Improvised Contexts: Movement, Perception and Expression in Deaf Children's Interactions
Identifieur interne : 001112 ( Main/Corpus ); précédent : 001111; suivant : 001113Improvised Contexts: Movement, Perception and Expression in Deaf Children's Interactions
Auteurs : Herman CoenenSource :
- Journal of Phenomenological Psychology [ 0047-2662 ] ; 1986.
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DOI: 10.1163/156916286X00088
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<p>IMPROVISED CONTEXTS: MOVEMENT, PERCEPTION AND EXPRESSION IN DEAF CHILDREN'S INTERACTIONS* Herman Coenen "It is not easy to uncover motoric intentionality in its essence: it hides behind the objective world to the constitution of which it contributes" (M. Merleau-Ponty, Phinominologie de la Perception, p. 167). ' The following text describes some results of a research project that Is undertook as a participant observer in a school for deaf children. It purports to draw the reader's attention to the fundamental and multi- form activities of the body in the everyday interactions of these children: how these children's school-world with its communicative contents, its routines and its adventurous occurrences, is shaped through gestures, mimics, locomotions, to mention just a few aspects of the broad range of motoric behaviour. Special attention is drawn to the phenomenon of "introduction," showing how the children introduce strangers into their world, how they introduce each other into new situations within the context of that world-and, as a contrast, how they are introduced into an outside world: a school for children without hearing-loss. The contrast evoked here is analyzed through the concepts of "incorporation" versus . "annexation," the former indicating a rather naturally flowing way of leading each other into a new environment or situation, mainly by bodily movements-the latter indicating the more coercive style in which the - children are taken up into a world not their own, mainly through express _ rule-enforcement. In the course of the whole analysis an important characteristic with which corporeality imbues these children's inter- actions becomes visible: improvisation. Upon narrow inspection their everyday world shows itself as totally alive, full of fluidity and change; it is a world built upon "improvised contexts." , -</p>
<p>2 Preliminaries Corporeality, meaningful structure, interaction: theoretical considerations The project of which I present some results here was a first stage of a longer wandering through a range of social settings, undertaken in order to explore the workings of the body in human interaction. The terms in which I report about the daily life of a group of hearing impaired children, and the notions implied in the analysis, will have to be read against that background. Therefore it seems good to start here with an indication of the theoretical lines that are at stake. ? 1 In handling our daily affairs there is nothing that we take for granted so much as our own body. We know that it is there, that it works and we trust unthinkingly that it will go on working the next moment and throughout an indefinite period thereafter. It is there, at our disposal in an unproblematic way, and we often even use it as if it were an instru- ment, the most willing and plastic of all. This is even so where, in a new wave of attention to the body, we cultivate it and subject it to hygienic and sportive regimes. And as long as everything remains in good order, it is not difficult to hold this implicit vision upright. As the center of a well-functioning reality our body seems to affirm the obedient role that we ascribe to it. This much-practised attitude does not receive great correction from the human sciences. Mostly the body seems to be nonexistent there. The neglect of its functioning in personal and social life is only partly taken away by the recent attention directed to the body by such diverse disciplines as sociobiology or the socio-psychological experiments in non-verbal behaviour.2 They do bring interesting and useful insights, but cannot bring about a radical breakthrough with respect to the attitude meant here. The special emphasis laid by these newer lines of research on the autonomous mechanics at work in the body even represents a modern version of the separation of mind and body that is so deeply rooted in Western philosophy. Again, the body is viewed as being isolated from the higher, mental structures of human existence; and even where its own significance is acknowledged, it remains enclosed in a separate circuit. This view goes hand in hand with an equivalent isolation of mental activities: when it comes to action and its inherent production of meaning, all the elements for an explanation are taken from the sphere of consciousness with its rational and irrational aspects. The critical leap away from the basic philosophical prejudices hidden in the modem human sciences, as it is performed by phenomenology, is</p>
<p>3 generally known. Through phenomenology's methodic return towards the field of direct experiences new foundations have been laid for empirical and theoretical work in the sciences of man. In the building- process of these foundations the question of "meaning" plays a central role. Phenomenological research has made clear that meaning can no longer be treated as a separate factor in the constellation of human phenomena; it rather should be seen as a pervading quality underlying and integrating the many and various sectors of existence that traditionally have been isolated from each other by philosophical and scientific think- ing. Especially the age-old distinction between subject and (outer) world turns out to be a false starting point for a realistic treatment of the dynamisms in social and psychic life. Subject and environment (in a multiple sense) are centres of gravity within one and the same world. Parallel to this movement towards an overcoming of the theoretical borderline between subject and world, new insights into the significance of the body within the area of subjective life and action have made their way. In the work of Buytendijk, Plessner, Schutz, and especially Merleau- Ponty the latter change of view has been brought to its consequences.3 Here the body is acknowledged as playing more than just a subordinate role, separate from the centre of subjective activity which was tradition- ally supposed to reside in the individual's consciousness; rather, the body is our way of being present in the world, and the instance through which every activity comes to be realised. Therefore it is preferable, instead of speaking about "the body," to use the term "corporeality," as an expression of a basic characteristic of our field of action. Thus corporeality gains a crucial position when it comes to the ques- tion of how the subject's relations with the surrounding world are built up and structured. And therefore, corporeality now can be seen as lying at the heart of the problem of where meaning comes from, how it develops, and how it influences human behaviour. Through this rehabilitation of corporeality a less idealistic approach to the theory of meaning becomes possible. Instead of projecting it into a hidden corner of pure mind-an "ego," free of all wordly allegiance- one now has to look for it in the concrete structures of everyday affairs. And a point of special importance for social science is that, whereas meaning is embodied in everyday situations, it must from the outset be characterized as social. As corporeal beings we live in a common envi- ronment ; the meanings that grow in our actions are the outcome of a common undertaking. In theoretical respect the possibility of bridging the distance between two generally congenial lines of research in modern sociological tradition comes into view here: the first based on the concept of typifications,</p>
<p>4 developed by Schutz, Berger and Luckmann among others, the second based on the concept of the social act, stemming from G. H. Mead and Blumer.' The importance of the Schutzian concept of typifications can be found in its stress on the acting subject's world of experience as a basis for the explanation of his actions and reactions in the social sphere. Its shortcomings seem to have their origin in an overaccentuation of the ego-centered acts of consciousness in the constitution of typifications; typifications thus become individually oriented mental models or schemes of interpretation.5 5 Starting from the other side, so to say, the Meadian concept of social act reveals the meaning-productive character of social intercourse and places the conscious interpretations and acts of the individuals involved in a genetic and situational context. The latter thus come to be seen as aspects of a more encompassing interplay.6 The acknowledgement of corporeality brings to light the relevance of both and shows how they can be reformulated and knit together in the analysis of social processes. Thus the leading question for the empirical inquiry presented here is: how corporeality, in its various aspects of perceptive and expressive functioning, can be seen at work in the development and structuring of interactive situations. This has to be specified at several points. First, my focus of interest is the interplay of gestures exchanged between the participants of the interaction. Each subject's movements take place in a corporeal field that is from the outset a shared one; in this field there is a continuous formation-process of social acts of which the individual movements are integrated parts. Second, this formation-process charac- terizes itself as a mutual improvisation by the participants, on the background of given themes and forms of action. In this improvisational activity situational structures come into being, which render each in- volved element its proper place. Third, these structures function as implicit meaning-patterns (social types) pervading the more conscious and willfull actions and interpretations of the participant subjects on the one hand, while they are, on the other hand, constantly being restruc- tured and reshaped by the latter. It may be clear that through the general insights into the significance of corporeality for the sociological understanding of the dynamics in inter- actional processes a new field of study is opened up, in which traditional theories such as those on role and socialisation shift. Also, the corporeal character of social events asks for another approach than intellectual reasoning and deductive logic alone. Therefore, in this project the choice was made for an exploration of concrete situations in everyday contexts that could give the hitherto global and presumptive insights a more substantive and detailed filling. The choice for a deaf children's world</p>
<p>5 was based on the additional motivation, that this context with its special accent on bodily movement and gesture might provide a privileged vantage point for observing the birth of meaning in the sphere of corporeal interplay. A practical aspect of doing the study in this particu- lar context was that it could shed some light on the problems inherent in the discussion between the protagonists of the oral language approach and those of the use of sign language in the education of the deaf. Setting and method of the study . The study that is reported here took place in a school for deaf children in San Francisco's Bay Area, in the period between February and July 1980. Some criteria decisive for the selection of this particular school were: the "dual track" that was followed in this school's teaching system, implying the simultaneous training of oral language (based on lip-reading and use of speech) and sign-language (Signing Exact English, SEE); the sympathetic and open attitude of the school's teaching staff towards this researcher and his project; the fact that the children were used to the regular presence of parents and other visitors in the classrooms; the relatively easy access of the school's site. The school was set up as a day centre to which the children were brought by schoolbus every morning and from which they were taken back to their homes in the afternoon. The area from which the pupils were recruited is generally known as prosperous, its lifestyle being liberal, with a high amount of geographical mobility. The school's population (teaching staff not included) consisted of around twenty children in ages varying between three and nine. They were divided up into four classes, one for deaf-and-blind pupils, the other three classes . for hearing impaired children in the successive age-groups of two and three, four and five, six to nine years. My research project did not include the deaf-and-blind children's class; it was restricted to the latter three classes whose population was medically characterized as children with severe to profound hearing loss. All of them wore hearing aids. Each class was conducted by a qualified teacher (two teachers for the two and three year olds) plus an aid. It goes without saying that in the following report all names have been changed for the sake of anonymity. For an impression of the everyday setting in which the interactions analysed here developed, the following two schemes, the first temporal, the second spatial, may be helpful. 1. Temporal schema: 8. a.m.: successive arrival of staff; ,</p>
<p>6 8.30 a.m.: successive arrival of children; 9. a.m.: lessons start; 10.-10.30 a.m.: play- and snack-time; 11.45 a.m. - 12.45 p.m.: lunch-time; ' 2. p.m.: end of school day. 2. Spatial scheme: (see next page) As to the method chosen for this study the following remarks should be made. I have tried to develop an approach that suited the field to be studied as well as the questions to be asked. As the foregoing has indicated already, these two dimensions were narrowly connected to each other, so that the object of the project can be thus resumed: to develop, on the basis of everyday occurrences among children in a school for the deaf, some insights into the processes of social meaning-constitution through corporeality. Departing from phenomenological analyses of corporeal- ity, I could assume that the field of study would be characterized by the -- partial implicitness of its meaning-structures, by fluidity and change- ability, by a "gestalt"-like organisation and interconnectedness of behav- ioral elements, and by the concrete situatedness of this organisation. These and other considerations pointed in the direction of a method combining participant observation and phenomenological-interpretive analysis within the general lines of a "grounded theory"-approach. As a participant observer I was a regular visitor of the school, who sat around in the classrooms during the lessons, went out with the children and their teachers on the playground during physical education hours and playtime, etc. I remained in the background as much as possible, trying not to interfere in things that happened among children or be- tween them and teachers. My role was known as that of a researcher, who was there with the intention of watching, noting down and trying to understand what was going on. And as such I was clearly accepted by the children and their teachers. This acceptance from the teacher's side was a great help: they provided me with background-information and were always willing to answer specific questions pertaining to the interpreta- tion of messages in sign-language exchanged by children. Acceptance by the children was crucial, in order to be able to assist in their interactions without blocking the "natural" flow of these situations. Therefore I took care to build up a friendly contact with them and not to be identified too much with the teachers, who also would have to rebuke and punish at times. I wanted the kids to feel free-as much as possible-to act as they would have done if I had not been there. My position as an overt researcher and the specific questions I had in</p>
<p>7</p>
<p>8 mind, implied the necessity of keeping a subtle balance between the role of an acquaintance and that of a stranger. In this light my decision to enter the field without a mastery of the sign-language used has to be understood. As I was especially looking for the mostly implicit meanings of the total area of corporeal movements, I judged that it was better to refrain from concentrating on the explicit messages exchanged through the means of this codified system of standard connections of sign and signified. The intention of the study was first of all: discovery. The "grounded theory"-approach, described by Glaser and Straus', seemed therefore most fit for the general strategy that had to be followed. As an important consequence the activities of data collection and analysis had to be intimately connected to each other; they were carried out alter- nately, at least during the period of my actual presence in the field, and thus they could reciprocally influence each other. In accordance with the general structure of the phenomenological method the analysis could be seen developing in two phases (which however were not clearly distinct with respect to time): The first phase consisted of elaborating some main features of the field's meaningful world, its routines, its specific happenings, its web of outspoken and tacit interpretations. Special attention was given to the possible cristallizations of the children's own meaning-provinces. within the boundaries of the school's world at large. The second phase consisted in asking the genetic question (in a phenomenological sense): how does this world, and especially the children's own province of that world, come into being and transmit itself in the course of the everyday flow of events? This question was meant in the specific sense that was given to the problems of meaning-genesis in the first paragraph of this paper: in terms, that is, of the connection of typifications, social acts and corporeality. This led to selecting interactional sequences and scrutinizing them insofar as they showed an interplay of various manifestations of corporeal movement, perception and expression by the participants of the interaction. The ways in which this interplay produced the themes and meaningful struc- tures of the situation at hand were the insights that I hoped to reach through this analysis. Before starting now with an outview on what I discovered, a last remark should be made about the activity of writing in the context of this research-project. In the exploration of a world of meaning, as was the case here, the development of texts through writing, be it in the shape of preliminary theoretical considerations, of field notes, of theoretical memos, or of a final synthetic presentation of resulting insights, takes a central place. From the beginning, these texts or text-fragments charac- terize themselves by a discursive form: they can be compared with</p>
<p>9 textures rather than with collections of separate entities. When it comes to a final report, therefore, a reduction of the results into a set of clearly distinct propositions would be unsuitable, if ever possible. A report in the context of interpretive social research will rather follow the lines of a flowing argumentation in which, through the means of relevant citations of fieldnotes and adequate concepts built up in the analytic process, a synthetic insight is evoked pertaining to the field under study. It presents a structure that has its plausibility with respect to the world of experi- ences at stake. As such, however, it is merely one realisation out of a (restricted) plurality of possibilities. Field Discoveries Incorporation: receiving a stranger The best point with which to start introducing the reader to the world I explored is the moment of my own start: a chilly, grey day, in early 1980, when I found myself passing through the rather unimposing entrance of that low wooden school building. I will show here now how that first day's feelings of estrangement were gradually overcome by the actions through which the deaf children responded to my presence. I will point out an important feature of those responses which, because of their corporeal character, may be called "incorporation." So, I take my point of departure in those experiences of the first day: being a stranger. If I was a stranger this was true in more than one respect. There was California, the United States, this country where I had never been before and that was so unexpectedly different in many ways, down to the most "trivial" things like doorknobs put in the wrong place and doors opening to the wrong side, or people asking me "how are you today?" without even knowing who I was and where I was yesterday. Then there was this school full of unknown people doing their inscrutable things, following invisible regulations and moving within surroundings full of obscure entities and functionaries in a matter of fact way that seemed as senseless as it was natural. And as if this were not enough, there were these children, with their quick, mysterious gestures, living in their own little world, impenetrable, unreachable. Was I going to do observations here? Would I ever be able to see something here? Not to speak of those nice and clear theoretical reflections about interactional context, corporeal- ity, perception, ambiguity and temporality that I had worked out before coming here; they seemed not to work any more, and suddenly I was left without words. The children here were deaf, but I got dumb. ,</p>
<p>10 And in my struggle with depression and weariness, stubbornly fighting to remain sitting there in the classrooms and to get something down on my notepad, I did not notice who it was that really helped me out of this. More than a year afterward, when that self-imposed pursuit of results was over in a way, I went through those first clumsy fragmentary notes again. And suddenly I saw: It was the kids themselves who did it and brought me in.g It was not I who forced my way in, it was they who, in small, inconspicuous moments took me inside. And so I gradually entered the field, quite some time after I came there. How did they do it? I think an adequate term here could be "incorpo- ration," because it was with their bodies that they took me into their world. First of all there were the looks. At many moments I got these open, friendly curious faces directed at me that gave the impression: "You are here, in the midst of what we are doing here; but what exactly is the part you take? " Now a distinction-although not too sharp--should be made between the two older age groups (the four and five year olds and the six to nine year olds) versus the youngest group (the two and three year olds). The impression has remained with me, that in the former two groups the looks had a more expressive character, whereas the youngest children did not give me that sign of an outspoken awareness of and attention to my presence. For them I did not seem to exist as a separate element in their reality, until the moment when I seemed to fit into the web of practical connections that they again and again built up around themselves: Charley9 wants the little chair I am sitting on. He reaches his hand out. I get up and immediately he crawls on it. Then he points to the paper-holder (he sees that Brian sits at this table drawing on a sheet of paper from that paper-holder). I give him a sheet of paper. He points out to me where I should put it: on the tray in front of him on the table. I put it on a wrong spot. He takes it up and puts it on the right spot. He starts drawing. I write his name in the margin of the sheet. He points to it. I point to the name and then on to him.... (Somewhat later) Sally comes to the drawing-table, takes a piece of paper, touches me, I have to give her a pencil (observation notes (o.n.); 28.2.1980). Here, with these younger children the looks seemed to be more integrated as an inconspicuous part of a practical movement of the body as a whole in which I was "asked" to do something for them. The spear-point of this total body-movement (i.e., that gestural moment which most directly caught my attention) would be: a reaching or pointing gesture of the hand, or a touch of the hand. An important aspect, that more and more proved its relevance also in the two other classes, shows itself here: It was very difficult to distinguish</p>
<p>11 sharply between an express "inviting" gesture and the movements be- longing to the situation into which I was being invited. Rather, there was a sort of threshold-gesture in which I was simultaneously invited to take part in the situation and received as part of the situation. The invitational gesture was not just an anticipation, it was itself the start of that into which it was an invitation. This is a telling example of the equivocity of body-movements that I saw time and again during this observation- period : the movements of the body carry a diffuseness of meaning that makes it difficult to pin them down to a well defined, one-pointed "message." Even where expressly identified standard-gestures, obeying the prescribed code of sign language are used, there is an overflowing richness of (implicit) meaning conveyed by the total corporeal figure. Let us get back to "incorporation" now. Very soon I came to see that also in the two older age-groups there was more than just the looks that took me in. It often happened on the playground, as in the following scene: Little high shrieks. The six year old girl, Bonny, sits on the swing and wants to be pushed. I do it. Another child points up high, stands for a while in that position reaching its arm out, until I see it: she wants to be lifted up on the swinging-rings. One of the boys is dragging another one (Martin). Martin falls on the ground, cries (without tears) his mouth wide open, with guttural sound, his face drawn. Jane (teacher) intervenes, puts him on his feet, points out'° to the other child that he should not do that again and that he should apologize. Then they go away. Martin sees me, makes crying-like movements, draws up his trouser-leg, shows to me where it was hurt. He walks back to the scene of the accident, points to the ground. Looks at me. I pity him. He is satisfied (o.n.; 25.2.1980). So there are all sorts of bodily expressions in which I was asked for help: pointing with a hand, reaching out an arm, keeping a certain posture longer than is normally done, making demonstrating gestures (crying-like movements; drawing up his trouser-leg). And there is even- something I did not at that time expect to find among deaf children-the use of sound. In many of these scenes there is a mixture of explicitness and implicit- . ness. The children often seemed to be aware that the other one's attention has to be caught by some strategy or other before the interac- tion will have its normal flow. So the pain following from the situation of being dragged and falling down is at that very moment made into a demonstration by an ostentatious use of crying gestures, just a little more or longer than would be done by someone who "normally" cries out his pain. That is what Martin did until Jane came to help him on his feet again. In the meantime the pain seems to be over, but he seems to need something more. So the demonstrative aspect of the drawn face, the</p>
<p>12 wide-open mouth is used expressly now, and directed towards me. One may say that he tries to catch my attention, but while he succeeds in doing this he elicits a reaction from me: I pity him. So, considered on the basis of their result Martin's movements had several aspects at once: they were an express demonstration ("see what has happened to me") but implicitly they were an appeal for attention and a begging for consolation. In the variety of bodily expressions in which my incorporation was done by the children, not only explicitness and implicitness were inter- mingled, but there also was a mixture of distance and nearness (speaking in a literal bodily sense): there were the looks, the shrieks, the pointings and the demonstrative showings, but the kids did not leave it at that; in every way they tried to catch the gaze, the attention and cooperation of this stranger that had entered within their horizon. In a very self-evident way they passed the borderline experienced by so many grown-up persons, over to direct bodily contact. There were not just the little touches by the hand, there was touching in various other forms: Mary, Daphne and Sandra are eating at the table, outside in the sun (on the playground of a school for hearing children where they are brought once a week to attend some lessons). They are alone, I walk up to them and say "hi" (in sign language: one of the very few signs I learned). Sandra repeats the little game that she was doing together with the others a little while ago at their own school when we were going back from the playground into the school-building: she slaps me on the buttocks .... (o.n. ; 16.4.1980). While we were walking to the playground Anny suddenly grasped my hand and did not let it go again. Sign of friendship. Mabel (the new help, replacing Jane who is ill) comes in her direction but is turned down: Anny gruffly bows her head, does not look at her (o.n.; 22.4.1980). Bonny comes to me and tries to pull herself up on me and to climb on me. The Friday before, when I was going to leave from here, she also did that. Then she hung on my neck before I knew it. This time I say to her: "no, no; no, no," but she goes on for quite a while, until Lenny (teacher) comes and tells her to leave . me in peace (o.n.; 29.4.1980). I present this series of observational notes in their chronological order. They seem to reveal a certain development. Gradually the touches spread out over wider areas of the body and as in the last scene, they become a more total body-contact. This development accompanies my own growing feeling of acquaintedness and being-at-ease. I was becom- ing looser, more playful and expressive towards the children. On both sides there were reactions of trust; that stranger without confidence, withdrawn and impenetrable was now woven into their world, integrated into their field of corporeal possibilities: they could do something with ,</p>
<p>13 me now and trusted that I would answer. At moments I was even treated as an ally who had the right of entry into their world of feelings, whereas others were kept outside. Sometimes I became embarrassed by their very direct expressions of friendship, but quite often I did answer them. And I began to understand more and more of what they did. Incorporation: helping a new one enter In this part the insight into the phenomenon of incorporation is extended: incorporation turned out to be practised by the children in various situations. Here I will concentrate on the situation in which a peer and possible future member of the group enters the field. Incorpora- tion now gets some different aspects compared to the situation where I, as a grown-up visitor, was introduced into the children's world. The movements and gestures involved now become underlined by an ostenta- tious didactical tinge. Incorporation work was not done to me only. Somewhat later in my observation-period I saw them doing it also to a newcomer, Emmy, a little girl who was brought to this school for a trial period on three consecutive Wednesdays. I did some observations during her second visit to the school. (Physical education, on the playground:) All children are fascinated and very careful, wanting to help Emmy. At this moment they are standing in line, next to each other. Daphne is standing in front of them and throws the ball to each of them by turns. She now throws it to Emmy (who is the first one of the line), and she does this while going down on her knees; she laughs and claps her hands in a very demonstrative gesture towards Emmy, as soon as the little one has caught the ball..... Then, very demonstratively again, she reaches out her hands, indicating that Emmy should throw back..... (o.n. ; 14.5.1980). Here the incorporating activity has a much more expressive character than in my case. The whole group is watching Emmy very attentively, every movement she makes is registered by the other children. And whereas most of the time my incorporation was done by asking me for help, it was now they who, very ostentatiously, offered help to the newcomer. Emmy was treated as a very helpless child, without any orientation in this strange setting, who literally had to be led by the hand: ' The children are going back inside. Daphne and Bonny take Emmy between _ them. As they go up the stairs Daphne very carefully bends forward, keeping her left hand in front of Emmy, who is to her right, looking at Emmy, at the stairs and then Emmy again, saying "tap, tap, tap, tap ....." (o.n.; 14.5.1980).</p>
<p>14 All activities in this physical-education hour, which is normally a time for the children to be very spontaneous, are now centered around this newcomer and her introduction. Especially Daphne, who is the eldest child in this class, takes that task very seriously. It is not so much that the normal activities were stopped and replaced by another, "special pro- gram" ; on the contrary, many things are done as usual, but they get a special didactical tinge. All gestures are now done in a self-conscious, demonstrative way, and are executed such that they are visible for the newcomer. The normally inconspicuous and fluid development of the situation is now superseded by an accentuation and modeling of the movements forming part of it. The situation and the movements inte- grated in it thus get a double meaning. On the one hand they are what they would be usually: doing games in the physical education lesson or going back inside the school building. Simultaneously, however, every- thing that is done is not done purely for its own sake, but is centered around the new child that has to be given entrance to this world over against which it must feel so helpless. Incorporation here has several aspects that did not show up as much when it was done on my behalf: - it is done by expressly offering to the new one the possibility of taking part in the usual activities of the group; - the new one is considered as being in need of help in this situation and is expected to remain passive; - the task of entering this world with which the new one is confronted, is considered "not easy"; - there is an awareness of the specificity of the group's own world into which the new one is being introduced; therefore it has to be didacti- cally underlined; - implicity it is supposed that "in the end the new one will be one of us and know how to do everything we do here." So incorporation here gets its full sense of extending the area of the group's normal activities over the potential new member. Emmy's inte- gration is sought after by making use of the implicit invitational or seducing effect of situationally meaningful movements: "Just let her take part in what we do, then she will automatically do it herself and so learn what it is all about." That all of this nevertheless is carried out in such an express way shows that simultaneously the children must be aware of the risks of failure of the undertaking: after all there is a borderline that has to be crossed by the stranger. The invitation implicit in the situational movements does not work with a mechanical necessity; it may just not be</p>
<p>15 picked up. Movements are opaque, their meanings are ambiguous, their suction power always remains precarious. Improvisation: transforming prescribed tasks Now, in tackling the phenomenon of improvisation, we seem to approach a core concept for the analysis of the children's activities, I will describe two situational types in which improvisation manifests itself specifically; first the situation where children deal with the tasks that were imposed on them, second the enclosure of freedom within a schoolday represented by "play-time." In both instances the children cooperate in opening up and exploring together new spaces of phantasy. Again, as in the foregoing parts, our focus is directed on the way this process takes shape through the meaningful dynamics of the whole body. The careful gestures by which Emmy was led into the group's world and the didactic modeling in which the activities of the group were presented to her produced the suggestion that it would not be easy for her to enter this world and act as a normal part of it: the implicit impression was given that this world had its fixed routines and rules with a definite but rather impenetrable special logic hidden behind them. A long effort of learning how to adapt to these patterns and how to function actively in accordance with them would be necessary after the initial incorporation was accomplished. This impression of a fixed world was also the one with which I was confronted during my own period of approach to these children's world and of incorporation into it. An important experience, however, that I underwent while this incorporation progressed was the gradual dissolving of the initial image of a massive and finished reality. As I became acquainted and began to move more smoothly within the daily school- context, not just sitting there as an immobile observer but responding by gestures, smiles, practical help, talk, etc., my understanding of the invisible network of meaning that was at work here grew. And with it grew my awareness that this "network" was only present as a horizon of which no more than some glimpses are visible now and then, a horizon that recedes for whomever tries to catch it and that changes with every movement he makes. That which happened on the foreground turned out to be anything but fixed; I saw a constant succession of situations improvised by the children. Sometimes there was a vague indication of recurring themes, but my main experience was that of surprise at the new course things would take at every instance. So after my entering the thick surrounding walls that sent out their message of stability and regular</p>
<p>16 order, the world behind them opened up. I was confronted with children who were at work in many momentary undertakings, of which neither the course nor the outcome could be determined beforehand. What they did during recess-time on the playground where they were relatively free to manage their own dealings, as well as what happened in the classroom where they had to deal with imposed activities and regulations, was in an important respect characterized by improvisation. This is how I came across it in the classroom: Lilian draws a heart in several concentric lines, each of a different colour. Rachel imitates it on her own piece of paper, starting with the outer line. She bends over the little box that stands between them and looks at Lilian's work. She points with her finger and wrinkles her eyebrows. Lilian answers the question, saying "yel- low." Rachel shakes her head, says "red" and takes a red chalk. The two sit leaning against each other, arm against arm. Now Rachel draws a face into the heart. Lilian does it too and then colours the eyes red. Rachel bends over Lilian's drawing and makes them blue (the eyes in Rachel's own drawing are also blue); then she colours a blue mouth in Lilian's drawing. The mouth is wry. Lilian scratches the blue out by her forefinger, draws a new mouth. In the meantime Rachel has drawn a garland around the heart on her own paper. Lilian looks at Rachel's drawing, attentively, hanging over it. Then she bends over her own paper, simultaneously directing her gaze at it, and draws again. She feels her cheeks with both forefingers and then draws two red circles on the cheeks of the face on her paper. Suzie (their teacher) says that it's time for fruit. Rachel already stood near Suzie for some moments, watching her prepare the oranges (o.n.; 16.4.1980). It began very simply: Suzie, the teacher, asked Lilian and Rachel to sit at the table, gave them a box full of chalks and a piece of paper each, and instructed them to draw a heart for someone they love. (Valentine's day was coming up soon.) So the theme is set, the material for realizing it is given. But then a complicated interplay between the girls develops, wherein move after move follows a new and unexpected course. They take up the task handed to them by the teacher and while executing it they give it a specific corporeal translation of their own. Here another aspect of incorporation can be seen. Not only are new persons emerging in the children's environment subject to it, but given tasks and imposed regulations are being incorporated by them as well. In a subtle, and certainly little noticed way, the children transform the context in which they are placed by the school and their teachers, into a creation of their own. A first important moment in this process of transformation is this: that which was presented to them as two individual activities (each child</p>
<p>17 should make her own drawing) becomes a common undertaking from the very start; the children sit very close to each other, shoulder against shoulder, the one's right arm pressed against the other's left arm-and Lilian's first move (drawing concentric lines) is immediately copied by Rachel. Thus a chain of action is created in which every move of one child is hooked in by a move of the other child, in which the first one's move is taken over and enriched with some new element. "Hooking in" is not only a metaphorical way of speaking here, it is also done in a literal corporeal sense by the children, e.g., when Rachel and Lilian alternately lean over each other's work, gaze at it, etc. So two developments are taking place simultaneously: every move that is done knits the two children more closely together as a "team" working on the common undertaking,-and at the same time it is a further step in the creative transformation of the given task. How central the touches, looks, pointings, etc., are in this process may be clear from the foregoing . observation-scene. Improvisation: creating a fantastic chain In describing the second situational type manifesting improvisation- the occurrences during play-time-the insight into this phenomenon is deepened. Especially I will try to analyze some of the "mechanics" at work in the corporeal sphere, by which improvisation leads to a struc- tured and comprehensible, but quickly changing, situation of play. This insight into the functioning of corporeality in the heart of the improvisa- tional process-and, indeed, into the narrow connection of the two- makes it possible to better understand the overall improvisational aspect of these children's activities. The phenomenon of improvisation and the corporeal basis on which it took place struck me most at those moments and locations where the children were left relatively free to develop their own play, especially on the playground during recess-time. Three interesting points were to be seen here. Firstly, the implicit way that the invitation to enter and fill out a new imaginary space was given to each other; secondly, the quick spreading out of the new fantasy-scene over large parts of the group and of the playground; thirdly, the quick changes that the theme of fantasy underwent and the way these changes were anchored in the motoric sphere. Here is an example of the sort of scenes that occurred on the play- ground quite often:</p>
<p>18 We are walking to the playground, it's recess-time. Chris, one of the boys, is gesturing to Leigh, the teacher, partly by using his hands for sign-language, partly by using his arms and face in a theatrical fashion. I ask her what he "said" and Leigh explains: "Chris said that he is big and strong and green." And then she tells me about the t.v. show "The Incredible Hulk" in which a man is poisoned and thereby becomes big, strong and green. The actor who plays the role is deaf; the deaf children often watch it .and like it very much. Some instants later, on the playground: Sitting at the picnic table the children quietly eat their piece of orange. Then Anny puts the orange peel in her mouth, in front of her teeth, so that it shows through between her lips. Martin, in front of her, also does it. They look at each other with big eyes. Then Martin makes clawing gestures. Leigh asks: "Are you the big hulk?" He nods slightly. Now Anny also does it and then I see a whole bunch of children doing it. They are running after each other, throwing each other down on the ground. Chris and Anny are dragging Bonny with them. Bonny gets hold of my sleeve. The two others draw her loose, throw her on the ground. Children running, cooing sounds everywhere. Then suddenly, five of them in the cone-shaped climbing rails (o.n.; 16.4.1980). Taking the quiet scene at the picnic table as the point of departure one can see that the fantastic chain starts in a very simple manner: one of them puts an orange peel in her mouth (who among us never did this?). This move, seen by the child that is in front of her, functions as an invitation, although it may never have been intended so: Martin imitates Anny. But it does not remain at that; while looking at each other their eyes widen, get big. And thereupon Martin adds a new element: the clawing gesture. From that point on the whole thing quickly spreads to . she others. So the start is an ordinary practical situation: sitting together at the picnic-table eating oranges. Ordinary things, oranges, are the material around which the actions of the children are centered. What remains after eating are orange-peels; normally these are gathered and thrown away. But one child starts playing with its peel and the mere aspect of this induces one of the others to follow the example. As we saw before, just the doing of it implies a question. Something like: "Why don't you also do it?" And to see the first one do it is enough for the other one to pick up the question. Taking over the perceived gesture is the answer he gives. This answer is not just a declaration of some conscious intention, like: "Yes, I am going to join you in this thing," but it is the act of joining itself. The threshold to the fantasy-situation and its capricious develop- ment has been passed already. ,</p>
<p>19 To resume my point, the invitation is implicit, already a first presenta- tion of the situation into which it invites the other child. And in this particular case the invitation consists of a playful manipulation of an element of a practical situation. A more or less unusual handling of ordinary utensils is the first move. It is important to acknowledge that these ordinary things and the practical setting in which they figure form the "launching-site" for the imagination that comes into being. And in the further course they remain present as the indispensable soil for intermediate landings. Anny and Martin have opened up the imaginary scene. For me their interaction is a nicely circumscribed interplay of gestures, easy to observe in the way it progresses. The one's gesture is taken over by the other, ' with a small addition that slightly changes the total expression. And so on, back and forth. But then, suddenly I lose my overview: it seems that all children are running around with terrifying claws and dreadful faces, and in every corner of the playground something is happening that has to do with it. Everyone and every spot is taken up into the scene of fantasy, like an infection that has contaminated everything. The children get very excited, they move around wildly and a broad range of bodily aspects of expression, even guttural sounds, comes into play. The "infection" ' carries something magical: it is not just that gestures are reciprocally imitated and enriched, but through this channel that has its kernel in the very tangible sphere of the senses, a common imaginative world is being conjured up, transmitted and transformed. Here we see how far the ability of gestures to carry implicit loads-as was also the case in the instances of invitation--can reach. The interplay of gestures being per- formed, perceived and taken over is the corporeal story of an enchant- ment that is as inscrutable as it is commonplace. Another aspect that made me lose my comfortable feeling of overview was the fluidity of the scene. As the fantastic chain unrolled itself the gestures through which it was built up were in a permanent and quick process of remodeling. And at no moment did the theme played out by the children seem to be fixed. Now it must be said that although this fluidity was at its strongest in situations of fantasy-play, I had already been plagued by its manifestations since my first visit to the deaf chil- dren's school. In the most diverse situations I was confronted with it, and it was a constant threat to my self-confidence as an observer, especially in the beginning. Gradually however, I learned to see it as part of this setting and maybe even as one of its central characteristics. Only then did it become possible to get some insight into the "mechanics" of this fluidity, and to become more attentive to the perceptible forms in which ' the transformations of the scene took place. In the imaginative play-</p>
<p>20 situations I learned much about this. An interesting discovery however came up in the following learning situation: Madeleine (teacher) is doing speech-exercises with two of the children in her class, Barbara and Daphne ... Daphne talks about a boxer; she imitates the face of that race of dogs by drawing the corners of her mouth down with her fingers and dropping her eyelids. But then she says (orally): "Blee(d), blee(d), blee(d)," meanwhile tapping with two fingers on her mouth-corner and cheek. Daphne is very expressive. She shows how a boxer goes k.o. She drops backwards, with her eyes closed (o.n.; 22.4.1980). Without giving any notice or making a halt Daphne changed the theme of her conversation. Only afterwards, when going over my notes, I realized that she had done this; so smoothly and inconspicuously did the transition take place. How did this come about? The first and most plausible interpretation would seem to be that the double meaning of the word "boxer" was responsible for the change. This would leave to the gestures the role of a secondary expression of an association which already had been brought about in Daphne's mind through the verbal image "boxer." But if this were so, why wouldn't Daphne, when giving her demonstration of the sportsman boxer, just have made use of the ready-made stereotype "head tucked away behind two fists"? If we watch attentively what happens perceptibly, it becomes clear that the gestural activity plays a far more important part than was granted it in the foregoing interpretation. The story about the sportsman boxer starts at the moment when the gesture "drawing the corners of the mouth down with her fingers" undergoes that very slight change by which it becomes "tapping with two fingers on her mouth-corner and cheek." And what she further demonstrates about this unlucky sportsman is a consequent elaboration of the thing that was said about him in the first gesture ("the poor guy, he is bleeding terribly"). So it seems to me that the association really takes place in the motoric sphere: carrying out gestural movement A spontaneously fades into gestural movement A' etc. There is an improvisational fantasy at work in the gestures, and all possible parts of the body are involved. It is this gestural improvisation that produces an associative chain of movements in which the transition from one imagina- tive theme to another becomes possible. One could speak here of "pantomimic association." This phenomenon of "pantomimic association" is shown in several moments in the fantasy-scene on the playground, cited above (o.n.; 16.4.1980). Each new phase in the unfolding of the scene is opened up by</p>
<p>21 a gestural turning-point, where the association takes place: 1. Eating out the piece of orange fades into putting the peel in the mouth and showing it demonstratively to another child; 2. Showing the mouth with the peel in it fades into drawing a threatening face with big eyes; 3. The threaten- ing gesture expands over wider areas of the body, implying the clawing movement of the hands and the corresponding lifting of the arms; 4. The threatening gestures, after the teacher's offer of a well known interpreta- tion ("are you the big hulk?"), fade into more straightforward aggression consisting of running after each other and throwing each other down; 5. For five of them running around as threatening beings fades into climbing up in the cone-shaped climbing rails (where I have often seen them play "savage animals"). An important aspect of the chain of gestures fading into each other that I saw thus develop, is that it was built up as a common undertaking of the children present on the playground at that moment; it started between two of them and by and by the whole group was affected. Carrying out a certain movement formed the basis for the "pantomimic association," but reciprocal perception (to see the others do it) was the condition by which everyone on the site could contribute to the further development of the chain. The mysterious side of this partaking in the common chain of gestures has already been mentioned above, when I spoke of the "magical infection" that was implied here. Annexation into a hearing environment At this point I propose to turn the reader's attention to a situation rather different from those described up to here: the interactions that developed when some of the children were exposed to the environment of a school not their own; this was a school for hearing children, where they were brought for a gradual integration into an open, non-deaf education process. An important discovery here was that the phenome- non of incorporation showed up again, especially between the deaf and the hearing children; but this phenomenon now became superseded by another specimen of introductional activity, which was especially present in some of the local teachers' actions: I purport to call it "annexation". In going through scenes from the observation notes I will elaborate some of the differences between "incorporation" and "annexation." Up to here I have described the deaf children's interactions as these unrolled in this school for the deaf. Their behaviour in this place had something unproblematic, an experience that was quite unexpected and even in some way disconcerting for me; whereas I was prepared to be</p>
<p>22 confronted with handicapped children I rather saw children who were very able to do their things and who at many moments were so inten- sively engaged in their interactions that it became very difficult for me to get some observational grip on the situation. It was not so much they who were handicapped here, as it was I who felt myself to be in that role. We have seen how the children incorporated this visiting stranger into their own world, how they took the first steps toward incorporation of a potential new member of their world, and how they, within the trustwor- thy spatial, temporal and social coordinates of that world, opened up new situations and lured each other into a creative partaking in the building up of these situations. I only came to realize how much this environment really was their "home-world," trustworthy and relatively unproblematic, when I once accompanied some of the older children on their regular visit to the school for "ordinary," hearing pupils. Here everything that I, during my participation up to that moment, had learned to see as their normal context of living was turned inside out. It was a very painful and, at moments, angering experience. Here suddenly they were the strangers, and many times more helpless than I as a hearing person had been when I entered their world. And there were several circumstances that seemed to counteract or even prevent the incorporation-tendency that one would now have expected to start working from the other side. This is not to say that there were no attempts at integration of the deaf children by the staff of this school. Indeed integration was the main goal of these organized visits. And the fact that one of the deaf-school's teachers was allowed to accompany the children in the classroom and, when needed, to act as an interpreter, gave this project a very tolerant aspect. Nevertheless what I saw was such a peculiar mixture of inclusion and exclusion that a special term does not seem to be out of place to indicate the way integration took shape here. Over against "incorpora- tion" I would rather speak of "annexation" in this context. The contrast with what happened at the school for the deaf now makes it possible, and necessary, to give a sharper and more specified definition of what was implied by "incorporation." "Incorporation" then, is the process in which inter-subjective contact, initiated by one of two parties, develops through a reciprocal partaking of corporeal expressivity and perceptivity as a common field. This process has a relatively spontaneous character on the part of those who are engaged in it; one could say that the activity implied here bears the heavy mark of the passivity" that forms its ground. The contact that grows here therefore has an important practical, sensorial and motoric aspect: it consists of look- ing at or walking toward each other, touching each other, pointing at</p>
<p>23 something, manipulating things together or in front of each other, etc. Here the participants are moving within a medium that is in principle accessible for each; because of its plasticity and lack of sharp boundaries or fixed forms it leaves room for creative fantasy that can be filled in in accordance with contextual and personal possibilities. "Annexation" on the other hand, implies a certain constraint for one of the two parties involved. This "weaker" party is forced to accept the specialized and standardized form of communication that is guarded by the dominating party. The form of communication is specialized insofar as it rests upon an over-accentuation of certain aspects of the total range of corporeal expression; it is standardized insofar as it is fixed into an institutionalized or conventional sign-system that requires a cognitive, express learning-process in order to be subjectively mastered. Annexation as an activity of coercive inclusion was visible especially in the behaviour of the hearing-school's teachers toward the visiting deaf children. It was accompanied by an activity of exclusion in which the children were set apart and by which the spontaneous tendency of mutual incorporation especially at work between the deaf and the hearing children was interrupted. Thus the deaf children were deprived of their natural access to contact with the hearing ones through an expressive dimension in which both are competent. This interruption of the sponta- neously developing intercorporeal communication left the children puzzled, disoriented and uncertain. It seemed to make them more ready to be subdued. A first example of this mixture of exclusion and inclusion could be seen on the playground of the hearing-school during lunch-time: Daphne and Sandra are sitting on the bench. Alone, quiet. Daphne, like a grown-up lady, starts to read a book. Now and then she looks around, at what's happening on the playground. Staring a bit. Sandra sits quietly looking in the same direction.... On the other side of the bench some hearing children are sitting. One of them taps Daphne on the hand, and shows a small piece of fruit between thumb and forefinger. The hearing children see Daphne's book and one of them says (accentuating her lip-movements and pointing at another child): "She likes horses." (Daphne's book is about horses.) Then, after a short conver- sation with Daphne (in which Daphne remains rather passive), they walk away from the bench, discussing among them what they will do next. Daphne and Sandra are sitting alone again. All the other children are gone now and they are looking glum. After a while the teacher (one of the hearing-school's teachers who is supervising the playground) comes walking up to them and starts to talk: "Do you know why you are benched here?" The children don't react. The question is repeated. Again there is no reaction. The teacher speaks slowly and with clear</p>
<p>24 Gp-movements. She sits down on her heels before them. Asks: "Where are you supposed to eat your lunch?" Sandra points with her finger, timidly, at the bench. "Where were you?" Sandra answers (orally): "To the washroom." The teacher says: "But you didn't come back here, you stayed over there." Sandra's face gives the impression to me that she thinks it unfair. Then they are allowed to go playing. The teacher comes to me and explains that they do know the rules, but that it is difficulty to make it clear to them why they are being punished (o.n.; 16.4.1980). In this scene the complicated role played by the "rules" in the exclusion-inclusion-process comes to light. The deaf children do not seem to be granted a say in the interpretation of the rules. The teacher supposes them to be unmistakably clear and acts upon this without giving attention to the corporeal signs sent out by the children indicating that they do not share the teacher's view. Her higher competence at the level of oral speech in relation to the children's ability at that point puts her in a position to impose her interpretation of the rules and simultaneously it is the rules-in the interpretation she gives them-that legitimize her to act as she does. This way the interpretation of the rules becomes a privilege of the hearing and orally speaking party. While being based upon elements of exclusion and inclusion in regard to the deaf children this rule-interpretation can now function as a further contribution to this very exclusion and inclusion. Trespassing the "rules" leads to isolation ("do you know why you are benched here?") and this will probably motivate the children in the future to listen more attentively to the orally proclaimed official meaning of these rules. Annexation in its double aspect of exclusion and inclusion overtly applied in the subsequent scene in the classroom: Big class, about thirty children. The teacher is reading a story from a book, very quickly. Daphne sits at the back. She does not follow the story. Stares in front of her, fumbles at her desk. Madeleine (the accompanying teacher from the deaf- school) sits next to her and translates the story in sign-language for her, but Daphne pays no attention to it. The classroom teacher stops reading, stands up . and walks through the whole classroom to Daphne. She asks: "What is it, Daphne?" No answer. Then Daphne gets a sermon: "You are a member of this . class, you have no choice." All other children look backwards. Madeleine translates in sign-language what the teacher says. Daphne sits there, her eyes filled with tears. Then the reading is continued, without any special attention for Daphne; the teacher does not read a bit slower, she reads without any gestural or mimic expressivity, or even a clearer accentuation of her lip-movements. Made- leine translates in sign-language. Daphne stares stifny in front of her, squinting. Madeleine takes Daphne's face in her hands and turns it towards her. Daphne</p>
<p>25 stubbornly looks in front of her again. After a while she starts to watch Made- leine. After the story-reading there follows an episode in which the teacher . talks to the children about an excursion that is being planned and the children are asked for the reactions of their parents. Then they do a writing-exercise: The exercise is finished, the children hand in their papers. There is some disorder in the class. Daphne too gets up and brings her paper to the teacher's desk. On her way she tickles a boy in his neck. He accepts it without protest. When she is back at her place other children come to her and show her a football-trophy. She reacts with full interest and enthusiasm. Points at it with a questioning expression on her face. I understand that she means to say: "Is that yours?" Then the school-bell rings. Time for going to the music-class. But the teacher orders all children to sit and bow their heads down on the desks, explaining: "This is an army-routine because of your casualness today." After a while she orders them to get up and go to the door in row-formation (o.n.; 16.4.'80). An interesting aspect of the two scenes cited here is that they show the deaf child in two strikingly different moods. In the first scene she sits in the rear of the classroom, seeing only the backs of the other children, and at the farthest possible point from the teacher. Exclusion is functioning ' clearly. Inclusion too: everything has its way in this class as if Daphne were not there. Especially the corporeal style in which the reading is done gives this impression. Daphne simply has to resign herself to it and adapt, and she is told so. One can read from her visible reactions how unhappy she feels in the midst of all this. Her normally quite vivid movements are stopped now, her eyes look "nowhere." Her own teach- er's attempt at catching her gaze by physical force (taking the child's face in her hands) is met with stiff, passive resistance. But then the imposed, rigid order relaxes a bit. The whole class comes to life, and we see some glimpse of a different Daphne. Now she is more like the Daphne I know from the deaf-school. The first thing she does is to use her hands for making contact with another child: she tickles a boy in his neck. And now she is not being let down. The boy lets her have her way. A few moments later some children initiate an interaction with her, by walking to her and showing her something that seems to have personal value for them. And Daphne reacts with lively and eloquent gestures. Thus an important element of the "disorder" that develops during some minutes (and that will be punished immediately thereafter) is the mutual . incorporation-process being set in motion (or rather, restored) between the deaf child and her hearing "class-mates." Spontaneously the chil-</p>
<p>26 dren, the hearing ones as much as the deaf ones, switch over to impro- vised gestural expressions which in their mutual interplay form a meaningful context outside the standards of any official system, be it oral or sign-language. Conclusion; the eloquent body This point brings me back to the insights that resulted from the first observations presented in this paper. The annexation episode as a contrast brings out the centrality of incorporation in these deaf children's dealings with their surroundings. It has a recurrent although not continu- ous character, in a social as well as in a temporal sense: it appears in various forms, according to the various social situations that come up for the children; and even forceful interruptions do not prevent the sponta- neous tendency at incorporation from redressing itself time and again. It is important to note that the deaf children do not seem to be alone in this tendency. With the hearing children (at least) a common plane of exchange immediately opens itself up here, which fits in with observa- tions that can be done at places where children of different national languages get in contact with each other. It seems good to sum up our main conclusions as to the structural forms and conditions of the two phenomena, annexation and incorpora- tion. Annexation in this study manifested itself in a social environment where the children's hearing loss was explicitly treated as a handicap, and where this handicap was the problem of a minority. Solutions for this problem were sought in organizational measures directed to an adapta- tion-as far as possible--of the deaf minority to the everyday rules and routines of the non-deaf environment. A strong indication for the existence of this phenomenon of annexa- tion were the negative reactions (madness, resistance) of the deaf chil- dren to the actual situation in which they found themselves. They were taken up into a rigid order which did not take into account the special behavioral restrictions connected to their deafness. Their lack of adap- tedness to the normal functioning of this order was responded to by the adults (teachers) with reprisal and punishment. An explicit reference to the normativity of this order was part of the adults' actions. The adults' intervention implied therefore that the normal flow of events was sud- denly held up. In this intervention the interactional contact with the deaf child was also narrowed down to the explicit use of spoken language: the child's possibilities of reacting and defending itself were thus largely reduced. Its deafness was then clearly functioning as a handicap.</p>
<p>27 Incorporation, on the other hand, was in the first place visible in an . environment where the deaf children were able to develop such forms of interaction as were adapted to their specific style of corporeal function- ing. Their hearing loss was embedded as an element within their total range of expressive abilities. The social situation left them free to develop the practical and communicative skills based on these abilities. Thus incorporation was characterized by a rather smooth and uninter- rupted flow of interactional events. Here things took a more or less improvised, spontaneous course. The observed sequences formed a unity, following an inner consequence in which all mutual actions were integrated. At these moments the deaf children seemed to be at ease, playful and inventive, naturally concentrated upon the things with which they happened to be busy. In each of the instances in which incorporation was at stake the interactional order was rather implicit, no fixed rules were being fol- _ lowed, not were they explicitly mentioned at special moments. We have seen incorporation in several forms: as the way the children introduced me as an adult stranger into their web of actions, as the way they did this to a new child, as the way they introduced each other into common undertakings in or outside the classroom. We even saw it at work at the school for hearing children, at those moments when deaf and non-deaf children took their chance to communicate in the margins of the imposed order. This shows the perseverance of the phenomenon in these children's world. , What it brings to light is the manifold and versatile power of corpore- ality in the knitting and weaving of interactional patterns. This power is for the larger part uncontrolled, spontaneous-and therefore, it is omni- present. In the life of the deaf children observed here, corporeality is far more than a special instrument for a specialized form of communication, a means that is, for using sign language as a substitute and imitation of the missing oral language. At many moments, at every ordinary school- day it becomes clear that sign language in itself is no more than a small particle in the totality of the body's social functioning-and apart from the latter it could neither be carried out nor understood. Blind spots in the grammatic and syntactic knowledge of sign-language on either side of the communicating parties are partly filled up, partly rendered harmless by that which is simultaneously happening on the more-embracing plane of total corporeal activity. Also the children were constantly engaged in inventing new gestures for specific situations: the official and standard- ized sign-language was permanently enriched by a very flexible and indexical idiom. This idiom was more than only language, designed for the mere goal of conveying explicit messages; it rather formed an</p>
<p>28 integrated part of the practical history of the children's interactive situations and naturally arose out of these situations more or less as an expressive by-product. So incorporation refers us to the wider social functioning of corporeal- ity. What is meant by this "wider social functioning"? It could be verbalized like this: through corporeal activity situations become structured into meaningful contexts. This structuring has a very direct and momentary character; it is implied in corporeal functioning itself, in the movements carried out and in perceptions undergone; it bears the mark of the concrete moment at which it takes place. Thus the aspect of improvisation that already emerged in the foregoing descrip- tions turns out to be of essential importance. The structuring meant here does not consist of express "talk" or acts of "communication" apart from practical action, but rather is integrated as an aspect of the latter. It comes about in gestures that most of the time are immediately tuned in to and form part of what the children are doing at that moment: building a tower of blocks, creating a fantasy-play, etc. The observation-scenes described here further suggest that this activity of the body should be taken in a broad sense: on the one hand it consists of a very wide range of expressive and perceptive aspects and forms, on the other hand it is not confined within the boundaries of the individual subject but rather is experienced as a common field in which a plurality of subjects is involved. At many moments during my observations I got in touch with this structuring function of corporeality. It was the basis on which my practi- cal participation in and my understanding of the situations created by the deaf children became possible, even without a mastery of sign-language. It was the eloquence of their gestures as they were situationally impro- vised and directly tuned in to the practical needs of the moment, that made me understand. There may well be some important consequences to all this. These consequences not only affect the position of standardized sign-language (that seems to have been designed and interpreted too much as an imitation of oral language) but also the position of verbal language on the whole. All too often in the study of interaction and communication, the dominant role is granted to verbal language as a theme and as an explanatory model. Gestures and non-verbal behaviour in general are then understood as epiphenomena of the verbally spoken; and even their internal structure is conceived of as built up along the lines of that semiotic model of verbal language. I The foregoing however suggests that this line of reasoning should be reversed. As in the case of the deaf children's sign-language, verbal</p>
<p>29 language could be better understood if it were seen as one specific form of corporeal expression, embedded in and functioning as an aspect of a far wider range of expressive forms. An important practical implication of these reflections would be that the road to the development of workable systems of communication between the hearing impaired and the hearing does not lead through the exclusive adaptation of the hearing-impaired (by training their capacity at lipreading and oral speaking) to the language of the hearing. But equally it may not be found in merely propagating standardized lan- guage, which would require the adaptation of the hearing to the institu- tionalized language-code of the hearing-impaired. Neither of these measures seems to have a practical chance without the mutual develop- ment by deaf and hearing people alike, of their at least potentially present capacity for improvisational movement, and of their corporeally based sensitivity for the immediate perception of movement and its inherent meaning. This, by the way, could also have considerable benefi- ' cial consequences for the interactions in the hearing world as such. NOTES . 'For more systematic and extensive discussions of these theoretical lines see Coenen (1979a, 1979b, 1981b, 1984). ' , 2See for example Argyle (1967), Gregory e.a. (1978), Kendon (1981) and Morris e.a. (1979). 3See Buytendijk (1964), Buytendijk and Plessner (1935), Merleau-Ponty (1942, 1945, 1948, 1958), Plessner (1923, 1941), Schutz (1932, 1970). 4See Coenen (1979a). SSee Coenen (1979b, 1984). 6See Coenen (1979a). ' 7See Glaser and Strauss (1967), Glaser (1978). $At this point I must expressly mention another influence from outside this research-setting that was a decisive help to keep me on the track and to get into the attitude in which I could expose myself to the happenings described here. This influence was Anselm Strauss who week after week taught me something of the humane patience that he so visibly embodies, telling me: "Don't push too hard." Of the many things I learned from him in the domain of field research, I guess this is the one I am most grateful for. 9For the sake of anonymity the names of children and teachers have been changed in this paper. '°As the teachers in this school mostly do, she uses oral speech and sign language simulta- neously. "In Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception the concept of passive intentionality takes an important place. It indicates those processes in subjective life in which meaningful structures come into being without express conscious and willfull activity of the ego involved.</p>
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