Cover not available
Part of
Mobilizing Others: Grammar and lexis within larger activities
Edited by Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm, Emma Betz and Peter Golato
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 33] 2020
► pp. 203–228

Chapter 8
Mobilizing others when you have little (recognizable) language

| Loughborough University
| Anglia Ruskin University
| Lancaster University
Getting another person to engage with you is, for most people, most of the time, a merely trivial challenge. Of course, there are times when our attempts are awkward, or misfire; nevertheless, usually we bring them off smoothly and successfully. But it is far from easy if you have an intellectual impairment; and, a fortiori, dauntingly challenging if the impairment is profound. For someone with severe cognitive and communicative incapacity, the attempt to get others to do things is highly, perhaps entirely, dependent on the others’ doubtful construction of just what it is that they are supposed to do. This chapter is about those attempts: how they succeed, and how (as they often do) they fail.
Keywords: intellectual disability, atypicality, service-users, interlocutors, incoherence, intentionality, vocalizations
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The residents’ attempts at mobilizing others
  • Concluding comments
  • Funding
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.33.08ant
References (40)
References
Antaki, Charles, Rebecca J. Crompton, Chris Walton, and W. Mick L. Finlay. 2017. “How Adults with a Profound Intellectual Disability Engage Others in Interaction.” Sociology of Health & Illness 39 (4): 581–598. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Antaki, Charles, W. Mick L. Finlay, and Chris Walton. 2009. “Choice for People with an Intellectual Impairment in Official Discourse and in Practice.” Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities 64: 260–266. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Antaki, Charles, Chris Finlay, Chris Walton, and Louise Pate. 2008. “Offering Choice to People with an Intellectual Impairment: an Interactional Study.” Journal of Intellectual Disability Research 52: 1165–1175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Antaki, Charles, and Alexandra Kent. 2012. “Telling People what to do (and, sometimes, why): Contingency, Entitlement and Explanation in Staff Requests to Adults with Intellectual Impairments.” Journal of Pragmatics 44: 876–889. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Antaki, Charles, and Ray Wilkinson. 2012. “Conversation Analysis and the Study of Atypical Populations.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Tanya Stivers and Jack Sidnell, 533–550. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fifth ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 5–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Broth, Mathias, and Keevallik, Leelo. 2014. “Getting Ready to Move as a Couple: Accomplishing Mobile Formations in a Dance Class”. Space and Culture 17 (2): 107–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cameron-Faulkner, Thea, Anna Theakston, Elena Lieven, and Michael Tomasello. 2015. “The Relationship Between Infant Holdout and Gives, and Pointing.” Infancy 20 (5): 576–586. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cascella, P. W. (2005). Expressive communication strengths of adults with severe to profound intellectual disabilities as reported by group home staff. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 26(3), 156–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Checa-Garcia, Irene. 2014. “Asking for Things without Words: Embodiment of Action Onset as a Toddlers’ Communication Tool.” In Talk in Institutions: a LANSI Volume, ed. by Christine M. Jacknick, Catherine Box, Hansun Zhang Waring, 29–45. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Clark, Herb H. 2005. “Coordinating with Each Other in a Material World.” Discourse Studies 7: 507–525. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul. 1997. “‘Open’ Class Repair initiators in Response to Sequential Sources of Troubles in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 28: 9–101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goode, David. 1994. A World without Words. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles. 1980. “Restarts, Pauses, and the Achievement of Mutual Gaze at Turn-Beginning.” Sociological Inquiry 50 (3–4): 272–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. “A Competent Speaker who can’t Speak: The Social Life of Aphasia.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14 (2): 151–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hodapp, R. M., Evans, D. W., & Ward, B. A. (1989). Communicative interaction between teachers and children with severe handicaps. Mental Retardation, 27, 388–395.Google Scholar
Finlay, W. Mick L., Charles Antaki, and Chris Walton. 2008a. “On not Being Noticed: Learning Disabilities and the Non-Vocal Register.” Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 45: 227–245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Finlay, W. Mick L., Charles Antaki, Chris Walton, and Penny Stribling. 2008b. “The Dilemma for Staff in “Playing a Game” with People with a Profound Intellectual Disability.” Sociology of Health and Illness 30: 531–549. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Finlay, W. Mick L., Charles Antaki, and Chris Walton. 2008c. “Saying No to the Staff: an Analysis of Refusals in a Home for People with Severe Communication Difficulties.” Sociology of Health and Illness 30: 55–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Forrester, Mike. 2011. “The Video-Camera as Natural Object.” In Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research, ed. by Paula Reavey. Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Forster, Sheridan, and Teresa Iacono. 2008. “Disability Support Workers’ Experience of Interaction with a Person with Profound intellectual disability.” Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability 33 (2): 137–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, Susan. 2014. “Language and the Manual Modality. The Communicative Resilience of the Human Species.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, ed. by Nick Enfield, Paul Kockelman, and Jack Sidnell, 78–101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hoey, Elliott M. 2015. “Lapses: How People Arrive at, and Deal with, Discontinuities in Talk”. Research on Language and Social Interaction 48 (4): 430–453. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kääntä, Liisa, and Arja Piirainen-Marsh. 2013. “Manual Guiding in Peer Group Interaction: a Resource for Organizing a Practical Classroom Task.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (4): 322–343. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keevallik, Leelo. 2010. “Bodily Quoting in Dance Correction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 43 (4): 401–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. “Coordinating the Temporalities of Talk and Dance.” In Temporality in Interaction, ed. by Arnulf Deppermann, and Susanne Günthner, 309–336. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kendrick, Kobin, and Paul Drew. 2016. “Recruitment: Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49: 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Knoblauch, Hubert, Rene Tuma, and Bernt Schnettler. 2014. Videography. Berlin: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Levinson, Steven C. 1979. “Activity Types and Language.” Linguistics 17 (5–6): 365–400.Google Scholar
2013. “Action Formation and Ascription.” In Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Tanya Stivers, and Jack Sidnell, 103–130. Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley.Google Scholar
Mondada, Lorenza. 2018. “Multiple Temporalities of Language and Body in Interaction: Challenges for Transcribing Multimodality.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 51 (1): 85–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prain, Meredith, Keith McVilly, Paul Ramcharan, Sally Currie, and John Reece. 2010. “Observing the Behavior and Interactions of Adults with Congenital Deafblindness Living in Community Residences.” Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability 35 (2): 82–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni. 2014. “When do People not use Language to Make Requests?” In Requesting in Social interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 303–334. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, and Emanuel A. Schegloff. 2002. “Home position.” Gesture 2 (2): 133–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sterponi, Laura, and Jennifer Shankey. 2014. “Rethinking Echolalia: Repetition as Interactional Resource in the Communication of a Child with Autism.” Journal of Child Language 41 (2): 275–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stivers, Tanya, and Federico Rossano. 2010. “Mobilizing Response.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 43: 3–31. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thorgrímsson, Guddmundur B., Christine Fawcett, and Ulf Liszkowski. 2014. “Infants’ Expectations about Gestures and Actions in Third-Party Interactions.” Developmental Psychology 5: 321.Google Scholar
Williams, Val. 2011. Disability and Discourse. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
World Health Organisation (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD). [URL] (accessed August 24th 2015).
Yearley, Steve, and John D. Brewer. 1989. Stigma and Conversational Competence: a Conversation Analytic Study of the Mentally Handicapped. Human Studies 12: 97–115. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Stokoe, Elizabeth & Emma Richardson
2023. Asking for help without asking for help: How victims request and police offer assistance in cases of domestic violence when perpetrators are potentially co-present. Discourse Studies 25:3 ► pp. 383 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.