This study addresses the vital role of material objects in discourse analysis. In examining mobile phone use in Hong Kong and Beijing, I analyze two types of data: physical use and discursive representation in talk and texts. This study develops an approach to incorporate two levels of mobile phone use, taking the physical objects as the starting point.; Considering the nature of human physical interaction with the material world, I tackle the physical level in two dimensions. First, I develop a taxonomy of functional categories to capture the multiplicity of mobile phone use by adding subcategories to three main functional categories: technomic, ideotechnic and sociotechnic, as developed in archaeology and material culture regarding artifacts in human society (Binford 1962; Deetz 1974). Then I illustrate a network of consequences of physical use in three dimensions: material, psychological and social. This framework enables us to index how the physical use of objects and discourse are intertwined without generalizing one function to all situations.; Second, I examine the impact of one mobile phone call in social interaction. I analyze a segment of dinner conversation, in which a mobile phone call occurs. Looking at its material and technological configurations in the physical context, I point out that concurrent realities and multiple floors arise when physically co-present and technologically mediated interactions occur simultaneously in the situation. Since these floors do not share the same communicative resources, they significantly shape participation structure.; For discursive representation, I analyze the representation of mobile phones in discourse to reveal particular sociocultural characteristics and users' knowledge of the technology. I illustrate three types of representation in print media and talk. The first type represents mobile phones as agents, anthropomorphized through linguistic means with layers of identity, social relationships and ability to take actions. The second type of representation characterizes individual users by highlighting particular aspects of use. The third type generalizes social groups based on their phone manners. Mismatches of social practices regarding mobile phone use can be taken as the basis for stereotyping of social groups as assumptions of appropriate behaviors with the technology vary in different communities.
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