33.1740, Review: Cognitive Science; Discourse Analysis; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Bressem (2021)
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Subject: 33.1740, Review: Cognitive Science; Discourse Analysis; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Bressem (2021)
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Date: Mon, 16 May 2022 14:13:01
From: Lauren Gawne [l.gawne at latrobe.edu.au]
Subject: Repetitions in Gesture
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36789677
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-3316.html
AUTHOR: Jana Bressem
TITLE: Repetitions in Gesture
SUBTITLE: A Cognitive-Linguistic and Usage-Based Perspective
SERIES TITLE: Applications of Cognitive Linguistics
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2021
REVIEWER: Lauren Gawne, La Trobe University
SUMMARY
Repetition in the performance of communicative gestures has long been
observed, but this monograph brings new levels of rigour to the study of how
repetitions are used and their role in communication. “Repetitions in Gesture”
takes a usage-based approach, drawing on a German language corpus of materials
to provide insights into the semantic functions, syntactic integration, and
interactional role in signalling attention. This work is grounded in a
Cognitive Linguistic approach to multimodal communication. (I reviewed the
physical version of this title, which is a hardcover book. It is also
available as an electronic book, which I did not have the opportunity to
access.)
This book has seven chapters, with a set of appendices that provide more
detail on the coding schema used and key examples referred to across chapters.
Chapter One introduces the topic of gestural repetitions, the multimodality of
grammar, and the data on which the analysis is based.
Chapter Two provides some background on the importance of iteration across
spoken and signed languages as well as gestures, noting modality-specific
differences, particularly the prevalence of reduplication as a grammatical
feature of signed languages.
Chapter Three provides the key analysis of the corpus, including details of
the coding process. This chapter provides the overview that sets up the
categorisation of repetitions and is the core contribution of the book to the
wider Gesture Studies literature. Across 30 hours of data from a variety of
settings, including television interviews and informal conversations and
games, Bressem identified 182 gestural repetitions made with the arms and/or
head by 40 speakers. From these examples Bressem identifies two main
categories of repetition and gives definitions of these that include
structural and functional features: iterations and reduplications. Iterations
involve repetitions with no change in realisation between strokes that repeat
a single gestural meaning, thus reenforcing the utterance, resembling the
long-established ‘baton/beat’ gesture category (Efron 1941/1972, Ekman &
Johnson 1969, McNeill 1992). Reduplications are repetitions where there is
some change in the movement parameters between strokes, thus building up
complex meaning alongside spoken content. Two different types of
reduplications with different semantic functions are noted by Bressem. The
first involves a change in the parameter of direction of movement or position,
(“Type A reduplications”), the second involves a change in the parameter of
position (“Type B reduplications”). Bressem also notes differences in
performance between the two major categories: reduplications are formed from
multiple-stroke sequences without preparation between strokes, while
iterations can be formed from multiple stroke sequences or preparation-stroke
sequences.
Chapter Four examines the relationship between gestural repetitions and
semantics. The first half of the chapter explores a cognitive-semantic
classification of iterations and reduplications, paying attention to the
distribution of these categories in the corpus, and their formal properties.
Iterations were far more common and also showed far more flexibility in terms
of the number of strokes, with examples sometimes demonstrating a length of
nine or more strokes (but iterations and reduplications both tended to have
2-3 strokes overall). The second half of the chapter examines the semantic
differences in light of these formal differences. Iterations tend to involve
the acting mode, and are used to represent the hands, while reduplications
tend to use a representing mode, with the manual gesture used to represent
something other than the hand. This opens them up to be used for more abstract
meaning making.
Chapter Five examines how repetitions interact with the syntax of co-produced
speech. Bressem opens by situating her work within the multimodal grammar
tradition, before examining the temporal relationship of the repetitions in
the corpus with syntactic elements. Bressem notes that reduplications have a
stronger temporal alignment with the relevant lexical affiliate than do
iterations, suggesting that different types of repetition have different
levels of integration with the co-speech content. In the second half of this
chapter Bressem introduces the distinction between multimodal constructions,
where the speech is obligatory and the gesture optional, and verbo-kinesic
constructions, where the gesture is a required element for the utterance to
have meaning.
Chapter Six looks at the role that repetitions have with regard to attention
and salience, as grounded in the literature on Cognitive Linguistics. Bressem
notes that gesture is generally considered a foregrounding strategy, but
discusses the different functions of iterations and reduplications.
Iterations, because they do not have semantic complexity, have a particular
function in attention focus.
Chapter Seven concludes the book by returning to the possible universality of
repetition across linguistic systems, independent of articulatory modality,
and the implications of repetition for Cognitive Linguistics and linguistics
more broadly.
EVALUATION
Bressem has brought a new level of rigour to the often observed but
under-analysed phenomenon of repetition in gesture. By grounding the research
in the existing literature from spoken languages and signed languages as well
as Gesture Studies, this work provides observable generalisations that should
be replicable across languages and corpora. The use of a clearly defined data
set and robust quantification of observed repetition phenomena sets a new
benchmark for corpora approaches to gesture. This book is reminiscent of
Harrison’s (2018) monograph, which focused on the multimodal construction of
negation, and its scholarly tradition is very much in the European Cognitive
Linguistic approach to Gesture Studies found in the work of Ladewig (2020),
Cienki (2017), and Müller (2017), and Cognitive Linguistics more generally,
particularly Langacker (2000).
“Repetitions in Gesture” is a dense 200 pages of content. Those pages pack in
a lot, including 30 figures, 21 tables, 112 footnotes and over 60 block
quotes. The footnotes provide the option for more contextualisation of data
and analysis, and there are eight appendices which give more detail on data
coding and key examples used in the volume. This allows for the invested
reader to build a deeper understanding, but I admit I did not make use of many
of them. Example art is presented as refreshingly dynamic pencil line
drawings, which are unfortunately pale in the printed volume, and the converse
text printing shows through. This is one element where the digital version
will likely offer a superior reading experience.
The distinction between iterations and reduplications, which is established in
Chapter Three and backed up by semantic, syntactic, and interactional
perspectives in subsequent chapters, is a key contribution of this volume. I
would have preferred a more semantically transparent labelling of Type A and
Type B reduplications, as these are revisted throughout the chapters and I
struggled at times to keep them clearly distinguished. While it is clear that
Cognitive Linguistics allows Bressem to make keen-eyed observations about the
functional and structural relationship between gestural repetitions and
co-speech content, occasionally chapters take a deeper turn into Cognitive
Linguistic theory, beyond the direct scope of the data being analysed. For
example, the final section of Chapter Five discusses multimodal constructions
more generally, and, as a reader not versed in Cognitive Linguistic or
Construction Grammar theory, I found it hard to follow the thread from the
earlier data analysis. Having said that, scholars coming to this book from
this theoretical background will find analysis here that grounds gestural
repetitions in the larger discussions of the field.
“Repetitions in Gesture” is a robust and rigorous work that sets a new
standard for how we talk about a ubiquitous feature of co-speech gesture.
Bressem uses a corpus to excellent effect to show the different ways speakers
use repetition. In doing so, she answers big questions about the role of
gesture in interaction, and shows that gesture can be used to build units of
different complexities. This book, and particularly Chapter Three, will be of
value to gesture researchers who want to bring rigour to the description of
repetition movements in their analyses, as well as Cognitive Linguists who
want to ensure that their work is truly grounded in a multimodal approach to
language.
REFERENCES
Cienki, Alan. 2017. Utterance Construction Grammar (UCxG) and the variable
multimodality of constructions. Linguistics Vanguard 3(s1).
https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2016-0048
Efron, David. 1941/1972. Gesture, race and culture; a tentative study of the
spatio-temporal and “linguistic” aspects of the gestural behavior of eastern
Jews and southern Italians in New York City, living under similar as well as
different environmental conditions. Mouton.
Ekman, Paul & Wallace V. Friesen. 1969. The repertiore of nonverbal behaviour:
Categories, origins, usage, and coding. Semiotica 1. 49-98.
Harrison, Simon. 2018. The impulse to gesture: Where language, minds, and
bodies intersect. Cambridge University Press.
Ladewig, Silva. 2020. Integrating gestures: The dimension of multimodality in
cognitive grammar. de Gruyter.
Langacker, Ronald W. 2000. Grammar and conceptualization. de Gruyter.
McNeill, David. 1992. Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. The
University of Chicago Press.
Müller, Cornelia. 2017. How recurrent gestures mean: Conventionalized
contexts-of-use and embodied motivation. Gesture 16(2). 277-304.
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.16.2.05mul
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Dr. Lauren Gawne is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at La Trobe University.
Lauren’s current research focus is the cross-cultural variation in gesture
use. Lauren also works on the grammar of Tibeto-Burman languages, constructed
languages, emoji use online and communicating linguistics to a general
audience.
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