Grasping haptic: Marshall McLuhan on haptic

握 Nice comment from Ken Johnstone, McLuhan Studies at University of Toronto, on McLuhan's read on the meaning of the Greek concept of haptic: "The haptic sense meant much more "mind" since it meant grasping, getting something whole. Grasping means that in some sense I become what I know in its concrete reality and so get it whole. It is this complete act of knowing, that then allows me to analyze my percept intellectually as well as affirm its reality in judgement. And it is this complete act of knowing that realizes my own centre."

I think most of us "Hapticians" would heartily agree with McLuhan's "felt sense" of haptic engagement, that it creates an integrated, concrete experience of not just the sound or word being attended to but also of the mind-body attending to it. In future posts I will explore more of the "sound-acquisition-readiness" that HICP/EHIEP should enhance if done consistently. In fact, it may well be that the greatest benefit of haptic awareness, as McLuhan contends, will be increasing realization or reaffirmation of one's own center and identity in both the L1 and L2. Again,  the "Medium had the message!" 握

Fossilized pronunciation repair--with a touch of haptic "cement"

Clip art:
Clker

There are probably two or three dozen different blogposts here that report research that indirectly supports the claim that haptic anchoring should be effective in working with learning new sounds and changing fossilized pronunciation. (I have been "looking" for studies such as this one for a couple of decades!) This study by Fredembach, Boisferon and Gentaz, summarized by Science Daily, makes the connection more directly.


The research examined the effect of using touch to assist learners in making associations between new symbols and new sounds. While looking at the graphic form of a letter/symbol and saying or hearing the sound, subjects in the experimental group "explored" the form with their hands as well. The haptic effect was clear: " . . . the explication lies in the specific properties of the haptic sense . . . in the hands, which plays a "cementing" role between sight and hearing, favouring the connection between the senses."

What that helps explain is why using haptic anchors in fossilized pronunciation work should, indeed, assist learners in "replacing" sounds embedded in specific words more efficiently. Done haptically, that does not have to be an especially time consuming process. (See earlier posts on how that process is carried out.) For most advanced learners, de-fossilization is, unfortunately, a painstaking, one-word-at-a-time problem: a new sound has to be associated with the graphic representation of every problematic word, not just encouraged to generalize unattended out through the learner's interlanguage.  In other words, just teaching the "fossilized" how to correctly articulate a sound in isolation is nearly pointless--unless every "misuse" is systematically ferreted out (Ready?) . . . manually, of course!