Gestures as content

In a more detailed analysis of the linguistic use of gestures, we can distinguish between two main functions, which have been associated with two parallel tracks’ Clark, 1996. One of these tracks carries the subject matter or content of the discourse, while the other is used for discourse management. Of course, it is not just gestures that can be analysed onto these two tracks. The error repairs described in Chapter 5 can also be looked at in these terms. For instance, the example in 6.1 could be analysed onto two tracks as shown in 6.2.

Gestures can have a number of functions, relating to either or both of these tracks. In this section we look at the use of gestures to convey con tent. Experimental work suggests that content-related gestures make a significant contribution to fluency in production, since preventing speakers from using gestures can result in reduced fluency and reduced vocabulary size (Krauss, 1998). Speakers who are prevented from gesturing also rely more on spoken expressions denoting spatial relationships, presumably because their hands are not free to play this role.

Content-related gestures can include symbols indices and icons, i.e. gestures that stand for something, indicate something, or depict something, respectively (McNeill, 1992).

Symbols

Gestures as symbols sometimes referred to as emblems stand for’ something. Indeed, such gestures can often correspond to and be used instead of a complete utterance, though they can also be used alongside information that is contained in the speech. They are used for interpersonal control e.g. hello’, be quiet’, to express personal states I approve’, I don’t know’ and for evaluations of others he’s crazy’. Less frequently they stand for objects or actions.

A small sample of such gestures and their possible meanings is given in Table 6.1. As the examples show, gestures can involve the use of various body parts including parts of the face and head, fingers and thumbs, the entire hand, shoulders, and so on.

 It is clear that for these gestures to be successful there must be some implicit agreement between speaker and listener as to their meaning. This is part of the common ground between the participants in an interaction, just like the common understanding of what words mean. It is often naively assumed by speakers that gestures are universal, and that they can use the same gestures when speaking a foreign language as they would use with their native language. However, there are cultural differences in the meanings that gestures have, not only between languages but also between varieties of a language used by different cultural groups. These differences can result in differences in interpretation. For instance, crossing the middle finger over the index finger can mean may I be protected’ in England, Scandinavia, parts of Sicily and in former Yugoslavia, but I am breaking a friendship’ in Turkey and Corfu (Morris, Collett, Marsh O’Shaughnessy, 1979). The thumbs up’ gesture that carries a positive meaning okay’, well done’, awesome’ in many European cultures is a very insulting gesture in some Middle Eastern countries as well as in parts of West Africa and South America Morris et al, 1979.

Note also that sounds can carry similar functions to gestures. That is, there are also auditory emblems, such as clap I approve’, hiss I disapprove’, tongue-click shame on you’, and so on.

Some gesture use usually requires more than one person to be actively participating. These have been called junctions’ Clark, 1996 and are typically joint physical actions, such as shaking hands, hugging, kissing. These junctions are often ignored in discussions of communication, because they involve joint action, but it has been noted that other types of communication are no less dependent on joint action. For instance, a successful spoken conversation depends on the listener paying attention as well as on the speaker articulating.

Indices

 Indexical or indicative gestures direct the perceiver’s attention to particular objects. These gestures usually involve an instrument, frequently a body part, as well as a locative action. For example, a common instrument for indicating is the forefinger the index’ finger, and a frequent locative action is to point at something (Schegloff, 1984). Again, though, the gesture is culturally determined. Some cultures point with the middle finger and many can also use the thumb, sometimes when pointing to something behind the speaker. To add to the confusion, in Western cultures where the index finger is used to indicate, it is frequently considered rude to use it to point directly at a person. Instead, indicating a person would be done by using the open hand. In addition to finger, thumb or hand, there are many other ways to point, for example with a nod of the head, or by directing your gaze towards someone. Some cultures point with the nose or lips. A sweeping gesture with the whole arm can be used to point towards a group of people. Simply turning your body towards someone or something in coordination with what you say can also have an indexical function.

Indexical gestures typically accompany speech, and may be timed to coincide with a spoken reference to the thing or person being indicated, as in 6.3. Examples 6.3–6.6 are from the author’s own observations.

However, it is not essential that there is also spoken reference to the thing being indicated. In the example in 6.4, it is clear that the speaker has painted two of the walls in the room, though these are not mentioned. In the actual utterance context it was also obvious that the remaining two walls had not been painted, which is perhaps implied but certainly not explicit from the utterance. In this example, the gesture complements the utterance, and could be seen as standing for some spoken referential act e.g. saying the word walls’ in the appropriate place in the utterance.

Iconic gestures

 Iconic gestures are gestures that depict what is being talked about. Most are executed by speakers, though listeners sometimes use them as part of their responses, such as when they smile or give a look of surprise. Iconic gestures are clearly a descriptive part of the basic message. In example 6.5 the gesture forms part of the description of the road.

Iconic gestures tend to be closely linked in time to relevant sections of what the speaker is saying. Interestingly, they often anticipate the words they belong to. This can lead to ambiguity in how analysts interpret the gestures. For instance, the gesture in 6.5 might be truly iconic, i.e. depicting perhaps the undulating and not just rough nature of the road, in which case it appears in the right place for an adjective in English, just before the noun. Or – unlikely perhaps in this case – it could be serving a speech production purpose see below, i.e. helping the speaker to access the word o from their mental dictionary.

 An iconic gesture can run alongside spoken information, with speech and gesture concurrent. Alternatively, the gesture can be embedded in the utterance, forming a component of what the speaker is saying in much the same way as words do. This second type is illustrated in 6.6.

Iconic gestures mainly function as signals by which speakers mean things. For this reason, most iconic gestures are informative; they generally express something not found in the accompanying words. A useful exercise for becoming aware of this is to consider a description of something that is technically quite complex but which might be more easily described visually through gestures. So for instance, you could think about the gestures that might accompany an explanation of how a lock works, and about how difficult it would be to complete such an explanation without gestures.

Another example of how a gesture conveys additional information comes from the utterance in 6.7, part of a description of a Sylvester and Tweety Bird cartoon (McNeill, 1992 ; McNeill & Duncan, 2000).

In the example, the square brackets show the entire period over which the hands were involved in gesturing, the bold face indicates when the main gestural movement took place, and the double-underline shows pre- and post-movement holds’. In these holds the hands were in a position which indicated holding a large round object. The gestural movement was a sharp downwards one. The interesting observation made about this example is that the speaker selected a verb o to characterise Tweety Bird’s actions, but chose to align the gesture with the words it down. This alignment, it is argued, is deliberate, because what is important in the narrative is the consequent action of the ball, which is that it is swallowed by Sylvester the cat and subsequently flushes him out of the drainpipe. The combination of lexical and gestural information therefore conveys more about the event than either alone.

Despite the iconicity of many gestures, it is often the case that the interpretation of gestures depends on the utterance context, just as individual words can often only be fully understood in the context of the utterance of which they are part. This can be experienced by viewing a speaker gesturing on a video with the sound turned off – some of the gestures will be obvious, but many can only be properly interpreted with the spoken utterance.

Interestingly, there is some automaticity to gesturing. Although speakers gesture less when the addressee cannot see them e.g. when they are talking on the telephone, they do not cut out their gestures altogether (De Ruiter, 1995). Research shows that Japanese native speakers sometimes bow at the end of telephone conversations, and that in America people nod on the telephone. Congenitally blind speakers also gesture, though not as much as sighted people. Such findings show how gestures are an integral part of a composite signal.

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مواضيع ذات صلة

Sources of typicality effects

The theory of idealised cognitive models

Problems with prototype theory

The horizontal dimension

The vertical dimension

The categorisation system

Principles of categorization

Prototype theory

The problem of prototypicality

The problem of conceptual fuzziness

The definitional problem

The classical theory