Meyer2020a
| Meyer2020a | |
|---|---|
| BibType | INCOLLECTION |
| Key | Meyer2020a |
| Author(s) | Christian Meyer, Jürgen Streeck |
| Title | Ambivalences of touch: An epilogue |
| Editor(s) | Asta Cekaite, Lorenza Mondada |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, touch, Social interaction |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Year | 2020 |
| Language | English |
| City | London |
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| Number | |
| Pages | 311-326 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781003026631-14 |
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| Howpublished | |
| Book title | Touch in Social Interaction: Touch, Language, and Body |
| Chapter | |
Abstract
In this epilogue, we discuss the particularities of touch in comparison to other communication modalities that have been studied by interaction research. Drawing on examples of loving touch and violent touch from novels and memoirs, we identify two properties of tactile interaction that differ from modalities such as vocality, gesture, or gaze: tactile interaction is 1) essentially reciprocal – while we can be looked at without looking back and can be talked to without talking back, we cannot touch without being touched back – and 2) inherently private – it is invisible from the outside and based on its experiential qualities. The fundamental ambivalence of touch arises from these properties. Moreover, due to these properties, tactile interaction may require revisions in our research methodology and in the models of communication that we implicitly invoke and of the concepts and vocabulary with which we address it.
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