Deaf-sighted, deaf-blind, and hearing-sighted people have been interacting within a small community in the Bay Islands of Honduras for over a century (Ali 2023; Ali and Braithwaite 2020). In this article, we sketch the history of the community and the ways in which signers make use of their own and their interlocutor's bodies to co-construct…

This article explores turn-taking in Japanese Sign Language ( JSL) by using Baker's (1977) framework. JSL as a language is wholly unrelated to American Sign Language (ASL), but because Baker and other discourse analysts have always been concerned mostly with ASL and European sign languages, it remains to be seen if Asian sign languages such as JSL…

Background and aims: Prior work has examined how children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder who are minimally verbal use their spoken language abilities during interactions with others. However, social communication includes other aspects beyond speech. To our knowledge, no studies have examined how minimally verbal children and…

The onset of intentional communication in children's first year of life represents a major milestone in human cognitive development. Similarly, it is well established that our closest living relatives, the great apes, communicate with signals characterized by at least first-order intentionality. Despite the well-documented influence of…

Individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in later stages may rely on a variety of modalities to communicate. The current study used conversational analysis techniques to examine naturalistic face-to-face interaction between a man with late-stage ALS and his wife to understand the types of accommodations they made to ensure that…

This article explores how gestures contributed to the communicative interaction achieved during puppet performances in indigenous communities in the Chiapas Highlands of Mexico. It presents the case of the Petul-Xun hand-glove puppet shows, which were performed from 1954 to 2000 as part of educational campaigns aimed at "modernising" the…

The emergence of signaling systems has been observed in numerous experimental and real-world contexts, but there is no consensus on which (if any) shared mechanisms underlie such phenomena. A number of explanatory mechanisms have been proposed within several disciplines, all of which have been instantiated as credible working models. However, they…

Foreign language teaching highlights the cultivation of the learners' communicative competence, because the main purpose of learning a foreign language is to use the target language to communicate. However, many students in higher institutions in China cannot speak English fluently after having learned English for more than ten years, although…

Demonstratives and pointing gestures are universal, early emerging, and ubiquitous, and it has long been claimed that there is a special relationship between them. But what exactly is the nature of this relationship? The present study investigates this question using a referential communication task. Speakers referred to targets that were near or…

Drawing from the experiences and testimonies of people with profound deafness, the study qualitatively explored the use of the hands with eyes and nose in the palm as communication alternatives in the field of deafness. The study was prompted by the 27 year old lady, Leah Katz-Hernandez who is deaf who got engaged in March 2015 as the 2016…

This Conversation Analysis study investigated how a speech and language therapist (SLT) created opportunities for communication aid use in multiparty conversation. An SLT interacted with a child with multiple disabilities and her grandparents in a home setting, using a bliss board. The analyses demonstrated a practice where the SLT employed…

The study examined the effects of the types of communication breakdowns of the communication partners on the repair strategies of students with severe intellectual disability during interaction within the natural school environment. Forty-eight staff members, divided into two groups based on daily vs. weekly contact with the student, and 12…

In this unit activity, students understand that social presence-one's ability to project a personality through computer-mediated communication-is critical for creating an effective online learning environment (Christen, Kelly, Fall, & Snyder, in press; Jorgensen, 2002; Kehrwald, 2010; O'Sullivan, Hunt, & Lippert, 2004). Without…

Few direct comparisons have been made between the responsiveness of children with autism to computer-generated or animated characters and their responsiveness to humans. Twelve 4-to 8-year-old children with autism interacted with a human therapist; a human-controlled, interactive avatar in a theme park; a human actor speaking like the avatar; and…

Mentoring is a trusting, developmental supervisory relationship whose success largely depends on participants' interpersonal abilities. Feedback interventions with mentees commonly present interactional challenges to maintaining that relationship, yet are integral to any teaching-learning context. In this study we examined whether and how two key,…