Touch in Social Interaction

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'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)