American Metaphoric Gestures:
A Lexicon and Components
Rebecca Webb
University of Rochester

Introduction

Gesture researchers disagree about the extent which gestures have language-like properties. McNeill (1992) has claimed that gestures are ad hoc, idiosyncratic, non-componential, non-combinatorial, with no lexicon or standards of form. Singleton, Goldin-Meadow and McNeill (1994) conclude that there is a qualitative, ‘cataclysmic’ difference between gesture produced with speech and sign language. This work focuses mostly on iconic gestures.

Other researchers have described language-like features such as componentiality and standards of form in different types of gesture. Calbris (1990) and Kendon and
Versante (2003) describe recurrent, meaningful components of form in a variety of French gestures, and Neapolitan pointing gestures, respectively, as does Müller (2002) for Spanish palm-up-open-hand gestures. McNeill (1992) has described emergent standards of form and componentiality in metaphoric gestures produced by two mathematicians.

The goal of the present work is to quantify the proportions of naturally-occurring gestures which are characterized by basic features of human languages. Metaphoric gestures were analyzed because they occur frequently in natural speech, and because they have been less studied than other gesture types. Three questions were addressed: Do metaphoric gestures have recurring forms that consistently correspond with identifiable meanings? If so, are these gestures shared across speakers, or are they idiosyncratic? Finally, can the gestures be analyzed into independently meaningful components? Webb (1996) presents this work in full.

Method

Gestures were collected from videotapes of four adult American English speakers: a university professor lecturing to a class on the philosophy of language ; a television talk show host and guest discussing mother-daughter relationships, and a selectman discussing issues in town government in a televised town meeting.

First the speech was transcribed; the location and duration of gestures was indicated by underlining the spoken words which co-occured with the stroke of the gesture. The form of the gesture was transcribed following conventions used for transcribing American Sign Language signs (Stokoe, 1960): handshape (hs), location (loc), orientation (or) and movement (mvt). Gesture type was identified (iconic, metaphoric, beat, and emblem, following criteria outlined by McNeill, 1992), as was the meaning of the gesture.

A gesture’s meaning was determined based on how the form of the gesture represented some aspect of the accompanying speech, or pragmatically functioned with respect to the speech. By comparing gestures with similar forms and their accompanying utterances, a common meaning could be identified across different contexts of use. In cases where the gesture was similar in form and meaning to an ASL sign, gesture meanings were derived from the meanings of the sign. In other cases, meanings previously described by other gesture researchers were used.

Analysis I: Lexicon

The first analysis addresses whether individual speakers produce metaphoric gestures with forms that consistently correspond to identifiable meanings. And if so, do they produce them recurrently?
The quantity of metaphoric gestures produced by each speaker is presented in Table 1. In 50 minutes of lecturing, the Professor produced 273 metaphoric gestures (tokens). In 40 minutes, the TV Host and Guest produced 331 metaphorics, and in 20 minutes the Selectman produced 138.

Table 1
Quantities of Metaphoric Types & Tokens for each Speaker
subject Professor TV Show Selectman
speaking time (mins.) 50 40 20
gesture tokens 273 331 138
gesture types 29 32 14
tokens per type 8.6 9.7 9.1 For each speaker, over 91% of their metaphoric gestures had identifiable forms to which meanings could be assigned, and which were produced repeatedly. The examples below, presented in textual format only, illustrate how one subject repeatedly produced metaphoric gestures with similar forms and meanings
(a)
(1) Isn't the reason that you think that it can't have qualitative conscious mental states
(a) Left hand, index and middle finger extended, is held with fingertips contacting temple.
(b) (c) (d) (e) (f)
(2) ... we're aware of certain qualities of certain of our conscious mental states.
(b) Right hand, bent 3 ‘claw’ handshape, held near the forehead, with beat movements on (c,d,e,f)
(g) (h) (i.)
(3) Now the brain state in you that realizes that mental state ...

(g) Right hand, extended index, raises to right temple, and holds
(h) Left hand, extended index, raises to left temple and holds
(i.) Both hands, extended indexes, raise slightly (beat?)Gestures like these, produced more than once with the same form and meaning, are considered tokens of a single gesture type. They share a location near the temple or forehead, while their handedness, handshapes and movements vary. Their meaning, MENTAL, is in part derived from the accompanying speech, which repeatedly refers to ‘mental states’, as well as from the forehead location, which is also found in emblems meaning ‘crazy’ or ‘stupid’, and in ASL signs such as THINK, WONDER, and UNDERSTAND.
As shown in Table 1, each of the subjects’ gesture tokens could be classified into a limited number of types, such as MENTAL. For example, the professor’s 273 metaphoric gestures were actually recurring tokens of just 29 gesture types. Similar results held for the other speakers.

Analysis II: Community

Metaphoric gestures were compared across subjects to determine whether metaphoric gestures are idiosyncratic or shared among speakers. More than 80% of the metaphoric gesture types in each lexicon were produced by the other speakers (for details, see Webb, 1996). Thus speakers appear to share a single, limited lexicon of metaphoric gestures.

Analysis III: Componentiality

Individual metaphoric gestures were examined for independently meaningful components. Gestures having similar form and meaning, but with some small formational difference, were compared. If elements of form had an independent meaning and they occured at least once elsewhere in the corpus with the same form and meaning, they were considered to be morpheme-like subcomponents.

Certain metaphoric gestures were found to combine with others to form a single whole gesture, while others never combined. Example (4) presents a frequent metaphoric gesture type, PRECISE, which is articulated with a ‘ring’ or F hand, where the thumb and forefinger tips meet, forming a circle. The PRECISE gesture is used when speakers are trying to make a fine distinction in the accompanying speech.
(j)
(4) See, but I think that this is so key, ...
(j) Left hand,‘ring’ handshape, palm toward center, raises from chest space to above left shoulder.
Example (5)(k) presents a gesture containing two independently meaningful components. It has the F handshape of a PRECISE gesture, which articulated at the temple location of a MENTAL gesture. It also shares the same meanings: the speaker is trying to communicate a precise task that she wants her listeners to do: to remember something. These gestural components combine simultaneously into a single fluid gesture, as morphemes do in ASL.
(5) ... those of you who are at home, who are adults,
(k) (l)
just, ..... if i can get you to do this, remember when you were a teenager?
(k) Left hand, ring handshape, holds close to left temple
(l) Left hand, ring handshape, moves from left temple forward into gesture space.
Between a third and a half of the metaphoric gesture types in each of the three corpora have at least one token that is componential. However, very few individual gesture tokens, less than 15%, can be analyzed into meaningful components. Thus certain metaphoric gestures can recombine with each other into a single gesture, but this is not a pervasive characteristic of the lexicon.

Summary

Speakers share a single, limited lexicon of metaphoric gestures; in comparing metaphoric gestures across speakers, one third to one half of the metaphorics differed no more in form and meaning across speakers than within a single speaker. Metaphorics also have limited combinatorial properties; certain metaphoric gestures can be analyzed into distinct components of form which correspond to specific meanings, and which occur elsewhere with the same meanings. Metaphoric gestures thus have more language-like features than previously assumed.

REFERENCES

Calbris, G. (1990) The Semiotics of French Gesture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Kendon, A. & Versante, L. (2003) Pointing by hand in Neapolitan. In S. Kita (Ed.) Pointing, Where language, culture and cognition meet. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Müller, C. (2002) Forms and uses of the palm-up-open-hand in a Spanish conversation. Paper presented at Gesture, The living medium conference. The University of Texas at Austin, June 2002.
McNeill, D. (1992) Hand and mind, What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Singleton, J., Goldin-Meadow, S., and McNeill, D. (1994) The cataclysmic break between gesticulation and sign: Evidence against a unified continuum of gestural communication. In K. Emmory & J. Reilly (Eds.), Language, gesture and space. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Stokoe, W. (1960) Sign language structure, An outline of the visual communication system of the American deaf. Studies in linguistics: Occasional paper, 8.
Webb, R. (1996) Linguistic features of metaphoric gestures. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester.