Keevallik, Hofstetter, and Julia Katila (Tampere University) gave a sneak peak of their upcoming paper at Nordisco23 in Tampere, with the presentation “Sounds and touch during affective episodes between romantic partners”, based on data collected by Julia Katila.
Abstract:
Research on interaction has only recently ventured into the domain of the senses, hitherto considered inaccessible for video analysis, showing how matters such as touch are systematically oriented to in families with children and in institutionalized tasting sessions (Goodwin & Cekaite 2018, Mondada 2019). Our paper contributes to this emerging field by targeting the interface of touch and vocal sound, dissecting the intersubjective potential of sounding when bodies are intertwined. The data entails video recordings of the naturally occurring lives of 10 same and different sex couples at their homes in Finland. The everyday life of each couple was documented for seven days for 10–20 hours a day with 4–5 video cameras set up in different rooms. Studying affective episodes between romantic partners with the methods of multimodal interaction analysis, we demonstrate how vocalization can express comfort and thus lead to extension of mutual bodily contact, or inform of discomfort, which leads to swift release of the problematic contact. We argue that, by providing immediate and nuanced access to other participants’ ongoing bodily experiences, haptic sensoriality is partially distributed into the auditory domain. We also highlight the affordances of vocalization as opposed to lexical items that could verbalize those very concerns: sounds are subtle and simultaneous with, even occasioned by, the changing pressures on the body. The relevance of progressivity in body contact is continuously negotiated and has moral, social, and relational implications, providing grounds for continuous realization of consent.
Non-lexical vocalizations 