Bilinguals’ gestures

Elena Nicoladis

University of Alberta

Speech-gesture system

• McNeill (1992) argued that “speech” should be called the speech-gesture system

• Evidence:– Gestures mean the same things as co-occurring

speech– Gestures are usually timed with similar

meaning words– Aphasia affects gestures

Why gesture?

• Maybe to organize our own thoughts– People remember more words when free to

gesture than when not– Children gesture more when a task is difficult– Problem-solving can emerge earlier on the

hands than in speech for children– People gesture when talking on the phone and

to themselves

Why gesture?

• Maybe to help the listener understand– People tend to gesture more with low frequency

word combinations than high

• Maybe both for ourselves and our listeners– Gesture may have as many functions as speech

Bilinguals’ gestures

• Bilinguals often speak one language better– Gestures might compensate for weak

proficiency (so, be for the listener)– Gestures might correspond to level of

proficiency

• Bilinguals might activate both languages at once all the time– Gesture rate might not be suppressed

Bilingual gestures: compensation?

• Do bilinguals use more gestures with their weaker language to compensate for their weak proficiency?

• One study with 4 French-English bilingual children showed that children did not gesture more in their weaker language (Nicoladis & Genesee, 1996)

But, there are different kinds of gestures

• Iconic gestures– Symbolic, e.g., walking or bird

• Deictic gestures– Pointing, even abstractly

• Conventional gestures– Culture-specific gestures like number gestures

Iconic gestures-speech

• McNeill’s studies refer exclusively to iconic gestures

• Children start using deictic and conventional gestures before they speak but iconic gestures only after they speak

• Maybe iconic gestures are more closely related to speech than deictic or conventional

First preschool study

• Study with five French-English bilingual boys, videotaped every six months, once in French and once in English, at 2;0, 2;6, 3;0 and 3;6

• We transcribed their speech and coded their gestures

First preschool study

• We found that:– The more iconic gestures they used, the longer

their utterances in each language– This was not true for deictic and conventional

gestures

• Conclusion: iconic gestures strongly related to language development

Other evidence for kinds of gestures

• Other studies of aphasia have shown that iconic gestures are lost but not necessarily deictic or conventional

• As language loss occurs with aging, iconic gestures tend to get used less (no studies on conventional or deictic)

Second preschool study

• 8 French-English bilingual children between 3 and 5 years

• 4 were French-dominant and 4 were English-dominant

• Videotaped once in French and once in English

Conventional gestures

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Deictic gestures

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Iconic gestures

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Second preschool study

• Children used more iconic gestures in their dominant language than their non-dominant language

• Not true for conventional or deictic gestures• Children were more likely to use

conventional or deictic gestures without speech when communicating in their weaker language

What about adults?

• One study with French-Swedish intermediate L2 learners showed that they used more iconic gestures in their L1 and more deictic gestures in their L2 (Gullberg, 1999)

Adult study

• 13 Spanish-English bilinguals and 13 English-Spanish bilinguals; all late learners

• All advanced bilinguals

• Watched a cartoon and told back the story

• Once in Spanish and once in English

• We coded iconic and deictic gestures

Iconic gestures

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Deictic gestures

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Adult summary

• Advanced bilinguals showed no difference in their two languages with iconic gestures

• They did use more deictic gestures in their L2

Interim conclusion

• Different kinds of gestures relate to language differently– Iconic gestures strongly related to language– Deictic conventional gestures can compensate

for weak proficiency

• Maybe the iconic gestures help people to create longer utterances

Bilingual mode

• Some researchers argue that bilinguals have both languages activated all the time (Grosjean, 2000)

• This can explain how code-switching happens– As well as results of studies on language processing

• To speak one language (“monolinugal” mode), the other language is suppressed

Gesturing in bilingual mode

• What happens if a bilingual knows a high gesture language (like French or Spanish) and a low gesture language (like English)?

• If they are in bilingual mode all the time, bilinguals might use a higher rate of gestures than English monolinguals

• Because there is no need to suppress a high gesture rate

Adult study

• 10 English-Spanish bilinguals

• 10 French-English bilinguals

• 10 English monolinguals

• All watched a cartoon and told the story back

• The bilinguals did this twice, once in each language

Results in English

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L1 vs L2

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Summary of results

• Both French-English and English-Spanish bilinguals gesture more than English monolinguals in English

• Here there was no difference between the rate of gestures in L1 and L2

• Maybe bilinguals do not suppress the high gesture rate of a high gesture language, even when speaking a low gesture language

Bilingual mode for preschoolers?

• Even bilingual children are thought to be in bilingual mode all the time (Grosjean, 2000) so these same results should hold for children

• This study: 10 French-English simultaneous bilinguals between 4 and 6 years and 10 English monolinguals of the same age

Results

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Iconic Non-iconic

Monolingual (English)Bilingual (English)Bilingual (French)

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Bilingual mode conclusions

• These results support the idea that bilinguals do not suppress a high gesture rate when speaking English

• Note that we cannot rule out an alternative explanation– Bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals

because they have more word finding difficulty

• We need other monolingual comparisons

Conclusions

• Bilinguals’ gesture use shows that iconic gestures and speech are strongly related– They are used more often with greater

proficiency– They are borrowed from a high gesture

language

• Other kinds of gestures may compensate for weak proficiency

Conclusions

• Language is not just the spoken component

• Gesturing appropriately for a culture is part of one’s linguistic knowledge:– Conventional counting gestures– Gender differences in Chinese L1 learners of

English AND gesture differences

Acknowledgements

• Paula Marentette

• Simone Pika

• Jody Sherman

• Natasha Tuck