{"title":"Joining actions through effort sounds: Mothers and infants in routine activities","authors":"Iris Nomikou","doi":"10.1016/j.langcom.2023.05.001","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper analyses the effort sounds made by caregivers in routine interactions with very young infants. Video recordings were made of 15 mother-infant dyads in Germany during nappy changing. The multimodal analysis of the interactions revealed that effort sounds were used when handling the infant’s body, such as dressing them or lifting them up, but also made to link to the sensations of the infant. The sounds achieved their meaning within sequences of actions and contextualised via temporality, phonetic variation and multimodality. With these vocalisations, I propose, parents can give infants’ sensations a voice, make them public, and thus achieve a co-ordination of experience.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47575,"journal":{"name":"Language & Communication","volume":"91 ","pages":"Pages 32-45"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Language & Communication","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530923000289","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper analyses the effort sounds made by caregivers in routine interactions with very young infants. Video recordings were made of 15 mother-infant dyads in Germany during nappy changing. The multimodal analysis of the interactions revealed that effort sounds were used when handling the infant’s body, such as dressing them or lifting them up, but also made to link to the sensations of the infant. The sounds achieved their meaning within sequences of actions and contextualised via temporality, phonetic variation and multimodality. With these vocalisations, I propose, parents can give infants’ sensations a voice, make them public, and thus achieve a co-ordination of experience.
期刊介绍:
This journal is unique in that it provides a forum devoted to the interdisciplinary study of language and communication. The investigation of language and its communicational functions is treated as a concern shared in common by those working in applied linguistics, child development, cultural studies, discourse analysis, intellectual history, legal studies, language evolution, linguistic anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, the politics of language, pragmatics, psychology, rhetoric, semiotics, and sociolinguistics. The journal invites contributions which explore the implications of current research for establishing common theoretical frameworks within which findings from different areas of study may be accommodated and interrelated. By focusing attention on the many ways in which language is integrated with other forms of communicational activity and interactional behaviour, it is intended to encourage approaches to the study of language and communication which are not restricted by existing disciplinary boundaries.