[Linganth] CFP on multimodal directives and children's language development

Tue Mar 11 17:34:50 UTC 2025

Yes and no.  I am on the general project but within the project there is a central group focussing on directives.  I opted out of this focus because Candy’s focus is exactly on directives and Alan invited Candy to join that group.  So Tami and I are on the margins of the team and we do not do micro analysis of the body as well, but rather we  are looking at mealtime parent-child interactions on a larger scale. Our Georgetown plenary was titled “Commensality and the Limits of Autonomy in Late Liberal Families.”  The presentation began with a general conceptualization and historical framing of ‘autonomy’ and the moral education of children in liberal, modern societies since the Englightenment. We then sped to late liberal childrearing and the talk labor entailed for parents in listening to children’s wants, with a focus on food consumption, which can be fraught and entailed.  All this is far from micro-analysis of the body’s movements, although the body is conceptually central.

Relatedly, yesterday I was reading articles related to another paper that Tami and I wrote for a conference in Berlin last year on WHO and UniceF and World Bank global interventions re childrearing practices in low and middle income countries. We have to revise the paper for an edited volume coming out of the conference.  I was infuriated by a multi-authored paper whose main point I share but which completely disregarded language socialization reseaarch so vital to their argument. The paper critiqued a paper supporting an NGO child-directed communication intervention among the Wolof in rural Senegal.  The original paper was horrific.  I showed it to Judy and she was sickened.  But the critique cited only cultural psychology, even though the paper addressed talk and communicative practices.  The first author is Gilda Morelli, Barbara’s former student, and included Akira Takada, among 6 authors I think.  The barriers are familiar but it sickens the soul, honestly.

….
We are taking a short trip to Sydney via LA.  We are flying to LA on Mar 29 and staying at the Luskin Center at UCLA.  We are visiting our buddies and also joining a small discussion group with a visiting phenomenologist (Dan Zahavi) on Marc 31. Then March 1 in the evening we fly to Sydney and return March 16.

 Sandro is still suffering with his left hand and is now at the hand PT, where he goes twice a week.  Tomorrow he is going to a UCSF pain clinic, which should be informative, hopefully.  I think I will go along to take notes.

I was invited to a birthday dinner for my Rolfing expert, Georgette Delvaux.  I put on a dress for the occasion, first time since moving to the Bay area.  She invited 5 women friends at her house for a dinner prepared by a superb chef of a restaurant that changed ownership a while back.   One woman was ill and didn’t join. One other woman was Galen Cranz, whom I have gotten to know pretty well (she lives around the corner and is a good friend of my friend Alice in LA and was on faculty at UCB.) The other woman (Martine) is, like Georgette, from Luxenbourg.  She has a phd in chemical engineering from UCB and lives nearby.  The meal was incredibly elegant and absolutely delicious.  The women were interesting.  Georgette refused to say her age. I am not certain she had a good time, because the discussion, dominated by the 3 women friends, focussed on the UC Berkeley’s relation to the Berkeley community and natural environment. I pointed out that the University of California nowadays can’t even properly support graduate students and it is getting worse every single day.

That’s some of the news at the top of the hour.

Abidingly, I miss you.

love, ellie

Elinor Ochs
Distinguished Research Professor
UCLA
eochs at anthro.ucla.edu

On 11 Mar 2025, at 6:36 AM, E. Mara Green <egreen at barnard.edu> wrote:

Dear all,
Please find below a CFP from Alan Rumsey, who also encourages others to share this widely. Thank you! Please contact Alan directly with any questions/submissions.

Call for papers:

All interested researchers are invited to submit an abstract to be considered for a special issue on multimodal directives and children’s language development.

Directives/requests have long been recognised as central to interactions involving young children, and to their language learning. While early studies (e.g., Ervin Tripp et al 1990) focused exclusively on directive speech forms, directives are increasingly being studied within the context of multimodal directive-response trajectories in which they occur, which include not only speech or sign, but also gaze, gesture, touch and other forms of bodily comportment (e.g., de León 2017, Goodwin and Cekaite 2018, Gaskins and Frick 2023). For the proposed special issue, we invite contributions with a multimodal focus on directives and the role they play in children’s language learning – including deaf children learning sign languages. (A possible additional focus could be on the role of directives in children’s socialization to particular cultures, of which language-learning is one aspect.)  We welcome proposals using a wide range of theoretical approaches and methods. If interested, please send a 200-400 word abstract by March 30 to alan.rumsey at anu.edu.au<mailto:alan.rumsey at anu.edu.au>. If your proposal is accepted, a near-final version of your paper will be due in by July 30. Feedback on it will be offered, and you will then have until August 30 to send us a final version, to be submitted for review byLanguage Development Research.

References

De León, Lourdes 2017. Emerging learning ecologies: Mayan children's initiative and correctional directives in their everyday enskilment practices. Linguistics and Education 41:47-58.

Ervin-Tripp, S., Guo, J., & Lampert, M. (1990). Politeness and persuasion in children’s control acts. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 307–331.

Gaskins, D., & Frick, M. 2023. Embodiment in directive sequences: The case of triadic interactions in a Polish-English bilingual family. International Journal of Bilingualism, 27(1), 122-142.

Goodwin, M. H., & Cekaite, A. 2018. Embodied Family Choreography: Practices of Control, Care, and Mundane Creativity London: Routledge.

If you have any queries, please send them to me at Alan.Rumsey at anu.edu.au<mailto:Alan.Rumsey at anu.edu.au>

--
E. Mara Green (she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
Barnard College, Columbia University

New book, available in print or open access:
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520399235/making-sense<https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.ucpress.edu%2fbook%2f9780520399235%2fmaking-sense&c=E,1,fDjjK2F_95x5_OqslojOnJxsvtBs4fXFDNug-mm1hBIpOUT6frIJJTUqQUASyJO2jLWTK9wQXRnFl5YT5D4cZy-9Yt8EyYDML3QRGPGg6-sUklY,&typo=1>

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