Gestures of the abstract

Parrill, Fey; Stec, Kashmiri

doi:10.1075/pc.17006.par

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…The systematic use of gesture space also extends to abstract referents, e.g., ideas, emotions, and discourse elements (Parrill and Stec, 2017). A corpus study of English contrastive gestures showed that speakers regularly produce gestures to each side of space when contrasting two ideas (Hinnell, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gesture Influences Resolution of Ambiguous Statements of Neutral and Moral Preferences

Hinnell

Parrill

2020

Front. Psychol.

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When faced with an ambiguous pronoun, comprehenders use both multimodal cues (e.g., gestures) and linguistic cues to identify the antecedent. While research has shown that gestures facilitate language comprehension, improve reference tracking, and influence the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns, literature on reference resolution suggests that a wide set of linguistic constraints influences the successful resolution of ambiguous pronouns and that linguistic cues are more powerful than some multimodal cues. To address the outstanding question of the importance of gesture as a cue in reference resolution relative to cues in the speech signal, we have previously investigated the comprehension of contrastive gestures that indexed abstract referents – in this case expressions of personal preference – and found that such gestures did facilitate the resolution of ambiguous statements of preference. In this study, we extend this work to investigate whether the effect of gesture on resolution is diminished when the gesture indexes a statement that is less likely to be interpreted as the correct referent. Participants watched videos in which a speaker contrasted two ideas that were either neutral (e.g., whether to take the train to a ballgame or drive) or moral (e.g., human cloning is (un)acceptable). A gesture to the left or right side co-occurred with speech expressing each position. In gesture-disambiguating trials, an ambiguous phrase (e.g., I agree with that, where that is ambiguous) was accompanied by a gesture to one side or the other. In gesture non-disambiguating trials, no third gesture occurred with the ambiguous phrase. Participants were more likely to choose the idea accompanied by gesture as the stimulus speaker’s preference. We found no effect of scenario type. Regardless of whether the linguistic cue expressed a view that was morally charged or neutral, observers used gesture to understand the speaker’s opinion. This finding contributes to our understanding of the strength and range of cues, both linguistic and multimodal, that listeners use to resolve ambiguous references.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gesture Influences Resolution of Ambiguous Statements of Neutral and Moral Preferences

Hinnell

Parrill

2020

Front. Psychol.

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“…One novelty of this study is the examination of gesture use in a non-spatial context, which is different from earlier evidence that focused on the relation between gesture production and spatiality (but see, Hurtienne et al, 2010;Parrill & Stec, 2017;Zdrazilova et al, 2018). Studies repeatedly emphasised that gestures are particularly effective in thinking and communicating about visual and spatial information (e.g., Alibali, 2005;Feyereisen & Havard, 1999;Lavergne & Kimura, 1987).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Gesture use in L1-Turkish and L2-English: Evidence from emotional narrative retellings

Özder

Özer

Göksun

2022

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Bilinguals tend to produce more co-speech hand gestures to compensate for reduced communicative proficiency when speaking in their L2. We here investigated L1-Turkish and L2-English speakers’ gesture use in an emotional context. We specifically asked whether and how (1) speakers gestured differently while retelling L1 vs. L2 and positive vs. negative narratives, and (2) gesture production during retellings was associated with speakers’ later subjective emotional intensity ratings of those narratives. We asked 22 participants to read and then retell eight emotion-laden narratives (half positive, half negative; half Turkish, half English). We analyzed gesture frequency during the entire retelling and during emotional speech only (i.e., gestures that co-occur with emotional phrases such as “happy”). Our results showed that participants produced more representational gestures in L2 than in L1, however, they used more representational gestures during emotional content in L1 than in L2. Participants also produced more co-emotional speech gestures when retelling negative than positive narratives, regardless of language, and more beat gestures co-occurring with emotional speech in negative narratives in L1. Furthermore, using more gestures when retelling a narrative was associated with increased emotional intensity ratings for narratives. Overall, these findings suggest that (1) bilinguals might use representational gestures to compensate for reduced linguistic proficiency in their L2, (2) speakers use more gestures to express negative emotional information, particularly during emotional speech, and (3) gesture production may enhance the encoding of emotional information, which subsequently leads to the intensification of emotion perception.

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“…For each spoken element in a contrast or list, we coded first whether it was accompanied by a gesture. There are many definitions of gesture, which can include movements of the entire upper body, such as head tilts and hand gestures (Parrill & Stec, 2017; Wehling, 2009). In Study 1, we focused specifically on hand gestures, defined as symbolic movement of the hands and arms in order to accompany the speech (Peters & Hoetjes, 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Gesture Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodying Similarity and Difference: The Effect of Listing and Contrasting Gestures During U.S. Political Speech

Zhang,

Izad,

Cartmill

2024

Cognitive Science

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Public speakers like politicians carefully craft their words to maximize the clarity, impact, and persuasiveness of their messages. However, these messages can be shaped by more than words. Gestures play an important role in how spoken arguments are perceived, conceptualized, and remembered by audiences. Studies of political speech have explored the ways spoken arguments are used to persuade audiences and cue applause. Studies of politicians’ gestures have explored the ways politicians illustrate different concepts with their hands, but have not focused on gesture's potential as a tool of persuasion. Our paper combines these traditions to ask first, how politicians gesture when using spoken rhetorical devices aimed at persuading audiences, and second, whether these gestures influence the ways their arguments are perceived. Study 1 examined two rhetorical devices—contrasts and lists—used by three politicians during U.S. presidential debates and asked whether the gestures produced during contrasts and lists differ. Gestures produced during contrasts were more likely to involve changes in hand location, and gestures produced during lists were more likely to involve changes in trajectory. Study 2 used footage from the same debates in an experiment to ask whether gesture influenced the way people perceived the politicians’ arguments. When participants had access to gestural information, they perceived contrasted items as more different from one another and listed items as more similar to one another than they did when they only had access to speech. This was true even when participants had access to only gesture (in muted videos). We conclude that gesture is effective at communicating concepts of similarity and difference and that politicians (and likely other speakers) take advantage of gesture's persuasive potential.

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Gestures of the abstract

Cited by 11 publications

References 36 publications

Gesture Influences Resolution of Ambiguous Statements of Neutral and Moral Preferences

Gesture Influences Resolution of Ambiguous Statements of Neutral and Moral Preferences

Gesture use in L1-Turkish and L2-English: Evidence from emotional narrative retellings

Embodying Similarity and Difference: The Effect of Listing and Contrasting Gestures During U.S. Political Speech

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