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Abstract: Technical development has created new arenas of communication for people. One such arena is the Video Relay Service (VRS). The VRS facilitates interaction between people who use visual/gestual sign language on a video phone, and people who use verbal/auditive language on the telephone/mobile phone. The interaction is mediated by a sign language interpreter. The interpreter is the only person in the setting who is directly linked to the others, and all participants are physically separated from each other. The interpreter plays a key role in the interaction, administrating and co-ordinating the talk. In order to do so, the interpreter uses a range of different techniques and strategies. It is the purpose of the current article to describe, analyse and discuss the turn-organisation of the VRS. The article demonstrates how the interpreter is a power figure, who may sanction or not sanction an utterance. The interpreter also manages the turn-taking machinery by means of visible and audible techniques, as well as rendition strategies. The interpreter is not only a mediator, but a co-creator of the interaction; a part that relates dynamically, and makes the participants relate dynamically, to the specific setting of the service. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: New communication technologies have created new contexts for social interaction and new challenges for understanding the role of technology in human activity, particularly in altering spatial relationships of interaction. In this article we discuss ways a new communication technology is influencing social interaction and language use among a visual language community, the Deaf community, in the U.S. We show some examples of ways signers are inventing new communication behaviors and adapting others as a result of the technological mediation of their visual space. Signers exploit new properties of the technologically mediated visual field, such as the way the size of manual signs is affected by proximity to the webcamera lens, and they respond to how other properties of the visual field require the adaptation of sign language production. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]