GESPIN – GESTURE & SPEECH IN INTERACTION – Poznań, 24-26 September 2009
Recurrent gestures and gesture families – proto-forms of linguistic structures in gestures Jana Bressem, Cornelia Müller, Ellen Fricke European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) research@janabressem.de, cmh.mueller@t-online.de, science@ellenfricke.de
Abstract This talk presents first insights into a repertoire of conventionalized gestures with primarily pragmatic functions used by German speakers. The talk will thereby draw on six recurrent gestures covering two differing semantic fields that will serve as first examples for the repertoire. The gestures are termed 'recurrent gestures' because they are “used repeatedly in different contexts and their formational and semantic core remain stable across different contexts and speakers.” (Ladewig, in prep.). Such stable form-meaning pairings across contexts and speakers in gestures have been studied from different cultural backgrounds (see Kendon (1995, 2004), Ladewig (in prep.), Müller (2004), Müller & Speckmann (2002), Payrató (1993), Seyfeddinipur (2004), Teßendorf (in prep.), inter alia). Analyses revealed that these gestures form a rather stable network through a common underlying semantic theme (Kendon 2004, Müller 2004) or semantic core (Ladewig in prep., Teßendorf in prep.), and that some of them show variations in form going along with variation of meaning. Furthermore, some scholars were able to show, that these gestures group in so-called “gesture families” (Kendon 2004), which have been defined as “groupings of gestural expressions that have in common one or more kinesic or formational characteristics. [...] [E]ach family not only shares in a distinct set of kinesic features but each is also distinct in its semantic themes. The forms within these families, distinguished as they are kinesically, also tend to differ semantically although, within a given family, all forms share in a common semantic theme.“ (Kendon 2004: 227) The analyses to be presented in this talk are based on a data corpus of 24 hours of various discourse types (face-to-face interaction, interviews, discussions, game shows, political debates). Based on a total of 219 recurrent gestural forms, 17 recurrent gestures were documented. So far, six of them have been analyzed with respect to their forms, meanings and functions based on a detailed description of the form features (Bressem MS.), the gestural modes of representation (Müller 1998, Müller et. al in prep), a context-of use analysis (Ladewig in prep., Ladewig & Bressem subm., Müller 2004), a sequential analysis (Ladewig in prep., Ladewig & Bressem subm., Müller 1998, 2004), possible underlying image schematic or motor bases (Bressem in prep., Ladewig in prep., Mittelberg to appear, Teßendorf in prep.) and their combination with other articulators. Using this approach, differing formal as well semantic cores were identified: a) “denial” and b) “vagueness” making up two distinct gesture families. Particular form features, specific sequential positions, contexts-of use and context distribution furthermore mark individual members of the differing families, thus leading to functional and performative differences of the specific recurrent gestures. The analyses presented in this talk are a further step in investigating the recurrent nature of gestures (Bressem & Ladewig in prep.), their conventionalization and performativity and possible proto-forms of linguistic structures in gestures (Fricke 2008, Müller 2004). Furthermore it gives insights into our attempt of trying to set up a repertoire of recurrent gestures used by German speakers.
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