Can you mold, handle or portray it? Iconicity and metaphor in depiction strategies in co-speech gesture
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English, Edyta, Can you mold, handle or portray it? Iconicity and metaphor in depiction strategies in co-speech gesture, Trinity College Dublin.School of Linguistic Speech & Comm Sci, 2022Download Item:
Abstract:
The study explores iconicity and metaphor revealed in various gestural depiction strategies in co-speech representational gestures (Kendon, 2004; David McNeill, 1992). The gesture examples have been sourced from three cultural-linguistic environments: Australia, Ireland and Poland. It investigates whether it is possible to detect consistent patterns in referent depiction manifested as depiction strategies within each community and across communities. In line with the theory of inter-bodily co-enacting (Cuffari & Jensen, 2014), each community is viewed as an extended ecology (Steffensen, 2011) and human bodies are perceived to be co-evolving with their immediate environment, rather than as existing as isolated entities. This study is also rooted in the concept of affordances (Gibson, 1979) and how object features impact gesture production. Research Question 1 investigates how different semantic features (spatiality, animatedness, manipulability, plurality) affect gesture production. Research Question 2 examines how different communities (Australia, Ireland and Poland) affect gesture production. Research Question 3 analyses the role of metaphor in depiction strategy creation. The principal findings are: 1) each semantic field favours a selection of specific strategies: spatiality favours molding, animatedness favours portrayal, manipulability favours handling and plurality favours molding and portrayal (with animate plural referents), 2) universal and community-specific trends have been detected regarding selecting different referent images, strategies, articulators and form parameters, 3) multiple and simultaneous constructions have been identified. Manipulability has generated the most multiple constructions. Simultaneity in gesture seems to be a universal feature with specific tendencies for different groups of speakers. Metaphor seems to be employed to convey conceptual information that goes beyond physical characteristics of the referents. For instance, it foregrounds various dimensions of concrete objects such as width or length. Abstract concepts such as amount can be represented via different geometrical configurations. An underlying semantic core or an underlying physical action can give rise to metaphor. Metaphor can also enrich iconic representation by adding the speaker s epistemic stance, neutralise or override semantic meaning of a referent.
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Author: English, Edyta
Advisor:
Leeson, LorrainePublisher:
Trinity College Dublin. School of Linguistic Speech & Comm Sci. C.L.C.S.Type of material:
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