How expressive body movements ground verbal descriptions of emotions: Feeling for speaking

Müller, Cornelia; Marienfeld, Benjamin

doi:10.1075/milcc.9.04mul

Part of

Dynamism in Metaphor and Beyond
Edited by Herbert L. Colston, Teenie Matlock and Gerard J. Steen
[Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication 9] 2022
► pp. 77–94

Feeling for speaking

How expressive body movements ground verbal descriptions of emotions

Cornelia Müller | European University Viadrina

Benjamin Marienfeld | European University Viadrina

In this paper, attention is drawn to the embodied experiences that are mobilized when speakers are asked to describe emotions. By analyzing how people use expressive body movements and language when thinking and speaking about emotion concepts, light is thrown on “People’s subjective, felt experiences of their bodies in action” (Gibbs, 2005: 9). It illustrates how experiencing emotion concepts bodily provides “part of the fundamental grounding for language and thought.” (Gibbs, 2005: 9). The title of this chapter alludes to Daniel I. Slobin’s reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Slobin counters Wilhelm von Humboldt and Benjamin L. Whorf static understanding of the relationship between “thought and language” with a dynamic idea of this relation which he terms Thinking for speaking (Slobin, 1996: 76). We report a small study indicating that speakers not only express affective experiences as conceptual content, but perform or indicate expressive body movements before or while describing a specific emotion. The chapter thus suggests a very concrete way of understanding Gibbs’ assumption of an “embodiment premise for language and thought”.

Keywords: thinking for speaking, gestures, embodiment, emotions, experiencing

Article outline

Introduction
Study design
Data
Methods
Findings
Micro-analytic case studies
- Surprise is straightening oneself up
- Pride is a feeling of raised shoulders and an upright posture
- Fear is a lump of lead in the belly and a contracted body
- Happiness is a feeling that wants to get out and up in circles
Is feeling for speaking a frequent phenomenon?
- Feeling first: A relevant phenomenon?
- Variable forms of embodied grounding
Summary
Conclusion: Feeling for speaking – experiencing grounds speaking
Acknowledgements
References

Published online: 9 September 2022

https://doi.org/10.1075/milcc.9.04mul

References (28)

References

Bressem, Jana, Silva H. Ladewig and Cornelia Müller. (2013) Linguistic Annotation System for Gestures (LASG). In: Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill and Sedinha Teßendorf (eds.): Body – Language – Communication: An international Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction. (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 38.1.), 1098–1124. Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Cienki, Alan & Cornelia Müller (eds.) (2008) Metaphor and Gesture. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Ekman, Paul. (1984). Expression and the nature of emotion. In Ekman, Paul and Klaus Scherer (eds.) Approaches to Emotion. New York, London: Psychology Press, Taylor & Francis.

Gibbs, R. W. (2005) Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kappelhoff, Hermann and Cornelia Müller. (2011) Embodied meaning construction. Multimodal metaphor and expressive movement in speech, gesture, and feature film. Metaphor and the Social World, 1(2): 121–153.

Kendon, Adam. (2004) Gesture. Visible Action as Utterance: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kita, Sotaro. (2000) How representational gestures help speaking. In McNeill, David (ed) Language and Gesture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 162–185.

Ladewig, Silva H. (2014a) Creating multimodal utterances. The linear integration of gestures into speech. In: Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill & Jana Bressem (eds.): Body – Language – Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction. (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 38.2.) Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter: Mouton, 1662–1677.

(2014b) The cyclic gesture. In: Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill & Jana Bressem (eds.): Body – Language – Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction. (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 38.2.) Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter: Mouton, 1605–1618.

(2020) Integrating Gestures. The Dimension of Multimodality in Cognitive Grammar, De Gruyter Mouton.

McNeill, David & Susan D. Duncan. (2000) Growth Points in Thinking for Speaking. In McNeill, David (ed.): Language and Gesture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 141–161.

Müller, Cornelia. (1998) Redebegleitende Gesten. Kulturgeschichte – Theorie – Sprachvergleich. Berlin: Berlin Verlag Arno Spitz GmbH.

. (2004) The Palm-Up-Open-Hand. A case of a gesture family? In: Cornelia Müller and Roland Posner (eds.): The semantics and pragmatics of everyday gestures. The Berlin Conference, 233–256. Berlin: Weidler.

. (2007) A Dynamic View on Metaphor, Gesture and Thought. In: Susan D. Duncan, Justine Cassell and Elena T. Levy (eds.): Gesture and the Dynamic Dimension of Language. Essays in Honor of David McNeill, 109–116. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

. (2008a) Metaphors Dead and Alive, Sleeping and Waking. A Dynamic View. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

. (2008b) What gestures reveal about the nature of metaphor. In: Alan Cienki and Cornelia Müller (eds.): Metaphor and Gesture, 219–245. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

. (2010) Wie Gesten bedeuten. Eine kognitiv-linguistische und sequenzanalytische Perspektive. In: Irene Mittelberg (ed.): Sprache und Gestik. Sonderheft der Zeitschrift Sprache und Literatur, 41(1): 37–68.

. (2017) Waking Metaphors. Embodied Cognition in Multimodal Discourse. In: Beate Hampe (ed.): Metaphor. Embodied Cognition in Discourse, 297–316. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

. (2019) Metaphorizing as Embodied Interactivity: What Gesturing and Film Viewing Can Tell Us About an Ecological View on Metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol, 34(1): 61–79.

Müller, Cornelia and Alan Cienki. (2014) Ways of viewing metaphor in gesture. In: Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill and Jana Bressem (eds.): Body – Language – Communication: An international Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction. (Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 38.2.). Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Müller, Cornelia & Hermann Kappelhoff. (2018) Cinematic Metaphor. Experience – Affectivity – Temporality. In collaboration with Greifenstein, Sarah / Horst, Dorothea / Scherer, Thomas / Schmitt, Christina. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, Reihe: Cinepoetics – English Edition 4.

Müller, Cornelia & Silva Ladewig. (2013) Metaphors for Sensorimotor Experiences: Gestures as Embodied and Dynamic Conceptualizations of Balance in Dance Lessons. In: Mike Borkent, Barbara Dancygier and Jennifer Hinell (eds.): Language and the Creative Mind. Stanford: CSLI, 295–324.

Müller, Cornelia & Susanne Tag. (2010) The Dynamics of Metaphor: Foregrounding and Activating Metaphoricity in Conversational Interaction. Cognitive Semiotics, 6: 85–120.

Slobin, Dan I. (1991) Learning to think for speaking. Native language, cognition, and rhetorical style. In: Pragmatics 1, 1–25.

(1996) From ‘thought to language’ to ‘thinking for speaking’. In: John J. Gumperz and Stephen C. Levinson, S. (eds.): Rethinking linguistic relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 70–96.

Streeck, Jürgen. (2009) Gesturecraft. The manu-facture of meaning. (= Gesture Studies 2). Amsterdam.

Talmy, Leonard. (1991) Path to realization: A typology of event conflation. In: Proceedings of the 17th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley: University of California. 1–40.

Wotschack, Christiane & Klann-Delius, Gisela. (2013) Alexithymia and the conceptualization of emotions: A study of language use and semantic knowledge. Journal of Research in Personality. 47. 514–523.