Instructing Equestrian Feel: On the Art of Teaching Embodied Knowledge

This study explores the instruction of equestrian feel as an interactional accomplishment. Equestrian feel is an embodied knowledge encompassing riders' ability to feel the horse's actions and to act appropriately. Building on ethnomethodological and conversation analytic analyses of video-recordings of riding lessons, we explore how equestrian feel is instructed in interaction between riding teachers and students. The results show how teachers use verbal resources, e.g., metaphors, to describe embodied feel, as well as perceptual resources that are made relevant by orienting to the horse's body as a semiotic field. Moreover, the teachers produce online instructions in the shape of directives, metaphorical vocal descriptions, and embodied demonstrations, thus molding the equipage by bringing attention to different aspects that together shape an embodied experience. In all, the study sheds light on communicative practices during riding lessons and on the interactional work involved in the art of instructing embodied knowledge.