No abstract

Using a repetition paradigm, in which speakers describe the same event to a sequence of listeners, we analyze the degree of reduction in representational gestures. We find that when listener feedback, both verbal and non-verbal, is minimal and unvarying, speakers steadily reduce their motoric commitment in repeated gestures across tellings without regard to the novelty of the information to the listener. Within this specific condition, we interpret the result to coincide with the view that gestures primarily serve as a part of speech production rather than a communicative act. Importantly, we propose that gestural sensitivity to the listener derives from an interaction between interlocutors, rather than simple modeling of the listener’s state of knowledge in the mind of the speaker alone.

Listener-based accounts of speech production claim that speakers modify their speech based on their evaluation of the listener’s state of knowledge (Lindblom, 1990). In line with this, repeated words shorten when they have been previously said to the same listener (Fowler, 1988); however, repetition across an episode boundary in a narrative does not lead to decreased acoustic duration (Fowler et al., 1997). We replicate Fowler et al.’s story boundary effect and extend the study by testing whether a switch in listener has an additional effect on word duration. Speakers were asked to tell and retell the same story in the sequence of (A) listener 1/(B) listener2/(C) listener1 again (Galati and Brennan, 2010). We expect word durations to reset when the speaker starts a new narrative, especially when there is a switch in listener. In other words, word durations should be comparable in conditions (A) and (B), but shorter in (C), since the listener in condition (C) has heard the story before. Acoustic data from 20 American English native speakers have been collected and transcribed; data analysis is ongoing. This study is intended to shed light on the interplay between production economy and the need to transmit information.