The Verbal-Kinesic Enactment of Contrast in North American English

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the linguistic and kinesic expression of contrast—the pitting of one position, object, or idea, against another. The archetype utterance for the embodied expression of contrast in English is the bipartite construction On the one hand . . . . On the other hand . . . . in which hand gestures are often performed sequentially along the sagittal axis (first on one side and then on the other side of the body) to depict the two options. However, English speakers have a variety of other linguistic means available to them for expressing contrast. Using data from naturally occurring discourse, I describe a range of linguistic resources that mark contrast and examine the semiotic relationships at play in the dynamic, multimodal signs (i.e. speech / gesture constructions) that accompany them. I demonstrate that, far from being ad hoc, when analyzed across the propositional, cognitive, and discursive domains, the way in which contrast is marked in the body can be viewed on a continuum of highly imageable to more schematically iconic kinesic movements. By placing the primary focus on the multimodal sign, this paper makes clear how speakers of North American English build semiotic environments around the construal of contrast.

Gesture Influences Resolution of Ambiguous Statements of Neutral and Moral Preferences

“…Some of the preference statements included a second hedge within the preference statement, e.g., I don't know, but I guess I agree more with that, as opposed to hard to know, but his argument makes more sense to me. Although this may have introduced more variability, this was done to incorporate the most natural speech possible in an experimental context; corpus studies have shown that speakers very frequently "stack" highly stanced elements such as hedges (Hinnell, 2019(Hinnell, , 2020.…”

“…Firstly, in this study the stimulus speaker gestured only with PUOH gestures. However, the corpus studies in Hinnell (2019Hinnell ( , 2020 suggest that speakers also regularly use other hand forms as well as other body articulators (e.g., head movements side to side) to indicate contrast, particularly when the referents are abstract. The question arises, then, whether other handshapes would affect the comprehension of contrastive gestures of preference and whether the effect is the same if the contrast is indicated in the head rather than the hands.…”

“…The systematic use of gesture space also extends to abstract referents, e.g., ideas, emotions, and discourse elements (Parrill and Stec, 2017). A corpus study of English contrastive gestures showed that speakers regularly produce gestures to each side of space when contrasting two ideas (Hinnell, 2019). For example, when speakers use fixed expressions that contrast two abstract concepts, such as on the one hand/on the other hand or better than/worse than, they regularly produced gestures to each side of their body that reflect this contrastive setup, as shown in Figure 1.…”

“…While maintaining a fairly constrained template for the preference statement (see full stimuli in Supplementary Material), 2 of the 3 preference statements we used included a second hedge within the preference statement, e.g., HEDGE + I guess I agree with her. Given the results of recent corpus studies(Hinnell, 2019(Hinnell, , 2020 and current research on "stance stacking, " which has shown that most frequently, highly stanced elements co-occur with each other (i.e., are "stacked, "Dancygier, 2012), we incorporated this type of more natural speech in our stimuli.Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org…”

When Gesture “Takes Over”: Speech-Embedded Nonverbal Depictions in Multimodal Interaction

“…In addition, the unbalanced interpersonal power dynamics found in certain settings (e.g., in contexts of instruction, see Goldin-Meadow, 2003 ; Hsu et al, to appear ) are to a large extent absent. Indeed, a growing number of studies on multimodal communication have examined television data for similar reasons [see the studies drawing on the databases of the Red Hen Lab ( www.redhenlab.org ) and the TV News Archive ( archive.org/details/tv ); e.g., Steen and Turner, 2013 ; Winter et al, 2013 ; Zima, 2017 ; Hinnell, 2018 , 2019 ]. On top of all these, TV talk shows abound in recounts of past experiences and enactments of hypothetical scenarios, both of which contribute to the richness of depicting.…”