ABSTRACT
In Chapter 9, we examine how invitations to hug with outstretched arms (an iconic partial of the desired entanglement of bodies) can be responded to either with an acceptance, an entry into an embrace, or forms of distancing from or rejecting the invitation into intimacy. As hugs provide conventionalized actions that proceed in particular routine ways, participants can index their involvement, alignment, or attunement with the other by their graduations (calibration) or execution of the routine or deviation from the way the activity is routinely carried out. In the embracing formation, participants’ bodies are intertwined in an intense physical contact that can provide for an experience of “single intercorporeity” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964). Prosody plays a key role in achieving alignment and co-participation in expressive affectivity.
