Having a different pointing of view about the future:The effect of signs on co-speech gestures about time in Mandarin–CSL bimodal bilinguals

Mandarin speakers often use gestures to represent time laterally, vertically, and sagittally. Chinese Sign Language (CSL) users also exploit signs for that purpose, and can differ from the gestures of Mandarin speakers in their choices of axes and direction of sagittal movements. The effects of sign language on co-speech gestures about time were investigated by comparing spontaneous temporal gestures of late bimodal bilinguals (Mandarin learners of CSL) and non-signing Mandarin speakers. Spontaneous gestures were elicited via a wordlist definition task. In addition to effects of temporal words on temporal gestures, results showed significant effects of sign. Compared with non-signers, late bimodal bilinguals (1) produced more sagittal but fewer lateral temporal gestures; and (2) exhibited a different temporal orientation of sagittal gestures, as they were more likely to gesture past events to their back. In conclusion, bodily experience of sign language can not only impact the nature of co-speech gestures, but also spatio-motoric thinking and abstract space-time mappings

Having a different pointing of view about the future: The effect of signs on co-speech gestures about time in Mandarin–CSL bimodal bilinguals

Mandarin speakers often use gestures to represent time laterally, vertically, and sagittally. Chinese Sign Language (CSL) users also exploit signs for that purpose, and can differ from the gestures of Mandarin speakers in their choices of axes and direction of sagittal movements. The effects of sign language on co-speech gestures about time were investigated by comparing spontaneous temporal gestures of late bimodal bilinguals (Mandarin learners of CSL) and non-signing Mandarin speakers. Spontaneous gestures were elicited via a wordlist definition task. In addition to effects of temporal words on temporal gestures, results showed significant effects of sign. Compared with non-signers, late bimodal bilinguals (1) produced more sagittal but fewer lateral temporal gestures; and (2) exhibited a different temporal orientation of sagittal gestures, as they were more likely to gesture past events to their back. In conclusion, bodily experience of sign language can not only impact the nature of co-speech gestures, but also spatio-motoric thinking and abstract space-time mappings

Systematic mappings between semantic categories and types of iconic representations in the manual modality:A normed database of silent gesture

Contains fulltext : 212953.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)An unprecedented number of empirical studies have shown that iconic gestures - those that mimic the sensorimotor attributes of a referent - contribute significantly to language acquisition, perception, and processing. However, there has been a lack of normed studies describing generalizable principles in gesture production and in comprehension of the mappings of different types of iconic strategies (i.e., modes of representation; Müller, 2013). In Study 1 we elicited silent gestures in order to explore the implementation of different types of iconic representation (i.e., acting, representing, drawing, and personification) to express concepts across five semantic domains. In Study 2 we investigated the degree of meaning transparency (i.e., iconicity ratings) of the gestures elicited in Study 1. We found systematicity in the gestural forms of 109 concepts across all participants, with different types of iconicity aligning with specific semantic domains: Acting was favored for actions and manipulable objects, drawing for nonmanipulable objects, and personification for animate entities. Interpretation of gesture-meaning transparency was modulated by the interaction between mode of representation and semantic domain, with some couplings being more transparent than others: Acting yielded higher ratings for actions, representing for object-related concepts, personification for animate entities, and drawing for nonmanipulable entities. This study provides mapping principles that may extend to all forms of manual communication (gesture and sign). This database includes a list of the most systematic silent gestures in the group of participants, a notation of the form of each gesture based on four features (hand configuration, orientation, placement, and movement), each gesture's mode of representation, iconicity ratings, and professionally filmed videos that can be used for experimental and clinical endeavors.17 p

Street Artivism on Athenian Walls : A cognitive semiotic analysis of metaphor and narrative in street art

The thesis is a collection of four papers on Greek street art (specifically situated in the city of Athens) with a focus on metaphors and narratives. The overall aim guiding this thesis is to explore how street art in times of crisis can represent sociopolitical issues and in what ways these messages can be conveyed. By using the perspective of cognitive semiotics to address this, a parallel aim is to contribute to developing concepts and methods in this relatively new discipline.Paper 1 presents a set of qualitative and quantitative analyses of rhetorical figures such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, oxymoron and personification in street art. A novel and empirically tested data-driven procedure is introduced, one that is informed by cognitive linguistic and semiotic theory for the identification and interpretation of rhetorical figures in crisis-related street art in Athens. The analyses show that, although the methodological protocol can be applied reliably to street art, and can enable the analysts to distinguish metaphors from other rhetorical figures, this genre often requires multiple kinds of sociocultural, contextual and linguistic knowledge to be accommodated in the analysis of the images, in order to achieve a successful and intersubjectiveinterpretation.Paper 2 contributes to the study of figurativity and polysemiotic communication. It discusses the complex phenomenon of metaphor synthetically, offering an approach that may help us to go beyond and overcome challenges among debated issues in metaphor research in cognitive linguistics and semiotics by using a coherent terminology, informed by cognitive semiotics. The data derived from the empirical analysis presented in Paper 1 are used as the basis for the theoretical implications of the analysis in Paper 2, and by extension for the validity of the step-wise procedure for identification and interpretation of rhetorical figures in street art.Paper 3 explores street artists’ experiences (on the basis of 10 audio-recorded go-along interviews) by focusing on what motivated their art-making and the verbal metaphors they used in go-along interviews where they were asked about these motivations. Methodologically it emphasizes the need for a theoretical definition of metaphor that should be clearly linked to its operationalization in alignment with the specific data. The results of the study reveal that street artists use a range of highly and moderately innovative metaphors when talking about personal experiences and motivations in relation to their art-making, with respect to situated communication.Paper 4 extends the scope of the thesis to the narrative potential of single static images, such as street artworks. With its qualitative approach, yet drawing on a sample corpus of street artworks, Paper 4 allows us to delve into narratological discussions probing the narrative potential of street art. The findings suggest that single static images can be able to narrate and be interpreted as narrations but only if the underlying story is known in advance.In sum, the thesis contributes new knowledge to our understanding of street art and provides a systematic and empirically grounded account of its figurative and narrative interpretation, with a number of workable ideas offered to the study of cognitive semiotics

Supporting children’s conceptual understanding of fractions with manipulatives and gesture

Fractions—their concepts, procedures, and symbolic notation—are well-known for the difficulty they present children, beginning in elementary school, and often, persisting long after. However, promoting children’s development of flexible and robust conceptual knowledge in this content area is critical for their success both in and out of school. The overarching goal of this project is to investigate the tools that support elementary school-aged children’s fraction learning by focusing on two different, yet related areas in cognitive science: physical action on objects (i.e., working with concrete manipulatives) and gesture. The first study identifies the specific mental models about fractions children develop and express through their speech and gesture. The second paper presents a comparative case study that examines how two children’s coordination of speech, gesture, and manipulatives reveals their fraction knowledge. By honing in on how children use gesture and/or manipulatives at times to their advantage and, at others, to their disadvantage, these two studies explore children’s existing knowledge to understand the nature of their fraction concepts, and ultimately, to inform the design of educational interventions that foster learning. The third, and final, study experimentally tests how variations in tools across an instructional intervention affect children’s learning of fraction notation and magnitude estimation. Preliminary results suggest that three of the four conditions—a gesture-based lesson, a manipulatives and gesture-based lesson, as well as a pencil and paper-based control, but not the manipulative-based lesson—led to learning gains from pre- to posttest on magnitude-estimation problems. None of the conditions, however, were successful at promoting transfer to problems, which included area-model estimation and fraction-magnitude comparison, beyond the intervention’s purview. Taken together, these three studies lend further insight into the affordances and constraints of using manipulatives and gesture to support the development of flexible and generalizable mathematics knowledge, concentrating specifically on a topic that challenges children as well as adults—fractions

The interactive ecology of construal in gesture: a microethnographic analysis of peer learning at an EMI university in China

Depictive manual gestures do not appear in isolation, but are motivated by a complex of experiential knowledge, communicative goals, and contextual-environmental factors (Harrison 2018; Kendon 2004; Müller 2014; Streeck 1993, 1994, 2009b). However, little is known about the incremental, moment-by-moment formulation of depictions in elaborate sequences of talk. Furthermore, questions endure about depiction as a learning resource within the contingent interactivity of the foreign language academic classroom. This study explores these questions in the context of subject-related student talk at a Sino-foreign university in China by focusing on how gesturers build expositions through intercorporeal and intersubjective sense making (cf. Merleau-Ponty 1945/2012). Drawing on empirical material from the corpus of Chinese Academic Written and Spoken English (CAWSE), I aim to contribute greater understanding of the intersubjective ecology of depictive gesturing. The study builds on previous research on depictive gestures in the classroom (e.g. Rosborough 2014; Roth & Lawless 2002) by focusing on sequences of gesturing within two distinct classroom tasks: i) dialogic explanations of complex systems and ii) interactional multi-party group discussions. By converging theories of intersubjectivity drawing on Cognitive Grammar (e.g. Langacker 2008; Blomberg & Zlatev 2014) and Conversation Analysis (Heritage & Atkinson 1984; Schegloff 1992), I use microethnography for the investigation of gesture as a cognitive practice (Streeck 2009b; cf. Erickson 1995; Streeck & Mehus 2005). The analysis engages concepts in phenomenology, ecological cognition and enactivism in order to illustrate the publicly displayable achievement of enactive construal in spoken exposition. These analyses expose the ways that speakers depict for intersubjective visualization of the topic-at-hand, and anticipate and react to affordances that occur within the landscape of interaction. Speakers design their depictions, by manipulating construal dimensions in three ways: i) depictions are integrated into the exposition for projecting and delimiting epistemic arenas where construal relations are tailored for specific structural aspects of the depictions, ii) depictions invite participatory frameworks for co-analysis of the topic-at-hand, and iii) speakers refashion their depictions to anticipate previous trouble. Furthermore, the analysis of the interactional order of the tasks illustrates the intercorporeality, the pre-reflective disposition towards sense-making, of construal in the moment-by-moment construction of academic classroom talk. This study has implications that problematize the notion of the body as a communicative resource by obscuring the notions of planning and strategy. Overall, the analysis shows that explanations and discussions involve finely grained attenuation of the corporeal dimensions of spoken language