# "Calling-out" and "halting" summonses: Drawing the attention of a coworker on the move

Angeliki Balantani, Esther González-Martínez

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## To cite this version:

Angeliki Balantani, Esther González-Martínez. "Calling-out" and "halting" summonses: Drawing the attention of a coworker on the move. Language and Communication, 2025, 104, pp.179-196. 10.1016/j.langcom.2025.06.002. hal-05200248

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Submitted on 5 Aug 2025

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# “Calling-out” and “halting” summonses: Drawing the attention of a coworker on the move

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Angeliki Balantani, Esther González-Martínez*

Department of Social Sciences, University of Fribourg, Boulevard de Pérolles 90, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland

## ARTICLE INFO

Article history:

Keywords:

Multimodal conversation analysis

Summons

Attention-drawing

Recruitment

Hospital staff

Corridor interaction

## ABSTRACT

We examine the activity of securing the attention of a prospective interlocutor by means of a summons-answer sequence when the summoned party is walking away from the summoner. We focus on two forms of first-name summonses. Calling-out summonses are produced when the coparticipants are at a significant distance from each other and the summoner remains stationary. Halting summonses are produced when the summoner is moving towards the summoned party and is about to reach them. The data are video recordings of hospital staff corridor interactions oriented towards recruiting a coworker for a practical task.

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ([http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)).

## 1. Introduction

Recruitment is ubiquitous in talk-in-interaction and everyday life (Floyd et al., 2020; Kendrick and Drew, 2016). A, the recruiter, enlists B, the recruitee, to achieve a practical action - A asks B to pass them an object, for instance - and/or B volunteers to do it (Kendrick, 2021). Initially concentrating on assistance, the concept of recruitment has progressively expanded to be understood as “the outcome of interactional methods securing involvement - assistance, cooperation or contribution - in the realization of a course of action” (González-Martínez and Drew, 2021, p. 1). Hospital staff corridor interactions are often oriented towards overtly or indirectly asking a coworker to do something: a nurse asks a secretary to retrieve a medical record, nudges a doctor into examining a patient or prompts an aide to prepare for an electrocardiogram (González-Martínez et al., 2017). These interactions are often very brief, fortuitous and produced on the move. We have conducted a research project to determine how, in this particular environment, the participants reach the stage where they can produce the initial recruiting move (Kendrick, 2020), for instance the request. The project relies on multimodal conversation analysis (Mondada, 2014a) of staff corridor interactions video recorded in an acute-care hospital in Switzerland. In this framework, we have identified four activities that are preliminary to initial recruiting moves and, for each of them, have examined specific interactional phenomena, as summarized in Table 1.<fnref n="1" />

<footnote>* Corresponding author. Department of Social Sciences, University of Fribourg, Boulevard de Pérolles 90, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland. E-mail addresses: abalantani@gmail.com (A. Balantani), esther.gonzalezmartinez@unifr.ch (E. González-Martínez).</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ Research project *Requesting in hospital nurses' unscheduled interprofessional interactions* (SNSF grant no: 18512). The present article is the second in a series of four, each concentrating on a specific preliminary to initial recruiting moves; see González-Martínez and Balantani (2025) for the first article of the series. The project relies on data collected for two previous projects of the second author of the present article and principal investigator: *New on the job. Relevance-making and assessment practices of interactional competences in young nurses' hospital telephone calls* (SNSF grant no: CRSII1_136291) and Mobile and contingent work interactions in the hospital care unit (SNSF grant no: PDFMP1_134875).</footnote>
<table><caption>**Table 1**
Preliminary activities and corresponding studied phenomena.</caption><thead><tr><td>Preliminary activities</td><td>Specific phenomena</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Locating</td><td>Locating summonses</td></tr><tr><td>Drawing attention</td><td>Calling-out and halting summonses</td></tr><tr><td>Securing availability</td><td>Displays of limited availability</td></tr><tr><td>Sharing background information</td><td>"I have (Someone)" statements</td></tr></tbody></table>

This article concentrates on the preliminary activity of drawing a prospective recruitee's attention through a summons in the opening phase of an interaction. In terms of the spatial and interactional configuration at the time of the summons, we focus on cases in which the to-be-summoned party is walking in a direction that takes them away from the future summoner. This is a common situation in the studied setting, since recruiting activities are often done on the spur of the moment when a prospective recruiter happens to see a coworker going down a corridor and seizes the opportunity to enlist them. We focus on two forms of first-name summonses, the most common form in our collection of cases; see Section 3. Calling-out summonses are produced when the summoner remains stationary while the summoned party is at a significant distance, walking in another direction. In these cases, the summons is uttered in a rather "tentative" tone of voice corresponding to sonic and prosodic features like rising intonation and even delivery pace, with a slight elongation of sounds. In contrast, halting summonses are produced just as the summoner, who is approaching the summoned party, is about to reach them. In these cases, the summons is delivered in a rather "assertive" tone of voice corresponding to features like falling intonation and faster pace with clipped sounds. In both cases, the recipient stops and bodily reorients towards the summoner. In the calling-out cases, the summoned party may also produce a verbal go-ahead response.

This article furthers our understanding of summons-answer sequences (Schegloff, 1968; see Eilittä, 2024 for a recent literature review) by examining how they play out in the opening phase of mobile interactions. In particular, we inquire into the "attention-drawing" function of the summons. It also contributes to research on language and social interaction focusing on recruitment practices (González-Martínez and Drew, 2021; Floyd et al., 2021; Kendrick and Drew, 2006), since we examine drawing the attention of the prospective recruitee as a preliminary to the initial recruiting move and the main activity of the interaction. Moreover, it contributes to the study of interactions "on the move" (Mondada, 2014b) by examining unplanned, fleeting exchanges between professionals in a semi-public circulation space.

## 2. Background

Examining face-to-face interaction, Goffman (1971) describes how a pedestrian may glance at another person who enters their scanning area and then immediately stops paying attention to them. Yet the pedestrian may also keep looking to make sure that the other person has seen them and even "check up on the other's eye check on him" (p. 13). Moreover, one party may indicate something that the two of them could do together next - for instance approach and greet each other - and the other may respond. Again, according to Goffman (1963), an encounter begins when a party makes "an opening move" - for example, if they suggest engaging in interaction - and the other party produces a "clearance sign" conveying that "he has placed himself at the disposal of the other" (p. 92). Goffman further emphasizes that catching the other's eye, establishing eye contact and producing eye-to-eye looks play a crucial role in the parties mutually opening themselves up to interaction. When studying acquaintances greeting each other at a party, Kendon and Ferber (1973) note that one person may sight another standing some distance from them, produce a hint that they want to engage in interaction, for instance continuing to look at the other person. If the other acknowledges the hint, the first person produces a distance salutation and may start approaching them. These studies speak of the interactants being mutually perceived, under close mutual monitoring, and reciprocally oriented as well as having offered reciprocal signs of openness to interaction as the first steps towards engaging in a common activity in addition to handling mere copresence.

In telephone interaction, the summons-answer sequence is formed of the telephone ring followed by the response of the called person (Schegloff, 1968). In everyday life, a summons can also take the form of other mechanically and electronically produced signs (like a police car siren or a phone text notification), oral and verbal behavior (whistling or uttering a first name, for instance) and bodily conduct (such as raising a hand) (Cekaite, 2008; Eilittä et al., 2021; Gardner, 2015; Kidwell, 2018; Licoppe, 2010; Reber and Couper-Kuhlen, 2020; Sikveland, 2019; Schegloff, 1968, 2007). According to Schegloff (1968, 2007), the summons mobilizes the attention and reciprocity of the addressee. When the summons is successful, the summoned party not only perceives it but also aligns to it as a recipient: as a person attending to a summons addressed to them, responding to it and ready to consider what may come next. The summons and subsequent go-ahead response combined thus establish the availability of the parties for interaction and "some incipient, but as-yet-unspecified, project" (Schegloff, 2007, p. 49). As generic pre-sequences (Schegloff, 2007), summons-answer sequences are indeed preliminary to many different base sequences, for which they "prepare the field", like requests or other practices for recruitment (Kendrick and Drew, 2016) oriented towards enlisting someone to perform a practical action.

In recent decades, multimodal conversation analysis (Mondada, 2014a) has produced a collection of studies showing how summonses serve as attention-getting devices in the opening phase of face-to-face interaction; see Pillet-Shore (2018) for an introduction. Hoey (2023) claims that a construction worker walking directly towards a coworker at a worksite serves as "a kind of progressively emerging summons" (p. 395). Examining requests for directions among pedestrians, Mondada
(2009) notices that the initiator of the approach looks at the prospective co-participant and produces a verbal summons, like “excuse me”, or an expression like an elongated “euh” that acts as one. For Tuncer and Licoppe (2018), a person wanting to talk to a colleague sitting in an office faces the interactional problem of obtaining their attention, which they manage by approaching the colleague’s open door and freezing in front of it, and/or producing a verbal summons. In an open-space office, Salvadori (2016) identifies different types of summonses that are instrumental for drawing a colleague’s attention and initiating a new episode of talk. Some are produced in a quasi-interrogative fashion, conveying a sense of urgency and unsure recipiency, and receive a vocal response. Others do not have an upward intonation and the response is just bodily, namely moving towards the summoner.

Based on the reported literature, we have examined summons-answer sequences preliminary to a recruiting move in a specific and understudied spatial configuration: when the summoned person is walking in a direction that takes them away from the summoner. Indeed, little is known about drawing attention when the participants are on the move, in a front-to-back configuration. And even less is understood about the interplay between the specific form of the summons-answer sequence and the recruiting activity that follows.

### 3. Setting, data and analytical approach

This article is based on data collected in an outpatient clinic of general and orthopedic medicine in an acute-care hospital in the French-speaking part of Switzerland (González-Martínez et al., 2017). The principal areas of the clinic were a Day Hospital Room, mainly used for the administration of treatment to chronic patients, and an Urgent Care Room for non-life-threatening emergencies. On a weekday, an average of 14 staff members would be working in the clinic: physicians, nurses, nursing aides and interns, and the clinic's secretary. The research team collected 331 h of video recordings of activity in the clinic's corridors and liminal spaces using four cameras suspended from the ceiling and eight wireless microphones suspended from light fixtures, functioning with no interruptions 12 h per day, for seven consecutive days; see Appendix A for a map of the hospital's corridors and the locations of the recording equipment.<fnref n="2" />

We selected 66 excerpts from the resulting video recordings that met the following criteria: 1) Two staff members who were previously apart come together and produce a new segment of talk; 2) There are no greetings or farewells, since these are rare between staff members during a workday; 3) One of them becomes a recruiter and the other a recruiter; 4) Talk is initiated by the soon-to-be recruiter; 5) Recruitment is the first and main order of business; 6) When successful, it equates to the recruiter getting involved in an immediate or subsequent new practical activity (in contrast to just providing a verbal response), whether or not this was projected by the initial recruiting move.

The initial verbal recruiting move (Kendrick, 2020) corresponds to the first utterance, or bodily action, aimed at enlisting the prospective recruitee in the realization of a specific new practical activity or providing them with an opportunity to get involved; see also Floyd et al. (2020). Prior to this, in 46 excerpts, the participants produce a verbal summons-answer sequence oriented towards securing the attention of the prospective recruitee; in most of these cases, the verbal summons is a standalone first name produced in full form.<fnref n="3" /> In 17 of them, the summoned party is walking in a direction that takes them away from the summoner. In response to the summons, the recipient stops and bodily reorients to the summoner. The summons thus not only draws the recipient's attention but also halts their walking trajectory, which takes them away from the summoner. Our study concentrates on these specific cases, which we have transcribed following the Jefferson (2004) conventions for talk and those of Mondada (2019) for bodily conduct, and analyzed relying on the approach of multimodal conversation analysis (Mondada, 2014a). We thus examine how talk, gaze, gestures and walking practices play a role in securing the attention of the summoned party and soon-to-be recruiter.

### 4. Summoning a coworker who is walking away

In this section, we will focus on instances of corridor interactions where two staff members initiate a new episode of talk through a summons-answer sequence (Schegloff, 1968). Initially, the participants are in a back-to-front arrangement and one party (B) is walking in a direction that takes them away from the soon-to-be summoner (A). A has visual access to B, but B cannot see A.<fnref n="4" /> While A has become aware of B's presence in the vicinity, B might be aware of A's presence through aural means but has not looked at her; in other words, no eye contact has taken place between the prospective interlocutors. Nevertheless, the prospective participants are still in positions from which they can hear each other. In order for A and B to

<footnote n="2">² The research protocol was accepted by the hospital's board of directors and the clinic staff gave voluntary informed consent for research participation, including the reproduction of still images drawn from the recordings for publication purposes. Patients and individuals external to the clinic were informed by written and oral means of the research being carried out in the clinic but, following the research protocol, the research team used footage only of the clinic personnel and other predetermined members of the hospital staff. Personal data, including the names of the persons concerned, was replaced by fictitious data. We have intentionally omitted diacritical marks from the pseudonyms.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ In other instances, the summons is a diminutive of the summoned person's first name; the first-name summons is prefaced by "ah" and/or "um"; the summoner says the first name of the summoned party twice, in rapid succession, and in the same turn-at-talk; the summons is an apology term followed by the recipient's first name; an aide saying "um pf-" while walking towards a nurse and looking at her functions as a summons that secures the nurse's attention.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ From this point on, we have used the feminine form (she/her) when referring to the participants in the excerpts since, as it happens, they are all women.</footnote>
start talking to each other, B needs to be stopped, since she may otherwise turn into a different corridor or enter a room and slip out of A's reach. A then summons B using her first name, a minimized and recognitional reference form (Sacks and Schegloff, 1979) that conveys familiarity between parties.

We have identified two forms of summons-answer sequences: “calling-out” and “halting” summonses, each exemplified below by two excerpts. In the cases with a calling-out summons, the participants are at a distance from each other: A is in a static position from which she sees B in the corridor, far from her, going somewhere else. A produces a summons that calls for B’s attention and projects more to come: namely, the reason for the summons. The summons is produced in a tentative tone of voice, which corresponds to sonic and prosodic features like a rising pitch contour with a final rising intonation, even speech delivery and a slight elongation of sounds. The recipient stops, bodily reorients towards the summoner and may produce a verbal go-ahead response. At the same time, the summoner issues the initial recruiting move. In the halting summons cases, participant A is herself going somewhere when she sees a colleague, participant B, walking in the corridor in the same direction, ahead of her. She approaches her from behind and utters a summons instructing her to halt; see De Stefani and Mondada (2010) on different ways of approaching a person. The summons is produced in an “assertive” tone of voice, which corresponds to sonic and prosodic features like falling intonation and fast-paced delivery with clipped sounds. The summoned party stops and bodily reorients towards the summoner. As this is happening, the summoner moves ahead with the recruiting activity.

## 4.1. Calling-out summons

In the first case of a calling-out summons, Excerpt 1 (Fig. 1), Hazel (Haz in the transcript), a nurse, is walking from the Break Room (henceforth BR) towards the Urgent Care Room (henceforth UCR).<fnref n="5" /> Alexandrie (Ale), a rotating nurse, is at the back of the Day Hospital Room (henceforth DHR). When Hazel goes past the DHR, and as she turns towards Corridor B, Alexandrie turns around, looks towards her and summons her (3); in Section 4, the numbers in parentheses correspond to the lines of the excerpts.<fnref n="6" />

Excerpt 1: 652_22B_022259

1 Haz: ↑et voi↑là (.) ↓basta.#
and that is it enough #img.1.1
fig

2 (0.9) €*(0.7)# (0.3)# (0.6)
haz €walks from BR towards UCR--->
ale *looks towards Haz--->
fig #img.1.2
fig #img.1.3

3 Ale: -> ha↑zel?€#
Hazel
haz -->€
fig #img.1.4

4 Haz: -> €↑oui::?*#
yes
haz €turns around--->
ale -->* 
fig #img.1.5

5 (0.3)

6 Ale: +tu pourras€ v'↑nir *quand (elle:)=
you can FUT come when she
haz +looks towards Ale--->>
haz -->€walks towards DHR--->>
ale *looks towards Haz--->>

7 Haz: =↑>oui<* (.) je suis là.#
yes I am there
ale -->*
fig #img.1.6

<footnote n="5">⁵ Beneath the original French talk, we have provided an English translation that is as natural as possible while still reproducing the structure of the French utterance. We have supplemented each excerpt's transcript with screenshots from the corresponding video clip and added annotations at the points in the transcript where the participants perform the actions shown in the images.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ See Appendix B for Praat visual representations of the summons examined in Section 4.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1. Hazel and Alexandrie in the area of the Day Hospital entrance and Corridor B. View from camera 2.</figcaption></figure>

At the beginning of Excerpt 1, Alexandrie is standing at the back of the DHR, her back turned to the entrance. She is examining some documents lying on top of the rolling cart in front of her (1, img. 1.1).<fnref n="7" /> She can hear Hazel talking to other staff members near the BR. Hazel produces a closing-implicative turn in line 1 that conveys that she is disengaging from the current conversation (1). Moreover, Hazel’s voice quality and the sound of her footsteps suggest that she is walking towards the DHR. Hazel will therefore soon become perceptually accessible and potentially available not only for interaction and conversation but also for a new practical activity. When Hazel enters Corridor B (2), going past the DHR in the direction of the UCR, she becomes visually accessible to Alexandrie, who torques her upper body to the right and gazes at Hazel but keeps her lower body oriented to the front (2, img. 1.2, 1.3); on body torque, see Schegloff (1998). This look functions as a check that Hazel is reachable both aurally and visually. Hazel is walking resolutely in the direction of the UCR with patient records in her hands. This tells Alexandrie that the walking is probably part of a larger line of action that needs to be stopped for Hazel to engage in a new activity. Following the look, Alexandrie summons Hazel by uttering her first name (3, img. 1.4) in a tentative tone of voice. The pitch pattern features a gradual rise with a final rising intonation. The summons is delivered smoothly in terms of tempo and with slight elongations of sounds towards the end; see Appendix B.<fnref n="8" />

The summons requests Hazel’s availability for interaction and conversation, and a soon-to-be specified practical activity. The summons is a tentative call for Hazel’s attention in the sense that it projects a response confirming that it has indeed been heard and that the recipient is ready to hear what might come next: namely, the reason for the summons. The summons draws and reorients Hazel’s attention to Alexandrie. Hazel’s response comes right away. She produces an elongated “yes” token with a rising intonation (4). The go-ahead displays recipiency and availability for conversation, inviting the summoner to say whatever she has produced the summons for. Concurrently, Hazel bodily reorients herself to the summoner by turning around (4, img. 1.5). Hazel can see Alexandrie, who diverts her attention back to the documents as soon as she responds, involved with some activity in the DHR that she is not ready to discontinue to approach her interlocutor; see Keisanen and Rauniomaa (2012) on handling an

<footnote n="7">⁷ Alexandrie's body is backlit, the top of her head is out of frame and we have transformed the original recordings into black and white watercolor-style images for anonymization purposes. We have zoomed in on the video recordings and reproduced a quick succession of images to capture the movement of Alexandrie's head, which is visible in Fig. 1. The reader may wish to zoom in on the images on their computer screen to examine them in greater detail.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ We have not marked these faint elongations in the conversational transcript, since we have not systematically checked for them in the recordings.</footnote>
object prior to the uttering of a request as a way of achieving recipient alignment beforehand. Hazel starts walking towards her, thus exhibiting readiness to engage in a practical activity other than the one underway up to that point. Moreover, her approaching displays an orientation towards the reason for the summons, which Alexandria produces next: she asks Hazel to come over to her, which is the initial recruiting move (6), at a time that she is about to specify. Nevertheless, Alexandria leaves her turn incomplete since Hazel not only agrees right away and announces her immediate arrival (7), but Alexandria also looks at her colleague and sees her already approaching. She then turns her attention back to the documents on the top of the rolling cart (7, im. 1.6). All in all, the summons has served to draw the attention of a colleague who was walking away, to engage her in interaction and conversation, and to reorient her trajectory towards the place where her practical contribution is needed.<fnref n="9" />

In Excerpt 2 (Fig. 2), a nursing intern, Coralie (Cor), is walking from the Plaster Room (henceforth PR) towards Reception and talking to a patient who is leaving the clinic. Hazel (Haz), a nurse, who is in the UCR, produces a calling-out summons (3) that manages to draw her attention, stop her trajectory and reorient her towards the UCR. A new summons (13) is nevertheless necessary to secure Coralie's involvement in the way Hazel truly intends it.

Excerpt 2: 1236_25B_041200

1 €(0.3) $*(0.3)#
cor €walks from PR towards Reception--->
haz $walks inside UCR--->
haz *looks towards Cor--->
fig #img.2.1
2 Cor: voi:↓là [(et pu+is)] c'est **tout** au fond.€+
here we are and then it is all the way to the end

    cor --->€
    cor +looks towards Haz------+
3 Haz: -> [cora↑lie?]#

    fig #img.2.2a+b
4 Pat: [+d'accord ]
    alright
    cor +looks towards Pat--->
5 Cor: [€ça va pour vous?]
    it goes alright for you
    cor €adopts a static position--->
6 Pat: ça va ( ) ↑très bien.=
    it goes very well
7 Cor: =ou[ais? ]
    yeah
8 Pat: [merci] ↑beau[coup:€]
    thank you very much

    cor --->€
    9 Cor: [€oké.$]

    okay
    cor €walks towards UCR--->
    haz --->$
10 Pat: $oà une [pro↑chaine+ **fois**]
        see you again
    haz $adopts a static position--->
    haz $points with Rhand towards Reception--->
    cor --->+
11 Cor: [au ↑revoir ] [oua]

    goodbye yah
12 Pat: [ me]r↑ci:

    thank you
13 Haz: -> >°coralie°<=#
        Coralie

        fig #img.2.3
14 Cor: -> =⇒bonne soi+[rée=oui?< ]#
        have a good evening yes

        cor +looks at Haz--->
        fig #img.2.4
15 Haz: [(>tu prends<)] une ur↑gence qui est là?$
    you take an emergency that/who is there

    haz --->$
    fig #img.2.5

<footnote n="9">⁹ Here, we have relied on Schegloff's (1996, 2002, 2007) distinction between securing attention for interaction (obtaining an orientation of the summoned party's perception towards the summoner), securing recipiency for talk (gaining "a hearer for the first utterance and prospective producer of a second fitted utterance," Schegloff, 2002, p. 361) and securing availability (obtaining reallocation of involvement on the part of the summoned party for the purpose of the practical activity in which the summoner is about to engage them.).</footnote>
16 Cor: $>ou↑ais<°*€+

yeah

haz $walks inside UCR--->>

haz --->0

haz --->*

cor --->€

cor --->+

17 €(1.2)€# (2.0)

€turns around€ walks towards Reception--->>

cor

fig #img.2.6

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 2.** Hazel and Coralie in the area of the Urgent Care Room and Corridor B. View from camera 4, except for 2.2, which corresponds to the views from cameras 4 (a) and 2 (b). Image edited to conceal the appearance of a patient.</figcaption></figure>
At the beginning of Excerpt 2, Hazel is in the UCR, removing a sheet from a bed and taking it to a disposal room, probably preparing the bed for a new patient. Coralie is walking along Corridor B towards Reception (1, img. 2.1), followed by a patient with crutches. Hazel sees Coralie from the UCR and observes that Coralie is following a trajectory that takes her away from her. As Coralie reaches Corridor C, Hazel summons her by uttering her first name (3, img. 2.2a + b) in a tentative tone of voice. The summons features a rising pitch contour with a final rising intonation and an elongation of the sounds towards the end. The rhythm of speech is evenly paced, maintaining uniform timing between the syllables; see Appendix B.

The summons is timely produced: Had Coralie continued walking, she would no longer have been within sighting and hearing range. Moreover, Coralie's position and turn-initial “voila” (“here we are” in French) (2) convey that she had reached a transition point in her conversation with the patient and was about to take leave of her. The summons is a tentative call for Coralie's attention in the sense that it asks for a response from her confirming that she indeed has heard it and that she is ready to hear what might come next. The summons does not receive a verbal response, since Coralie is not available for conversation: she is showing the patient the exit and will later on check that she can let the patient go (7). Nevertheless, Coralie shows availability for interaction and a new practical activity. She stops moving away, directs her gaze to Hazel, who is attentively looking at her, and sees that Hazel is in the UCR, involved in work over there (2-5). The summons and Hazel's undertaking convey that Coralie's presence in the UCR is required as well. As a result, Coralie starts walking towards Hazel as her interaction with the patient comes to an end (10-14). The calling-out summons has thus managed to attract Coralie's attention, preventing her from walking away and even reorienting her trajectory towards Hazel. Nevertheless, Hazel is pointing in the direction of Reception and summoning Coralie again (13, img. 2.3). The pointing gesture fulfills the functions identified by Keisanen and Rauniomaa (2012) in their study about prebeginnings to requests: claiming imminent speakership, indicating a point in space towards which the recipient should orient next and helping to identify what the incipient action of the soon-to-be speaker may relate to. The new summons has acoustic features that may correspond to it being not only a second one but also different in intent from the first; on repeated summonses, see Eilittä and Vatanen (2023), Sikveland (2019). It is produced with a rather flat pitch and a softer tone of voice, and is delivered at a faster pace than the first one. It conveys that Hazel is requesting Coralie's availability for conversation as well, to listen to what Hazel has to say, instead of just stopping and coming towards her. As soon as Coralie directs her gaze to Hazel (14, img. 2.4), without waiting for a verbal response, Hazel produces the initial recruiting move: she asks Coralie to pick a patient up from Reception, towards which she keeps pointing, and take them to the UCR (15, img. 2.5). At the beginning of the excerpt, noticing that Coralie was already oriented towards Reception, Hazel had attempted to give her a new task to carry out there. However, that project needed not only Coralie's physical availability, obtained thanks to the first summons, but also her attending to what Hazel had to say, which required a second summons. In line 16, Coralie agrees to deal with the request, reorients herself in the direction of Reception and walks towards it (17, img. 2.6).

This section has presented a specific form of summons-answer sequence preliminary to a recruiting activity. The summons is oriented towards getting the attention of a summoned party walking in a direction that takes her away from the summoner and stopping her. Before a calling-out summons, the participants are located at a distance from each other and have not established mutual gaze. The soon-to-be summoner is involved in a practical, manual activity that makes it unlikely for her to move away from her current position and might be related to the upcoming recruitment. Her embodied conduct points to what the summons may be for. For instance, in Excerpt 1, Alexandrie, the soon-to-be summoner, is handling some documents on top of a rolling cart for Hazel, the imminent summoned party, to check. She torques her upper body to the right to gaze at Hazel but keeps her lower body oriented to the cart. In Excerpt 2, when Hazel first summons Coralie, she is bundling up the sheet that she has just removed from a bed, which she is probably preparing for the new patient that she is going to ask Coralie to pick up from Reception. Moreover, the soon-to-be summoned person is moving away, about to go out of sight and hearing range. The summons is a tentative call for attention. It is delivered with a rising intonation and sound elongations, and at an even pace. It projects a verbal response from the summoned party showing that the summons has been heard in spite of the distance. As the summoned party orients to the summoner, she sees that the colleague who has summoned her is involved in work that may require her own presence. She stops her current trajectory and starts walking towards the summoner. Moreover, she verbally responds with a positive response token immediately following the summons (Excerpt 1) or with a deferred go-ahead response once the summons has been repeated and she has the floor (Excerpt 2). The summoned party thus shows availability and readiness to get involved in interaction, conversation and the practical activity that the summons foreshadows.

## 4.2. Halting summons

In the first case of a halting summons, Excerpt 3 (Fig. 3), Alexandrie (Ale), a rotating nurse, is walking from the DHR towards the UCR. She summons Ophelia (Oph), a nursing aide who she calls the equivalent of “Ophele” and who is walking ahead of Alexandrie, in the same direction.<fnref n="10" /> Then, Alexandrie hands Ophelia a notebook to take to the UCR.

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ The real name of the person we are referring to as Ophelia does not “sound French”. Alexandrie does not call her the French version of this name, in which case we would have used the pseudonym “Ophelie”. She instead uses another full name, similar to the original one and closer to a French name, that still sounds like a “foreign” name. Other nurses also call Ophelia “Ophele”. We could consider this a micropractice related to the unity of nearness and remoteness when dealing with the “stranger” (Simmel, 1908).</footnote>
Excerpt 3: 625_22B_04114

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 3. Alexandrie and Ophelia in the area of the Urgent Care Room entrance and Corridor B. Double view from cameras 2 (a) and 4 (b), except for 3.4, which corresponds to the view from camera 4.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 3. (continued)</figcaption></figure>

At the beginning of Excerpt 3, Alexandrie exits the DHR and starts walking towards the UCR, holding a notebook open in her hands. She closes the notebook and directs her gaze at Ophelia, who is walking ahead of her, in the same direction. She then starts turning the notebook upright, as if to ready it to be handed over to Ophelia (3, img. 3.1 a+b). As Ophelia steps into the corridor entrance of the UCR, Alexandrie produces an “ah” token and summons her by her first name (4, img. 3.2 a+b). The change-of-state token (Heritage, 1984) displays an orientation to the interaction not being planned: it is contingent on Alexandrie seeing Ophelia walking towards the UCR. It also conveys the opportuneness of the timing for Alexandrie (Aijmer, 1987): she was going to the UCR to do something related to the notebook but sees a colleague, going in the same direction, to whom she can hand over the task. Compared to the calling-out summonses, which are delivered in a tentative tone of voice, this halting summons sounds rather assertive. The pitch pattern begins with a noticeable reset, marked by an initial rise, on “ah o”, followed by a sharp fall. The summons is faster paced, with shorter intervals between syllables, which results in a reduced temporal span despite comprising two components, the “ah” and the first name; see Appendix B.
The summons is produced at the point where it is recognizable that Ophelia is heading to the UCR, which makes her particularly suitable for the upcoming recruitment. As soon as Ophelia produces the summons, Alexandrie starts handing the notebook over to her (5); see Cekaite (2008) on handling an object when producing a summons as a way of directing the recipient's attention to the reason for it. At the same time, Ophelia begins turning towards her: the summons has attracted her attention and she is reorienting towards Alexandrie (5). Alexandrie then produces the initial recruiting move (6-7). She asks Ophelia whether she can give her the notebook, to which she refers with the deictic "ça" ("this" in French), to take to the UCR. She simultaneously hands the notebook over to her (6-7, img. 3.3 a+b), an action that specifies and furthers the recruitment project. Moreover, Alexandrie tilts her head to the right at the minimizer "just", accentuates it and softens her voice towards the end of her recruiting turn. Her utterance, combined with the pleading look and the soft voice, requests the right to recruit her colleague and projects that it will amount to a minor inconvenience for her; on self-oriented can-in-terrogatives, see Fox and Heinemann (2016) and Zinken (2015).

Note that there is no verbal response to the summons. As soon as Ophelia starts reorienting towards her, Alexandrie, who is already bodily projecting the purpose of the incipient recruitment (the notebook), delivers the recruiting turn. Ophelia's turning towards Alexandrie is the bodily response to the summons, displaying attention and availability for interaction (5). Moreover, as Alexandrie produces the recruiting turn, Ophelia takes two steps towards her and moves her hand forward to take the notebook, thus committing to do as asked. Once Ophelia has taken the notebook (8, img. 3.4), Alexandrie responds with a compliment followed by a "thank you" that does appreciation (9). Both participants turn around and walk in opposite directions: Alexandrie returns to the DHR and Ophelia resumes her trajectory to the UCR.

In Excerpt 3, the interaction unfolds as both participants are on the move without stopping, which might correspond to a very low-cost and self-evident requested action. In contrast, in Excerpt 4 (Fig. 4), the participants stop and the prospective recruiter performs additional preliminary work following the summons-answer sequence. Mae, a nurse, exits the UCR and is walking towards Reception, holding a folder in her hand, when she sees Justa (Jus), a nursing aide, walking ahead of her in the same direction and summons her (4).

Excerpt 4: 704_23A_043018

1 €(1.0)
mae @walks from UCR towards Reception--->
mae @holds record--->
2 Mae: lui donner le do$sssier.
to give him/her the record
jus $walks from PR towards Reception--->
3 (0.4) +(0.2)# (0.4)
mae +looks towards Jus--->
fig #img.4.1
4 Mae: -> ↑ah jus#↑ta$
ah Justa
jus --->$
fig #img.4.2
5 (0.2) $*(0.2) 2(0.4)#
jus $turns around--->
jus *looks towards Mae/record--->
jus 2opens both arms--->
fig #img.4.3a+b
6 Mae: t'es encore là-bas?$
you are still over there
jus --->$
7 Jus: $ou↑i?+=
yes
jus $adopts a static position--->
jus --->?
mae --->+
8 Mae: =+·hh @i:1 re*vient lundi, $ >il faut juste+ faire
he returns on Monday it should just be done
mae +looks towards card---------------------+looks towards Jus
--->>
mae @holds card in front of Jus--->
jus --->*looks towards card--->>
jus --->$takes a step forward--->
9 2la facture<€ pour la poly. h?$@#=
the invoice for the Poly(clinic)
jus 2takes card with Rhand-------?
mae --->€adopts a static position--->>
jus --->$
mae --->@
fig #img.4.4
10 Jus: =$a[d'accord]@$
alright
jus $walks towards Reception--->>
jus @takes record with Lhandª
mae --->@
In terms of design, Mae's turn in line 4 is similar to the first summons turn in the previous excerpt. It has two components, the “ah” and the first name. The change-of-state token displays the unexpected but propitious nature of the encounter. Mae was not actively searching for Justa prior to the sequence: rather, she sees her happen to pass by and summons her on the spur of the moment. It is produced in an assertive tone of voice. The pitch pattern features a consistent level trajectory. The delivery is fast paced with clipped transitions, which results in a reduced temporal span despite the summons comprising two components; see Appendix B.

<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 4.** Mae and Justa in the area of the Urgent Care Room entrance and Corridor B. View from camera 4, except for 4.3, which corresponds to the views from cameras 4 (a) and 2 (b).</figcaption></figure>
The summons requires Justa's attention and projects more to come. It foreshadows a request for involvement in a new practical activity in addition to interaction and conversation. In response, Justa stops, turns around and looks towards Mae, who is approaching, holding a patient's record in front of her, and extends her arms, hands wide open (5, img. 4.3 a+b). Nursing aides and interns act as "carrier staff members", travelling back and forth from Reception and support spaces to the clinic's main centers of activity, bringing patients with them and transporting documents or other objects. By extending her arms, Justa displays an understanding that recruitment is coming and that its object is the record, which was suggested not only by Mae's holding the record but also from her referring to it at the very beginning of the excerpt. As a result, Justa displays both availability and eagerness to get involved in a practical activity related to the record.

Following this display of attention and availability, Mae moves to the business of the stopping. First, she checks whether Justa is still working in Reception (6), which the aide confirms (7). Then, Mae shares some background information and delivers an “il faut” recruiting utterance. Through the impersonal deontic statement (Rossi and Zinken, 2016), Mae instructs Justa to create an invoice related to the patient's record (8-9).<fnref n="11" /> In contrast to the previous excerpt, here the recruiting activity requires the participants to stop as there are two objects to be taken - a card and a record - and some information to be shared prior to the handover. Justa takes the card (9, img. 4.4) and the folder. After the excerpt, she heads over to Reception and Mae returns to the UCR.

In sum, in section 4.2, we have explored instances in which the soon-to-be summoner party is going somewhere to complete a task. She sees another coworker walking ahead of her, going in the same direction, approaches from behind and, when they are in close proximity, summons her by uttering her first name. The summons is delivered in an assertive tone of voice conveying certainty that the summoned party will hear it and prompting her to stop walking. In the two cases examined, the first name is prefaced by the change-of-state token “ah”, which conveys the unexpected, felicitous nature of the encounter. The summoner sees her colleague walking in the same direction as her at the right time and can thus hand a task over to her. In both cases, a bodily reorientation towards the summoner suffices for the summoned person to show availability for interaction. Moreover, extending one or both hands serves to show availability for the upcoming requested practical activity; no verbal go-ahead response is needed. In both cases, the practical activity the summoned party is recruited to assist with are low cost and contingent on the summoner seeing her coworker walking in the same direction. The task is to be completed in the part of the hospital she is heading to anyway and something can already be done right on the spot of the summons. The summoner seizes this opportunity and recruits a coworker. The recruiter passes the task, and the related objects, over to the recruitee and they part ways.

## 5. Discussion and conclusion

The studied summons-answer sequences are produced in a specific spatial and interactional configuration in which the to-be-summoned party is walking in a direction that takes them away from the future summoner. We distinguish between two forms of first-name summons. In the case of the calling-out summons, the two parties are distant from each other at the time of the summons and the summoner is involved in an activity that she cannot leave to approach the summoned party. It is going to be up to the latter to walk over to the summoner and get involved in the activity that the summons foretells. The summoner tentatively calls the attention of her coworker as orienting to the contingencies associated with responding to the summons. The response shows that the summons has indeed been heard, despite the distance. The summoned party shows readiness to engage in interaction by bodily orienting towards the summoner, and, in conversation, by verbally producing a go-ahead response. She also shows availability to engage in the activity that the summons foretells by abandoning her up-to-now activity and walking trajectory to proceed towards the summoner. In contrast, the halting summons is produced in an assertive tone of voice when the parties are in close proximity, the summoned party walking ahead of the summoner. Here as well, the summoner is oriented towards the specificities of the immediate interactional environment, and more precisely to the lack of contingencies associated with hearing the summons and, probably, with granting the upcoming request. Indeed, the summoned party is not asked to change directions and walk towards the summoner, since she is behind her, but merely to stop. Moreover, the summoner is going to assign her a low-cost task congruent with her up-to-now involvement and walking trajectory. In such cases, the recipient's stop and bodily reorientation to the summoner displays that what is required, instead of talking and walking, is to welcome, on the spot, whatever comes next. The recipient's up-to-now activity and walking trajectory are merely suspended and resume following the recruitment.

This study contributes to the understanding of recruitment practices by investigating the preliminary activities that prepare the way for the initial recruiting move; in particular, securing the attention of the prospective recruitee with a summons-answer sequence. We confirm that these sequences function as pre-sequences securing attention, recipiency and availability (Schegloff, 1968, 2007). The summoned person not only orients perceptually towards the summoner but also aligns as the recipient of the summons and what may come next. Moreover, we distinguish availability for interaction, conversation and a new practical activity, and consider the distinct forms they take in the data. Regarding the claim that the

<footnote n="11">¹¹ In line 8, we have used the auxiliary verb “should” to translate “il faudrait” to convey obligation instead of necessity (Rossi and Zinken, 2016), since Hazel could have expressed necessity with an “il est nécessaire” (it is necessary) or “j’ai besoin” (I need) statement.</footnote>
summons foreshadows an “as-yet-unspecified” project (Schegloff, 2007, p. 49), we argue that at the time of the summons, the summoner may signify some of what this activity may entail – stop, answer and come over, or just stop – and that at the time of her response, the summoned person can display some orientation towards it. The summons does not specify that the summoner is going to produce a recruiting move next, or what the target action may be, but prepares the way for what is going to be done and limits “the potential foci of attention” (Keisanen and Rauniomma, 2012, p. 350). Moreover, this article presents new evidence that there are different types of verbal summonses serving as resources when a summoner calls out to a coworker (Salvadori, 2016). We show that the acoustic and prosodic features of a first-name summons differ depending on whether the summons is oriented towards attempting to call the attention of a distant coworker who is walking in a direction that takes them away from the summoner or towards halting a coworker who is walking ahead, almost within arm’s reach. The form of the summons-answer sequence may also be related to the nature of the projected and oriented-to new activity, whether it would require the summoned party to abandon her up-to-now activity and walk towards the summoner, or to stay in place and just momentarily suspend whatever she is doing. This would show the interrelation between the summons-answer sequence and the initial recruiting move. On the one hand, the summoner not only draws the attention of the summoned party, but she also does it in a way that forecasts what she is expected to do following the sequence. On the other hand, the summoned party not only offers her attention but also orients towards the activity that the summons foretells and readies herself to get involved in it. This article underscores the multimodal nature of the studied summons-answer sequence, in the production of which participants combine talk with bodily conduct and material and spatial resources. For instance, by staying in place and keeping her body orientation away from the summoned party, the summoner conveys that she is busy with another activity, that the summoned party may be connected to the upcoming new activity and that it is up to the summoned party to do the walking. At the same time, the summoner gives away what the recruitment may be about, for instance by examining some documents the summoned party would be asked to check, by pointing in a direction the party should walk, or by projecting the object to be handled in front of them (Keisanen and Rauniomaa, 2012).

Most studies on language and social interaction in clinical settings remain concentrated on prescheduled, predominantly static encounters taking place in closed spaces, between participants and healthcare professionals (Pilnick et al., 2009). The studied work environment fosters brief, impromptu, on-the-move interactions between staff members, oriented towards enlisting a colleague to achieve some practical task. Coworkers engage in interaction while crossing paths, passing each other by, converging or walking behind one another. All in all, this study contributes to the understanding of the interac- tional work involved in “getting others to do things” (Floyd et al., 2020) in such mobile and contingent professional in- teractions. By summoning their coworkers and responding “ready for action”, the professionals not only move forward in their tasks, coordinate their contributions and acknowledge their responsibilities, but also maintain social cohesion at team level (Kendrick and Drew, 2016).

**Declaration of competing interest**

None.

**CRediT authorship contribution statement**

**Angeliki Balantani:** Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Formal analysis, Data curation. **Esther González-Martínez:** Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Validation, Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization.

**Data statement**

Due to the sensitive nature of the data, participants were assured that the raw data would remain confidential and would not be shared.

**Funding**

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant no. 185152). The sources of funding played no role in the design or implementation of the study; in the collection, analysis or interpretation of the data; in the preparation, review or approval of the manuscript; or in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
## Acknowledgements

The authors presented preliminary analysis of the data in several data sessions and at the Conference on Language, Interaction and Social Organization (LISO) held at the University of California-Santa Barbara on May 19, 2023. They thank the participants for their constructive comments, as well as Prof. Veronica Marietta González Temer (Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación, Santiago de Chile) for her assistance in preparing the Praat figures and contributing to their interpretation, Prof. Paul Drew (University of York), partner of the research project, for the collaboration, and Elisabeth Lyman for her editing of the present article.

## Appendices

### A. Clinic premises and recording set-up

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. A.1.** Clinic premises and recording set-up. The triangles represent the video cameras, the dots the wireless microphones and the striped rectangle the reception/mixing/editing station. The area covered by the video cameras is represented in light gray. Corridor A is 27.40 m long, Corridor B (the section between Corridors A and C) 4.16 m long and Corridor C 31.50 m long (González-Martínez et al., 2017).</figcaption></figure>
## B. Visual representations of the summons

<figure><img src="image_11.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. B.1.** Visual representations of the studied summons. From top to bottom: 1) Excerpt title; 2) Conversational transcript of the summons; 3) Praat visual representation of the sound fragment including waveform, spectrogram, intensity trace (continuous line) and pitch trace (dotted line) aligned with orthographic labels of verbal production (spatially centered in the respective interval).<fnref n="12" /></figcaption></figure>

<footnote n="12">¹² We are providing these visual representations at the suggestion of one of the anonymous reviewers and hope that readers will consider them appropriate and of interest. In preparing them, we have tried to follow the recommendations of Walker (2017), except for issues like “scaling to the speaker’s pitch rate,” which did not seem appropriate for the considered data. In the conversational transcript, and in the corresponding orthographic labels, we have replaced the real first name of the summoned party with a pseudonym chosen for its closeness to the original (syllable count, length and sound similarity).</footnote>
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**Angeliki Balantani** is a researcher in multimodal conversation analysis. She completed her PhD in linguistics at the University of Essex, where she investigated responses to informings in Greek talk-in-interaction. Her current research focuses primarily on human sociality and the interplay of language, gaze and gesture in the production of social actions. Her recent work includes investigations of deixis, joint attention, reference construction, joint decision making and action coordination that have been published in Journal of Pragmatics, Language and Communication, Lingua and Gesprächsforschung

**Esther González-Martínez** is Full Professor of Sociology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. In her research, she adopts an ethnomethodological perspective and relies on conversation and multimodal analysis, supplemented by ethnographic fieldwork. She focuses on the situated organization of social interactions in institutional settings. Her first studies centered around police and judicial interactions in France and the United States. More recently, she has conducted several projects on nurses' unscheduled interactions with co-workers in Swiss hospitals, with particular focus on telephone conversations, corridor interactions, mobility practices and recruitment practices.