“the smallest grapes”
A couple of weeks ago the University of Barcelona hosted a week-long course on Gesture and SLA, run by Dr Marianne Gullberg, Professor of Psycholinguistics at Lund University in Sweden. Marianne has to be one of the leading experts on gesture and language, having published and researched extensively on the subject. While it’s still fresh, then, here are ten things that I think every language teacher should know about gesture.
1. Gesturing with the hands is just one of the many types of non-verbal behaviours that we use when we communicate, others being voice-quality, facial expressions, eye gaze, head nods, body orientation, shoulder shrugs, and so on. But of all these, gesture is probably the bodily behaviour that is most directly tied to linguistic meaning.
2. Gesture occupies one end of a continuum of communicative hand actions, the other end of which is sign language. Pantomime occupies a point midway on this continuum. But, unlike sign language and mime, gesture doesn’t substitute for speech: rather it co-occurs with it. Nor is it a conventionalized system that, like signing, can be taught systematically.
3. Near the purely gestural end of the continuum are what are called ‘emblems’: those gestures that have become conventionalised within a culture to represent certain meanings, such as the scribbling gesture that means ‘bring me the bill’ (in a restaurant) or the thumbs-up sign in many cultures. (The picture on the left is the cover of a book of Spanish gesture emblems [Green 1968]). Emblems are, arguably, teachable, but represent only a small subset of what most people do when they gesture while talking (despite the fascination that emblems have for amateur cultural anthropologists).
“in the middle of nowhere”
4. Most gestures are either ‘beats’ – rhythmic, often chopping, motions that act as a kind of ‘prosodic highlighting’ (McNeill 2012), or pointing of some kind, or (the most interesting from a psycholinguistic point of view) the metaphoric/iconic type of gesture, as when we make a wide arc with both hands (like Penelope Cruz in this pic) to represent ‘expansiveness’. Pragmatic gestures – such as indicating a question (‘How do you call it?’) – are also common.
5. Gesture is non-verbal but that doesn’t mean it is non-linguistic. In fact, speech and gesture are inextricably linked, forming an integrated (or ‘coupled’) system. As McNeill (2012: 31) puts it, ‘gestures and synchronous speech are … co-expressive but not redundant: they express the same idea each in its own way – often each its own aspects of it’. Thus, gesture is not just an ‘add-on’, a way of ornamenting speech. Gesture and speech originate together, and are precisely synchronized.
“How do you call it?”
6. But gestures are more than simply communicative: we gesture when we can’t be seen gesturing, such as on the phone, or in the dark, or talking to ourselves. This suggests that gesture has some kind of self-regulating function, that it is a physical embodiment of thought, that we ‘think with our hands’.
7. While gesturing is a universal feature of speech, there are identifiable cross-cultural differences in gesture systems. These are mainly with regard to emblems (the ‘thumbs-up’ gesture, for example) and also in terms of the extent of ‘gestural space’. But, because gesture and language are closely linked, and because gestures are often representational, they can reveal ways in which different languages construe the world. Gullberg (2011) herself has researched the ways that ‘putting an object on a surface’ is differently represented in some languages, and how there is a close match between the semantics of the verbs in these languages and the characteristics of the gesture. Interestingly, cross-linguistic transfer effects have been observed in learners.
8. On the subject of language learning, there is evidence to suggest that language learners gesture more in their second language than in their first: this is largely because they use more pragmatic gestures (e.g. hand flapping) to compensate for disfluencies, such as when searching for a word. But, contrary to expectations, perhaps, learners only occasionally use representative gestures as a substitute for lexical gaps. Research (e.g. Gregersen et al 2009) also shows that the more proficient the learner, the more meaning-oriented are their gestures.
9. So, how does gesture aid language acquisition? In terms of reception, the gestures of others (including, of course, the teacher) may help make input comprehensible by, for example, ‘speech parsing’ – i.e. helping learners find ‘the words in the noise’. They may also help link language and cognition by activating mirror neurons: seeing you gesture makes me feel as if I’m gesturing, and hence I’m connected to the thinking that motivated the gesture.
10. The learner’s own gestures may also play an important role in language learning. It’s generally accepted that any kind of learning task is aided when the learner can ‘off-load’ the cognitive effort involved on to an external representation. Hence learners will gesture a lot when doing a speaking task, even when they are performing behind a screen and so cannot be seen. ‘It is possible that L2 learners’ gestures reflect their attempts to reduce the processing load of keeping words, grammar, and the relationships between entities in mind at the same time as planning what to say next. In this sense, gestures may help learners to keep talking’ (Gullberg 2008: 293). Moreover, gesturing while learning seems to improve recall, e.g. of lexis. And, very importantly, gestures help build rapport and confer on their users the status of a legitimate interlocutor. ’Learners who are seen to gesture are often more positively evaluated on proficiency than those who are not’ (ibid.)
Moral: if your students have a speaking test, encourage them to gesture.
Marianne Gullberg in Barcelona
References:
Green, J.R. (1968) A Gesture Inventory for the Teaching of Spanish, Philadelphia: Chilton Books.
Gregersen, T., Olivares-Cuhat, G. & Storm, J. (2009) ‘An examination of L1 and L2 gesture use: what role does proficiency play? Modern Language Journal, 93/2, 195-208.
Gullberg, M. (2008) ‘Gestures and second language acquisition,’ in Robinson, P., & Ellis, N.C. (eds) Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition, London: Routledge.
Gullberg, M. (2011) ‘Thinking, speaking and gesturing about motion in more than one language,’ in Pavlenko, A. (ed.) Thinking and Speaking in Two Languages, Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
McNeill, D. (2012) How Language Began: Gesture and speech in human evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The David Letterman interview from where the stills of Penelope Cruz were taken can be seen here:
An A-Z of ELT 
I love Penelope’s screenshots. Are you sure, Scott, the caption for the second one is not “An A-Z of ELT”?
:0) love it.
I’m going to be watching my students a lot now!
A lot of people say Greeks or Italians “talk with their hands”. Is this a fact that some cultures/languages gesture more or do we like to just think that’s true? And are there any languages which incorporate gestures like sign language? ie. that can carry as much precise meaning as sign language?
Cheers.
With regard to your first question, Gullberg pointed out that every culture thinks there’s a culture that gesticulates more than their own. The Italians seem to be more prone than most to this kind of cultural stereotyping. While there are some grounds to suppose that the ‘gestural space’ (i.e. the area within which one’s hands typically move) may vary from culture to culture, it’s also probably true to say that there is just as much variability within a culture (or a culturally cohesive geographical area) than there is across cultures.
Regarding your second question: no, apart from the use of ’emblems’, i.e. those conventionalized representational gestures so beloved of cultural anthropologists like Desmond Morris, and which seem to be a feature of all languages. Why? Because sign language is a system that operates as a substitute for spoken language. not in conjunction with it. There is no reason, therefore, to have gestures that are ‘more precise’ than speech, if you are also speaking at the same time.
Hi Scott,
Your post made me wonder whether gesture could be part of instinctive accommodation and whether it could become ‘fossilised’ and a barrier to communication in one’s native tongue.
I say this because of a chap I met in a village in Pakistan. He was there on holiday from Italy, where he’s been living for many years. He spoke to me in clear Punjabi but his mannerisms (hand gestures, shoulder and eye movements) were pure (stereotypically) Italian! In fact, they were so pronounced (no pun intended) that they put me off what he was saying; I became confused by the disconnect between his words and his gestures. I presume he had instinctively adopted these mannerisms to fit into his new life in Italy but now they seem to have become fossilised and an impediment to communication in his native tongue. This seems to support the idea of making learners explicitly aware of accommodation/gestures rather than leaving it to instinct alone.
Thanks for that, Mumtaz. Yes, there is research to show that – when there is a disconnect between speech and gesture, e.g. if you were to say ‘he came in through the window’ and made a gesture indicating ‘going out’ – then the listener has a harder job processing the input. However, I don’t know any research that has identified crosscultural mismatches, i.e. where a speaker is speaking a language but using the gestural repertoire of another. To research this you would need to find subjects like your Punjabi-speaking acquaintance who has been brought up in Italy. On the other hand, studies of bilinguals suggest that they employ the gestural repertoire of the language they happen to be speaking, and that this is further evidence of the inseparability of the two systems: speech and gesture.
I mean “spoken languages” which incorporate more complex gestures like sign language.
It is funny to compare how do you count with your fingers or how do you express this: ‘Come here!’ Both gestures vary according to the cultural background of the speaker. While Hungarians wave with their fingers, with the palm up, Italians do it with palm down. ‘One’ in Hungarian is showing your thumb, ‘Three’ is expressed with your thumb, index and middle fingers, etc. Should we urge the students to change their gestures when they speak in another language?
If they are likely to be interacting with speakers who have different gestural conventions, than it’s probably useful to be able to ‘read’ them accurately, and even adopt some – or at least, avoid transferring emblems that might cause offense in the target culture! But, again, I would emphasise that the bulk of what we do with our hands when we talk does not comprise these culturally specific gestures: look at Penelope Cruz for example. Apart from her use of gestural space, perhaps, there is nothing intrinsically ‘Spanish’ about her gesture system, is there?
Great closing advice to a very informativ article, Scott, thanks once again! For years I was intrigued by the Japanese gesticular lexicon, and still some of it escapes me, but is most charming. The flip side is rough boys in North America, ‘flipping the bird’ and shaking their fists, etc. Very expressive!
Was there anything said about the gestural origins of language and that language might not have developed through vocalizations but from gestures which became a systematic form of communication?
I find the idea that vocalization of language as very recent, fascinating and it has all sorts of implications regarding how we acquire language both L1 and L2.
Gullberg herself didn’t touch on language origins, but there is a whole new book on the subject (McNeill 2012 – it’s in my list of references above). McNeill argues persuasively that the ‘gesture-first’ theory of language evolution, i.e. that, as you say, ‘language might not have developed through vocalizations but from gestures which became a systematic form of communication’ is essentially flawed, on two counts:
‘First, gesture-first must claim that speech, when it emerged, supplanted gesture .. The theory fails to predict that speech and gesture became a single system’ (p.60).
‘Second, the gestures of gesture-first would be pantomimes… The view that communication started as a form of pantomime ignores the fact that ‘pantomime repels speech’: ‘the distinguishing mark of pantomime compared to gesticulation is that the latter is integrated with speech; it is an aspect of speaking. In pantomime this does not occur. There is no co-construction with speech, no co-expressiveness; timing is different (if there is speech at all), and no dual semiotic modes’ (p.64).
McNeill’s basic point is that a system that functions in tandem must have evolved in tandem.
Many years ago, I used to do some radio announcing. When I reviewed recordings of my extemporaneous speech with a mentor, I discovered that I repeated myself often. My mentor told me that new announcers will do this, they’re responding to lack of feedback — we can’t see or hear the people we’re talkin to. Maybe there’s something like that going on with second language learners? Gesture more (partly) because they’re not getting “I understand you” feedback? Maybe it’s similar when on the phone. More physical gestures because no visual feedback?
Interesting observation, Kathy. Certainly learners seem to use gesture to ‘regulate’ their talk, even when they can’t be seen (as when they do the task behind a screen). I’m also wondering if maybe the mirror neurons are implicated here. In the case of a lack of visual feedback signals from an interlocutor, we create our own, as it were. We see ourselves understanding us!
Another thought: if gestures help us ‘off-load cognitive effort’, the manipulation of objects must do the same, hence the pedagogical power of such things as cuisenaire rods.
I’ve just (re)watched the Penélope Cruz vídeo and found that the voices and images were hopelessly out of sync (was it just me?) In light of this post, I probably found this so disconcerting because the gestures were not integrated into the communication. This transported me back to my teenage years watching the imported Chinese TV series ‘Monkey’. Another argument against dubbing, if we needed it.
Given that this is a fledgling field, it’s hard to know, as yet, if these findings are actually teachable. For me, the most striking implication for the profession might be the research being done into the use of gesture to create more ‘human’ and therefore more effective virtual teacher avatars for use in on-line teaching programmes.
Hi, Jessica.
Your comment on more human virtual teacher avatars made me think of a film I saw yesterday, ‘Robot and Frank’. An emotional story about an old man and a robot given by his son as a caretaker in order to provide him with structure and routines (also communicative) to counter the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Communication, the human factor, the language instinct (very Pinkerian..)
I was just reading about this film yesterday. Thanks for mentioning it, JJ. It will be very interesting to see to what extent the empathy that the robot creates is due as much to non-verbal as to verbal mechanisms.
Jessica … if the virtual teacher (with life-like gestures) is not yet here, the virtual therapist (who responds to your body language by adjusting hers) is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22630812
“Making computer-generated images appear human isn’t easy, but if believable they can be powerful tools for teaching and learning.”
“In this sense, gestures may help learners to keep talking”
I guess Italian people must have the most talkative language learners then, right? 🙂
Yes, gestures is a typical way of communicating messages more effectively ,being used in lower levels of language learning, when students don’t seem to have mastered the mechanics of the language system and their fluency hasn’t been developed, yet.
Still, it is the most common way of expressing yourself in a foreign language you don’t speak, once you’ve visited its respective country.
And ,for me, as a typical Greek, gestures is a way of conveying my messages and feelings with EMPHASIS…
Thanks for the comment, Paraskevi. The view that learners use gestures to compensate for lexical difficulties (‘if in doubt, mime it’) is widespread, but in reality the evidence suggests otherwise. In fact, Marianne Gullberg herself is emphatic that this is not the case. When I suggested as much she wrote:
In short, learners do not try to ‘fill the gaps’ in their knowledge by substituting missing words with gestures. Rather, they use gesture (among other things) to buy processing time.
Thanks, Scott, as every Sunday.
A couple of caveats:
a) “the more proficient the learner, the more meaning-oriented are their gestures”.
As opposed to pragmatic-oriented?
b) “gestures help build rapport and confer on their users the status of a legitimate interlocutor”.
In terms of interlocutor legitimacy, my impression is that gains in pronunciation go hand in hand with gains in gesturing, except for Letterman, who sees the lack of as sexy.
Yes, exactly (see my comment to Paraskevi above).
Thanks very much Scott! I recently gave a webinar… and of course my mum watched it… first thing she said… “your hand movement is very annoying” “you look like those cocky politicians” and the thing is I AGREE! I always speak with my hands, I’ve always done it both in Spanish and English, probably because I hesitate a lot in both languages, so I’m always seeking for words… but when it comes to on-line sessions r using programs like adobe connect, gestures can be rather distracting. because it’s a tiny screen, there’s a lot of delay and movement sometimes makes things more complicated. Any ideas? DO you also find gestures distracting in on-line workshops?
Hi Nati. With regard to the use of gesture in online learning, this is a whole exciting – and relatively unresearched – area. But, in theory, at least, there should be even more need for some kind of body language in online delivery than in face-to-face communication. See my comment below in response to Kerri.
As a teacher of English to deaf students, I really appreciate you bringing up this topic.Gestures are such powerful contributors to communication!
This past year I’ve also been teaching hearing adults. I use a lot of gestures in class (not signs) and they love it,
Naomi
Thanks for that insight, Naomi. Yes, the evidence suggests that teachers’ use of gesture really supports comprehension, and hence learning – whether with deaf or hearing learners.
The Italians have some very specific gestures with very specific meanings, but then again, so do Americans. My experience is that Italians have a larger number, though.
Regarding the Italian use of gestures – or, strictly, of emblems – a great deal has been written, most of it by non-specialists. E.g. http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/12/13/bruno-munari-speak-italian-gestures/
However, if you look at many of these, you will see that – if not universal – their use extends beyond Italy itself.
I have a book of Spanish gestures, which is equally dodgy, and includes literally scores of emblems. My feeling is that no one ethnicity has a monopoly on gestures, but that there is a tendency to stereotype Italians in particular.
What I find much more interesting, from a linguistic perspective, is not the way that gestures substitute for speech (e.g. making a “crazy” gesture, rather than saying it) but the way that gesture works in conjunction with speech to convey the cognitive structures that seem to underpin language. And particular the way that gesture serves not only to express meaning, but to help the speaker construct meaning. From a language learning or teaching point of view, this is surely of more interest than the fact that a round shape made by the index finger and thumb can mean OK in one culture and anus in another!
My (Italian) inlaws don’t gesture very much, in the end, but a lot of other Italians I know do. And some of my (Spanish) students seem to gesture much more than others. A lot of them are more universal (lowered downward facing palm accompanying the word “child” or steering wheel gesture to accompany “drive) so no, Italians don’t have a monopoly on gestures any more than they have a monopoly on tomato sauce… Just don’t tell them they don’t!
Thanks, Daniel. Whether Italians gesture more than anyone else (and there is no empirical evidence to suggest that they do, as far as I know) is of interest to anthropologists, but not to linguists. (And if it turns out to be a myth that Italians gesture more than anyone else, that is in itself an interesting social phenomenon, like other forms of cultural stereotyping, such as that African Americans are musical, or Germans humorless, but, again, of interest mainly to sociologists).
From the perspective of applied linguistics, including language learning and teaching, my interest is in the fact that, as Gullberg (2012: 417) puts it ‘Everybody gestures when they speak’ (emphasis added), and not that some do it more than others. It follows that, if gesture and speech are co-expressive (unlike mime or signing), and if they originate in tandem, what does gesture tell us about cognition and about the way that language is instantiated in the brain, and how is gesture implicated in language learning, and, by extension, teaching?
(In retrospect, I think I should have constructed my original post along the lines of ‘Common myths about gesture’!)
Hello everyone
Can I add a word of warning about using gestures in the lesson? Once when I was working at a language school teaching adults I felt completely terrified and found myself in a state of utter terror while witnessing the following: I put up my arm (stretched it upwards, a gesture I used to facilitate memorization of “expensive”, a TPR trick of establishing psychomotor associations). To my horror everyone in the group (the students were sitting in a circle) automatically raised their arms, too (there were 17 of them). It seemed as if they were hypnotized. My terror was rooted in the feeling of power over that group of students. Since then I never-ever insist that my students imitate the gestures after me, just give examples of how this technique can be used and encourage students to invent their own gestures. Miming stories and action songs are fine to do with young learners but with adults it does feel strange. Up to now I am still wondering: what was it? A show of mass hypnosis?
Interesting story, Svetlana – testimony, perhaps, to the charismatic power of the teacher! But also to the learners’ implicit understanding of how enactment reinforces learning. Your learners were in fact using what the research into enactment suggests is a very powerful learning tool.
Great article. I’m glad I found you through G+. In Thailand, asking for the bill can be gestured in 2 ways, making a “check mark” or drawing a “circle” on the table, with your index finger. Thanks so much!
Great post Scott! Of course, gestures are used by Italians regularly for emphasis and to show passion for what they believe in – I often do this in the classroom at all levels and use gestures quite often for emphasis in pronunciation lessons! Hence the name, Rizzotto! This was an interesting article on “Gesture Writing” – who would have thought? http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/gesture-writing/?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonp
Kerri Rizzotto
Thanks, Kerri. See my response to Daniel above. And to re-iterate the point that gesture is not an expressive ‘add-on’, here is McNeill (2012: 19) again:
And now I get it. Still weird online because when the connection is not good the camera captures the middle of awful gestures, etc. but I’d still stick my neck out for them 🙂
Hi Scott,
I was not referring, or relating, to Daniel’s point. I do apologize for that confusion. I was merely stating (perhaps not clearly) that although I gesture, and I also happen to be Italian, my gestures in the classroom (specifically referring to my Pronunciation class) serve that exact purpose…”a dynamic dimension on which thought and speech come alive”….I do hope that is clearer – and I just so happen to have my first hearing-impaired student in my class this semester that seems to have a great appreciation of this integrative approach to language learning.
Thanks for the clarification, Kerri. Yes, you’re absolutely right: teaching that integrates speech and movement is – all things being equal – more effective than ‘single mode’ teaching. In a recent study of how teachers used gesture and body language in some advanced classes of academic writing, Hood (2011: 49) concluded:
This, of course has implications on online learning and the researcher adds: ‘There is an urgent need for more research into the ways in which interpersonal epilinguistic body language functions in relation to teaching and learning in face-to-face classrooms, and in turn into the impact a lack of access to embodied meanings might have in computer-mediated online learning’ (p.48).
One thing that webinar presenters might consider is how visible their arms and hands are, and how they use these to co-construct meaning as they present. Does anyone know of any literature on this?
Thank you, Scott – I am now so very interested in this entire topic and the research involved….once again you have stimulated a flow of great ideas….
I don’t think there is much literature into this although I’ve been advised to avoid it on-line by my Dos and people who take part in on-line learning training courses.
Personally, I think gestures really give impact on learning. I wonder if the effect of these gestures personally and online differs greatly?
Thanks Scott, this reminds me of a joke about a man who is carrying parcels and is stopped by a passerby who asks the time. In response he asks the passerby to unload the parcels one by one, before giving the answer, while gesturing with his hands “It’s half past two.”
Hope you liked that 🙂 do you think that it can be too distracting if, as teachers, we use our hands too speak too much? Do we not run the risk of losing the attention of the class by waving our hands too wildly? Is there an optimum number of gestures per minute for the best communication?