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Including facial gestures in gesture-speech ensembles

  • Janet Bavelas✝ , Jennifer Gerwing and Sara Healing
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From Gesture in Conversation to Visible Action as Utterance
This chapter is in the book From Gesture in Conversation to Visible Action as Utterance

Abstract

Conversational facial gestures fit Kendon’s (2004) specifications of the functions of hand gestures. We illustrate how facial gestures in dialogue, like hand gestures, convey referential content as well as serving pragmatic, interpersonal and interactive functions. Hand and facial gestures often occur together, creating an integrated visual image in gesture–speech ensembles. A semantic features analysis demonstrates how speakers adjust their use of these visible versus audible expressive resources according to context. Speakers who were interacting face-to-face (compared to speakers who could not see their addressee) were significantly more likely to rely on their hand and facial gestures than on their words when describing key semantic features, and their gestures were more likely to convey information that was not in their words.

Abstract

Conversational facial gestures fit Kendon’s (2004) specifications of the functions of hand gestures. We illustrate how facial gestures in dialogue, like hand gestures, convey referential content as well as serving pragmatic, interpersonal and interactive functions. Hand and facial gestures often occur together, creating an integrated visual image in gesture–speech ensembles. A semantic features analysis demonstrates how speakers adjust their use of these visible versus audible expressive resources according to context. Speakers who were interacting face-to-face (compared to speakers who could not see their addressee) were significantly more likely to rely on their hand and facial gestures than on their words when describing key semantic features, and their gestures were more likely to convey information that was not in their words.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. A foreword vii
  4. From gesture in conversation to visible action as utterance 1
  5. Part I. Gaze and face
  6. Including facial gestures in gesture-speech ensembles 15
  7. Mutual gaze and recognition 35
  8. Part II. Manual gestures – quotable gestures and pointing
  9. Gesture in the communicative ecology of a South African township 59
  10. The emblem as metaphor 75
  11. Pointing, talk, and the bodies 95
  12. Part III. Manual gestures – their nature and relationship to language
  13. Gesture as “deliberate expressive movement” 127
  14. On the lower limit of gesture 153
  15. Part IV. Language evolution
  16. The word according to Adam 177
  17. The intelligibility of gesture within a framework of co-operative action 199
  18. Part V. Sign systems
  19. Signs and space in Arandic sand narratives 219
  20. Different strokes 245
  21. Gesture in all its forms 289
  22. Part VI. Children language development
  23. The development of two pragmatic gestures of the so-called Open Hand Supine family in Italian children 311
  24. How gestures help children to track reference in narrative 331
  25. Gestures and multimodal development 351
  26. Name index 371
  27. Subject index 373
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.188.02bav

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. A foreword vii
  4. From gesture in conversation to visible action as utterance 1
  5. Part I. Gaze and face
  6. Including facial gestures in gesture-speech ensembles 15
  7. Mutual gaze and recognition 35
  8. Part II. Manual gestures – quotable gestures and pointing
  9. Gesture in the communicative ecology of a South African township 59
  10. The emblem as metaphor 75
  11. Pointing, talk, and the bodies 95
  12. Part III. Manual gestures – their nature and relationship to language
  13. Gesture as “deliberate expressive movement” 127
  14. On the lower limit of gesture 153
  15. Part IV. Language evolution
  16. The word according to Adam 177
  17. The intelligibility of gesture within a framework of co-operative action 199
  18. Part V. Sign systems
  19. Signs and space in Arandic sand narratives 219
  20. Different strokes 245
  21. Gesture in all its forms 289
  22. Part VI. Children language development
  23. The development of two pragmatic gestures of the so-called Open Hand Supine family in Italian children 311
  24. How gestures help children to track reference in narrative 331
  25. Gestures and multimodal development 351
  26. Name index 371
  27. Subject index 373
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