A preliminary description of haptices in Italian social-haptic communication

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