Cekaite-Holm2017

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Cekaite-Holm2017
BibType ARTICLE
Key Cekaite-Holm2017
Author(s) Asta Cekaite, Malva Kvist Holm
Title The Comforting Touch: Tactile Intimacy and Talk in Managing Children’s Distress
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Touch, Pre-school, Children, Swedish
Publisher
Year 2017
Language English
City
Month
Journal Research in Language and Social Interaction
Volume 50
Number 2
Pages 109–127
URL Link
DOI 10.1080/08351813.2017.1301293
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

The present study examines young children’s distress management in situ, focusing on situations of crying and caregivers’ embodied—haptic—soothing responses in preschools in Sweden. The adults’ responses to crying involve embraces, stroking, and patting. Haptic soothing is managed by calibrating the bodily proximity and postural orientations between the participants, including haptic—embracing or face-to-face—formations that are coordinated with particular forms of talk. Haptic formations configure specific affordances for embodied participation by actualizing the availability of tactile, aural, and visual modalities. The interactional organization of soothing in an embracing formation involves: an initiation/invitation and response, submergence of two bodies into a close haptic contact, and coordinated withdrawal from haptic contact. The embracing formation temporarily suspends the requirements for the distressed person to act like a responsive listener and speaker. The caregiver uses the face-to-face formation to reestablish conditions for the child’s interactional co-presence. Data are in Swedish and English translation.

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