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Article published In:
Recurrent Gestures
Edited by Simon Harrison, Silva H. Ladewig and Jana Bressem
[Gesture 20:2] 2021
► pp. 285–312

The Slapping movement as an embodied practice of dislike

Inter-affectivity in interactions among children

| European University ViadrinaFrankfurt-Oder
| European University ViadrinaFrankfurt-Oder
This paper introduces the Slapping movement as an embodied practice of dislike or meta-commentary recurring in conflictive situations between German children aged four to six (Hotze, 2019). Children move this way primarily in stopping a co-participant’s action and protesting against the action to be stopped. The Slapping movements documented showed different manners of execution. Some forms appeared to be very expressive, others were more schematic. Inspired by a phenomenological approach to gestures our analysis shows that the movement qualities show different degrees of communicative effort and affective intensity which respond to the inter-affective dynamics unfolding between the participants of a situation. This means that the affective intensities unfolding in an interaction not only give rise to the Slapping movement, but they also influence how the hands are moved. In more detail, we observed that the higher the affective intensities become the larger and more vigorous the Slapping movements are.
Keywords: inter-affectivity, affectivity, negation, recurrent gesture, dynamic multimodal communication, child interaction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Recurrent gestures
    • 1.2Recurrent gestural movements observed in children
    • 1.3Recurrent gestural movements and affect
  • 2.Identifying and analyzing Slapping movements
  • 3.The Slapping movement exemplified
    • Example 1.Negotiation and outburst of anger
    • Example 2.Continuous confrontation and abrupt rise of anger
    • Example 3.Back and forth of offering and rejecting
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.21013.lad
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