How to speak “geocentric” in an “egocentric” language: A multimodal study among Ngigua-Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals in a rural community of Mexico

Abstract

It has recently been shown that individuals residing in rural, indigenous communities rely on geocentric conceptualizations of space, e.g., north/south/east/west, even after they have shifted to a language that is known to favour egocentric conceptualizations, e.g., right/left. In this paper we explore how this combination works in practice by conducting a study in a previously non-investigated indigenous community of Mexico, the Ngiguas. We used a verbal localization task for community-scale relations. We filmed the responses of early bilinguals in Ngigua (Otomanguean) and in Spanish as well as of a control group of Spanish monolinguals from the same rural community. Statistical analysis of speech and co-speech gestures reveals that bilinguals favour geocentric gestures and direct pointing in both languages, associating them with topological and deictic terms. Against our predictions, Spanish monolinguals also use high rates of geocentric gestures that they frequently combine with cardinal terms. In sum, the Ngigua data show that geocentric conceptualizations can be transmitted to monolingual generations via co-speech gestures, including in a language where egocentric conceptualizations prevail in other settings.

Space in Hand and Mind: Gesture and Spatial Frames of Reference in Bilingual Mexico

“…Thus, egocentric and allocentric FoR vocabulary may function differently: Mastering egocentric words may crystallize and promote a strategy that is initially dispreferred, whereas mastering allocentric words may serve merely to put a label on a prepotent preference. A prediction that follows from this account—and one consistent with recent findings (Calderón et al, 2019; Le Guen, 2011)—is that allocentric behavior may occur with or without support from allocentric language, while egocentric behavior may be found only where linguistic and cultural support is in place.…”

“…4 4 While it may seem surprising that we did not see effects of the other linguistic factors, recent work on bilingualism in gesture has found that monolinguals and bilinguals from the same population do not necessarily differ in their gestural styles (e.g., Calderón, et al, 2019) and that bilinguals do not necessarily switch gestural patterns when switching languages (e.g., So, 2010). Results from this literature have been mixed, however (Gullberg, 2012).…”

“…Much of the early pioneering work was qualitative and observational (Haviland, 1993; Levinson, 2003); it offered naturalistic examples of apparent FoR use in gesture but also left open critical questions about the robustness and limits of the phenomenon. More recently, a couple of controlled elicitation studies have analyzed the gestures speakers produce when explicitly asked to describe the spatial relationship between familiar, large‐scale landmarks (Calderón et al, 2019; Le Guen, 2011). Here, we sought to build on these contributions by eliciting descriptions of small‐scale events, using a procedure in which we expected directional information to be backgrounded.…”

“…8), sometimes suddenly, such as when communities shift from one preferred spatial framework to another (e.g., Hendricks, Bergen, & Marghetis, 2018; Meakins & Algy, 2016; Meakins et al, 2016). Such cognitive regime shifts may be associated with major sociocultural transitions, such as the demographic shifts currently underway in Juchitán (McComsey, 2015) and elsewhere in Mexico (Calderón et al, 2019). The ecological framework just sketched stands to illuminate not only the domain of space, but other domains as well, such as time (Hendricks et al, 2018), number (Cooperrider, Marghetis, et al, 2017), and even higher mathematics (Goldstone, Marghetis, Weitnauer, Ottmar, & Landy, 2017; Marghetis, Landy, & Goldstone, 2016).…”

“…1 When speakers of Yucatec Maya were asked explicitly to describe where one familiar landmark was in relation to another (i.e., a gas station in relation to a store), they used cardinally oriented gestures to convey the relationship (Le Guen, 2011). A study with another community in rural Mexico, using the same style of task, also reported high rates of allocentric gesture (Calder on, De Pascale, & Adamou, 2019). Whether members of other groups would gesture any differently is unknown, as even speakers of preferentially egocentric groups use cardinal directions for describing large-scale space (Levinson, 2003).…”