Interaction (discourse)

Face-to-face interaction (less often, face-to-face communication or face-to-face discourse) is a concept in sociology, linguistics, media and communication studies describing social interaction carried out without any mediating technology. Face-to-face interaction is defined as the mutual influence of individuals’ direct physical presence with his/her body language. Face-to-face interaction is one of the basic elements of the social system, forming a significant part of individual socialization and experience gaining throughout one's lifetime. Similarly it is also central to the development of various groups and organizations composed of those individuals.

Study of face-to-face interaction is defined as the process of recording and analyzing the reactive pattern of individuals when they are involved in a face-to-face interaction. It is concerned with issues such as its organization, rules, and strategy. The concept of face-to-face interaction has been of interest to scholars since at least the early 20th century. One of the earliest social science scholars to analyze this type of interaction was sociologist Georg Simmel, who in his 1908 book observed that sensory organs play an important role in interaction, discussing examples of human behavior such as an eye contact. His insights were soon developed by others, including Charles Cooley and George Herbert Mead. Their theories became known as symbolic interactionism. By the mid-20th century, there was already a sizable scholarly literature on various aspects of face-to-face interaction. Works on this topic have been published by scholars such as Erving Goffman and Eliot Chapple.

Historically, mediated communication was much rarer than face-to-face. Even through humans possessed the technology to use technology to communicate in space and time for millennia, the majority of the world's population lacked the necessary skills, such as literacy, to use them. This began to change with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg that led to the spread of printed texts and rising literacy in Europe from the 15th century. Since then, face-to-face interaction has begun to steadily lose ground to mediated communication.

...
Wikipedia