GESPIN – GESTURE & SPEECH IN INTERACTION – Poznań, 24-26 September 2009
The role of gesture in taboo-related discourse Monika Wachowska University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies Nowy Świat 4, 00-497 Warsaw, Poland m.wachowska@uw.edu.pl
Abstract The paper discusses a mitigating or euphemistic function of gestures in discourse that makes reference to social and conversational taboos. The analysis is based on Polish TV talk-shows and interviews recorded in 2008. Three excerpts are discussed in detail – each of them refers to a different type of taboo: negative stereotypes, sexuality, and bodily functions. In every case I focus on three aspects: how the taboo content is introduced into public discourse, how the semantic meaning of the verbal utterance is modified by the accompanying gestures, and finally, what pragmatic effects are achieved by the speakers' choice of gestures. Generally, the speakers/gesturers in the recorded material prefer gestural modality over verbal phrases to convey crude or obscene messages. Their choice of gesture over speech is motivated not by the need to strengthen the indecent content, but rather to mitigate the explicit verbal message. At the same time they use gestures in order to achieve other discursive goals, e.g. provoke a humorous response, disambiguate idiomatic expressions or manifest their attitude towards a narrated or reported story.
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Introduction
Given the expressive and attention-drawing nature of gesture, it should not come as a surprise that people use certain gestures to insult, make obscene comments or refer to social taboos. Often, such vulgar or indecent instances of non-verbal behaviour belong to the class of emblematic (Ekman and Friesen 1969, McNeill 1992) or quotable gestures (Kendon 2004), i.e. gestures that can substitute for the entire verbal utterance, are conventionalized in form, culture-specific, and easily paraphrasable by means of a word or phrase that carries a similar meaning. Thus, when seeing someone who extends his middle finger upwards, the other four being bent, most of us would not have problems with recognizing the conventional form of the gesture, glossing it as 'fuck you' or 'fuck off' and understanding the communicative message of the gesturer. Probably to many people seeing this gesture would be subjectively even more obscene than hearing the verbal insult alone, since the gesture by its iconic form evokes offensive sexual associations (Morris et al. 1979: 79-92, Morris 2002: 296-310). However, in this paper I do not focus on the offensive, insult-strenghtening function of emblematic gestures. Instead, I concentrate on the reverse phenomenon related to non-verbal behaviour and taboo, i.e. gestures as communicative devices that mitigate verbal content that would otherwise be taboo or obscene. In her paper on Polish and English taboo vocabulary, Kizeweter notes: “Words that many people consider offensive or shocking, for example because they refer to sex, the body or people's race” – this is how the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English edited in 2001 explains the term taboo words. Nobody who agrees with the
GESPIN proceedings, vol. I above definition can be surprised by the fact that an average speaker of a language, be it English or Polish, avoids discussing the issue of taboo vocabulary in public, and that the issue seems to occupy a rather inferior position in language research. (Kizeweter 2004: 341)
Indeed, speakers may want to avoid explicit reference to taboo words and topics in s p e e ch, but are they equally cautious when it comes to spontaneous, speech-accompanying gestures? As observed by Kendon, there is “(...)a functional continuity between language, as manifested in speech, and gesture.” (Kendon 2000:50), thus one may expect that the two modalities – verbal and gestural – may substitute one for another, both semantically and pragmatically, also in the domain of taboo discourse. The aim of this paper is to discuss three cases of gestures that co-occur with or replace speech in taboo-related discourse. The examples are varied with respect to the type of gesture (emblems, iconic gestures and metaphoric gestures) and the type of taboo involved (negative stereotypes, sexuality and bodily functions). In each case I analyze semantic contribution of gestures and discuss their pragmatic or discoursive effects of the utterance. Since the data presented in the paper is limited to three examples, I do not intend to put forward any specific theoretical claims or make conclusive generalizations about mitigating function of gestures in Polish discourse as such. Rather, I would like to draw attention to the phenomenon of euphemistic gestures and suggest possible areas for further investigation on a larger set of data.
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The Data
2.1 Methodology The paper is based on data recorded in 2008 from a variety of Polish TV programmes, including talk shows, feature programmes and interviews. The video material was edited with ELAN Linguistic Annotator, ver. 3.3.0., however, due to the limits of space, the physical manner of performing the gestures has been only briefly described in the main body of the paper. Frame captures of the relevant gestures as well as longer verbal exchanges that show the context for a particular gesture's meaning and usage can be found in the CD-Rom Appendix . Since the data come from publically broadcast programmes and feature popular journalists and actors, I refer to the speakers/gesturers in the paper by their real names. For the purpose of the present paper I have selected and discussed three examples illustrating three different categories of taboo or obscene words. In the three subsections below I show how the speakers deploy speech and gesture in order to deal with indecent or offensive content in TV programmes. In each case I try to demonstrate how the meaning of utterances is enriched or modified semantically and/or pragmatically by the interplay of verbal and non-verbal modality.
2.2 Example 1: the taboo of a negative national stereotype The first example comes from the late-night talk-show Kuba Wojewódzki1, a weekly entertainment TV programme that features interviews with Polish celebrities and brief satirical comments on current cultural, political and social events. In the following fragment the host- Kuba Wojewódzkireports the following news:
1)Kreml – [gest] nasi bracia [gest] - ogłosił przetarg na zakup trzech i pół tysięcy białych myszek. (...) The Kremlin – [gesture] our brothers [gesture] - announced a tender for three and a half thousand of white mice. The word Kreml ('the Kremlin') is immediately followed by an open-hand pointing gesture where the speaker extends his right arm upwards to the right. He holds the extended arm as he utters the phrase nasi bracia ('our brothers'), and then makes a pause. During the pause he performs 1
Kuba Wojewódzki, recorded 11.03. 2008, TVN.
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the second gesture, i.e. he strikes several times his neck with the outer edge of his right palm, then he finishes the sentence without any further gestures. The first gesture seems to draw the audience's attention to the Kremlin which metonymically stands for members of the Russian government. The speaker points to his upper-right area which reflects the relative geographical position of Warsaw where the speaker is, and Moscow, where the Kremlin is located. In other words, the upper-right area of the speaker corresponds to northern-east direction where Moscow is located. The verbal phrase nasi bracia 'our brothers' is somewhat ambiguous, since Poles and Russians are not 'brothers' in the literal sense of having the same parents. However, the broader sense of the term 'brothers', i.e. people who have something in common and feel mutual emotional attachment, is still vague. Individuals may perceive themselves as 'brothers' due to a wide variety of reasons: attending the same university, serving in the same regiment in the army, being members of the same political party, sharing preference for the same type of music, and so on. In the discussed utterance the speaker does not specify verbally what kind of brotherhood there might be between Poles and Russians, however this information is conveyed gesturally. The second gesture of the speaker is in fact an emblematic Polish gesture that means 'to get/to become heavily drunk'. Thus, according to the speaker, Poles and Russians seem to be brothers in heavy drinking. The speaker expresses this opinion only in gesture possibly due to the fact that excessive alcohol drinking is one of the negative stereotypes about Slavic nations, hence a potentially taboo issue. However the gesture, apart from its semantic function of narrowing the general concept of 'our brothers' to the more specific concept of 'our brothers – i.e. people who, similarily to us, enjoy excessive consumption of alcohol', fulfils also a pragmatic, discursive role. It guides the audience towards the humorous interpretation of the latter part of the utterance. It can be noted that in the reported news it is not stated explicitly why the Kremlin would want to buy 3,500 white mice. Again, several more or less plausible explanations could be offered: mice could be used for lab testing, for feeding some reptiles or felines, and so on. However, in Polish the phrase 'white mice', apart from its literal meaning denoting small rodents with white fur, functions also in the idiomatic expression widzieć białe myszki – lit.'to see white mice', i.e. to have hallucinations caused by excessive drinking of alcohol. Thus, the joint verbal-gestural reference to the Kremlin as ‘our brothers who like drinking’ guides the audience towards the interpretation that the Kremlin's tender for white mice is in some way linked to alcoholic intoxication.
2.3 Example 2: the taboo of sexual organs In the above example the emblematic gesture was used to narrow the concept of brotherhood, express a negative stereotype and introduce the context for the intended interpretation of the utterance. In the following example an iconic gesture is used for disambiguation between the literal and non-literal meaning of an idiomatic expression. The example comes from a different episode of the same show2. This time the host interviews Paweł Królikowski, a Polish actor. At one point Wojewódzki says:
2)Kuba Wojewódzki: Dobrze, słuchaj, mało który aktor... - bo ty masz jaja-... Kuba Wojewódzki: Ok, listen, there are not too many actors...- 'cause you have balls [lit. 'eggs'] -...
3)Paweł Królikowski: Nooo tak, no ale co co co to za kwalifikacja artystyczna jest... Paweł Królikowski: Weeell yeeeah, but what what what kind of artistic criterion is this...
4) K.W.:[śmiech] dobrze, że się przyznał [śmiech]. [K.W. parodiuje rozmowę z P.K.] Masz jaja. No mam, no trudno. Dali, to wziąłem.No błagam cię. (...) 2
Kuba Wojewódzki, recorded 04.03.2008, TVN.
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Masz jaja metaforycznie [gest] rzecz biorąc [gest], nie pytałem cię o [gest]. K.W.:[laughs] It's good that he admitted it [laughs]. [K.W. mocks his own conversation with P.K.] You have balls. Well, I have, well, I can't help it. They gave, so I took. Oh, please. (...) You have balls metaphorically [gesture] speaking [gesture], I wasn't asking you about [gesture]. The phrase metaforycznie rzecz biorąc ('metaphorically speaking') is accompanied by a right hand spinning and waving gesture over the head, followed by a 'finger bunch' gesture . The last gesture, performed at the end of the utterance, replaces the expected and syntactically required verbal phrase and iconically shows two roundish objects held in both hands by the speaker. The Polish phrase mieć jaja (lit.'to have eggs', 'to have balls') has a literal and non-literal meaning. The literal sense 'having eggs' can be understood as 'having roundish hard-shelled reproductive bodies, such as chicken eggs'. This meaning in turn euphemistically stands for 'male testicles'. However, in a more metaphorical sense the phrase also means 'to be daring, brave, bold, to have courage.' In everyday conversations it seems that the phrase is by default interpreted and understood in its non-literal meaning (i.e. 'to be brave'), possibly due to social constraints on public discussion of male and female genitals in explicit terms. However, in the discussed example both senses of the phrase are entertained by the interlocutors. When Wojewódzki opens the exchange, he uses the phrase in its default meaning of being brave, having courage and in fact he intends to complement Królikowski. Królikowski, however, downplays the remark and does not react enthusiastically, boastfully or gratefully enough for a man who has just been told this kind of big complement. Instead, he reluctantly admitts that he 'has balls', but the overall impression is that it is nothing special, worth mentioning. The perlocutionary effect of the complement on Królikowski ('overmodest' and belittling) seems to cause switching from the default metaphorical sense to the literal sense of the phrase mieć jaja, i.e. 'to have testicles'. Indeed, a male actor, by the natural course of things, most probably has testicles, and there is nothing special about this fact. Wojewódzki mocks his own conversation with Królikowski, playing at the same time on the literal and non-literal meaning of the phrase to provoke some laughter in his audience. Yet, in order to steer the conversation in a more serious direction, he finally disambiguates the two senses by using a metalinguistic verbal comment (metaforycznie rzecz biorąc, 'metaphorically speaking'), accompanied by a metalinguistic gesture expressing the idea of metaphor, a pragmatic gesture of 'finger bunch' that is often used to ask a question or make the meaning of the verbal utterance more precise , and an iconic gesture to render to the literal meaning.
2.4 Example 3: the taboo of defecation In the previous sections I used examples from a show that has been broadcast for a relatively long time (since 2002), hence its convention, including the accepted and expected level of indecency or obscenity, has been already well established. Therefore, the guests of Kuba Wojewódzki usually do not hesitate if they want to tell an indecent joke or make a crude comment. However, in a new talkshow the limits of what can be said on the air might not be that clear to participants, hence the need for negotiating the degree of explicitness or obscenity. The following example illustrates interplay of speech and gesture aimed at establishing the boundary of acceptable indecency. The fragment comes from the first episode of the talk-show Wojciech Cejrowski-Po mojemu3. The host, Wojciech Cejrowski, talks with Marian Opania, an actor. They chat about travelling and at one point Opania says:
5)Marian Opania: Opowiedziałbym pewną niecenzuralną opowieść. Marian Opania: I would tell you a certain indecent story.
6)Wojciech Cejrowski: To proszę bardzo, najwyżej się wytnie. 3
Wojciech Cejrowski – Po mojemu, recorded 09.03.2008, TVN Style.
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Wojciech Cejrowski: So go ahead, at worst we will cut it out.
7) M.O.: Otóż, otóż w Kanadzie przeżyłem yymmmm moment horroru (...) Yyy, i rzecz na czym polegała, że usadowiłem się na [gest] - ekhm -[gest]... M.O.: So, so in Canada I experienced yymmmm a moment of horror (...) Yyy, and the thing was that I sat on [gesture] – ekhm- [gesture]...
8) W.C.: ...na tronie. W.C.: ...on the throne.
9)M.O.: ...na tronie [potaknięcie]. (...) M.O.: ...on the throne [head nod]. (...) Establishing the limits of acceptable level of obscenity in this example begins with a verbal preparatory stage, i.e. the meta-narrative remark opowiedziałbym pewną niecenzuralną opowieść 'I would tell you an indecent story', which functions as a request for potentially explicit story. The permission to tell such a story is granted verbally by the host and Opania begins his narration. However, when he comes to the point which in his opinion might infringe acceptable social conventions, he hesitates and resorts to gestures. He pauses just when he is about to utter some word denoting the toilet. He scratches his forehead and slightly coughs. These non-verbal actions are both meta-narrative, since they express the speaker's embarrassment and uneasiness related to the very act of telling the story. Then he quickly pantomimes the manner of sitting on the toilet. At this point Cejrowski suggests a euphemistic word – 'throne' – that could be safely used. Opania repeats na tronie 'on the throne' and nods which is a meta-narrative acceptance of the word and its (low) level of indecency.
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Discussion and Conclusions
In the above sections I presented three utterances that refer to the most typical taboo items: negative stereotypes about nationalities ('Poles and Russians are drunkards', example 1), human sexual organs ('you have balls' , example 2), and bodily functions related to defecation ( 'sitting on the toilet', example 3). In all cases the speakers decided to use a gesture rather than explicit words to render the potentially obscene concept ( an emblematic gesture for 'getting drunk' in example 1, an iconic gesture depicting two roundish items, i.e. testicles in example 2, and a pantomimic gesture enacting sitting on the toilet in example 3). Interestingly, when the verbal phrase was ambiguous (as in example 2: 'to have balls' – 'to be brave' vs. 'to have balls' – 'to have testicles'), the gesture replacing the verbal phrase was used only when it was clear from the context that the speaker used the phrase in the more obscene and literal sense (i.e. jaja 'balls' in the sense of testicles). Otherwise, the same-sounding phrase did not require any gestural substitution or verbal hedging. Resorting to gestures instead of words seems to be a preferred strategy not only when the speaker knows for sure that what he wants to say infringes the norms of public discourse, yet still wants to express the message, but also when he is not certain whether the intended word would be still acceptable or already obscene in a given context. Such a situation took place in example 2, where the speaker conveyed gesturally the notion of the toilet, even though he had been given explicit verbal permission to use indecent vocabulary. He agreed to refer to the sanitary item verbally only when the euphemistic word 'throne' was suggested to him. However, apart from the mitigating or euphemistic function, the gestures discussed in the paper fulfil also other pragmatic roles and enrich semantic aspects of utterances. They can narrow a more general meaning to a more specific one ('brothers' , example 1), disambiguate words ( 'balls', example 2), set the context for the required interpretation of the utterance ('white mice' and alcoholic intoxication, example 1), allow the narrator to show his attitude towards the narrated story without explicit verbal meta-textual comment (uneasiness and embarrassment related to telling what happened in a toilet, example 3).
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The present study focuses on three examples only and does not allow to generalizing. Nevertheless, it signals some of the verbal and gestural strategies that are used by speakers of Polish to render taboo content in an utterance. A more comprehensive future research could focus on different categories of gestures deployed in “indecent” discourse and possible diversification of speakers' strategies depending on the type of speech event or the type of taboo. Bibliography Ekman, P., Friesen, W. 1969. The repertoire of nonverbal behavior. In: Semiotica 4 (2) . pp. 49-89. Kendon, A. 2004 . Gestures. Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kizeweter, M. 2004. A study of English and Polish taboo vocabulary relating to the human body and its functions, as presented in English-Polish and Polish-English dictionaries. In: Relevance Studies in Poland 1. Warsaw: Wyd. University of Warsaw/Institute of English Studies. pp. 341-347. McNeill, D. 1992. Hand and mind. What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morris, D. 2002. People watching. London: Vintage. Morris, D., Collett, P., Marsh, P., O'Shaughnessy, M. 1979. Gestures. Their origins and distribution. Granada: Triad. APPENDIX
Example 1. Kuba Wojewódzki, 11.03.2008, TVN. Example 1 · Kreml – [gest] nasi bracia [gest] - ogłosił przetarg na zakup trzech i pół tysięcy białych myszek. (...) · The Kremlin – [gesture] our brothers [gesture] - announced a tender for three and a half thousand of white mice.
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Example 2. Kuba Wojewódzki, 04.03.2008, TVN. Example 2 · Kuba Wojewódzki: Dobrze, słuchaj, mało który aktor... - bo ty masz jaja-... · Kuba Wojewódzki: Ok, listen, there are not too many actors...- 'cause you have balls [lit. 'eggs'] -... · Paweł Królikowski: Nooo tak, no ale co co co to za kwalifikacja artystyczna jest... · Paweł Królikowski: Weeell yeeeah, but what what what kind of artistic criterion is this... · K.W.:[śmiech] dobrze, że się przyznał [śmiech]. [K.W. parodiuje rozmowę z P.K.] Masz jaja. No mam, no trudno. Dali, to wziąłem.No błagam cię. To by..Wszedłeś mi w połowę zdania. Masz jaja metaforycznie rzecz biorąc, nie pytałem cię o [gest]. · K.W.:[laughs] It's good that he admitted it [laughs]. [K.W. mocks his own conversation with P.K.] You have balls. Well, I have, well, I can't help it. They gave, so I took. Oh, please. This wa[s]...You cut into the middle of my sentence. You have balls metaphorically [gesture] speaking [gesture], I wasn't asking you about [gesture]. · P.K.: Tak...tak... Ekhm. Ja będę podążał tym tokiem, no dobra no. · P.K.: Right...right...ekhm... I will stick t o this version, well ok. · K.W.: Masz- tylko nie przerywaj - masz jaja, bo mało który aktor powiedziałby o sobie
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takie zdanie "Nie jestem specjalnie uzdolnionym aktorem". K.W.: You have – just don't interrupt – you have balls, because there are not too many actors who would say the following sentence about themselves: „I'm not a particularly talented actor”.
Example 3. Wojciech Cejrowski-Po mojemu, 09.03.2008, TVN Style. Example 3 · Marian Opania: Opowiedziałbym pewną niecenzuralną opowieść. · Marian Opania: I would tell you a certain indecent story. · Wojciech Cejrowski: To proszę bardzo, najwyżej się wytnie. · Wojciech Cejrowski: So go ahead, at worst we will cut it out. · M.O.: Otóż, otóż w Kanadzie przeżyłem yymmmm moment horroru i kiedy wróciłem do Polski i opowiedziałem tę historyjkę, nikt mi nie uwierzył, wszyscy myśleli, że tak zgrabnie sobie wymyśliłem. Otóż trzeba panu, państwu wiedzieć, że ja jestem właśnie niemieckojęzyczny, stąd puenta niemiecka będzie. Otóż trafiłem w jednej z restauracyj do ubikacji, gdzie było wejście takie jak do salonu w Westę...w westernowych rzeczach. Tylko to takie było uchylne i był zepsuty haczyk w tym. Yyy, i rzecz na czym polegała, że usadowiłem się na [gest] - ekhm -[gest]... · M.O.: So, so in Canada I had experienced yymmmm a moment of horror, and when I came back to Poland and told that story, nobody believed me, everybody thought I had made it up so aptly. So you, you should know that I'm a German-speaking [person] , which is why the punch line will be in German. So in one of the restaurants I went to the toilet where the entrance was like in a saloon in weste...western pieces. It was like swinging and there was a broken latch in it. Yyy, and the thing was that I sat on [gesture] – ekhm- [gesture]... · W.C.: ...na tronie. · W.C.: ...on the throne. · M.O.: ...na tronie [potaknięcie]. (...) · M.O.: ...on the throne [head nod]. (...)
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