Lecture 2- gestures, sign and language

Question 1

Is language the same as communication, how else might you communicate?

Answer 1

No, you don’t need language to communicate you can use gestures

Question 2

What conveys shock + confusion?

Answer 2

Emotions, shown in face often move eyes around as if to look for more information

Question 3

What conveys excitement?

Answer 3

Big movements often wide eyes, jumping/bouncing and hands/arms go up

Question 4

What is an example of gender influenced excitement?

Answer 4

Jumping up and down giggling more characteristic of girls

Question 5

What is the relationship between biological and social in terms of facial and body gestures?

Answer 5

There is a cline (gradient) some are purely biological what you instinctively do (raw emotions) while others are learnt gestures to represent things

Question 6

What is an example of a gesture between biological and social influence?

Answer 6

The fist pump displays genuine human emotion and our tendency to convey excitement in big movements but puts it into a stable-culturally transferred gesture.

Question 7

What’s clearly an example of a gesture that has no biological influence what so ever?

Answer 7

Raise the roof, its fixed

Question 8

What’s and example of gesture where you are acting it out?

Answer 8

You just blew my mind

Question 9

What are the 5 general types of gestures?

Answer 9

• Emotional expression (excited etc.)
• Non-intentional gesture (rubbing shoulders, or touching back of neck when talking) these are related to emotions but not directly giving out information
• Emblems
• Pantomime= acting out a scene
• Illustrative gestures

Question 10

What are emblems?

Answer 10

• They are fixed, culturally learnt gestures
• They have a history and are not known unless you live in the community
• example include ok, raise the roof, thumbs up

Question 11

What is the biggest category of gestures? What is it synchronized with?

Answer 11

Illustrative, speech

Question 12

What are the four sub categories of illustrative gestures?

Answer 12

• Beat gestures
• Deictic
• Iconic
• Metaphoric

Question 13

What are beat gestures?

Answer 13

They mark rhythm with the person moving their hands on the beat for emphasis

Question 14

What are deictic gestures?

Answer 14

pointing

Question 15

What are iconic gestures?

Answer 15

• Represent something in the world with your hands, body

- Examples are up the stairs, directions, back and forth

Question 16

What are metaphoric gestures?

Answer 16

• Extending physical things into things that aren’t physical (concepts)
• Examples are 3 levels of NCEA, Back and forth but talking about a conversation or something like that NOT physical

Question 17

Can gestures stand alone?

Answer 17

No (with the exception of iconic) they need speech to accompany them, or at least clearest communication is when a combination of speech and gestures are used

Question 18

What can gestures add to speech (called mismatches)?

Answer 18

• Show a point of view (this guy)
• Add size manner texture and more
• Word referent with gestural info (spider-tells us stuff by action not having to say

Question 19

What is a downfall of gestures?

Answer 19

Generally vague+ not precise

Question 20

Does every culture use gestures?

Answer 20

Yes, in some more prominent than others (Italian)

Question 21

How does the speed of gesturing compare to talking?

Answer 21

Only use a few a minute whereas we speech 2-3 words per second

Question 22

What is interesting about people who are blind and gestures?

Answer 22

They still do it despite having never seen it done (suggests it not purely cultural)

Question 23

When do we use more gestures?

Answer 23

When we are not sure what to say or why trying to be persuasive

Question 24

Is sign language essentially illustrative gestures?

Answer 24

• Yes in that they you learn them culturally (like emblems), some are iconic representative (But some are not) and dietic you can use pointing
• But overall no as there are some signs that are abstract which you can’t guess, it is sequential not global and discrete (separate words one after the other-do not overlap), it is hierarchical one meaning inside of other words and it is grammatical if you do a gesture different it is just wrong not weird.

Question 25

Language is…

Answer 25

• arbitrary forms (that map to meanings)
• sequential (not global) and discrete
• hierarchical
• grammatical
• social
• functional