Cover not available
Part of
Pragmatics and its Interfaces
Edited by Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 294] 2018
► pp. 163–184

The interface between pragmatics and gesture studies

| Saarland University, Germany

This chapter considers the interface between pragmatics and gesture studies, focusing on the dynamics of communication and interaction as people engage in language use. It presents a systematic linguistic study of the relationship of speech, gesture, and eye gaze. Based on face-to-face interactions, pragmatic topics, such as cohesion and repetition, will be revisited to investigate speech, gesture, and gaze in context. It will be demonstrated how interactants create and maintain joint action, how they engage in F-formations to negotiate steps within an interaction space and to contribute to activities. The chapter aims at establishing a pragmatic perspective on gesture and gaze in context to supplement and extend previous gesture-based research and to derive new implications for the study of human communication.

Keywords: pragmatics, gesture studies, pointing gesture, gaze, cohesion, reference, co-referential chains, repetition, stance taking
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pragmatics and the study of gesture
  • 3.The data
  • 4.Cohesion and reference
    • 4.1Para level reference
    • 4.2Meta level reference
  • 5.Repetition
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 7 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.294.08per
References
Aijmer, Karin
1997 “ I think – an English Modal Particle.” In Modality in Germanic Languages. Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. by Toril Swan; and Olaf J. Westwik, 1–47. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Allan, Keith, and Kasia M. Jaszczolt
2012 The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Anne H., and Elizabeth A. Boyle
1994 “Forms of Introduction in Dialogues: Their Discourse Contexts and Communicative Consequences.” Language and Cognitive Processes 9 (1): 101–122.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bayliss, Andrew P., Emily Murphy, Claire K. Naughtin, Ada Kritikos, Leonhard Schilbach, and Stefanie I. Becker
2013 “ ‘Gaze Leading’”: Initiating Simulated Joint Attention Influences Eye Movements and Choice Behavior.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 142 (1): 76–92.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bazzanella, Carla
2011 ”Redundancy, Repetition, and Intensity in Discourse.” Language Sciences 33: 243–254.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H.
1996 Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Akiba A., and Randall P. Harrison
1973 “Intentionality in the Use of Hand Illustrators in Face-to-face Communication Situations”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 28 (2): 276–279.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cook, Mark
1977 “Gaze and Mutual Gaze in Social Encounters.” American Scientist 3: 328–333.Google Scholar
Cruse, Alan D.
2000 Meaning in Language. An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, John W.
2007 “The Stance Triangle.” In Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, ed. by Robert Englebretson, 139–182. Amsterdam: Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ekman, Paul, and Wallace V. Friesen
1969 “The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behavior: Categories, Origins, Usage, and Coding.” Semiotica 1 (1): 49–98.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fetzer, Anita
2011 “Pragmatics as a Linguistic Concept.” In Foundations of Pragmatics, ed. by Wolfram Bublitz, and Neal R. Norrick. 23–50. Berlin: De Gruyter.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 “Discourse Pragmatics: Communicative Action Meets Discourse Analysis.” In Pragmatics and Its Interfaces, ed.by Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick, 33–57. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles
2000 “Action and Embodiment within Situated Human Interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1489–1522.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 “Pointing as Situated Practice.” In Pointing: Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet, ed. by Sotaro Kita, 217–241. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K., and Ruqaiya Hasan
1976 Cohesion in English. Longman: London.Google Scholar
Howarth, Barbara, and Anne H. Anderson
2007 “Introducing Objects in Spoken Dialogue: The Influence of Conversational Setting and Cognitive Load on the Articulation and Use of Referring Expressions.” Language and Cognitive Processes 22 (2): 272–296.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ilie, Cornelia
2018 “Pragmatics vs Rhetoric: Political Discourse at the Pragmatics-Rhetoric Interface.” In Pragmatics and Its Interfaces, ed.by Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick, 85–119. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi:DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara
1987 “Perspectives on Repetition.” Text 7 (3): 205–214.Google Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H.
2012 “Pragmatics in the History of Linguistic Thought.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Keith Allan, and Kasia M. Jaszczolt, 495–512. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kärkkäinen, Elise
2007 “The Role of I guess in Conversational Stancetaking.” In Stancetaking in Discourse: Subjectivity, Evaluation, Interaction, ed. by Robert Englebretson, 183–219. Amsterdam: Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendon, Adam
1990 Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in Focused Encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kita, Sotaro
2003 “Interplay of Gaze, Hand, Torso Orientation, and Language in Pointing.” In Pointing: Where Language, Culture, and Cognition Meet, ed. by Sotaro Kita, 307–328. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang
1982 “Local Deixis in Route Directions. Speech, Place, and Action.” In Studies in Deixis and Related Topics, ed. by Robert J. Jarvella, and Wolfgang Klein, 161–182. Norwich: Wiley.Google Scholar
Koschmann, Timothy, Curtis Le Baron, Charles Goodwin, and Paul Feltovich
2010 “ʽCan you See the Cystic Artery yet?’ A Simple Matter of Trust.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2): 521–541.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krauss, Robert M., Yihsiu Chen, and Purnima Chawla
1996 “Nonverbal Behavior and Nonverbal Communication: What Do Conversational Hand Gestures Tell us?” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 28: 389–450.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krauss Robert M., Yihsiu Chen, and Rebecca F. Gottesman
2000 “Lexical Gestures and Lexical Access: A Process Model.” In Language and Gesture, ed. by David McNeill, 261–283. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lascarides, Alex, and Matthew Stone
2009 “Discourse Coherence and Gesture Interpretation.” Gesture 9 (2): 147–180.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Logan, Tracy, Tom Lowrie, and Carmel M. Diezmann
2014 “Co-thought Gestures: Supporting Students to Successfully Navigate Map Tasks.” Educational Studies in Mathematics 87 (1): 87–102.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeill, David
1992 Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2005 Gesture and Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 “Gestures of Power and the Power of Gestures.” In Proceedings of the Berlin Ritual Conference 2008, ed. by Erika Fischer-Lichte; and Christoph Wulf, 1–13. [URL] (29.122013)Google Scholar
2012 How Language Began: Gesture and Speech in Human Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeill, David, and Elena T. Levy
1993 “Cohesion and Gesture.” Discourse Processes 16 (4): 363–386.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McNeill, David, Susan Duncan, Amy Franklin, James Goss, Irene Kimbara, Fey Parrill, Haleema Welji, Lei Chen, Mary Harper, and Francis Quek
2010 “Mind Merging.” In Expressing Oneself/Expressing One’s Self: Communication, Cognition, Language, and Identity, ed. by Ezequiel Morsella, 143–164. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Morris, Charles W.
1938 Foundations of the Theory of Signs. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Müller, Cornelia, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva Ladewig, David McNeill, and Sedinha Tessendorf
(eds) 2013 Body – Language – Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction. Berlin: De Gruyter MoutonGoogle Scholar
Müller, Cornelia, Silva H. Ladewig, and Jana Bressem
2013 “Gestures and Speech from a Linguistic Perspective: A New Field and its History.” In Body – Language – Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, 55–81. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Pereira, Gerardine M.
2013 “Going to the Zoo. The Role of Gaze and Other Non-verbal Behavior in Task-based Interactions.” Pragmatics & Cognition 21(2): 380–398.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pereira, Gerardine
2015 The Interplay of Gesture, Gaze, and Speech: Analyzing Task-based Interaction. Dissertation. [URL]Google Scholar
Sidnell, Jack, and Nick J. Enfield
2016 Deixis and the Interactional Foundations of Reference. [URL] (16.062016)Google Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert
2002 “Common Ground.” Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 701–721. [URL] (12.092013)Google Scholar
Staudte, Maria
2010 Joint Attention in Spoken Human-Robot Interaction. Universität des Saarlandes Dissertation. [URL] (26.082013)Google Scholar
Stivers, Tanya
2008 “Stance, Alignment, and Affiliation during Storytelling: When Nodding is a Token of Affiliation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (1): 31–57.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tannen, Deborah
1989 Talking voices. Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wiener, Jan M., and Thora Tenbrink
2008 Traveling Salesman Problem: The Human Case. [URL] (25.062012)Google Scholar
Wunderlich, Dieter, and Rudolph Reinelt
1982 “How to Get There From Here.” In Speech, Place, and Action, ed. by Robert J. Jarvella, and Wolfgang Klein, 183–201. Norwich: Wiley.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Jucker, Andreas H.
2023. Chapter 12. “He offered an apologetic smile”. In Multimodal Im/politeness [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 333], ► pp. 327 ff. DOI logo
Yus, Francisco
2018. The interface between pragmatics and internet-mediated communication. In Pragmatics and its Interfaces [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 294], ► pp. 267 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 september 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.