Negotiation of expertise and multifunctionality: PowerPoint presentations as interactional activity types in workplace meetings

• There are recurrent speaker exchanges within workplace PowerPoint presentations.
• Domains of expertise of the participants are displayed through the exchanges.
• PowerPoint presentations achieve both information delivery and directive functions.
• Slides as a text and as a material object are invoked and used by participants.
• The PowerPoint presentation is a vehicle for furthering organizational goals.

This article investigates exchanges between the presenter and another participant within PowerPoint presentations in workplace meetings. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis as a method, it examines 1) how participants orient to each other's expertise, 2) what is accomplished through the exchange and 3) how the PowerPoint slide is interwoven with the process. The results show how the exchanges establish the presentation as information delivery in which the complexity of professional knowledge is displayed and negotiated. Moreover, there is an orientation to directive functions of the presentation activity. The PowerPoint slides as a text and as a material object are evoked for these purposes.