Universal or Not?

Gestures:

Background DataThere have been many studies

documenting the differences in gestures between languages.

The same gesture can have different meanings in different languages.

Also, the same concept can have different gestures across languages.

Previous ResearchBy having native English and native

Spanish speakers describe the same cartoon, McNeill found that the English speakers used more path descriptions accompanied by segmented and extreme gestures whereas Spanish speakers used more manner terms, less segmented and less extreme gestures.

More ResearchOne observation that has been studied

extensively is the difference between Italian and American gestures. Iverson et. Al. found that these differences influence language acquisition such that Italian children enter the two-word stage later than American children.

A bit more researchLastly, a study by Maynard found that

Japanese speakers nod 3 times as often in conversations. They nod at different parts in the sentence and possibly for different reasons.

HypothesisGestures can be used to inform the listener

about the speaker.

If gestures are specific to a language then English speakers will be able to identify other English speakers by their gestures.

MethodsShowed subjects 6 YouTube videos

featuring speakers of different languages.The clips had 10 – 30 seconds straight of

gesturing that would allow us to cover the speaker’s faces

Then we asked them the following questions:

Survey questionsWhat is your native language? Do you speak any other languages?What gender are you?

Are these people speaking English or not? Why?

ResultsOverall, the subjects were good at figuring

out which speakers were not speaking English

More Asians knew that the Asian videos were not English than any other ethnicity

More people thought that French was English than British English

Most people thought the American in the Italian setting was not speaking English

Results con’t.The subjects gave many reasons for why

they chose English or non-English. Among the most common were:The speaker’s gestures reminded them of

someone they knewBackgroundHand and arm movements (gestures)

Criteria for hand and arm movementsMost of the no answers were because the

gestures were too quick or too much.Most of the yes answers said that English

gesturing is more informal, slower, calmer and smaller.

Different subjects used the same criteria to draw different conclusions

ProblemsDid not counterbalance e.g. did not show

videos in different orders.Didn’t control for setting e.g. different

clothes, backgrounds etc.We didn’t specify which dialect of English

we were asking about.

ConclusionEven though the subjects were not able to

identify English speakers by their gestures they were able to identify non-English speakers by their gestures.

Our most interesting finding was that there is a prevalent perception of what English gestures look like.