Manual accents

Abstract

Most people are unaware of the gestures they make while talking. It has been claimed that speech and gesture derive from a common source, and the information about thought processes that gestures convey complements or reinforces the simultaneous information provided by speech. For instance, if we compare French "il traverse le fleuve en nageant" with English "he is swimming across the river", gestures indicating the swimmer's path tend to fall on the verb in French and other Romance languages (plus Japanese), while they fall on the adverbial in English and other non-Romance Indo-European languages (plus Chinese). What then happens when people subsequently learn a language unlike their own in this respect? Non-native gestures assume considerable importance in investigating this question, since they act as windows onto the speaker's 'thinking for speaking' in their L2. To investigate this question ourselves, we examined the use of 'path' gestures in descriptions of motion events. Native speakers of English, Dutch and Spanish participated in the study, with the latter two groups also performing in English. The results show that there are language-specific gestural patterns, and that they are often transferred to L2. These 'manual accents' suggest that the importance of gesture in the study of second language acquisition should not be underestimated, because gestures may reveal L1-based thinking patterns not detectable in otherwise fluent and correct L2 speech. Consequently, we should reflect carefully on what it means to 'become bilingual'. 1. Motion events crosslinguistically If you observe people conversing, you will see more than a mouth move. Eyes, eyebrows, hands, head, body, all seem to be involved in some synchronized expressive dance. But the question is, does the dance vary according to the language being spoken?

Conceptual and lexical effects on gestures: the case of vertical spatial metaphors for time in Chinese

“…English, Dutch) tend to produce path gestures with a satellite component, and tend to accumulate gestures for path and manner in a single clause. First, some case studies about bilinguals' gestures for motion events described that Spanish/Turkish learners of English maintained an L1-like gesture pattern in the L2, for example, Spanish and Turkish speakers still performed path gestures with verbs when speaking English, although the findings were based on a very small sample (Kellerman & Van Hoof, 2003;Negueruela, Lantolf, Jordan, & Gelabert, 2004;Stam, 2006). Second, another study found that there was a parallel trend in L2 speech and gesture production.…”

“…If the vertical mental representation of time in Chinese speakers is the most important determining factor for the choice of gestures, and assuming everyone can only have one conceptual scheme (e.g. Kellerman & Van Hoof, 2003;Negueruela et al, 2004;Stam, 2006), then one would predict that Chinese-English bilinguals will also gesture vertically even when speaking English. That means their vertical gesturing will be unaffected by the language itself.…”

Gestural introduction of Ground reference in L2 narrative discourse

“…In fact, various findings demonstrate that speech and gesture form a single system in conveying meaning (see Kendon 2004;McNeill 2000;Goldin-Meadow 2003 for overview of recent studies). These developments in L1 gesture studies are now beginning to be reflected in gesture studies that focus on second language learners (Gullberg 2003(Gullberg , 2005(Gullberg , 2006Kellerman and van Hoof 2003;McCafferty 2002McCafferty , 2004Negueruela, Lantolf, Rehn Jordan, and Gelabert 2004;Stam 1999: Yoshioka 2005.…”

11 Second Language Acquisition from a McNeillian Perspective

“…This speech-gesture synchrony for native speakers is important as it provides a means by which to investigate second language acquisition. Stam (1998Stam ( , 2006aStam ( , 2006b), Kellerman and van Hoof (2003), and Negueruela, Lantolf, Rehn Jordan, and Gelabert (2004) used speech-gesture synchrony to explore whether learners' thinking for speaking patterns about motion change when they acquire a second language. All of them looked at native speakers of Spanish and English and Spanish learners of English, and all replicated previous findings regarding native speakers' thinking for speaking patterns in both speech and gesture (McNeill & Duncan, 2000).…”

“…Kellerman and van Hoof (2003) and Negueruela et al (2004) Conclusion: Future of second language acquisition research fell on the verb. Both concluded that the L2 learners were still thinking for speaking in their L1.…”