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30: Why do we gesture when we talk? (Video episode!)
🕑 Added 2019-03-21 22:20:33 +0000 UTCWhen you describe to someone a ball bouncing down a hill, one of the easiest ways to make it really clear just how much the ball bounced would be to gesture the way that it made its way downwards. You might even do the gesture even if you’re talking to the other person on the telephone and they can’t see you. No matter what language you speak, you’re likely to gesture, but that doesn’t mean we all gesture the same.
In Lingthusiasm’s very first video episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about gesture in a format where you can actually see what gestures we’re talking about! In particular, we talk about the kinds of gestures that we make at the same time as our words, even when no one can see us (Ever gesture on the phone? You’re not alone!)
These gestures, called co-speech gestures, let us reinforce the rhythm of what we’re saying and indicate where or how something is moving. We also talk about how kids learn to gesture as they’re learning to speak, and how gestures differ in different languages.
This episode is also available in the conventional podcast audio format through SoundCloud or in your regular podcast app, if you’re okay with imagining the gestures!
💚🎧🙌
Massive thank you to all of you, our patrons, for making this special video episode possible! Producing video is not a trivial task for a production team that’s used to audio-only, and your support on Patreon directly enabled us to film, edit, and caption this video, so everyone gets to learn about gesture linguistics without the frustration of not actually seeing what gestures we’re talking about! You’re stellar human beings and we appreciate you greatly. 💚
For links to more about gesture mentioned in this episode, check out the shownotes page.
Comments
Lingthusiasm
Nice! I hope it helps your students!
Blank
I enjoyed the whole thing, but as a Math tutor, I particularly appreciated the stuff about doing geometry with gestures--I'm going to try to incorporate (/ enforce!) doing a little gesturing with geometry. I always do it by habit but anecdotally I notice that the students who are most engaged do it too.
