Sophie Lambolez. « *Dites donc il fonctionne pas ce machin.* »
*Regard sur le support informatique*. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2016,
pp. 198. With a preface by Alain Trognon and Anne-Nelly Perret-
Clermont. ISBN 978-2-343-09716-9

Sara Greco, USI – Università della Svizzera italiana, Faculty of Communication Sciences
sara.greco@usi.ch

This volume, appeared for the book series «Figures de l'interaction» (figures of inter-action) published by L'Harmattan, deals with communication processes within a technical professional domain: Namely, remote troubleshooting and maintenance support (in French, “dépannage infor-matique à distance”) in the field of infor-matics. The author, Sophie Lambolez, is currently a lecturer at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

It goes without saying that, due to an
increasing interaction with complex ma-
chines in our personal and professional
life, the existence of services devoted to
remote support is increasingly important.
And so is the study of how communication
between experts and users can be co-con-
structed in an effective way within these
processes. Rapidly developing technolog-
ical changes often bring new communica-
tive processes with them; it is important
to reflect on these processes in order to
interpret and improve them. Lambolez's
volumes takes this challenge seriously. For
this reason, the book will not only be of use
to scholars interested in the dynamics of
communication in a professional domain;
it will also offer a tool to practitioners and
managers whose companies offer this
kind of service and who are interested in
reflecting on their organizational practices
at the level of communication. Lambolez's
writing style consistently addresses both
readerships.

The volume is opened by an intro-
duction on remote troubleshooting and
maintenance support (chapter 1) and by
a description of the two companies (one
in France, one in Switzerland) in which
Lambolez had the opportunity to work

(chapter 2). She could observe how com-
munication develops in this kind of pro-
fessional activity from an internal, qua-
si-anthropological perspective. Chapters
3 and 4 discuss the theoretical perspective
adopted by the author for her analysis of
the expert-client interaction; different ap-
proaches are discussed in a clear and well-
thought style. The last two chapters of this
book, namely 5 and 6, represent the core of
the analysis. In particular, chapter 5 anal-
yses communication between experts and
clients; the author reconstructs a "script"
that includes the sequences that are nor-
mally present in the development of this
kind of interaction, whilst signalling the
most specific features of each sequence.
Chapter 6 goes back to remote trouble-
shooting and maintenance support as a
new professional activity and gives some
advice that will be useful for the recruit-
ment, training and continuing education
of these specialists in the field of commu-
nication.

Among the many aspects that are in-
teresting in this volume, I would like to
focus on some that appear particularly rel-
evant for communication studies. In fact,
although being focused on a very specific
context, this work does not refrain from re-
flection on theoretical concepts that are of
broader interest.

First, Lambolez goes beyond the idea
of remote support as an event based on the
simple flow of information from expert to
client and vice versa. She develops a rich
notion of *interaction* between human be-
ings and introduces the concept of “dou-
ble-activity interaction”, which refers to the
two activities that must be simultaneously
managed in this type of conversation: An
expert must be able not only to solve the problem technically (asking questions, proposing actions to be performed, etc.) but also to manage communicative dialogue in a collaborative way in order for the interaction to be successful. In this relation, Lambolez observes that technical competences (on software applications and remote support) can be only be put in place if communication is managed at the level of “relational skills”. In my view, these skills concern the construction of a space for interaction and communication, the building of trust and the resolution of possible conflicts (this latter is an aspect that Lambolez briefly touches upon).

Second, interaction analysis in this work is based on a careful consideration of theoretical accounts that inherit both from social psychology and from linguistics (such as for example Trognon, 1999; Trognon & Bromberg, 2006). Such inter-disciplinary background appears particularly promising for a better understanding of communication at a fine level of granularity; however, in this volume, some of the linguistic or discursive aspects – e.g. how the lack of non-verbal cues in phone conversations is compensated within verbal communication – are discussed only briefly. Pursuing this line of research by going further in the integration of interdisciplin ary contributions could be a future development and an important step towards understanding this type of interaction.

Third, an aspect that stands out in Lambolez's analysis is the communicative co-construction of the problem to be solved, about which expert and client hold different but complementary knowledge (see p. 128 and p. 143). The technical problem, in fact, is not known to the expert – and is often not fully understood by the client! – at the beginning of their phone conversation. Clients might see their machine blocked without having a clue about the reasons why it is so; experts might think of a series of possible causes but they do not physically see the problem and, thus, they need to ask their clients to “see” through their eyes. A first type of communicative work that client and expert can only do together is to construct

and share a “common ground”, largely factual, on whose basis they can build their interaction. Due to the relevance of the co-construction of knowledge in this phase of this interaction, which Lambolez neatly identifies and describes, it would be interesting to reinterpret and further discuss this kind of professional activity by interpreting it as a communicative activity type of problem-solving (see for example van Eemeren, 2010).

Beyond these and other interesting theoretical suggestions, this book also gives practical insights on the remote troubleshooting and maintenance support as a new profession, in which communication plays an important role. Notably, this represents a research project that already brought about a follow-up at the practical level, as both companies that were the object of this study equally benefited from the author's observations to reinterpret and restructure their work in this area. Going back to one of the two companies after some time, the author has herself noted how communication in this area had been reorganized.

Nothing could make a better ending for this review than a provoking open question proposed by the author herself at the end of her work. Lambolez makes a connection between the crucial “relational skills” required for this kind of work and the skills that would be expected of a teacher in an educational context. She suggests that educational dialogue could be profitably reinterpreted, if one took the relational skills into account, which are able to open and sustain a space for communication. This suggestion might be extended to any activity of problem-solving, in which a cooperative co-construction of knowledge is needed in order for the interaction to proceed.

## References

Trognon, A. (1999). Eléments de logique interlocatoire. In M. Gilly, J. P. Roux, & A. Trognon (Eds.). *Apprendre dans l'interaction: analyse des médiations sémiotiques* (pp. 67–92). Nancy – Aix-en-Provence:
Presses Universitaires de Nancy – Publications de l'Université de Provence.

Trognon, A. & Bromberg, M. (2006). L'interaction sociale (pp. 63–94). In S. Ionescu & A. Blanchet (Eds). *Psychologie sociale et ressources humaines*. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

van Eemeren, F. H. (2010). *Strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse. Extending the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation*. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.