Use of gesture space in gestural accommodation

Charlotte Bouget (1) , Marion Tellier (1)

1 LPL - Laboratoire Parole et Langage

Speakers adapt their speech to their interlocutors and when they talk to an elderly person, they tend to engage in elderspeak. In this paper, we explore with a new approach how caregivers adapt their use of gesture space in a vocabulary explanation task with older and younger adults. Preliminary results on one caregiver show that she tends to occupy a larger gesture space when speaking to a senior than when addressing a younger partner. Thus, caregivers could spontaneously accommodate their discourse and their gestures to help interlocutors when they have difficulties or when caregivers think seniors have difficulties.

Mots clés: use of gesture space; elderspeak; caregiver; senior; gestural accommodation; use of gesture space

Domaines: Linguistique

Charlotte Bouget, Marion Tellier. Use of gesture space in gestural accommodation. Gesture and Speech in Interaction 4, Sep 2016, Nantes, France. pp.37-42. ⟨hal-01498880⟩