Chapter 6
On the relationship between inter-(dis)fluency and gesture
The goal of the present chapter is to further explore the multimodal dimension of inter-(dis)fluency by
documenting the different forms and functions of gestures co-occuring with fluencemes, or occurring within their vicinity, in
their situated, embodied, and multimodal environment, thus taking a step further from the initial functional classification of
gestures used for the quantitative analyses. The present chapter will thus only present detailed qualitative analyses of the
data across the two corpora, and pay specific attention to the temporal relationship between (dis)fluency and gesture and
their synchronicity in terms of gesture phases, as well as the deployment of different articulators (i.e. hand, face, eyes,
shoulders, and trunk) and the shape, configuration, orientation, movement, and position of gestural sequences in the gesture
space, following a more form-based approach to gesture (Bressem &
Müller, 2014; Ladewig & Bressem, 2013; Müller et al., 2013). Several references will also be made to the gestures analyzed in previous
chapters, as to establish a typology of gestural variants in relation to inter-(dis)fluency. The present chapter is structured
as follows: I first illustrate the temporal relationship between (dis)fluency and gesture phrasing through several examples on
the synchronization of speech and gesture production, then document several visual-gestural practices embodying
inter-(dis)fluency.
Article outline
- I.Synchronization of speech and gesture
- 1.1Hold and retraction: Suspension and interruption in the two modalities
- 1.2Preparation: Preparing speech and gesture in tandem
- II.On the visual-gestural practices embodying inter-(dis)fluency
- 2.1Doing thinking as an interactional practice
- 2.1.1Multimodal gestalts of doing thinking: Embodied markers of hesitation?
- 2.1.2Gestural practices of doing thinking
- 2.2Embodied displays of stance and intersubjectivity
- Conclusion to the chapter
-
Notes