Using objects and technologies in the immediate environment as resources for managing affect displays in troubles talk

This chapter shows how the communicative affordances of material objects in the local environments, including mobile phones and laptops, provide resources for participants to manage displays of affect during troubles talk, including potentially enacting or resisting affiliative recipiency. Specifically, we highlight embodied practices through which speakers employ such devices as an interactional resource to keep emotional displays off-record in order to preserve the ongoing action trajectory while participants negotiate affiliative work.