Gesture and Bilingualism: evidence from Polish-English preschoolers.

Abstract

Communication of monolingual and bilingual children differs with respect to words they use in a conversation and choice of gestures accompanying these words. Language dominance can play a vital role in how children use gestures to back up or replace vocabulary items. In the research, we investigated the relationship between language and gestures in bilingual, Polish-English preschoolers. We assumed that children would produce more co-speech gestures in their dominant language, compared to their non-dominant language, which has not been traced thoroughly in the topical research. In the report, we provide theoretical background from gesture studies and language acquisition, we present the procedure used in the experiment, and discuss the analysis of data obtained from four bilinguals: a 53-month-old, two 67-month-old and a 76-month-old. The recordings gathered document gesticulation and speech of the children during a conversation with the researcher, which is conducted in the form of a game. We present quantitative (gesture count) and qualitative analysis of the material gathered during that game.