Gesture in
Discourse
Inside the utterance,
we will find
information, and if we
know how to unpack
the
utterance, we will find
discourse.
It is a type of nonverbal communication
in which physical behaviors, as opposed to
words, are used to express or convey the
information. Such behavior includes facial
expressions, body posture, gestures, eye
movement, touch and the use of space.
Body language
3
Two women talking to eachother;
Notice the woman in blue has arm
next to her body, whilst the other uses
hers to gesticulate, both signs of body
language.
4
It is an integral part of body language and the
expression of emotion. An accurate interpretation
of it relies on interpreting multiple signs in
facial expressions
combination- such as the movement of the eyes,
eyebrows, lips, nose and cheeks- in order to form
an impression of a person’s mood and state of
mind; it should be additionally considered in regard
to the context in which it is occurring and the
person’s likely intention.
5
The term posture refers to how we hold our bodies
as well as the overall physical form of an individual.
Posture can convey a wealth of information about
how a person is feeling as well as hints about
personality characteristics, such as whether a
person is confident, open, or submissive.
Sitting up straight, for example, may indicate that
a person is focused and paying attention to what is
going on. Sitting with the body hunched forward,
on the other hand, can imply that the person is
bored or indifferent.
Body posture
6
Gestures can be some of the most direct and obvious
body language signals.
Waving, pointing, and using the fingers to indicate
numerical amounts are all very common and easy to
understand gestures.
Some gestures may be cultural, however, so giving a
thumbs-up or a peace sign in another country might
have a completely different meaning than it does in the
United States.
e.g., clenched fist, thumbs up and thumbs down, “okay”
gesture, V sign…
gesture
7
The gestures are actual
components of speech, not
accompaniments or “add-ons”
(Kendon’s 2008 term), but integral
parts of it. They are the opposite of
“body language”; not a separate
“language of gesture” but gestures
that
are actually part of language, of
speech.
Adam Kendon defined gestures as “actions that have the features of manifest
deliberate expressiveness.” We adopt his definition with one qualification and one
proviso. The qualification is that gesture cannot be deliberate. As we regard them,
“gestures” are unwitting and automatic, anything but deliberate (Kendon may have
meant by “deliberate” non-accidental, and with this we agree; but the word also
conveys “done for a purpose,” and with that we do not agree: gestures are
unwitting, inadvertent, un-self-conscious, parts of thinking itself). The proviso
concerns “action.” We regard gestures as movements orchestrated by
significances other than pragmatic actions, created by the speaker him- or herself
to embody significant imagery, not to attain goals, social or physical.
9
A gesture is …
an unwitting, non-accidental, non-goal-directed action,
orchestrated by speaker-created significances, having
features of manifest expressiveness, that enacts imagery
(not necessarily by the hands or hands alone), and is
generated as part of speaking.
10
To see the difference the proviso makes,
the gesture of this figure looks like the action of
lifting something in the hand, but it is
not lifting at all. It is an image of the character
rising, of the interior of the pipe through
which he rose, and of the direction of his motion
upward, all in a single symbolic form,
in none of which a lifting hand plays a part.
11
Communicative dynamism” is the extent to which a
given spoken or gestured form pushes the
communication forward (Firbas 1971).
Communicative
Dynamism and the
Psychological
Predicate
12
Space itself, where gestures are made, embodies discourse
themes. Gestures are of course spatial but the spaces in
which they appear are not filled at random.
Space as
Discourse
13
14
Catchments (abbreviated as C) occur when space,
trajectory, hand shape, and so on recur in two or
more (not necessarily consecutive) gestures.
Catchments show the effective contextual
background and provide an empirical route to the
discovery of the discourse context.
Catchments
15
16
-A catchment is recognized from recurrences of
gesture form features over a stretch of discourse.
-It is a kind of thread of consistent visuospatial action
imagery running through the discourse and provides a
gesture-based window into discourse cohesion.
-The logic is that discourse themes produce gestures
with recurring features; these recurrences give rise to
the catchment.
-Thus, reasoning in reverse, a catchment offers clues to
the cohesive links in the text with which it co-occurs.
17
Beat gestures are gestures that do not carry any speech
content. They convey non-narrative content and are
more in tune with the rhythm of speech. They are used
regardless of whether the speaker could see the listener
or not. Therefore, beat gestures accentuate the topic
that is being conveyed without directly referring to the
topic, emphasizing certain words and phrases during
speech.
Beat gestures
E,g,. “his girlfriend, Alice, Alice White”
18
Viewpoints in gesture are of two basic kinds:
observer viewpoint.:
Many take the perspective of a detached observer, watching an
event as if it occurred on a stage or screen: the hands are the
whole character, the space is the space in which the character
resides, and the speaker’s own head and body are on the
outside, looking in.
character viewpoint.:
The other perspective is that of the participant in the action:
the hands are the character’s hands, her motion its motion,
and the speaker’s body is the character’s in the scene.
Some gestures combine the perspectives, one part of the
gesture being in observer viewpoint, another part in character
viewpoint.
View points
In gesture
19
Pointing is a gesture specifying a direction
from a person’s body, usually indicating a
location, person event, thing or idea. It
typically is formed by extending the arm,
hand, and index finger.
20
Gestures are intrinsically social. They express this quality in
discourse units that themselves comprise interactions and
social mimicry. Schegloff (1984) used gesture to forecast
what would be “in play” in the next round of conversation.
We follow his lead, supplemented with the concept of a
psychological predicate, and look for joint psychological
predicates and fields of meaningful oppositions. A new
joint discourse unit is formed, among other ways, when
one person mimics the gesture of another or when two
individuals participate in one psychological predicate, one
providing the linguistic side, the other the gesture.
Mimicry and SocialInteractive Discourse
21
22
Conclusion:
discourse units formed by two persons,
their gestures and fields of
meaningful oppositions realized in
common through mimicry. This can take
place in conversations or during instruction
or even in the kind of virtual interaction that
a gesture coder has with video images of
another person’s gestures.
The End