Locating summonses

Summonses are a crucial resource for prospective participants attempting to establish contact in the opening phase of an interaction. In conversation analysis, they have been studied predominantly as the first pair part of the summons-answer sequence, functioning as “attention-getting devices.” We show that summonses can also be instrumental for achieving a more fundamental task: locating a prospective coparticipant in space. Indeed, coparticipants may rely on summons-answer sequences in order to look for their future interlocutors and identify where they are. Our study focuses on stand-alone first-name summonses in the opening phase of interactions involving a recruiting activity and considers locating the prospective coparticipant and recruitee as a preliminary to it. This article contributes to the understanding of summonses and recruitment in face-to-face “on the move” interactions. The data are video recordings of staff corridor interactions in a hospital outpatient clinic in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. • In addition to attention-getting devices, summonses can be locating devices. • “Locating summonses” allow the summoner to search for and localize the summoned party. • With the summons-answer sequence, the interlocutors reveal and identify each other's locations in space. • Locating the prospective recruitee is a preliminary to recruiting them for a new practical activity. • “Locating summonses” are common among hospital staff in the spatially distributed workspace of a clinic.