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Article published In:
Interactional Linguistics
Vol. 1:2 (2021) ► pp.241–272

Parental lip-smacks during infant mealtimes

Multimodal features and social functions

ORCID logo | Linköping University
| Linköping University

The lip-smack is a communicative sound object that has received very little research attention, with most work examining their occurrence in nonhuman primate interaction. The current paper aims to dissect the social potential of lip-smacks in human interaction. The analysis examines a corpus of 391 lip-smack particles produced by English-speaking parents while feeding their infants. A multimodal interaction analysis details the main features: (1) rhythmical production in a series, (2) facial-embodied aspects, and (3) temporal organisation. Lip-smacks occurred in prosodically grouped chains of mostly 3 or 5 particles, with accompanying facial expressions, and were co-ordinated with the infants’ chewing. They highlight the mechanics of chewing while framing eating as a pleasant interactional event.

The paper contributes not only to the distinctly social functions of a sound object hitherto ignored in linguistics but also to research on interactional exchanges in early childhood and their potential connection to the sociality of nonhuman primates.

Keywords: infant, interaction analysis, lip-smacks, multimodal, primate interaction, sound object
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Lip-smacking in nonhuman primates
    • 1.2Non-lexical sounds in interaction
  • 2.Data and methods
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1The rhythmic and prosodic production of lip-smack chains
    • 3.2Eye gaze, facial gestures, and embodied movements
    • 3.3Temporal organisation
  • 4.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 2 August 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/il.21006.wig
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