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Bilinguals’ gestures
Elena Nicoladis
University of Alberta
Speech-gesture system
• McNeill (1992) argued that “speech” should be called the speech-gesture system
• Evidence:– Gestures mean the same things as co-occurring
speech– Gestures are usually timed with similar
meaning words– Aphasia affects gestures
Why gesture?
• Maybe to organize our own thoughts– People remember more words when free to
gesture than when not– Children gesture more when a task is difficult– Problem-solving can emerge earlier on the
hands than in speech for children– People gesture when talking on the phone and
to themselves
Why gesture?
• Maybe to help the listener understand– People tend to gesture more with low frequency
word combinations than high
• Maybe both for ourselves and our listeners– Gesture may have as many functions as speech
Bilinguals’ gestures
• Bilinguals often speak one language better– Gestures might compensate for weak
proficiency (so, be for the listener)– Gestures might correspond to level of
proficiency
• Bilinguals might activate both languages at once all the time– Gesture rate might not be suppressed
Bilingual gestures: compensation?
• Do bilinguals use more gestures with their weaker language to compensate for their weak proficiency?
• One study with 4 French-English bilingual children showed that children did not gesture more in their weaker language (Nicoladis & Genesee, 1996)
But, there are different kinds of gestures
• Iconic gestures– Symbolic, e.g., walking or bird
• Deictic gestures– Pointing, even abstractly
• Conventional gestures– Culture-specific gestures like number gestures
Iconic gestures-speech
• McNeill’s studies refer exclusively to iconic gestures
• Children start using deictic and conventional gestures before they speak but iconic gestures only after they speak
• Maybe iconic gestures are more closely related to speech than deictic or conventional
First preschool study
• Study with five French-English bilingual boys, videotaped every six months, once in French and once in English, at 2;0, 2;6, 3;0 and 3;6
• We transcribed their speech and coded their gestures
First preschool study
• We found that:– The more iconic gestures they used, the longer
their utterances in each language– This was not true for deictic and conventional
gestures
• Conclusion: iconic gestures strongly related to language development
Other evidence for kinds of gestures
• Other studies of aphasia have shown that iconic gestures are lost but not necessarily deictic or conventional
• As language loss occurs with aging, iconic gestures tend to get used less (no studies on conventional or deictic)
Second preschool study
• 8 French-English bilingual children between 3 and 5 years
• 4 were French-dominant and 4 were English-dominant
• Videotaped once in French and once in English
Conventional gestures
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Deictic gestures
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Iconic gestures
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Second preschool study
• Children used more iconic gestures in their dominant language than their non-dominant language
• Not true for conventional or deictic gestures• Children were more likely to use
conventional or deictic gestures without speech when communicating in their weaker language
What about adults?
• One study with French-Swedish intermediate L2 learners showed that they used more iconic gestures in their L1 and more deictic gestures in their L2 (Gullberg, 1999)
Adult study
• 13 Spanish-English bilinguals and 13 English-Spanish bilinguals; all late learners
• All advanced bilinguals
• Watched a cartoon and told back the story
• Once in Spanish and once in English
• We coded iconic and deictic gestures
Iconic gestures
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Deictic gestures
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Adult summary
• Advanced bilinguals showed no difference in their two languages with iconic gestures
• They did use more deictic gestures in their L2
Interim conclusion
• Different kinds of gestures relate to language differently– Iconic gestures strongly related to language– Deictic conventional gestures can compensate
for weak proficiency
• Maybe the iconic gestures help people to create longer utterances
Bilingual mode
• Some researchers argue that bilinguals have both languages activated all the time (Grosjean, 2000)
• This can explain how code-switching happens– As well as results of studies on language processing
• To speak one language (“monolinugal” mode), the other language is suppressed
Gesturing in bilingual mode
• What happens if a bilingual knows a high gesture language (like French or Spanish) and a low gesture language (like English)?
• If they are in bilingual mode all the time, bilinguals might use a higher rate of gestures than English monolinguals
• Because there is no need to suppress a high gesture rate
Adult study
• 10 English-Spanish bilinguals
• 10 French-English bilinguals
• 10 English monolinguals
• All watched a cartoon and told the story back
• The bilinguals did this twice, once in each language
Results in English
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L1 vs L2
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Summary of results
• Both French-English and English-Spanish bilinguals gesture more than English monolinguals in English
• Here there was no difference between the rate of gestures in L1 and L2
• Maybe bilinguals do not suppress the high gesture rate of a high gesture language, even when speaking a low gesture language
Bilingual mode for preschoolers?
• Even bilingual children are thought to be in bilingual mode all the time (Grosjean, 2000) so these same results should hold for children
• This study: 10 French-English simultaneous bilinguals between 4 and 6 years and 10 English monolinguals of the same age
Results
0
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Iconic Non-iconic
Monolingual (English)Bilingual (English)Bilingual (French)
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Bilingual mode conclusions
• These results support the idea that bilinguals do not suppress a high gesture rate when speaking English
• Note that we cannot rule out an alternative explanation– Bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals
because they have more word finding difficulty
• We need other monolingual comparisons
Conclusions
• Bilinguals’ gesture use shows that iconic gestures and speech are strongly related– They are used more often with greater
proficiency– They are borrowed from a high gesture
language
• Other kinds of gestures may compensate for weak proficiency
Conclusions
• Language is not just the spoken component
• Gesturing appropriately for a culture is part of one’s linguistic knowledge:– Conventional counting gestures– Gender differences in Chinese L1 learners of
English AND gesture differences
Acknowledgements
• Paula Marentette
• Simone Pika
• Jody Sherman
• Natasha Tuck