Clarke, M., & Wilkinson, R. (2013). Communicative competence in children’s peer interaction. In N. Norén, C. Samuelsson, & C. Plejert (Eds.), Aided communication in everyday interaction (pp. 23–58). J&R Press.
This study examined the use of multiple modalities to collaboratively achieve affiliation in two student dyads that include one child with cerebral palsy aged 7;11 or 10;8 years and a peer. In the first excerpt, the speaking partner used question design to provide an opportunity for affiliation in risqué humor, and the aided communicator used a combination of minimal VOCA generated speech with embodied resources (e.g., gaze direction, facial expression and upward physical movement) to affiliate with a ‘naughty’ stance by signaling an expletive. In the second excerpt, the speaking partner used multiple compound turns (e.g., “if-then”, or “when-then”) to generate opportunities for anticipatory completions of collaborative constructions of impropriety, and the aided communicator produced well-timed sequential uses of embodied resources (e.g., vocalizations, prosody, gaze shifts, smiling and pausing) to produce recognitional onset of and affiliation with his partner’s assessment. The non-linguistic contributions of the aided communicator were acknowledged but not interpreted by the speaking partner, building heightened affiliation of the risqué nature of the interaction in progress. In the final excerpt, the speaking partner treated delays in VOCA-mediated production as evidence for impropriety and the aided communicator responded in ways that aligned with this portrayal. In this study, communicative competence realized in the social action of affiliation was distributed across both communication partners, through the use of multimodal resources and a shared stance of naughtiness or impropriety.