The challenges of multimodality and multi-sensoriality: Methodological issues in analyzing tactile signed interaction

Iwasaki, Shimako; Bartlett, Meredith; Manns, Howard; Willoughby, Louisa

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2018.05.003

Cited by 28 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The dialogical frame is established based on a situated understanding of the situation and context ( Wadensjö, 1995 ; Raanes, 2018 ). Simultaneously, the pairs of participants engage in many layers of brief, necessary clarification and cooperation at the backstage level ( Goffman, 1981 ; Iwasaki et al, 2019 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Access to Interaction and Context Through Situated Descriptions: A Study of Interpreting for Deafblind Persons

Raanes

2020

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article focuses on how to provide environmental descriptions of the context with the intent of creating access to information and dialogical participation for deafblind persons. Multimodal interaction is needed to communicate with deafblind persons whose combined sensory loss impedes their access to the environment and ongoing interaction. Empirical data of interpreting for deafblind persons are analyzed to give insight into how this task may be performed. All communicative activities vary due to their context, participants, and aim. In this study, our data are part of a cross-linguistic study of tactile sign language and were gathered during a guided tour for a deafblind group. The guided tour was tailored to a specific group (adult deafblind tactile signers and their interpreters) visiting one of the oldest cathedrals and pilgrim sites in Scandinavia, with interpreters following up the guide’s presentation and providing descriptions based on the given situation. The tour and the interpreters’ work were videotaped, and the ongoing interaction and communication have been studied through video-ethnographic methods and conversational analysis. The data have been investigated for the research question: What elements are involved in descriptions to provide deafblind individuals access to their environments? Theories from multimodality communicative studies are relevant for the ways tactile descriptions are presented and analyzed. Some of this is an investigation at a microlevel of interaction. An overall inspiration for this study is interaction studies with data from authentic formal and informal conversations and ways of analyzing embodied action and situated gestures in studies of human interaction. Also, concepts of “frontstage,” “backstage,” and “main conversation” are brought into our interpreter-mediated data to follow the role of building meaning in complex conversations. Theories on interaction are used in the analyses to illustrate the participating framework between the guide, the interpreter, the deafblind person, and the situated frame of their interaction. The study opens for a broader understanding of the repertoire of multimodal interaction and how such interaction may be handled as inputs in communication processes. This is of relevance for communication with deafblind persons, for professionals meeting blind and deafblind clients, and for knowledge of multimodal interaction in general.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Access to Interaction and Context Through Situated Descriptions: A Study of Interpreting for Deafblind Persons

Raanes

2020

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As a result, EMCA has been able to make key contributions towards revealing the complex and nuanced communicational practices of sensorily and neurologically heterogeneous persons (e.g., Avital and Streeck 2011;Iwasaki et al 2018;Goodwin 2018). EMCA investigations have also revealed how participants with heterogenous access to communication resources (e.g., visually-impaired and nonvisually impaired participants) use a wide array of creative methods and resources to coordinate all kinds of activities together from giving directions to exploring art (Due and Lange 2017;Friedman 2012;Garfinkel 2002;Goode 1994;Saerberg 2010;vom Lehn 2010).…”

Section: Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis: Mathematics Learnmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enactivism and ethnomethodological conversation analysis as tools for expanding Universal Design for Learning: the case of visually impaired mathematics students

Abrahamson

Flood

Miele

et al. 2018

ZDM Mathematics Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Blind and visually impaired mathematics students must rely on accessible materials such as tactile diagrams to learn mathematics. However, these compensatory materials are frequently found to offer students inferior opportunities for engaging in mathematical practice and do not allow sensorily heterogenous students to collaborate. Such prevailing problems of access and interaction are central concerns of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an engineering paradigm for inclusive participation in cultural praxis like mathematics. Rather than directly adapt existing artifacts for broader usage, UDL process begins by interrogating the praxis these artifacts serve and then radically re-imagining tools and ecologies to optimize usability for all learners. We argue for the utility of two additional frameworks to enhance UDL efforts: (a) enactivism, a cognitive-sciences view of learning, knowing, and reasoning as modal activity; and (b) ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA), which investigates participants' multimodal methods for coordinating action and meaning. Combined, these approaches help frame the design and evaluation of opportunities for heterogeneous students to learn mathematics collaboratively in inclusive classrooms by coordinating perceptuo-motor solutions to joint manipulation problems. We contextualize the thesis with a proposal for a pluralist design for proportions, in which a pair of students jointly operate an interactive technological device.

show abstract

“…An important perspective in intersubjectivity is how the units of speech, the attention, and the turn at talk are constructed in interaction (Iwasaki 2011). Trevarthen (1998) has studied the interaction between mothers and their infants and how they share attention, either on each other (primary intersubjectivity), or on an object (secondary intersubjectivity).…”

Section: Intersubjectivity As a Shared Focus Of Attentionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intersubjective Understanding in Interpreted Table Conversations for Deafblind Persons

Raanes

Berge

2021

Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The question to be raised in this study is how shared understanding can be established in interpretermediated group dialogues for deafblind persons. The study is based on an analysis of video recordings from a restaurant banquet where a group of deafblind persons and their interpreters were present. Despite their inability to see and hear one another clearly, the dialogue among the deafblind participants flows. Analysis of video-recordings from the banquet found that intersubjectivity was established when interpreters and deafblind participants worked together to establish mutual attention, define the situation and the message structures. Further, the analyzes found that haptic signals, embodied gestures, and tactile senses were used to examine the context of the dinner table and handle the banquet activity. As a result, multiple states of intersubjectivities are found: It is not only the deafblind participants who establish states of intersubjectivity in their dialogue with each other, the interpreters are also part of their social world.The aim of this study is to establish more awareness of multimodal strategies that can support meaningmaking in communication with deafblind participants. This article enlights insight into the interpreters' professional practice and how they alternate between interpreting spoken utterances, describing the context, and facilitating different kinds of haptic signals. This insight is also relevant to other professional groups working to assist deafblind persons, for instance, teachers, social workers, health workers, and personal assistants. The findings will also contribute to the field of linguistics research. By exploring a specific setting, where multimodal resources are used by participants who have a combined sensory loss, we can understand language use in this specific setting as well as theoretical concepts and general structures in human communication.

show abstract

The challenges of multimodality and multi-sensoriality: Methodological issues in analyzing tactile signed interaction

Cited by 28 publications

References 26 publications

Access to Interaction and Context Through Situated Descriptions: A Study of Interpreting for Deafblind Persons

Access to Interaction and Context Through Situated Descriptions: A Study of Interpreting for Deafblind Persons

Enactivism and ethnomethodological conversation analysis as tools for expanding Universal Design for Learning: the case of visually impaired mathematics students

Intersubjective Understanding in Interpreted Table Conversations for Deafblind Persons

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About