"What did it say?": Mobile phone translation app as participant and object in family discourse

This study examines video recordings of one multilingual family whose members interact using a voice translation application that runs on a mobile phone. Its purpose is to explore the ways in which the app does or does not function as a participant. Taking the perspective that participation is negotiated and displayed collaboratively and is only achieved if people orient to each other as participants, I demonstrate how the app is constituted as a participant in the interaction to the extent that it fulfills the animator and principal roles that make up the production format (Goffman 1981), and as an object to the extent that it aids the human participants to fulfill those roles themselves. People display their orientation to the app as a participant through gaze and laughter directed at the mobile phone. They orient to the mobile phone (henceforth, "the app") as an object when they use it to fulfill the animator role themselves or display responsibility for the original message by gazing at the other participants and by asking for validations of the app's translations. The study contributes to our understanding of technologically mediated interaction by demonstrating how participation roles are distributed between human and non-human entities. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.