Touch in Social Interaction

Touch, Language, and Body

Lorenza Mondada editor Asta Cekaite editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:16th Jul '20

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Touch in Social Interaction cover

Rooted in multimodal conversation analysis and based on video recordings of naturally occurring social interactions, this book presents a novel analytical perspective for the study of touch. The authors focus on how different forms of touch are interactionally organized in everyday, institutional, and professional practices, showing how touch is multimodally achieved in social interaction, how it acquires its significance, how it is embedded in the current activity and in its social context, and how it is systematically intertwined with talk, facial expressions, and body posture.

Including work by a wide range of renowned researchers, this volume provides rich visual illustrations of situations featuring touch as a social and intersubjective practice. The studies make a compelling contribution to the field by clearly examining and demonstrating the social meaning of touch for the participants in social interaction in a broad range of contexts.

Presenting a new methodology for the study of touch, this is key reading for all researchers and scholars working in conversation analysis, multimodality, and related areas.

'The blossoming research on multimodal interaction has mainly focused on gaze and gesture. This book is the first to explore the richness of uses of a hitherto neglected bodily resource: touch. It reveals the fundamental role that haptic practices play both for emotional exchanges and professional action in contemporary societies.'

Arnulf Deppermann, Leibniz-Institute for the German Language, Germany


"The blossoming research on multimodal interaction has mainly focused on gaze and gesture. This book is the first to explore the richness of uses of a hitherto neglected bodily resource: touch. It reveals the fundamental role that haptic practices play both for emotional exchanges and professional action in contemporary societies."

Arnulf Deppermann, Leibniz-Institute for the German Language, Germany

"The primary value of this volume is in the way it compels us as researchers to contend with how we study, represent, examine, and conceptualize touching practices beyond simply glossing that a touch occurred. Touch is probably one of the least-researched of practices in the wake of the interactional turn toward embodied conduct; and yet right now, touch (and its absence) is experiencing an unparalleled moment of salience for an entire generation."

Jessica S. Robles, Symbolic Interaction (2020)

"This book makes a compelling contribution to the field by clearly examining the social meaning of interactional touch in a broad range of contexts and allowing fair and truthful representations of multiple viewpoints from scholars with different backgrounds. The original findings and analytical frameworks developed in this volume would serve as an excellent reference to support, benefit and inspire future research in relevant fields. Given its innovative and rich contents, the book would be particularly appealing to researchers and scholars working in conversation analysis, multimodality, cultural studies, sociopragmatics, cognitive linguistics and related areas."

Fang Chen, Journal of Pragmatics 169 (2020)

ISBN: 9781138541931

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 940g

344 pages