37.2443, Confs: Panel at IPC20: The Pragmatics of (Intimate) Relationships at a Distance (Finland)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2443. Wed Jul 22 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2443, Confs: Panel at IPC20: The Pragmatics of (Intimate) Relationships at a Distance (Finland)

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Date: 21-Jul-2026
From: Andrea Rodriguez [a.rodriguezortega at uq.edu.au]
Subject: Panel at IPC20: The Pragmatics of (Intimate) Relationships at a Distance


Panel at IPC20: The Pragmatics of (Intimate) Relationships at a
Distance
Short Title: IPrA2027

Date: 27-Jun-2027 - 02-Jul-2027
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Contact: Andrea Rodriguez
Contact Email: a.rodriguezortega at uq.edu.au
Meeting URL: https://pragmatics.international/page/IPC20Helsinki

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2026

We invite colleagues examining the interactional accomplishment of
intimate relationships at a distance to join us for the panel “The
Pragmatics of (intimate) relationships at a distance” (panel
description below). If you have a relevant contribution, please send a
provisional title and an abstract (max. 350 words) to Andrea Rodriguez
by 30 September 2026.
Participants will then be expected to submit their abstract through
the official IPrA 2027 submission platform by 15 October 2026.
The Pragmatics of (Intimate) Relationships at a Distance
Relationships emerge as a complex, joint, interactional accomplishment
characterised by the tacit development of, orientation to, and
commitment toward taken-for-granted relational expectations. The rise
of digital technologies has played a crucial role in facilitating the
initiation and maintenance of (intimate) relationships by reducing the
sense of physical distance (e.g., family members and romantic couples
living apart) and what might be considered ontological distance (e.g.,
human-AI companion relationships). The quality of human relationships
at a distance is an emerging interdisciplinary concern, mainly
addressed through surveys and interviews that rely on participants’
perceptions. There is, however, a growing body of interactional
studies that scrutinise the granular details of naturally occurring
conversation alongside the affordances/constraints of digital
technologies to understand intimacy and relationships at a distance
(Márquez-Reiter & Frohlich, 2020) in at least two ways. One has
focused on how digital affordances enhance the accomplishment of
closeness (see Licoppe & Morel, 2012; Licoppe, 2017; Rintel, 2015;
Fitzgerald & Rintel, 2013 – on couples; Gan, et al., 2020; Gan 2021,
2022, 2023 – on parenthood at a distance; Choe, 2020, forthcoming;
Boudouraki et al., 2022 – on family at a distance; Vold Lexander &
Androutsopoulos, 2023; Rodriguez, 2026 – on transnational families).
The other has explored how humans interact with human-like technology,
including robots and AI companions (Habscheid et al., 2023; Tuncer et
al., 2024; Hall et al., 2024), often engaging in ‘relational’
practices designed for bonding, such as teasing, and troubles telling.
More recently, questions have been raised about how humans develop a
sense of and commitment to sustaining intimate relationships with AI
companions (e.g., AI girl/boyfriends, husbands/wives).
This panel brings together researchers from various disciplines
working with interactional data and aims to expand current knowledge
about the impact of technology on how relational closeness and
intimacy are accomplished at a distance. It welcomes contributions
that fit within the above-mentioned approaches. Topics of interest
include (but are not limited to):
 - Technology-enhanced (intimate) human relationships: Papers that
examine how various technologies (e.g., messaging apps, video
calls/conferences, social media, robot companions, virtual reality,
etc.) help bridge physical distance and enable relational intimacy.
 - The accomplishment of collective activities
 - The surfacing of implicit relational expectations
 - The co-construction of emotional connection
 - Displays of relational commitment
 - Multilingual transnational family practices
Human-digital companion relationships: Papers concerned with how
humans interactionally anthropomorphise digital technologies and how
they relate with AI companions, including (committed) relationships.
 - AI as social agents
 - The meta-ontology of AI
 - Action and agency ascription
 - The accomplishment/lack of (relational) common ground
 - Construction of trust
References:
Boudouraki, A., Reeves, S., Fischer, J. E., & Rintel, S. (2022).
Mediated Visits: Longitudinal Domestic Dwelling with Mobile Robotic
Telepresence. In S. Barbosa, C. Appert, C. Lampe, D. A. Shamma, K.
Yatani, S. Drucker, & J. Williamson (Eds.), CHI Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems (No. 251). ACM.
Fitzgerald, R., & Rintel, S. (2013). From lifeguard to bitch: How a
story character becomes a promiscuous category in a couple's video
call. Australian Journal of Communication, 40(2), 101–118.
Gan, Y. (2021). Capturing love at a distance: Multisensoriality in
intimate video calls between migrant parents and their left-behind
children. Social Interaction, 4(3).
Gan Y. (2023) Choreographing digital love: Materiality, emotionality,
and morality in video-mediated communication between Chinese migrant
parents and their left-behind children. Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 28(3).
Gan, Y., & deSouza, D. K. (2022). Moving out of view: Managing
participation and visibility in family video-mediated communication.
Social Interaction, 5(2).
Gan, Y., Greiffenhagen, C., & Licoppe, C. (2020). Orchestrated
openings in video calls: Getting young left-behind children to greet
their migrant parents. Journal of Pragmatics, 170, 364–380.
Habscheid, S., Hector, T., & Hrncal, C. (2023). Human and Non-Human
Agency as Practical Accomplishment. Social Interaction, 6(1).
Hall, L., Albert, S., & Peel, E. (2024). Doing Virtual Companionship
with Alexa. Social Interaction, 7(3).
Choe, H. (2020). Instant Messaging in Korean Families: Creating Family
Through the Interplay of Photos, Videos, and Text. ProQuest
Dissertations & Theses.
Licoppe, C., & Morel, J. (2012). Video-in-interaction: “Talking heads”
and the multimodal organization of mobile and Skype video calls.
Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(4), 399–429.
Licoppe, C. (2017). Showing objects in Skype video-mediated
conversations: From showing gestures to showing sequences. Journal of
Pragmatics, 110, 63–82.
Márquez Reiter, R., & Frohlich, D. M. (2020). A pragmatics of
intimacy. Internet Pragmatics, 3(1), 1–33.
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00044.mar
Rintel, S. (2015). Omnirelevance in technologized interaction: Couples
coping with video calling distortions. In R. Fitzgerald & W. Housley
(Eds.), Advances in Membership Categorisation Analysis (pp. 123–150).
SAGE.
Rodriguez, A. (2026). “Está difícil” [“It’s difficult”]: Accounting
practices and the surfacing of relational expectations in
transnational family talk. Discourse Studies 28(4).
Tuncer, S., Licoppe, C., Luff, P., & Heath, C. (2024). Recipient
design in human–robot interaction: the emergent assessment of a
robot’s competence. AI & Society, 39(4), 1795–1810.
Vold Lexander, K., & Androutsopoulos, J. (2023). Multilingual Families
in a Digital Age: Mediational Repertoires and Transnational Practices.
Routledge.



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