The Experiencing Face: Communicative and Felt Aspects of the Face During Kissing and Hugging Between Romantic Partners

Abstract

In this study, I uncover the moment-by-moment emergence of what I call an “experiencing face” during kisses and hugs between romantic partners. At such moments of intimate touch, the facial gestures often momentarily “shut down” to simply give way to experiencing the emotion and tactile “being-with another person” (M.H. Goodwin, 2017: 76). Focusing on the multisensoriality of the face during kisses and hugs, I reflect on some ways of face-on-communication—direct communication through faces touching. Previous EMCA studies have taken a communicative (see Ruusuvuori, 2013) approach to facial expressions. I add to the study of facial expressions by including a focus on the simultaneity of, and an interplay between, communicative and felt aspects of the face in interaction. Taking a phenomenological perspective on interaction studies based on Merleau-Ponty (1962), I approach facial postures from an intercorporeal framework (Meyer et al., 2017): facial postures are expressions of “living bodies” (Streeck, 2013) entailing felt and communicative features.