Nonverbal gender differences: examining gestures of university-educated Mandarin Chinese speakers

Abstract

This article attempts to describe gender-specific gestures typically employed by university-educated Mandarin Chinese speakers in talk-in-interaction. Careful and repeated examination of audio-video data collected from real conversational settings shows that females prefer using hand-shielding-mouth gestures when laughing broadly and hand clapping when excited with joy, while males take to chin-up when indicating a target and index-finger pointing when directing recipients' attention. However, this does not rule out the situation in which females may also use fingers pointing to imply “blame” or “criticism.” Understanding of such gesture differences between males and females in Mandarin-Chinese interaction will help prospective other language speakers to interact more effectively with Mandarin speakers in the intercultural context.