Mastering the body
Correcting bodily conduct in adult–child interaction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/rcsi.37389Keywords:
adult–child interaction, touch, manual guiding, body, correctionAbstract
Recent interactional studies of multimodal interaction have shown how touch can be used as a form of social control in adults' directives to children, or as a way of guiding children into embodied politeness. Using multimodal interactional analysis grounded in conversation analysis, this paper aims at exploring how touch is used as a semiotic resource to socialize young children between 4 and 5 years of age into appropriate ways of presenting the body in public. The focus will be on moments when the child's body becomes the subject of correction while some other action is going on. In those moments, touch is used as manual guidance to change and correct children's body position or bodily conduct. These corrections shed light on what are considered appropriate forms of bodily conduct in public, and how children are manually guided towards established norms of such conduct. The study aims at adding to our understanding on how 'haptic sociality' (Goodwin 2017) contributes to socializing children into appropriate bodily conduct in interaction.
References
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Shakespeare, P. (1989). Aspects of Confused Speech: A Study of Verbal Interaction between Confused and Normal Speakers. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Speier, M. (1978): The child as conversationalist: some culture contact features of conversational interactions between adults and children. In M. Hammersley & P. Woods (eds), The Process of Schooling: A Sociological Reader (pp. 98–103). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Tulbert, E. & Goodwin, M. (2011). Choreographies of attention: Multimodality in a routine activity. In J. Streeck, C. Goodwin & C. LeBaron (eds), Multimodality in Communication (pp. 79–92). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Björk-Willén, P. (2018). Learning to apologise: Moral socialization as an interaction practice in preschool. Research on Children and Social Interaction, 2(2).
Burdelski, M. (2010). Socializing politeness routines: Action, other-orientation, and embodiment in a Japanese pre-school. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 1606–1621. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.11.007
Burdelski, M. (2012). Language socialization and politeness routines. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs & B. Schiefferlin (eds), The Handbook of Language Socialization (pp. 275–295). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Cekaite, A. (2015). The coordination of talk and touch in adults’ directives to children: Touch and social control. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 48(2), 152–175. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2015.1025501
Cekaite, A. (2016). Touch as social control: Haptic organization of attention in adult–child interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 92, 30–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2015.11.003
Cekaite, A. & Goodwin, M. H. (2013). Calibration in directive/response sequences in family interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 46, 122–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.07.008
Craven, A. & Potter, J. (2010). Directives: Entitlement and contingency in action. Discourse Studies, 12(4), 419–442. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445610370126
Crossley, N. (1995). Body techniques, agency and intercorporeality: On Goffman’s Relations in Public. Sociology, 29(1), 133–148. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038595029001009
Curl, T. & Drew, P. (2008). Contingency and action: A comparison of two forms of requesting. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41(2), 129–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351810802028613
Forrester, M. (2010). Ethnomethodology and adult–child conversation: Whose development? In H. Gardner & M. Forrester (eds), Analysing interactions in childhood. Insights from Conversation Analysis (pp. 42–48). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Forrester, M. & Reason, D. (2006). Competency and participation in acquiring a mastery of language: a reconsideration of the idea of membership. The Sociological Review, 54(3), 446–466. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2006.00625.x
Garfinkel, H. & Sacks, H. (1970). On formal structures of practical actions. In J. C. Tiryakian & E. McKinney (eds), Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments (pp. 337–366). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press.
Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in Public. New York: Harper Colophon.
Goodwin, M. H. (2017). Haptic Sociality: The embodied interactive constitution of intimacy through touch. In C. Meyer et al. (eds), Intercorporeality: Emerging Socialities in Interaction (pp. 73–102). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190210465.003.0004
Goodwin, M. H. & Cekaite, A. (2013). Calibration in directive/response sequences in family interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 46, 122–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.07.008
Goodwin, C. & Goodwin, M. H. (2004). Participation. In A. Duranti (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 222–244). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Heritage, J. & Watson, D. (1979). Formulations as conversational objects. In G. Psathas (ed.), Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 123–162). New York: Irvington.
Holm Kvist, M. (2018). Children’s crying in play conflicts: A locus for moral and emotional socialization. Research on Children and Social Interaction, 2(2).
James, A. & James, A. (2012). Key Concepts in Childhood Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526435613
Jefferson, G. (1972). Side sequences. In D. Sudnow (ed.), Studies in Social Interaction (pp. 294–338). New York: Free Press.
Kääntä, L. & Piirainen-Marsh, A. (2013). Manual guiding in peer group interaction: A resource for organizing a practical classroom task. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 46(4), 322–343. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2013.839094
Kendon, A. (1990). Spatial organization in social encounters. The F-Formation system. In A. Kendon (ed.), Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behaviour in Focused Encounters (pp. 209–230). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kendon, A. (2010). Spacing and orientation in co-present interaction. In A. Esposito et al. (eds), Development of Multimodal Interfaces: Active Listening and Synchrony (pp. 1–15). Heidelberg: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12397-9_1
Kern, F. (2017). Interactional resources in children’s game explanations. Paper presented at the International Pragmatics Conference, Belfast, 16–22 July.
Martin, C. & Sahlström, F. (2010). Learning as longitudinal interactional change: From other-repair to self-repair in physiotherapy treatment. Discourse Processes, 47(8), 668–697. https://doi.org/10.1080/01638531003628965
Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B. (1984). Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories. In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (eds), Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion (pp. 276–320). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Raymond, G. & Lerner, G. (2014). A body and its involvements: Adjusting action for dual involvements. In P. Haddington et al. (eds), Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond Multitasking (pp. 227–246). Amsterdam: Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.187.08ray
Schegloff, E. (2007). Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791208
Selting, M. et al. (2011). A system for transcribing talk-in-interaction: GAT 2 (trans. and adapted for English by E. Couper-Kuhlen & D. Barth-Weingarten). Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion, 12, 1–51.
Shakespeare, P. (1989). Aspects of Confused Speech: A Study of Verbal Interaction between Confused and Normal Speakers. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Speier, M. (1978): The child as conversationalist: some culture contact features of conversational interactions between adults and children. In M. Hammersley & P. Woods (eds), The Process of Schooling: A Sociological Reader (pp. 98–103). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Tulbert, E. & Goodwin, M. (2011). Choreographies of attention: Multimodality in a routine activity. In J. Streeck, C. Goodwin & C. LeBaron (eds), Multimodality in Communication (pp. 79–92). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Published
2018-12-03
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Kern, F. (2018). Mastering the body: Correcting bodily conduct in adult–child interaction. Research on Children and Social Interaction, 2(2), 213-234. https://doi.org/10.1558/rcsi.37389
