Categorisation of Gestures McNeill Only spontaneous or speech-associated gestures are included. Iconics Iconic gestures bear a close formal relationship to the semantic content of speech Example: A speaker was asked to describe a scene from a comic book story in which a character bends a tree back to the ground. During the description the speaker appeared to grip something and pull it back. In addition to the speaker’s memory image the gesture also reveals the particular point of view that he had taken toward this picture. The example illustrates the close connection that exists between speech and gesture. The gesture movement coincided with the part of the utterance that presented the same thing. The gesture has the function of coexpressiveness in order to complete the person’s thought. Still, gestures also function as complementarities. Speech and gesture refer to the same event, but the pictures they present are different. Example: speech conveys the ideas of pursuit and recurrence while gesture conveys the weapon used (an umbrella). Both refer to the same event, but each presents a different aspect of it. Only through a joint consideration of both speech and gesture we can see all the elements: the type of action, its recurrence, the weapon, and how it was used Metaphorics The pictorial content presents an abstract idea rather than a concrete object or event. Example: A speaker is announcing that what he has just seen and is about to recount to the listener is a cartoon The speaker is referring to the genre of the cartoon which is an abstract concept. Yet as long as he forms an image of a bounded object supported in the hands he makes it concrete. Beats During these gestures the hand moves along with the rhythmical pulsation of speech. These gestures tend to have the same form regardless of the content Typical beat: a simple flick of the hand or fingers up and down, or back and forth; the movement is short and quick Beats have just two movement phases- in/out, up/down, etc. They reveal the speaker’s conception of the narrative discourse as a whole. They refer to information that provides the structure within which the plot line unfolds. Example: a beat that accompanied a reference to the theme of an episode. The spoken utterance does not refer to a particular incident but characterizes a class of incidents, and the beat marked the word (“whenever”) that signalled this reference to the discourse as a whole rather than a specific event. Cohesives Cohesives serve to tie together thematically related but temporally separated parts of the discourse. They emphasize continuities. Gestural cohesion depends on repeating the same gesture form, movement, or locus in the same gesture space: the repetition is what signals the continuity. Example (iconic gesture): A speaker is describing one of the cartoon episodes first made a crisscross gesture for intersecting overhead wires, interrupted herself to make a back-and-forth movement to represent a trolley car, and then went back to the crisscross gesture. Since the narrative story line is interrupted by the illustration of the trolley system a connection back to the main theme has to be arranged which is accomplished by the second crisscross iconic. The second crisscross was cohesive because it tied together two parts of the narrative by showing, literally, where the old theme was located. Deictics Deictic are pointing gestures. Pointing can indicate objects and events in the concrete world, but it also plays a part even where there is nothing objectively present to point at (the abstract kind). Example: during a conversation between two previously unacquainted students. The gesture is aimed not at an existing physical place, but at an abstract concept of where the interlocutor had been before. Abstract pointing gestures imply a metaphorical picture of their own in which abstract ideas have a physical locus. Wundt Distinction between affective and symbolic gestures: affective gestures: - bear a close relationship to the content of speech in terms of proximity in space or form - divided into demonstratives, and gestures designating the form and/or function of objects symbolic gestures: - have a less direct connection to the content of speech, and rely on association Efron Three aspects of gestures: 1. Gestures as spatio-temporal events or movements 2. Gestures regarded as interlocutional or communicative events 3. Gestures discussed as linguistic or referential units three fundamental categories of linguistic gestures: logical-discursive gestures emphasise the verbal content batons: rhythmic gestures ideographic gestures: trace the movement of thought objective gestures have meaning independently of speech deictic or pointing gestures physiographic gestures: visualise what they refer to - iconographic: gestures trace the form of a visual object - kinetographic: gestures depict bodily actions emblematic or symbolic gestures represent a visual or logical object by pictorial or non-pictorial form are culture-specific and have standardised meanings Ekman & Friesen Illustrators: movements which are directly tied to speech, serving to illustrate what is being said verbally are said to substitute, contradict or augment the information provided orally subdivided into a number of categories: batons or rhythmic gestures ideographs: sketch a path or direction of thought deictic movements: indicate objects present in the room spatial movements: express spatial relationships kinetographs: movements depicting bodily action pictographs: draw pictures of the referent Illustrators include all spontaneous, speech-associated gesture Freedman Two broad categories are distinguished: 1. body-focused movements: unrelated to the spoken word involve self-stimulation 2. object-focused movements: intimately linked to the formal and/or contextual aspects of speech correspond to all the categories seen for gesticulation are divided into speech-primacy movements: closely parallel the formal and rhythmic properties of speech motor-primacy movements: express the content message
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 03:24:15 +0000
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