City Research Online

Abstract

Background: Gestures are spontaneous hand and arm movements that frequently accompany speech and play an important role in everyday communication (Kendon, 1997). Many gestures are semantically rich; for example, they reflect concrete or abstract reference in the discourse (iconic, metaphoric and air writing & number gestures) or convey meaning in their own right (pantomime and emblem gestures). Other gestures are semantically empty; for example, they refer to places or objects (deictic gestures) or mark speech rhythm (beat gestures). Finding out more about the different roles of gestures in speech production, helps us to better understand the relationship between language and gestures. This novel study addresses the following research questions:
(1) To what extend do PWA and neurologically healthy participants (NHP) employ semantically rich gestures (iconic, metaphoric, pantomime, emblem and air writing & numbers) in comparison to semantically empty gestures (deictic, beat and other)? What impact does the semantic competence of PWA have on gesture production?
(2) Do semantically rich gestures take different roles (facilitative, communicative, augmentative, compensatory) during conversation?
(3) Do different conversation topics (i.e., narrative and procedural) elicit different gesture patterns?

Publication Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Poster)
Publisher Keywords:	aphasia; gestures; co-speech; conversation; semantics
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Language & Communication Science

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