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Emotion in Language: Theory – research – application
Edited by Ulrike M. Lüdtke
[Consciousness & Emotion Book Series 10] 2015
► pp. 113–134

Enkinaesthetic polyphony:

The underpinning for first-order languaging

 | University of Glasgow, Scotland
 | University of Agder, Norway
We contest two claims: (1) that language, understood as the processing of abstract symbolic forms, is an instrument of cognition and rational thought, and (2) that conventional notions of turn-taking, exchange structure, and move analysis, are satisfactory as a basis for theorizing communication between living, feeling agents. We offer an enkinaesthetic theory describing the reciprocal affective neuro-muscular dynamical flows and tensions of co-agential dialogical sense-making relations. This “enkinaesthetic dialogue” is characterized by a preconceptual experientially recursive temporal dynamics forming the deep extended melodies of relationships in time. An understanding of how those relationships work, when we understand and are ourselves understood, when communication falters and conflict arises, will depend on a grasp of our enkinaesthetic intersubjectivity.
Keywords: affect, agents, dynamics, enkinaesthesia, first-order languaging
Published online: 16 December 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ceb.10.06stu
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