The proposed symposium aims at understanding the way dialogicality emerges and gets formed through early infant­-caregiver interactions. This symposium thus explores situations where one of the partners is far beyond any symbolic means, i.e. verbality, thus addressing the challenging question of how to research the developmental processes of the dialogical self prior to the development of language. The stance taken here is that dialogicality exists from the beginning of life, and even before; dialogicality would not exist nor develop without concrete social others oriented towards the becoming person (Bertau & Gonçalves, 2007). This stance will be discussed by the contributers following three related pathways. Garvey relates to emotions which are seen as an essential component of self development as they simultaneously foster a sense of connection with and differentiation from others. Gratier explores the intersubjective organization of the mother­-infant interaction through their vocal exchanges, a means with which a link is built between timing and sharing of both affect and interest. Lyra describes the emergence of self­organization patterns within the mother­infant communication system, each pattern belonging to typical manners of dialoguing: establishment, extension and abbreviation. Abbreviation is seen to occur as a dialogical achievement in which one can identify the emergence of a dialogical self and the seeds of symbolic functioning.

The presentation is grounded on the premise that emotions are an essential component of self development as they simultaneously foster a sense of connection with and differentiation from others. Emotions are viewed as holistic as they dynamically involve the whole body and emerge in dialogical contexts. Emotions involve experiences that are dynamically lived and developed over time through co­regulated dialogues with others. It is our contention that the study of early emotions in dialogical contexts constitutes a viable avenue to study how young infants develop their early sense of self. A case study of a mother­-infant dyad’s co­-regulated experiences is presented with the goal of illustrating the theoretical and methodological contributions of examining self and emotions as dialogically and dynamically evolving over time.

This study presents the results of an acoustic analysis based on high quality audio recordings of spontaneous playful interaction between mothers and their 2­-month­-old infants. The temporal organisation of vocal expressions is examined in particular through an analysis of pulse, phrasing and narrative. We show that positive social engagement between mother and infant is rooted in musical and improvisational patterns of interpersonal negotiation of expressive sound. Our analyses also suggest that vocal exchange with preverbal infants is both dialogical and polyphonic in that mothers and infants vocalise in turn but also frequently vocalise together, often with what sounds like shared purpose and concerted effort. We pay special attention to these episodes of turn-­taking and co­-vocalisation and try to distinguish purposeful polyphonic co­-vocalisation from unintended moments of vocal co­-occurence. This distinction is based on the overall temporal and prosodic patterning of the exchange. If co­-vocalisation occurs at a point in time that supports the temporal organisation of the interaction, or what we can be called its ‘narrative orientation’, it is considered to be harmonious and intentional. Thus, we will present empirical findinds and discuss their theoretical underpinnings within and outside psychology.

This presentation elaborates upon the constructive power of joint actions in early life. The microgenetic analysis of mother­infant dialogical practices allows identifying three historically constructed, self­organized developmental patterns: establishment, extension and abbreviation. Abbreviated dialogues are particularly explored as exhibiting the simultaneous emergence of self positioning and a pre­symbolic space of functioning in infancy. Three characteristics of these dialogues exemplify this simultaneous emergence: (a) the infant’s capacity to abstract and generalize the abbreviated format as distinct from the specific content of the each dialogical event; (b) the role reversal activity during the give­and­take exchanges and © the holistic character of the shared dyadic understanding of their relationship dynamic. Mother­infant abbreviated dialogues are discussed as exhibiting the seeds of a genuine language phenomenon in which the other is apprehended in his/her complexity, includingthe historically co­constructed affective­emotional atmospheres. Earlier abbreviations suggest that the capacity to communicate about something may have an antecedent historical construction where this “about” is not an object, like in the sign­ signifier relationshi

Asking for the possibility of a dialogical approach to spoken as well as to written language on the basis of the founding text by Jakubinskij Über die dialogische Rede (On Dialogical Speech), (1923). Colloquium Jakubinskij (06/2005)

Erkundung des Ertrags einer dialogischen Herangehensweise an die gesprochene und an die geschriebene Sprache anhand des Grundtextes von Jakubinskij Über die dialogische Rede (1923). Colloquium Jakubinskij (06/2005)

Zusammenstellung der Dokumente als PDF-Datei vom 25. März 2001