Cross-cultural variation of speech-accompanying gesture: A review

Abstract

A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. This article reviews the literature on cross-cultural variation of gestures. Four factors governing the variation were identified. The first factor is the culture-specific convention for form-meaning associations. This factor is involved in well-known cross-cultural differences in emblem gestures (e.g., the OK-sign), as well as pointing gestures. The second factor is culture-specific spatial cognition. Representational gestures (i.e., iconic and deictic gestures) that express spatial contents or metaphorically express temporal concepts differ across cultures, reflecting the cognitive differences in how direction, relative location and different axes in space are conceptualised and processed. The third factor is linguistic differences. Languages have different lexical and syntactic resources to express spatial information. This linguistic difference is reflected in how gestures express spatial information. The fourth factor is culture-specific gestural pragmatics, namely the principles under which gesture is used in communication. The culturespecificity in politeness of gesture use, the role of nodding in conversation, and the use of gesture space are discussed.

Left/right and front/back in sign, speech, and co-speech gestures: What do data from Turkish Sign Language, Croatian Sign Language, American Sign Language, Turkish, Croatian, and English reveal?

“…Only the difference between Turkish speech and speech including cospeech gesture codings was significant. These findings are in line with previous research on co-speech gestures (Kita and Özyürek 2003;Kita 2009) which suggests that speakers do gesture when they describe spatial relations. The present study also adds that co-speech gestures can add information (Kendon 2000) which speech lacks, such as in the case of Turkish.…”

“…When languages represent space, they map spatial features, Space in sign, speech, and co-speech gestures 443 not one-to-one, but many-to-many onto the linguistic representations (Jackendoff 1996; Slack and van der Zee 2003). However, they differ from each other in many domains of the linguistic representations of space such as morphosyntax (Grinevald 2006), preferences for a reference frame over another in a given situation (Pederson et al 1998;Levinson and Wilkins 2006), conversion of motion event parts to linguistic event segments (Bohnemeyer et al 2007), and gestural productions accompanying spoken language descriptions of space (Levinson 2003;Kita and Özyürek 2003;Kita 2009). These differences are, arguably, reflected in nonlinguistic domains of cognition (see Levinson et al 2002;Majid et al 2004;Haun et al 2011; see also for contrary findings Li and Gleitman 2002;Li et al in press) The studies presented above focused on one of the available modalities in human communication, the audio-vocal modality.…”

Gesticulating science: Emergent bilingual students’ use of gestures

“…Goldin-Meadow (2004, p. 315) states that unlike language, which is based on codified words and a specific grammar, "gestures convey meaning globally, relying on visual and mimetic imagery." Simultaneously, research has shown variations in how people from different ethnic cultures use gestures (Ekman & Friesen, 1972;Kita, 2009). To exemplify, Matsumoto and Hwang's (2013) comparative study displayed several differences in how people from Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, Latin America, Middle East, South Asia, and the United States use emblems (gestures that can occur independent from speech).…”

Reconstructing verb meaning in a second language

“…Gestures also mirror information structure and align with newsworthy or focused information. This coordination means that gestures reflect language-specific meaning in different gestural forms and gestural timing relative to speech (Brown & Gullberg, 2008;Duncan, 2005;Gullberg, Hendriks, & Hickmann, 2008;Kita, 2009;Kita & Özyürek, 2003;McNeill, 1992; (Gullberg, submitted-a). For instance, native French speakers' gestures tend to express the path element of the movement in a simple pointing hand or a gesture with a flat hand shape moving in a given direction.…”