Gesture - Volume 23, Issue 1-2, 2024

East Asian languages and cultures are known to show substantial differences from European ones, including in terms of how negation is expressed. The present study considers how gestures relate to the expression of verbal negation by speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Based on around 400 minutes of Chinese TV programs, we establish some relatively stable gestural form-meaning mappings associated with verbal negation. For instance, holding away gestures tend to express rejection, and wigwagging gestures tend to express denial. Our analyses of these gestural correlations with verbal negation provide insights into the multifunctionality of negative verbal clauses when viewed from a multimodal perspective.

The primary purpose of this study was to test whether there were task differences (storytelling vs. language learning history) in gesture frequency among Farsi-English bilinguals. Given the importance of visuospatial processing for representational gestures, we predicted that participants would produce more representational gestures when telling a story than when recounting their language learning history (i.e., how they learned English as second language), and no task differences in beat production. A secondary purpose of this study was to test if there were differences in gesture production by language. We predicted that the participants would use more representational and beat gestures in their second language (English) than in Farsi. As predicted, the participants used more representational gestures in story-telling than when talking about their language history in both languages and more beats when speaking English than Farsi. Surprisingly, they used equivalent rates of representational gestures in both languages. We discuss these results in terms of the different functions of representational gestures and beat gestures.

Previous research has suggested a link between levels of empathic engagement and the frequency and saliency of certain gestural forms, notably conduit and palm-revealing gestures. The present research investigates if these patterns are also observable in the use of pointing gestures within Tibetan communities, an underrepresented population in linguistics and cognitive science studies. To address this query, we implemented a referential communication task to elicit pointing behavior. This paradigm required participants to harness a repertoire of pointing techniques in order to facilitate the accurate assembly of intricate toy block configurations. The results showed that like many other cultural populations, Tibetan participants showed an overall preference for manual over non-manual pointing gestures at least within a controlled laboratory environment. However, Tibetan participants with higher levels of empathy produced manual pointing more often compared to those with low empathy. Notably, the two groups showed no difference in the mean number of non-manual pointing. These findings underscore the significance of integrating individual differences in investigating pointing preferences and, more broadly, enhance our understanding of the predictors of gesture use in human communication.

Previous studies have shown that students’ gestures can support their learning, yet little is known about what might prompt students to use gestures while learning in mathematics classrooms. To address this, we observed the same fraction lesson, taught by 8 different teachers, in which we identified students’ mathematics-related gestures and traced back to how and who prompted the gestures. We also searched for all instances of these prompts within a 4-minute window, to assess the probability that those prompts led to student gestures. Logistic regressions indicated that students were likely to engage in gesturing when they spontaneously offered elaborations (without prompting), and after teachers’ higher-order prompts. We also found that students produced more concatenated gestures after teachers provided higher-order prompts (requesting strategies or rationale) than factual prompts (requesting facts or results of mathematical problems). This study provides new insights about the conditions that elicit students’ embodied mathematical thinking.

Currently, it is unclear whether observing iconic gestures benefits comprehension of second language (L2) accented narratives, and whether it benefits it to a different degree than it does for first language (L1) accented narratives. In this study, L1 American English speakers watched videos of two narratives, one of which featured L1 accented American English, and the other of which featured L2 French-accented English. One narrative featured iconic gestures complementing speech, and the other did not contain gestures. Despite a marginally greater benefit of iconic gestures for L1 than L2 accented narratives, observing iconic gestures had no significant impact on comprehension, free recall, and event memory for L1 and L2 accented narratives. These findings suggest that observing iconic gestures may not enhance comprehension or memory for L2 accented spoken narratives. Implications for improving communication between L1 and L2 accented speakers are discussed.

Prosody influences speech organization by signaling phrasal prominence, grouping patterns, and speakers’ pragmatic intentions. While traditionally viewed as restricted to speech, research shows prosody is also conveyed visually. This article reviews research showing strong parallels between spoken prosody and co-speech gestures in prominence marking, grouping phrasal structures, and signaling pragmatic intent. We extend this discussion and propose a modality-neutral prosodic framework hypothesis comprising three propositions: (a) prosody should be viewed as a modality-neutral grammar component that operates as an abstract level of representation while adapting to different sensory channels and language modalities; (b) in spoken languages, prosody is implemented flexibly through two distinct channels, spoken and gestural, which enable to mark prominence, grouping and meaning in a multimodal way; (c) parallel implementations are found in the way prosody is manifested in spoken and sign languages. A modality-neutral view of prosody will enrich current formal and developmental theories of language.

This study examines depictive gestures in naturally occurring instructional activities of chadō (tea ceremony). The participants include a trained chadō instructor and beginning-level students. Drawing on praxeological work on depictive gestures and the notion of environmentally coupled gesture (ECG), I focus on a subset of ECG: environmentally coupled depictive gesture (ECDG). This study adopts a multimodal conversation analysis framework and shows how ECDGs are integrated to various degrees with language and spatial and material features to facilitate correction and demonstration in chadō. Findings also show that the sequential context and participants’ shared experience of the chadō procedure play a pivotal role in the instructional efficacy of ECDGs. This paper concludes by discussing the role of gestures, objects, and language across instructional settings.