Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T15:41:13.208Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Point to a referent, and say, “what is this?” Gesture as a potential cue to identify referents in a discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2011

WING CHEE SO  and
JIA YI LIM
WING CHEE SO*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
JIA YI LIM
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Wing Chee So, Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, BLK AS4 9 Arts Link, Singapore. E-mail: psyswc@nus.edu.sg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study explored whether caregivers' gestures followed the discourse-pragmatic principle of information status of referents (given vs. new) and how their children responded to those gestures when identifying referents. Ten Chinese-speaking and eight English-speaking caregivers were videotaped while interacting spontaneously with their children. Their speech and gestures were coded for referential expressions. Our findings showed that the Chinese-speaking caregivers gestured more often than the English-speaking caregivers but both of the groups gestured more often when asking their children to identify the new referents than the given referents (e.g., pointed to a puzzle while asking “What is this”?). The children were also sensitive to the information status of referents and they relied on the gestures to identify the new referents (but not the given referents). Overall, gesture serves as a potential cue for referential identification in both the caregivers and their children.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 329 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, S., & Schroder, H. (2003). Preferred argument structure in early Inuktitut spontaneous speech data. In Du Bois, J. W., Kumpf, L., & Ashby, W. (Eds.), Preferred argument structure: Grammar and architecture for function. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Allen, S. E. M. (2000). A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut. Linguistics, 38, 483–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beattie, G., & Shovelton, H. (1999a). Mapping the range of information contained in the iconic hand gestures that accompany spontaneous speech. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 18, 438–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beattie, G., & Shovelton, H. (1999b). Do iconic hand gestures really contribute anything to the semantic information conveyed by speech? An experimental investigation. Semiotica, 123, 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beattie, G., & Shovelton, H. (2001). An experimental investigation of the role of different types of iconic gesture in communication: A semantic feature approach. Gesture, 1, 129–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caselli, M. C., Vicari, S., Longobardi, E., Lami, L., Pizzoli, C., & Stella, G. (1998). Gestures and words in early development of children with Down syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 41, 1125–1135.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chafe, W. L. (1976). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In Li, C. N. (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 25–55). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. L. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. L. (1996). Inferring identifiability and assessibility. In Fretheim, T. & Gundel, J. (Eds.), Reference and referent accessibility (pp. 37–46). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clancy, P. M. (1993). Preferred argument structure in Korean acquisition. In Clark, E. V. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Child Language Research Forum. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Demir, E., & So, W. C. (2006). What's hidden in the hands? How children use gesture to convey arguments in a motion event. In Brugos, A., Clark-Cotton, M. R., & Ha, S. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 172–183). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Driskell, J. E., & Radtke, P. H. (2003). The effect of gesture on speech production and comprehension. Human Factors, 45, 445–454.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Du Bois, J. W. (1987). The discourse basis of ergativity. Language 63, 805–855.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, J., Alibali, M., & McNeill, N. M. (2001). Divergence of verbal expression and embodied knowledge: Evidence from speech and gesture in children with specific language impairment. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16, 309–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fex, B., & Mansson, A.-C. (1998). The use of gestures as a compensatory strategy in adults with acquired aphasia compared to children with specific language impairment (SLI). Journal of Neurolinguistics, 11, 191–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, H. (1989). To open minds: Chinese-speaking clues to the dilemma of contemporary education. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. (2003). Hearing gesture: How our hands help us think. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., & Saltzman, J. (2000). The cultural bounds of maternal accommodation: How Chinese-speaking and English-speaking mothers communicate with deaf and hearing children. Psychological Science, 11, 311–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S., & Singer, M. (2003). From children's hands to adult's ears: Gesture's role in the learning process. Developmental Psychology, 39, 509–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenfield, P. M., & Smith, J. H. (1976). The structure of communication in early language development. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Guerriero, A. M. S., Oshima-Takane, Y., & Kuriyama, Y. (2006). The development of referential choice in English and Japanese: A discourse-pragmatic perspective. Journal of Child Language, 33, 823–857.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gullberg, M., De Bot, K., & Volterra, V. (2008). Gestures and some key issues in the study of language development. Gesture, 8, 149–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, S. D., & Church, R. B. (1998). A comparison between children's and adults’ ability to detect conceptual information conveyed through representational gestures. Child Development, 69, 85–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeill, D. (2005). Gesture and thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narasimhan, B., Budwig, N., & Murty, L. (2005). Argument realization in Hindi caregiver–child discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 461–495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özçalışkan, S., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture is at the cutting edge of early language development. Cognition, 96, B101–B113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paradis, J., & Navarro, S. (2003). Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: What is the role of input? Journal of Child Language, 30, 371–393.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sauer, E., Levine, S. C., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (in press). Early gesture predicts language delay in children with pre- and perinatal brain lesions. Child Development.Google Scholar
Serratrice, L. (2005). The role of discourse pragmatics in the acquisition of subjects in Italian. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 437–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
So, W. C., Demir, E., Goldin-Meadow, S. (2010). When speech is ambiguous gesture steps in: Sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic principles in early childhood. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 209–224.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stefanini, S., Caselli, M. C., & Volterra, V. (2007). Spoken and gestural production in a naming task by young children with Down Syndrome. Brain and Language, 101, 208–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stefanini, S., Recchia, M., & Caselli, M. C. (2008). The relationship between spontaneous gesture production and spoken lexical ability in children with Down syndrome in a naming task. Gesture, 8, 197–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tardif, T., Gelman, S., & Xu, F. (1999). Putting the “noun bias” in context: A comparison of English and Mandarin. Child Development, 70, 620–635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar