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- Volume 11, Issue, 2011
Gesture - Volume 11, Issue 3, 2011
Volume 11, Issue 3, 2011
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Barack Obama, being sharp: Indexical order in the pragmatics of precision-grip gesture
Author(s): Michael Lempertpp.: 241–270 (30)More LessGesture in political oratory and debate is renowned for its nonreferential indexical functions, for the way it purportedly can indicate qualities of speaker and materialize acts of persuasion — functions famously addressed in Quintilian’s classic writings but understudied today. I revisit this problematic through a case study of precision-grip (especially thumb to tip of forefinger) in Barack Obama’s debate performances (2004–2008). Cospeech gesture can index valorized attributes of speaker — not directly but through orders of semiotic motivation. In terms of first-order indexicality, precision-grip highlights discourse in respect of information structure, indicating focus. In debate, precision grip has undergone a degree of conventionalization and has reemerged as a second-order pragmatic resource for performatively “making a ‘sharp’, effective point.” Repetitions and parallelisms of precision grip in debate can, in turn, exhibit speaker-attributes, such as being argumentatively ‘sharp’, and from there may even partake in candidate branding.
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Modes of pointing to existing spaces and the use of frames of reference
Author(s): Olivier Le Guenpp.: 271–307 (37)More LessThis paper aims at providing a systematic framework for investigating differences in how people point to existing spaces. Pointing is considered according to two conditions: (1) A non-transposed condition where the body of the speaker always constitutes the origo and where the various types of pointing are differentiated by the status of the target and (2) a transposed condition where both the distant figure and the distant ground are identified and their relation specified according to two frames of reference (FoRs): the egocentric FoR (where spatial relationships are coded with respect to the speaker’s point of view) and the geocentric FoR (where spatial relationships are coded in relation to external cues in the environment). The preference for one or the other frame of reference not only has consequences for pointing to real spaces but has some resonance in other domains, constraining the production of gesture in these related domains.
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The flexible semantic integration of gestures and words: Comparing face-to-face and telephone dialogues
Author(s): Jennifer Gerwing and Meredith Allisonpp.: 308–329 (22)More LessOne measure of the communicative function of gestures is to test how speakers’ gestures are influenced by whether an addressee can see them or not, that is, by manipulating visibility between participants. We question traditional dependent variables (i.e., rate measures), suggesting that they may have been insufficient for capturing essential differences in the gestures speakers use in each condition. We propose that investigating the qualitative features of gestures is a more nuanced, and ultimately more informative approach. We examined how speakers distributed information between their gestures and words, testing whether this distribution was affected by the visibility of their addressee. Twenty pairs of undergraduates took part in conversations that were either face to face (n = 10) or on the telephone (n = 10). Each speaker described a drawing of an elaborate dress to the addressee. We used a semantic feature analysis to analyze descriptions of the dress’ skirt and assessed when words or gestures contributed information about five categories pertaining to features of the skirt’s unusual shape. Although speakers’ rates of gesturing and number of words did not vary significantly between conditions, speakers contributed more information and conveyed more categories in their gestures when the addressee would see them, while words carried the informational burden when addressees would not see the gestures (p’s < .001). These results suggest that gestures serve a communicative function. The semantic feature analysis is thus an example of how to explore gestures’ qualitative features within a quantitative paradigm.
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Bilingual children’s gesture use
Author(s): Lisa Smithson, Elena Nicoladis and Paula Marentettepp.: 330–347 (18)More LessPrevious studies have shown that bilinguals use more manual gestures than monolinguals (Pika et al., 2006; Nicoladis et al., 2009), suggesting that gestures may facilitate lexical retrieval or may reduce the cognitive load on working memory during speech production. In this study, we tested the generalizability of these findings by comparing the use of gestures in three groups of children (English monolinguals, Mandarin Chinese-English bilinguals, and French-English bilinguals) between 7 and 10 years of age as they retold two short stories about a cartoon. The bilingual children were asked to retell narratives in both languages. The results showed that the French-English bilinguals used significantly more gestures than the Chinese-English bilinguals. With respect to gesture rates accompanying speech in English, the monolinguals did not differ from either bilingual group. The bilingual children’s use of gestures was generally not correlated with our measures of working memory (narrative length and speech rate). These results suggest that culture may be a more important determiner of gesture rate than bilingualism and/or working memory capacity.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 22 (2023)
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Volume 21 (2022)
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Volume 20 (2021)
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Volume 19 (2020)
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Volume 18 (2019)
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Volume 17 (2018)
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Volume 16 (2017)
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Volume 15 (2016)
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Volume 14 (2014)
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Volume 13 (2013)
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Volume 12 (2012)
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Volume 11 (2011)
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Volume 10 (2010)
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Volume 9 (2009)
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Volume 8 (2008)
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Volume 7 (2007)
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Volume 6 (2006)
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Volume 5 (2005)
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Volume 4 (2004)
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Volume 3 (2003)
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Volume 2 (2002)
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Volume 1 (2001)
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Home position
Author(s): Harvey Sacks and Emanuel A. Schegloff
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Depicting by gesture
Author(s): Jürgen Streeck
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Some uses of the head shake
Author(s): Adam Kendon
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