Chapter 9. Mimetics, gaze, and facial expression in a multimodal corpus of Japanese
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Kimi Akita
Abstract
Mimetic/ideophonic utterances are often accompanied by expressive prosody and iconic gesture. This chapter reports the speaker’s facial expression and eye contact with the hearer as two more possible nonverbal correlates of mimetics on the basis of a multimodal corpus of Japanese interviews. It is shown that, unlike prosody and gesture, these somewhat frequent facial behaviors are not correlated with the morphosyntactic features of mimetics because of their primarily affective and interactional nature. However, a weak correlation with morphosyntax is suggested for the speaker’s gaze redirected away from the hearer, which is considered a signal of ‘depictive’ signification prototypical mimetics illustrate.
Abstract
Mimetic/ideophonic utterances are often accompanied by expressive prosody and iconic gesture. This chapter reports the speaker’s facial expression and eye contact with the hearer as two more possible nonverbal correlates of mimetics on the basis of a multimodal corpus of Japanese interviews. It is shown that, unlike prosody and gesture, these somewhat frequent facial behaviors are not correlated with the morphosyntactic features of mimetics because of their primarily affective and interactional nature. However, a weak correlation with morphosyntax is suggested for the speaker’s gaze redirected away from the hearer, which is considered a signal of ‘depictive’ signification prototypical mimetics illustrate.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Editors and contributors vii
- Abbreviations and symbols ix
- Introduction: Ideophones, mimetics, and expressives 1
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Part I. Phonology and morphology
- Chapter 1. ‘Ideophone’ as a comparative concept 13
- Chapter 2. The phonological structure of Japanese mimetics and motherese 35
- Chapter 3. Monosyllabic and disyllabic roots in the diachronic development of Japanese mimetics 57
- Chapter 4. Cross-linguistic variation in phonaesthemic canonicity, with special reference to Korean and English 77
- Chapter 5. Classification of nominal compounds containing mimetics 101
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Part II. Semantics and pragmatics
- Chapter 6. Towards a semantic typological classification of motion ideophones 137
- Chapter 7. The sensori-semantic clustering of ideophonic meaning in Pastaza Quichua 167
- Chapter 8. The power of ‘not saying who’ in Czech onomatopoeia 199
- Chapter 9. Mimetics, gaze, and facial expression in a multimodal corpus of Japanese 229
-
Part III. Language acquisition and multilingualism
- Chapter 10. The structure of mimetic verbs in child and adult Japanese 251
- Chapter 11. Iconicity in L2 Japanese speakers’ multi-modal language use 265
- Chapter 12. Ideophones as a measure of multilingualism* 303
- Subject index 323
- Language index 325
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Editors and contributors vii
- Abbreviations and symbols ix
- Introduction: Ideophones, mimetics, and expressives 1
-
Part I. Phonology and morphology
- Chapter 1. ‘Ideophone’ as a comparative concept 13
- Chapter 2. The phonological structure of Japanese mimetics and motherese 35
- Chapter 3. Monosyllabic and disyllabic roots in the diachronic development of Japanese mimetics 57
- Chapter 4. Cross-linguistic variation in phonaesthemic canonicity, with special reference to Korean and English 77
- Chapter 5. Classification of nominal compounds containing mimetics 101
-
Part II. Semantics and pragmatics
- Chapter 6. Towards a semantic typological classification of motion ideophones 137
- Chapter 7. The sensori-semantic clustering of ideophonic meaning in Pastaza Quichua 167
- Chapter 8. The power of ‘not saying who’ in Czech onomatopoeia 199
- Chapter 9. Mimetics, gaze, and facial expression in a multimodal corpus of Japanese 229
-
Part III. Language acquisition and multilingualism
- Chapter 10. The structure of mimetic verbs in child and adult Japanese 251
- Chapter 11. Iconicity in L2 Japanese speakers’ multi-modal language use 265
- Chapter 12. Ideophones as a measure of multilingualism* 303
- Subject index 323
- Language index 325
