Touching

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Touching
Author(s):	Lorenza Mondada (University of Basel, Switzerland) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7543-9769)
To cite:	Mondada, Lorenza. (2023). Interactional space. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: []

Touching is an embodied sensorial practice consisting in a dynamic contact of the hand and other parts of the body with a touched surface—either another body or a material object. An EMCA approach focuses on the action of touching rather than in the sense of touch per se, and consequently on the way touching practices happen amid ongoing activities and are oriented to within social interaction. This is a focus on when people engage in touching each other or touching an object, how this haptic engagement is formatted and made intelligible, and how it involves other people participating in it and responding to it. Hence, touching as an interactional practice is situatedly embedded in other activities; it unfolds in time, involves parts of the body in recognizable ways, and has a sequential organization, in which the coordination with others and the intersubjectivity of touching are manifested in the responsiveness of and mutual adjustments between participants, addressing not only its intelligibility but also its normativity (Cekaite & Mondada, 2020).

The emergent EMCA literature on touching in interaction includes studies on touching the other as a fundamental way to establish interpersonal connections, and touching objects as a fundamental way to explore and connect to the material environment. Each of these two fields is presented and exemplified through an extract in the following sections.

Touching others

Studies involving touching others have addressed key questions of the sequential organization of touch between toucher and touched, how touching is mobilized within a course of action, what it accomplishes and how it is responded to, in aligned or disaligned ways, manifesting not only (dis)agreements and resistance to touch/being touched but also, thereby, the normativity of touching. Research in this domain of ‘haptic sociality’ (Goodwin, 2017) has advanced knowledge about interpersonal, intimate and close relationships typically in couples, and families: touching can do a variety of actions, from displaying emotions and affects (Goodwin, 2017), to controlling (Cekaite, 2015, 2016) and shepherding (Cekaite, 2010). Likewise, the use of touching in professional contexts, such as (pre)schools (Burdelski, 2020; Cekaite & Bergnéhr, 2018) and health settings (Heath, 1989; Merlino 2021; Nishizaka, 2007, 2011, 2020; Nishizaka & Sunaga, 2015) implicates normative regulations of both compassionate relations and diagnostic practices. Touching has also been tackled by studying ordinary forms of haptic contact such as hugs, kisses, and caresses (Cekaite & Holm Kvist, 2017; Goodwin, 2017; Mondada et al., 2020), including in interspecies interactions (Llewellyn et al., 2022; Mondémé, 2020) and animal interactions (Mondada & Mergueditchian, 2022).

Extract (1) presents an instance of interpersonal touch between mother and son: kissing. It is occasioned by a family photoshoot, with a professional taking pictures of the family. We join the action as mother is holding son in her arms and requests a kiss from him (line 1) (cf. Goodwin, 2017, 2020 about mother requesting hugs).

Mom requests a kiss from Son (line 1). However, he is not available: he is looking behind her, probably at his sister, who is playing in the back (Figure 1). He shakes head, refusing to kiss (line 2). Mom responds with a vocalization (line 3). As he slightly turns his head towards her, she comes closer to him and kisses him audibly (line 4, Figure 2). So, in these few seconds a rejected request to kiss by Mom is followed by a kiss initiated—and even ‘stolen’—by her, in a unilateral and asymmetric way. This is overseen by Daughter (Figures 2, 4) and monitored by Photographer: the camera’s beeping sounds (lines 1 and 4) indicate that Photographer focuses the image as kisses emerge, although she does not take any photo at this point.

Next, Son turns to Mom, and Mom looks at him smiling (line 5). Son also looks at her and comes closer to her. Their mutual bodily orientation, closely facing each other, builds a haptic formation that projects the emergence of a possible kiss. Indeed, Mom and Son kiss each other on the mouth (line 6, Figures 3A/3B). Their kissing is now overseen not only by Daughter, but also by Cousin (line 5 on, Figure 3A). This time, Photographer (figure 3B) catches the scene and produces a shot.

This extract reveals a rich array of embodied features of haptic interpersonal practices:

• Haptic practices can be initiated in various ways, verbally requested, or bodily initiated and projected. They can also be responded in aligned or disaligned manners. This constitutes the sequential organization of kissing trajectories. Moreover, kissing can be performed in a symmetric or asymmetric manner. This displays different forms of social, hierarchical, personal relationships, entitlements, rights and obligations (Cekaite, 2010, 2015; Goodwin & Cekaite, 2018).
• A practice like kissing involves not only mouths and lips but also the entire body: it relies on a kissable body formation that is progressively assembled by the participants’ bodies, mobilizing approaching bodies, positions of the upper body, head orientation, arms hugging, gaze, facial expressions and protruding lips (see also Kendon, 1975; Goodwin, 2017). This mobilization of the entire body prepares the kiss and makes it projectable, enabling the coordination (or the resistance) of the parties.
• Emergent projectable, haptic formations have a social visibility that can be witnessed, recognized, monitored by co-participants, bystanders, overlookers, lurkers, etc.

Touching objects

The second type of touching practices concerns haptic explorations of materiality. In contrast to interpersonal touch, here touch is not responded to by the touched object. The interactional dimension of haptic material practices lies in either engaging in touch together with another or in witnessing somebody touch an object. Haptic contact as a form of direct, first-hand access to the sensory characteristics of an object can be seen by another participant in a way that exhibits either a subjective experience or grounds a shared, intersubjective experience. In EMCA, touching materialities has been mainly explored in professional contexts: by analogy to professional vision (Goodwin, 1994) a form of professional touch (Mondada, 2020a) characterizes activities in which touching is a form of embodied expertise (see C. Goodwin, 2017; Mondada, 2021 on cheese mongers; Smith & Goodwin 2020 on geologists). In other activities, touch is deeply intertwined with other sensorial practices, such as smelling and tasting in tasting sessions (Mondada, 2020b), or vision and haptic sensations in medical activities (Heath et al., 2018; Hindmarsh & Pilnick, 2007; Nishizaka, 2011, 2020).

Extract (2) shows how touching a material object is sensorially, interactionally, sequentially, and normatively organized. In a gourmet shop palpating cheeses is key in the selection of products. Previous to the extract, the customer requesting some creamy cheese, spotted a Pérail, then confirmed by the seller as a possible candidate (line 1):

When she mentions “pérail” (line 1) the seller extends her hand towards one piece and palpates it (Figure 2): this enables her to produce a negative description (the cheese is firmer, that is, less creamy than requested). Palpation is crucial in establishing these qualities and is consequential for the recommendation on whether or not to buy. The seller takes out the product from the refrigerated shelf and shows it to the customer (line 2). Even before that, the customer has slightly extended her arm towards the window case. This might prompt the seller to offer her to touch it: in this case, the offer would in fact be responsive to an embodied request for permission. The format of the offer involves various modal verbs revealing issues of agency, normativity, and attribution of intentions. It is followed by an account (“il est emballé”/‘it is wrapped’, line 4), legitimizing the possibility of touching despite a general prohibition to touch food products in the shop—addressing normative constraints on touching.

The customer is therefore eventually able to palpate the “pérail”, checking its consistency herself (line 3). The outcome of touch orients to the relevance of checking a second piece of the same kind of cheese (P2, line 4), revealing that the customer treats each piece as being unique, and possibly having different sensorial (haptic but also tasting) qualities. The seller understands this and aligns with it, putting the first piece back in the fridge (line 4) and giving a second one (line 7). Here, again, the seller palpates the cheese first: this enables her to produce a comparative description. As the seller has almost completed her descriptive turn, the customer palpates this second candidate too (line 7). So, the sense of touch is exerted while hearing a description of the haptic qualities, which reflectively instructs it and gives the possibility to check what is said about it. The description shapes the sensation, and the sensation makes sense of the description (Liberman, 2013; Mondada, 2019, 2020b). The customer decides to buy the second cheese. Touching permits a direct access to the product’s qualities, and is consequential for decision-making, grounded in first-hand sensorial experience.

This excerpt shows some crucial features of touching objects in social interaction:

• Haptic practices can take different detailed forms of the hand, like palpating, rubbing, caressing, etc., as well as of other parts of the boy.
• These different haptic formats are accountably produced and recognized so by others, and this grounds their intersubjectivity, which is also observable in the way others respond to the relevance of what self is feeling.
• These haptic practices are relevantly embedded in and contribute to the current course of action (enabling participants to make selections, take decisions, organize the next step within the activity).

Additional Related Entries:

• Turn-taking
• Multimodality
• Multisensoriality
• Opening
• Participation

Cited References:

Burdelski, M. (2020). Teacher compassionate touch in a Japanese preschool. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 3(1).

Cekaite, A. (2010). Shepherding the child: Embodied directive sequences in parent-child interactions. Text & Talk, 30(1), 1-25.

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.

Cekaite, A. (2016). Touch as social control: Haptic organization of attention in adult–child interactions. Journal of Pragmatics, 92, 30-42.

Cekaite, A., & Bergnéhr, D. (2018). Affectionate touch and care: embodied intimacy, compassion and control in early childhood education. EECERJ, 26, 940-55.

Cekaite, A., & Holm Kvist, M. (2017). The comforting touch: Tactile intimacy and talk in managing children’s distress. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 50(2), 109-127.

Cekaite, A., & Mondada, L. (eds.) (2020). Touch in social interaction: Touch, language, and body. Routledge.

Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public. Basic Books.

Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 96(3), 606-633.

Goodwin, C. (2017). Co-operative action. Cambridge University Press.

Goodwin, C., & Smith, M.C. (2020). Calibrating professional perception through touch in geological fieldwork. In A. Cekaite & L. Mondada (eds.), Touch in social interaction: Touch, language, and body (pp. 269-287). Routledge.

Goodwin, M. H. (2017). Haptic sociality: The embodied interactive constitution of intimacy through touch. In C. Meyer, J. Streeck, & J.S. Jordan (eds.), Intercorporeality: Emerging socialities in interaction (pp. 73-102). Oxford University Press.

Goodwin, M.H. (2020). The interactive construction of a hug sequence. In A. Cekaite & L. Mondada (eds.) Touch in social interaction: Touching moments (pp. 27-53). Routledge.

Goodwin, M. H. & Cekaite, A. (2018). Embodied family choreography. Practices of control, care and mundane creativity. Routledge.

Heath, C. (1989). Pain talk: The expression of suffering in the medical consultation. Social Psychology Quarterly, 52(2),113-25.

Heath, C., Luff, P., Sanchez-Svensson, M., & Nicholls, M. (2018). Exchanging implements: The micro-materialities of multidisciplinary work in the operating theatre. Sociology of Health and Illness, 40, 297-313.

Hindmarsh, J. & Pilnick, A. (2007). Knowing bodies at work: Embodiment and ephemeral teamwork in anaesthesia. Organization Studies, 28(9), 1395-1416.

Kendon, A. (1975). Some functions of the face in a kissing round. Semiotica, 15(4), 299-334.

Liberman, K. (2013). The Phenomenology of Coffee Tasting. In K. Liberman (ed.) More Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 215-266). SUNY.

Llewellyn, N., Hindmarsh, J., & Burrow, R. (2022). Coalitions of touch: Balancing restraint and haptic soothing in the veterinary clinic. Sociology of Health and Illness, 44(4-5), 725-744.

Merlino, S. (2021). Making sounds visible in speech-language therapy for aphasia. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 4(3).

Mondada, L. (2018). Multiple temporalities of language and body in interaction: Challenges for transcribing multimodality. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 51(1), 85-106.

Mondada, L. (2019). Rethinking bodies and objects in social interaction: a multimodal and multisensorial approach to tasting. In U. Kissmann & J. van Loon (eds.) Discussing new materialism (pp. 109-134). Springer.

Mondada, L. (2020a). Sensorial explorations of food: How professionals and amateurs touch cheese in gourmet shops. In A. Cekaite & L. Mondada (eds.) Touch in social interaction: Touch, language, and body (pp. 288-310). Routledge.

Mondada, L. (2020b). Orchestrating multi-sensoriality in tasting sessions: sensing bodies, normativity, and language. Symbolic Interaction, 44, 63-86.

Mondada, L. (2021). Sensing in social interaction: The taste for cheese in gourmet shops. Cambridge University Press.

Mondada, L. & Meguerditchian, A. (2022). Ouvertures et salutations entre babouins: organisation de la séquence et orientation incarnée vers l’autre. Langage et société, 2/2022(176), 127-160.

Mondada, L., Monteiro, D. & Tekin, B.S. (2020). The tactility and visibility of kissing: intercorporeal configurations of kissing bodies in family photography sessions. In A. Cekaite and L. Mondada (eds.) Touch in social interaction: Touch, language, and body (pp. 54-80). Routledge.

Mondémé, C. (2020). Touching and petting: Exploring “haptic sociality” in interspecies interaction. In A. Cekaite & L. Mondada (eds.) Touch in social interaction: Touch, language, and body (pp .171-196). Routledge.

Nishizaka, A. (2007). Hand touching hand: referential practice at a Japanese midwife house. Human Studies, 30(3), 199-217.

Nishizaka. A. (2011). Touch without vision: referential practice in a non-technological environment. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 504-520.

Nishizaka. A. (2020). Guided touch: The sequential organization of feeling a fetus in Japanese midwifery practice. In A. Cekaite & L. Mondada (eds.) Touch in social interaction: Touch, language, and body (pp. 224-248). Routledge.

Nishizaka, A. & Sunaga, M. (2015). Conversing while massaging: Multidimensional asymmetries of multiple activities in interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 48(2), 200-229.

Additional References:

Classen, C. (2012). The deepest sense: A cultural history of touch. University of Illinois Press.

Howes, D. (2003). Sensual relations: Engaging the senses in culture and social theory. University of Michigan Press.