Pointing Out Directions in Murrinhpatha

Blythe, Joe; Mardigan, Kinngirri Carmelita; Perdjert, Mawurt Ernest; Stoakes, Hywel

doi:10.1515/opli-2016-0007

Cited by 18 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…More broadly, though, it is communicative practices , not just linguistic structures per se, that are adapted to niches, and gesture is a critical part of such practices. Researchers have long linked gestural practices to broader cultural, linguistic, and even ecological factors (e.g., Blythe, Mardigan, Perdjert, & Stoakes, ; Haviland, ; Kendon, ; Kita & Ide, ; Levinson, ; Núñez & Cornejo, ). For instance, Kendon (, pp.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Preference for Pointing With the Hand Is Not Universal

2018

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Pointing is a cornerstone of human communication, but does it take the same form in all cultures? Manual pointing with the index finger appears to be used universally, and it is often assumed to be universally preferred over other forms. Non-manual pointing with the head and face has also been widely attested, but it is usually considered of marginal significance, both empirically and theoretically. Here, we challenge this assumed marginality. Using a novel communication task, we investigated pointing preferences in the Yupno of Papua New Guinea and in U.S. undergraduates. Speakers in both groups pointed at similar rates, but form preferences differed starkly: The Yupno participants used non-manual pointing (nose- and head-pointing) numerically more often than manual pointing, whereas the U.S. participants stuck unwaveringly to index-finger pointing. The findings raise questions about why groups differ in their pointing preferences and, more broadly, about why humans communicate in the ways they do.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Preference for Pointing With the Hand Is Not Universal

2018

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“…For example, the use of co-speech pointing actions to symbolically index physical and abstract referents – and very often their simultaneous temporal and semantic alignment with speech – have been described for diverse language ecologies such as the Cuna people of Panama (Sherzer, 1972), the Yupno people of Papua New Guinea and speakers of American English (Cooperrider et al, 2014), Murrinhpatha in Northern Australia (Blythe et al, 2016), Kreol Seselwa in the Seychelles (Brück, 2016), and speakers of Nheengatú in Brazil (Floyd, 2016). Across these ecologies, pointing is both a plurifunctional and multimodal referential strategy (integrating bodily actions, posture orientations and eye gaze either with or without speech) that patterns along formal, semantic, and spatiotemporal lines.…”

Section: Composite Utterances In Signed and Spoken Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction

2018

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Signers and speakers coordinate a broad range of intentionally expressive actions within the spatiotemporal context of their face-to-face interactions (Parmentier, 1994; Clark, 1996; Johnston, 1996; Kendon, 2004). Varied semiotic repertoires combine in different ways, the details of which are rooted in the interactions occurring in a specific time and place (Goodwin, 2000; Kusters et al., 2017). However, intense focus in linguistics on conventionalized symbolic form/meaning pairings (especially those which are arbitrary) has obscured the importance of other semiotics in face-to-face communication. A consequence is that the communicative practices resulting from diverse ways of being (e.g., deaf, hearing) are not easily united into a global theoretical framework. Here we promote a theory of language that accounts for how diverse humans coordinate their semiotic repertoires in face-to-face communication, bringing together evidence from anthropology, semiotics, gesture studies and linguistics. Our aim is to facilitate direct comparison of different communicative ecologies. We build on Clark’s (1996) theory of language use as ‘actioned’ via three methods of signaling: describing, indicating, and depicting. Each method is fundamentally different to the other, and they can be used alone or in combination with others during the joint creation of multimodal ‘composite utterances’ (Enfield, 2009). We argue that a theory of language must be able to account for all three methods of signaling as they manifest within and across composite utterances. From this perspective, language—and not only language use—can be viewed as intentionally communicative action involving the specific range of semiotic resources available in situated human interactions.

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“…Pointing also varies across cultures by virtue of being bound up with broader communicative practices and cognitive patterns. For example, Blythe et al (2016) described how pointing becomes an especially critical communicative resource in Murrinhpatha conversation because of cultural taboos on naming certain people and the places associated with those people. Elsewhere, pointing is recruited into a conventional practice for referring to the time of day.…”

Section: Variation In Pointing Across Culturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pointing in gesture and sign.

Cooperrider¹,

Mesh²

2022

Gesture in Language: Development Across the Lifespan.

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anchor words to the world, and build common ground with each other. Following others, we will here define pointing as a bodily "movement toward" a target-someone, something, somewherewith the intention of reorienting attention to it (Eco 1976; see also Cooperrider, Slotta, and Núñez 2018;Kendon 2004). Often this gesture is done with the index finger-a pre-eminently "pointy" articulator that projects an imaginary vector-but it can also be done by tossing the head, pursing the lips, or extending a machete, among other ways. Pointing is a means of indicating-that is, of establishing attention to something by creating a spatiotemporal connection to it (Peirce 1940; see also Clark 2003). It is not the only way of indicating-one can also pat something or hold it up for inspection (Clark 2003). Indicating, in turn, is one of the three major methods of meaning-making that humans have-along with depicting (that is, using iconic representations) and what is sometimes called describing (that is, using symbolic resources) (Clark 2003(Clark , 2016Enfield 2009;Ferrara and Hodge 2018;Peirce 1940). (The term "symbolic" is used in many ways in linguistics and cognitive science, but here refers to meaning conveyed by rule or convention, e.g., that a green traffic light means 'go.') On purely theoretical grounds, then, pointing is a "basic building block" of communication (Kita 2003a). And so it is on empirical grounds, too. Pointing is an earlyemerging communicative act-among the earliest, in fact (see Morgenstern, this volume)-and it is found universally in both spoken and signed communication (Kendon 2010;Kita 2003a;Morgenstern 2014;Pfau 2011).Unsurprisingly, this elemental gesture has attracted the attention of both gesture researchers and sign language linguists. However, scholars in these two traditions have looked at pointing through different lenses and have gravitated toward different aspects of it. Gesture researchers, for example, have usually treated pointing as an adjunct to language but not really part of it; sign researchers, in contrast, have often treated pointing as a core part of sign language grammar rather than as a separate, "gestural" component (e.g., Meier and Lillo-Martin 2010).These differing frameworks and foci contribute to an impression that-superficial similarities notwithstanding-pointing gestures and pointing signs are, deep down, fundamentally different.Recently, however, there is a new push to compare pointing gestures and pointing signs directly, that is, using similar datasets and similar analytical criteria. These direct comparisons underscore the fact that pointing gestures and pointing signs share many commonalities, and help sharpen our understanding of where exactly the differences lie.

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Pointing Out Directions in Murrinhpatha

Cited by 18 publications

References 32 publications

The Preference for Pointing With the Hand Is Not Universal

The Preference for Pointing With the Hand Is Not Universal

Language as Description, Indication, and Depiction

Pointing in gesture and sign.

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