Chapter 5: From Mother’s Mouth to Baby’s World and Back Again: Shaping One’s Attachments Through Vocalization

Attachment vocalizations, such as infant crying, whining, and child-directed speech, are well noted for their ability to get and maintain the attention of attachment partners. However, unlike screaming from the next room— which also gets attention—they appear to play a large role in building and maintaining attachment relationships, reorganizing behavior, and restructuring the meaning world of each partner.

Umwelt research focuses on the “relations between a living subject and its object” (von Uexküll, 1934/1957, p. 11), and as such forces the researcher to reevaluate what the object is to the subject, and conversely how the subject plays an important role in the object’s Umwelt. In this chapter, I argue that in human attachment relationships, the attachment partner is the specific vocalization produced by the partner, and the vocalization causes the other partner to increase the proximity between them.