[Linganth] AAA Session Proposal - Draft

[Barbara LeMaster]

Hi All,

I am putting a session together on "essential embodied communication".  If you are interested in participating, please let me know at the email above: Barbara.LeMaster at csulb.edu .  Below is a draft session description.

AAA 2015
Draft Session Abstract about
Essential Embodied Communication

         Communicating involves more than a stream of words or signs.  Sometimes, however, situated embodied communication becomes more relevant to understanding an interaction than do words or signs. Goodwin noted that sometimes embodied practices are “used by participants in interaction to organize phenomena relevant to vision….  There is thus not only communication through vision, but also ongoing communication about relevant vision (Goodwin, 1981, 1986).  Goodwin was noting how vision can be used as an index that can align speakers’ focus and talk. This is one of many uses of essential embodied communications that are the focus of this session.  One example is two simultaneous expressions of a university seminar, one in spoken English, and the other interpreted English-to-American Sign Language (ASL).  Without also interpreting eye-gaze among the seminar participants, the Deaf participant becomes lost when the interpreted ASL does deviates from a linear expression. As session participants look at each other, they communicate understandings and misunderstandings through their gaze and facial expressions.  Without also interpreting these, the person receiving the linear interpretation of the seminar looses the connections of the threads of diverted conversation.  Another paper also considers eye-gaze in Nepal, and how it is used both as a material and ethical precursor to people being able to communicate in natural sign.  Another paper combines an analysis of perspective and shared sign space (e.g., Emmorey and Tversky 2002) with an ethnographic analysis of how two Ukranian Deaf men map political and social identities onto a violently contested space (orientation to maps of real geography, a feature that differs from spoken languages).



Dr. Barbara LeMaster
Linguistics Search Committee, Chair
Professor,
Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics
CSULB, 1250 Bellflower Boulevard
Long Beach, CA 90840
Office:  FO3-322
Phone: (562) 985-5037
Fax:  (562) 985-4371
Email: Barbara.LeMaster at csulb.edu
Website: http://www.csulb.edu/~lemaster
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