Language and gestures in conversation: A cross-cultural study of the usage and functions of regulators and illustrators in French, Japanese, and American-English.

摘要

Linguistic studies incorporating the gestural component reveal important facts about the relationship between language and gesture. In this study, certain gestural regulators and illustrators are examined for their usage and functions in natural conversation in French, Japanese, and American-English. Our primary objective is to get beyond ethnocentricity by conducting a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study in (3) unrelated languages in an effort to identify those gestural patterns that are language-specific and/or culture-specific, and those that are universal.;It is known that the grammar of whole-part relations in Romance languages accounts for the perception of personal sphere and inalienable possessions. We examine cultural and linguistic factors related to the concept of personal sphere in order to describe the gestural sphere for speakers of the (3) languages.;Regulators, i.e., gaze behavior and certain hand and head gestures, are conversation markers in that they organize the talk-interaction by the role they play in negotiating the turn, controlling the addressee's attention and understanding, and accepting or rejecting the speaker's topic. Universal gaze patterns are discussed and new models are proposed in order to account for cross-cultural differences. We also present a limited inventory of hand and head regulators that vary across languages and cultures.;Illustrators, deictic movements in particular, function to orient the addressee to target locations, personal referents, and speaker topics. The display of gesture is contingent upon the existence of certain universal prevailing conditions, and further, verbal signals possessing the properties of deixis in and of itself, and those that mark topic, are not sufficient to preclude non-verbal deictic or topic-marking signals.;Lastly, evidence that gestures are not distinct from language is provided by primary and secondary bilinguals who demonstrate a one-to-one correspondence with respect to a particular language and its gestural system; however, patterns exhibited by secondary bilinguals reveal that gestures related to personal sphere are culturally-determined. This topic leads to the issue of L2 gesture acquisition and the proposition to incorporate the gestural component into models of both talk-interaction and language learning and instruction.