Forms and functions of gesture reiterations in a corpus of tandem interactions
Résumé
The present study analyses data gathered as part of the SITAF project (Spécificités des Interactions Verbales dans le Cadre de Tandems Linguistiques Anglais-Français), run at the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle between 2012 and 2014 (Horgues & Scheuer 2015). In this 25-hour video-recorded corpus, 21 pairs of undergraduate students interact in ‘tandems’ consisting of an English native speaker and a French one. Language tandem interactions between a native speaker (NS) and an L2 learner (non-native speaker, NNS) provide a unique collaborative learning environment based on solidarity and reciprocity, as each participant takes turns being the native and the non-native side of the dialogue (Brammerts & Calvert 2003).
In the course of tandem interactions, participants can rely on shared non-verbal resources (e.g. prosody, gesture), so as to bridge the L1/L2 language gap. In this corpus, participants recurrently take up some of the kinesic forms that have just been used by their interlocutor, in a process of visual alignment (De Fornel 1992, Kimbara 2006, Graziano et al. 2011). We propose to name “kinesic reiteration” the repetition of speaker 1’s gesture by speaker 2 with possible variations. Kinesic reiterations are used both by NS and NNS speakers in the data. They are endophoric forms whose functions remain to be defined as part of the cohesion of interactional discourse and the co-construction of meaning.
Analysis of gestural repetition has so far focused more on self- than on other-repetition in L1 speakers. While iterations (i.e. the repetition of the exact same gesture form by the same speaker) usually add information to the propositional content expressed verbally, reduplications (i.e. repetition of the same gesture form with a change in direction and/or orientation) only emphasize an aspect of the propositional content expressed in speech (Bressem 2014). As for L2 learners, they tend to use coreferentially overexplicit speech, i.e. they maintain reference by repeating lexical NPs more than is done in L1, and overmark these lexical NPs by combining them with anaphoric gestures (Gullberg 2006). More generally, the study of anaphora in co-speech gestures has mostly focused on exophoric functions of gestures. The deictic functions of hand gestures, head movements or gaze have been largely explored, with a focus on pointing gestures (Kita, 2003, Boutet et al. 2011). In this study, we take a different but complementary approach to existing work on gestural anaphora, by focusing on endophoric gestures and their interpersonal functions.
Instances of visual alignment are systematically annotated with the sound off in ELAN (Wittenburg et al. 2006). This systematic coding is used to inductively establish a typology of the articulators (body parts), forms and functions of kinesic reiterations in the data. Representational gestures, (Kendon 2004), meta-discursive ones (Streeck 2009), and facial displays (Chovil, 1991) are the most frequently reiterated gestures. Reiterated gestures participate in the expression of epistemic and affective stances (Ochs, 1996): they are used to ensure mutual understanding and track reference across speaker’s turns-at-talk, but also to express a shared perspective (e.g. show empathy).
Formal variations can be observed in the gesture forms that are taken up by speaker 2, who either reduces or expands them. A reiteration can be sketchier, faster, less articulated, smaller in amplitude – although similarities are persistent enough for it to be unequivocally traced back to a previous gesture done by speaker 1. In this respect, reiterations are analogical with pronouns and proforms in the verbal modality and to the accessibility of the reference (Ariel 1990): a reduced form can be used to designate a referent once its status has shifted from new to given information (Gundel et al. 1993).