A preliminary description of haptices in Italian social-haptic communication: a phonological perspective

Deafblind individuals experience a combination of partial/complete loss of hearing and sight. They use a variety of communication modes, amongst which social-haptic communication (SHC), which consists of brief tactile messages performed on the body of the deafblind person (haptices). A phonological-like structure can be observed in SHC if we consider the smallest units of touch individuated by Lahtinen (2008), called haptemes. Haptemes can create minimal contrasts in haptices. This contribution discusses whether the recently created Italian haptices also have a phonological structure. According to a preliminary analysis, Italian haptices seem to have their own form of phonology, which responds to physical constraints of signal transmission (such as tactile perceptibility) and to pragmatic contextual factors.