Eye closures in spoken Hebrew: Conversational functions and meaning semiosis

Abstract

The present study focuses on eye closure (EC) as a communicative facial gesture in Israeli Hebrew media talk and pays particular attention to its coordination with coexpressive verbal, prosodic, and embodied resources. Drawing on the interactional approach to language and embodied action, the study demonstrates that EC can convey four contextual meanings – concentration, hedging, negation and totality – depending on the context in which it occurs and the verbal material with which it is coproduced. The paper proposes that these contextual meanings are derived from the more general meaning of disengagement conveyed by EC. Moreover, the present paper suggests several potential semiotic connections between the basic physiological use of EC as a reflex of self-protection and evasion and its observed contextual meanings. This provides evidence for the co-optation of the basic functions of facial gestures for communicative purposes via metaphorical-metonymical extensions.