Civility and mobility: Drivers (and passengers) appreciating the actions of other drivers

Abstract My analysis centres on a dominant aspect of civility between vehicles: appreciation. I examine the inter-vehicular interaction that precedes and accompanies the ‘hand-up’, before then widening the analysis to consider the ‘thank you’ and its role in the intra-vehicular activities of driver and passenger. I differentiate between the weaker expectations of appreciation when vehicles are passing by one another and the stronger expectation involved in ‘letting in’ or ‘letting out’. In considering how rights of way are waived by drivers, I make a contrast with a cost-benefit analysis of request and offers. The article draws upon video recordings of car journeys made by families, friends and commuters.

[1]  N. Thrift.  Driving in the City , 2004 .

[2]  Jack Katz.  How Emotions Work , 1999 .

[3]  R. Turner,et al.  Ethnomethodology: Selected Readings , 1974 .

[4]  Lorenza Mondada,et al.  Crossing the street: How pedestrians interact with cars , 2019, Language & Communication.

[5]  Alexandra Weilenmann,et al.  Managing Walking Together , 2014 .

[6]  S. Fuller.  A Fuller Vision of Thomas Kuhn: Response to Roth and Mirowski , 2001 .

[7]  On generosity , 2001 .

[8]  Kobin H. Kendrick,et al.  Recruitment: Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction , 2016 .

[9]  Paul Drew,et al.  Requesting in social interaction , 2014 .

[10]  L. Mondada.  Talking and driving: Multiactivity in the car , 2012 .

[11]  Tim Phillips,et al.  Incivility: The Rude Stranger in Everyday Life , 2010 .

[12]  Kenneth Liberman.  More Studies in Ethnomethodology , 2013 .

[13]  P. McIlvenny.  How did the mobility scooter cross the road? Coordinating with co-movers and other movers in traffic , 2019, Language & Communication.

[14]  Véronique Traverso.  Aspects of polite behaviour in French and Syrian service encounters: A data-based comparative study , 2006 .

[15]  D. Swanton.  Flesh, Metal, Road: Tracing the Machinic Geographies of Race , 2010 .

[16]  Lorenza Mondada,et al.  Using Video for a Sequential and Multimodal Analysis of Social Interaction: Videotaping Institutional Telephone Calls , 2008 .

[17]  Mathias Broth,et al.  On the road: Communicating traffic , 2019, Language & Communication.

[18]  J. Urry.  Inhabiting the Car , 2006 .

[19]  E. Goffman.  Behavior in Public Places , 1963 .

[20]  J. Urry,et al.  Travel time use in the information age , 2005 .

[21]  Jim Schenkein,et al.  Notes on the art of walking , 1974 .

[22]  Mathias Broth,et al.  Telling the Other's side: Formulating others' mental states in driver training , 2019, Language & Communication.

[23]  L. Mondada.  Emergent focused interactions in public places: A systematic analysis of the multimodal achievement of a common interactional space , 2009 .

[24]  A. Bangerter,et al.  Passing-by “Ça va?” checks in clinic corridors , 2017 .

[25]  R. Watson,et al.  Constitutive Practices and Garfinkel’s Notion of Trust: Revisited , 2009 .

[26]  Krishna M Kavi,et al.  Beyond the black box , 2010, IEEE Spectrum.

[27]  Pentti Haddington,et al.  Moving Together , 2014 .

[28]  R. Smith.  The practical organisation of space, interaction, and communication in and as the work of crossing a shared space intersection , 2017 .

[29]  H. Garfinkel.  Studies in Ethnomethodology , 1968 .

[30]  Marcus Sanchez Svensson,et al.  Configuring Awareness , 2002, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

[31]  A. Galloway.  Space and Culture , 2003 .

[32]  E. D. Stefani,et al.  Learning to communicate: Managing multiple strands of participation in driving lessons , 2019, Language & Communication.

[33]  E. D. Stefani,et al.  Instructional sequences in driving lessons: Mobile participants and the temporal and sequential organization of actions , 2014 .

[34]  P. Drew,et al.  Contingency and Action: A Comparison of Two Forms of Requesting , 2008 .

[35]  Arnulf Deppermann.  Intersubjectivity and other grounds for action-coordination in an environment of restricted interaction: Coordinating with oncoming traffic when passing an obstacle , 2019, Language & Communication.

[36]  Mirka Rauniomaa,et al.  Interaction Between Road Users , 2014 .

[37]  Anita M. Pomerantz.  Compliment Responses: Notes on the Co-operation of Multiple Constraints , 1978, Asking and Telling in Conversation.

[38]  Oskar Juhlin,et al.  Driving and ‘Passengering’: Notes on the Ordinary Organization of Car Travel , 2008 .