but as conjured by the ineffable effects that poor quality data volumes and the
inefficiency of Skype codecs produce. Here the coucou word is used to describe the
disappearing of the remote other, a disappearing soon followed by a reappearing - as if
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callers are digital ghosts that suddenly appear and vanish in the world as seen on the screen,
a world that is evidently different from the world as is.
What one finds, if one examines Skyping then, is not merely that ‘looks’ are things that can
be learnt through Skyping, that how another is to be recognised can be as it were, taught.
What one finds is that the skill that gets glossed as the ability to recognise another is actually
subordinate to the work entailed in Skype user’s capacity to engage in jointly produced
orientations to physical display, ones that are not about just their own faces and bodies,
about looks so to speak, but include any combination of faces and bodies and other real
objects – presents and ornaments, cats and dogs, grandmothers and grandchildren. Much
more is seen than merely looks in Skype. At the same timer, seeing within Skype is bound up
with the organised, sequential patterning of these acts of joint looking, acts that sometimes
repeat themselves, and which sometimes allow new components to appear in the lookings –
new views of the bodies in question, new arrivals who coucou out of the blue, so to speak.
Conclusion
There is other research in the same vein. Space precludes further consideration of it. Suffice
to say that those papers that look at Skyping praxiologically, at what it entails for those who
use it, show that it allows ‘seeings’ and ways of fabricating conversation that are bound up
with these seeings. For want of a label one might say that Skyping involves the social
production of seeing types and the consequences of these on topic management. These
types and their implicated topics are articulated in and through elaborate arrangements of
bodies, places and things through time; they are inevitably focused on and through the
camera and the screen, on what these allow to be seen. It is through the articulations of
people, things, time and seeing types that the particular vocabulary of Skype comes to have
its valence, even if that vocabulary is appropriated from other settings – as in the case of
coucou moments.
Coming to learn the looks of others then, the heart of Madianou and Miller’s thesis, turns
out to require work that Madianou and Miller ignore (since their interest is in what that work
allows). The evidence of this work, just sketched, entails as I say making seeings occur at just
the right moments and ensuring somehow that what is seen at those times is what ought to
be seen by all involved. One sees together on Skype, one doesn’t see from one point and
view or from another, in other words; Skyping involves fabricating a joint seeing, an
orientation of collaborative interest.
One might formulate all of these features in the following maxims of ‘user conduct’ or
orientations. When people skype they1) ‘Ensure that what I show is what the other sees, so that what they see is seen such
that they notice the things I want them to;
2) ‘I do this in patterned ways so that my sought-for seeings can be echoed in their
subsequent turns; first me doing a coucou and then the other doing one of their own,
and so forth’.
3) ‘I do this so as to make Skyping a joint endeavour where things to be seen are jointly
agreed – so that Skyping is something we do together.’
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The way I have expressed these maxims makes them seem awkward, ponderous almost. That
is not how Skype is used, though. What I am saying is that people don’t just look at each
other, at either end of the Skype connection. They come to see together when seeing here
means looking with agreed and mutually intelligible intentions – that they in effect agree
ways of seeing together, of looking in ways that both or all on a Skype connection understand
and orient to. I think these ways have a kind of logic to them, or rather that there are number
of logic types to be found if one looks – like the logic of coucouing. Key to all, however, is an
orientation that has an interrogative stance, a way of looking that emphasises the seeking of
things to notice (through seeing) and the seeing of things thereby to talk about. And always
this is jointly produced: this work is collaborative; people do this together even as they take
turns individually. One looks to see what to do in a Skype call, to see what to talk about, to
see how to continue, but one does this together.
Given this, one might suggest that Skyping is effortful. It demands the management of topic
and concerns through the skilful use of seeing types and sequential display of objects for
view. One would imagine that fitting Skype into the natural rhythms of already busy daily
lives is thus intimately connected to the intensity of the experience, this effortfulness, if this
is the right label. Presumably also, the effortfulness of Skype is at once its problem and its
appeal: if someone (or persons) has or have the energy, the prospect of a Skype call might
entice them and they will offer their engaged attention willingly. If they don’t have that
vitality, they might resist the beckoning of a Skype ringtone, the summons in an SMS, the
scheduled logging on articulated through a Facebook posting. Perhaps they may
communicate nevertheless, but will choose less forthright modalities of doing so. Perhaps
also it is that accounts for why the scheduling activities take the form they do, with Skyping
being in the middle of prior acts of communication that help set up this demanding moment.
The point of noting these matters is that it allows us to understand that judgements about
whether to Skype or not are bound to the work of seeing and noticing, and that this is the
work of being family and friends across distance, when those connections are articulated in
and through Skype. It doesn’t matter whether the family in question consists of kids in the
Philippines and Mothers in London or two friends in the suburbs of Paris. Wherever they are,
whosever they are, whatever their relation, there is a logic to the engagements they make
through Skype, a purpose articulated in doing so. This logic has a particular kind of meaning
and delivers a special kind of enchantment. Seeing is central to it, but not because this seeing
is somehow resonant of the seeing as a natural feature of face to face conversation but
because, in Skype, seeing becomes the business, the purpose and the fun of communication
– for it is here that seeing becomes the thing looked for in the talking. This is the grammar
of Skype. This is part of the everyday vocabulary of being in touch.
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