Gestures as illocutionary and discourse structure markers in Southern Italian conversation

Abstract

In Southern Italy gesture use is prominent and many gestures are conventional. These include ‘pragmatic’ gestures that indicate type of speech act or aspects of discourse structure and ‘substantive’ gestures that express utterance content. Drawing from video-recordings of natural conversations made near Salerno, Italy, the contexts of use of four conventional ‘pragmatic’ gestures are described. The first two, the Mano a borsa (‘purse hand’) and the Mani giunte (‘praying hands’) are well known and have recognition as ‘quotable gestures’ or ‘emblems’. They express the illocutionary intent of the spoken utterances associated with them. The second two relate to discourse structure: The Finger Bunch, which is similar to the ‘purse hand’ in form, marks ‘topic’ as distinct from ‘comment’; the Ring, in which the tips of the index finger and thumb are brought into contact forming a circle, marks the ‘locality’ of a unit in relation to the theme. These latter do not have recognition as ‘emblems’ but they may be related to gestures that are similar in form that do. Factors that contribute to the conventionalization of gesture, and implications for the status of gestures in relation to language are discussed.