Action-Depicting Gestures and Morphosyntax: The Function of Gesture-Speech Alignment in the Conversational Turn.

Paweł Urbanik,Jan Svennevig

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689292

Abstract

The current study examines the role of action-depicting gestures in conversational turns by focusing on their semantic characteristics and temporal position in relation to their verbal affiliates (action verbs or more complex verb phrases). The data are video recordings of naturally occurring interactions in multilingual construction sites in Norway. The analysis distinguishes two modes of action depiction: generic depictions, which represent the action as a general type, and contextualized depictions, which in addition include deictic references to the spatio-material environment or iconic representations of the specific manner of action performance. These two modes typically occupy different positions in the turn. Generic depictions are mostly initiated before the verbalization of the action or are synchronized with it, while contextualized depictions mostly start simultaneously with the verbalization and extend beyond the verb phrase or the turn. The pre-positioned and synchronized generic gestures are shown to serve as a practice for facilitating recognition of the verbalized action and may be temporally manipulated in order to pre-empt understanding problems in the face of reduced common linguistic resources. The post-positioned contextualized depictions serve instead to add specifying information about aspects of the action referred to and thereby to complement or supplement the meaning of the verb phrase, securing understanding of action specifics. The study contributes to research on gesture-speech synchrony by demonstrating how variation in the alignment of action depiction and syntax is used to direct the recipient’s attention toward different interactional goals.

Highlights

The concept of action is relevant for analyzing conversation in two fundamentally different ways
We address two questions: 1) What is the specific contribution of action-depicting gestures to the representation of physical actions in conversational turns? 2) How do speakers position their gestures in relation to the verbal affiliates and what interactional consequences does this have? In answering these questions, we will take into account the relevance of the first concept of action representation to the emergence of action-depicting gestures in the sequential unfolding of talk
We have identified 92 gestures that illustrate actions co-expressed in speech with verbal affiliates, i.e., action verbs or larger verb phrases that name the action in question

Summary

Introduction

The concept of action is relevant for analyzing conversation in two fundamentally different ways. Conversational contributions often refer to actions as part of their semantic or ‘ideational’ meaning. Such actions are typically conveyed by action verbs or more complex verb phrases. They may concern actions in the here-and- situation or displaced actions, performed by the speaker or by some other actor. In Extract 1, we illustrate how these two forms of action are relevant to analyzing a conversational contribution by presenting a short sequence from a meeting in which a construction worker, Tomasz, proposes a solution to his foreman, Georg, on how to secure a construction so that a task can be performed

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion