Bilinguals

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Bilinguals gestures

• Elena Nicoladis
• University of Alberta

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Speech-gesture system

• McNeill (1992) argued that speech should be
  called the speech-gesture system
• Evidence
• Gestures mean the same things as co-occurring
  speech
• Gestures are usually timed with similar meaning
  words
• Aphasia affects gestures

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Why gesture?

• Maybe to organize our own thoughts
• People remember more words when free to gesture
  than when not
• Children gesture more when a task is difficult
• Problem-solving can emerge earlier on the hands
  than in speech for children
• People gesture when talking on the phone and to
  themselves

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Why gesture?

• Maybe to help the listener understand
• People tend to gesture more with low frequency
  word combinations than high
• Maybe both for ourselves and our listeners
• Gesture may have as many functions as speech

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Bilinguals gestures

• Bilinguals often speak one language better
• Gestures might compensate for weak proficiency
  (so, be for the listener)
• Gestures might correspond to level of proficiency
• Bilinguals might activate both languages at once
  all the time
• Gesture rate might not be suppressed

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Bilingual gestures compensation?

• Do bilinguals use more gestures with their weaker
  language to compensate for their weak
  proficiency?
• One study with 4 French-English bilingual
  children showed that children did not gesture
  more in their weaker language (Nicoladis
  Genesee, 1996)

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But, there are different kinds of gestures

• Iconic gestures
• Symbolic, e.g., walking or bird
• Deictic gestures
• Pointing, even abstractly
• Conventional gestures
• Culture-specific gestures like number gestures

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Iconic gestures-speech

• McNeills studies refer exclusively to iconic
  gestures
• Children start using deictic and conventional
  gestures before they speak but iconic gestures
  only after they speak
• Maybe iconic gestures are more closely related to
  speech than deictic or conventional

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First preschool study

• Study with five French-English bilingual boys,
  videotaped every six months, once in French and
  once in English, at 20, 26, 30 and 36
• We transcribed their speech and coded their
  gestures

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First preschool study

• We found that
• The more iconic gestures they used, the longer
  their utterances in each language
• This was not true for deictic and conventional
  gestures
• Conclusion iconic gestures strongly related to
  language development

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Other evidence for kinds of gestures

• Other studies of aphasia have shown that iconic
  gestures are lost but not necessarily deictic or
  conventional
• As language loss occurs with aging, iconic
  gestures tend to get used less (no studies on
  conventional or deictic)

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Second preschool study

• 8 French-English bilingual children between 3 and
  5 years
• 4 were French-dominant and 4 were
  English-dominant
• Videotaped once in French and once in English

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Conventional gestures
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Deictic gestures
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Iconic gestures
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Second preschool study

• Children used more iconic gestures in their
  dominant language than their non-dominant
  language
• Not true for conventional or deictic gestures
• Children were more likely to use conventional or
  deictic gestures without speech when
  communicating in their weaker language

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What about adults?

• One study with French-Swedish intermediate L2
  learners showed that they used more iconic
  gestures in their L1 and more deictic gestures in
  their L2 (Gullberg, 1999)

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Adult study

• 13 Spanish-English bilinguals and 13
  English-Spanish bilinguals all late learners
• All advanced bilinguals
• Watched a cartoon and told back the story
• Once in Spanish and once in English
• We coded iconic and deictic gestures

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Iconic gestures
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Deictic gestures
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Adult summary

• Advanced bilinguals showed no difference in their
  two languages with iconic gestures
• They did use more deictic gestures in their L2

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Interim conclusion

• Different kinds of gestures relate to language
  differently
• Iconic gestures strongly related to language
• Deictic conventional gestures can compensate for
  weak proficiency
• Maybe the iconic gestures help people to create
  longer utterances

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Bilingual mode

• Some researchers argue that bilinguals have both
  languages activated all the time (Grosjean, 2000)
• This can explain how code-switching happens
• As well as results of studies on language
  processing
• To speak one language (monolinugal mode), the
  other language is suppressed

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Gesturing in bilingual mode

• What happens if a bilingual knows a high gesture
  language (like French or Spanish) and a low
  gesture language (like English)?
• If they are in bilingual mode all the time,
  bilinguals might use a higher rate of gestures
  than English monolinguals
• Because there is no need to suppress a high
  gesture rate

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Adult study

• 10 English-Spanish bilinguals
• 10 French-English bilinguals
• 10 English monolinguals
• All watched a cartoon and told the story back
• The bilinguals did this twice, once in each
  language

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Results in English
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L1 vs L2
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Summary of results

• Both French-English and English-Spanish
  bilinguals gesture more than English monolinguals
  in English
• Here there was no difference between the rate of
  gestures in L1 and L2
• Maybe bilinguals do not suppress the high gesture
  rate of a high gesture language, even when
  speaking a low gesture language

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Bilingual mode for preschoolers?

• Even bilingual children are thought to be in
  bilingual mode all the time (Grosjean, 2000) so
  these same results should hold for children
• This study 10 French-English simultaneous
  bilinguals between 4 and 6 years and 10 English
  monolinguals of the same age

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Results
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Bilingual mode conclusions

• These results support the idea that bilinguals do
  not suppress a high gesture rate when speaking
  English
• Note that we cannot rule out an alternative
  explanation
• Bilinguals gesture more than monolinguals because
  they have more word finding difficulty
• We need other monolingual comparisons

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Conclusions

• Bilinguals gesture use shows that iconic
  gestures and speech are strongly related
• They are used more often with greater proficiency
• They are borrowed from a high gesture language
• Other kinds of gestures may compensate for weak
  proficiency

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Conclusions

• Language is not just the spoken component
• Gesturing appropriately for a culture is part of
  ones linguistic knowledge
• Conventional counting gestures
• Gender differences in Chinese L1 learners of
  English AND gesture differences

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Acknowledgements

• Paula Marentette
• Simone Pika
• Jody Sherman
• Natasha Tuck