In this paper, we approach the pragmatics of body, mind and technology through an investigation of the scope and explanatory power of existing theoretical perspectives. Our focus is how the social psychological perspective of territories of the self (Goffman 1972) can be applied and possibly – still – enlighten and explain the impact of the smartphone on human social life. According to Goffman, some of the aspects of individuals’ behavior in social and public life relate to how we claim, patrol and defend territories. The smartphone creates new conditions for, in particular egocentric territoriality. Based on empirical observations in data from a linguistic ethnographic study of language and social media in family life (SoMeFamily, e.g. Stæhr & Nørreby 2021; Madsen 2022; Ag 2022), we argue that the smartphone involves intersections of the possessional territory, the information and conversational preserves. The smartphone is not merely a physical object we carry along to occasionally use for making contacts. Since it also contains personal information, it also involves concerns of the individuals control over the content of mind accessible through the artefact of the smartphone with, for example, saved communications, contacts, pictures and notes. Finally, the smartphone, in principle, makes it possible to control and guard the conversational preserve, but it can also be the medium of its violation.

Taking into consideration reflections in informal interviews and well as recordings of everyday interactions, we illustrate how Goffman’s thoughts about the territories of the self, are useful to apply to explain the concerns and experiences of violation and preservation of egocentric territoriality articulated and enacted by the participants in our study. Based on this, we argue that to a large extend the occupation with territorial preservation involves human agency and how individuals (choose to) act in relation to another’s smartphone or relate to their own smartphone – with all its associated territorial concerns. But what is new is that the device itself – with its technological affordances – plays an active part in the preservation and violation of territories of the self: Since 1) It is an information and conversational preserve in a physical form; 2) It makes available new ways of crossing territorial borders (through e.g. tracking apps); and 3) It violates conversational preserves through its technology (e.g. through appearance of notifications and news feeds which sometimes leads to individuals unwillingly receiving particular information or becoming conversationally involved without active human agency). We discuss these insights in relation to the more recent theoretical ‘posthuman’ perspective with its emphasis on the intersection of body, mind, technology and materiality, which deconstructs the divide between human and machine in various ways (e.g. Pennycook 2018; Clark 2008) and reflect on the relationship between impact, mediation and agency.