Being communicative. Does it mean using wider pitch range and more gestures?

Research has shown that gestures and language and speech are interrelated. In fact gestures seem to be planned, produced and to develop together with language and speech (Goldin-Meadow, 2003; Kendon, 2004; McNeill 2005). Gestures also seem to help speakers organize and package visuo-spatial information in a way that is compatible with the linearity of speech (Kita 2000). For example, speakers describing an object that is falling down might produce a gesture representing a downward movement. Finally, gestures are, to a large extent, culture specific, and are learned by individuals as part of the process of learning to communicate in a socio-linguistic community. The interrelations of gestures and prosodic prominence have also been investigated. There is general consensus that gestures are aligned with prominent parts of speech, though the precise nature of the temporal relationship between gestures and speech is far from clear. To the authors’ knowledge, little to no attention has been paid to the relationship between speakers’ global pitch range and use of gestures. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there might be a relation between the speakers’ amount of pitch variation and their use of gestures in speech. For example, speakers that are perceived as having a monotonic voice generally do not gesticulate much in their speech; on the contrary, animated speech is often characterized by a considerable amount of gesturing. In fact, it is highly likely that speakers convey paralinguistic meanings both through their pitch ranges (together with other voice characteristics) and their gestures. In L2 development, it is possible that L1 gestures might have an influence on L2 gestures at all stages of language development, and that gestural transfer co-occurs with linguistic transfer (Brown, Gullberg, 2008; Pika, Nicoladis, Marentette, 2006). It has also been suggested that, since gestures play an important role in facilitating language access in speech production, bilingual/L2 speakers may gesture more than monolingual speakers. This would be due to the cognitive complexity that speaking more than one language requires (Kita, 2000). So gestures would help bilingual/L2 speakers retrieve lexical items and reduce the cognitive load on working memory required to access more alternative options in producing language and speech than monolinguals (Kita, 2000; Nicoladis 2007). However, studies aimed at confirming the extent and characteristics of L2 learners’ gesturing compared to L1 speakers have not provided uncontroversial results (Sherman, Nicoladis, 2004). This paper is part of a more general research project aimed at investigating the hypothesis that speakers convey linguistic and paralinguistic meanings through their variations in pitch range and use of gestures. Specifically, this paper investigates the interrelations between pitch range and gestures in L1 and L2 in a group Italian speakers of Italian (native language) and English (second language). The following research questions are addressed: (1) is there a relationship between speakers’ pitch range and gestures such that greater variations in the speaker’s voice pitch are associated to greater use of gestures?; (2) does this occur both in L1 and L2? (3) in the L2, is this relationship affected by contextual factors, for example the speaker’s nervousness in performing a task? 8 native Italian female speakers, learners of English L2 with a competence at the B1 level of the CEFR were videorecorded while telling Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Crow” once in Italian, and twice in English, once right after they had told the story in English and a second time a week later. The reason for having the speakers repeat the story a second time after a week was to test possible effects of familiarization with the story and/or the task on speakers’ variations in pitch and gestures. The analysis followed three main phases: a first accurate examination of the audiovisual material; a spectro-acoustic analysis of the prosodic patterns; and, finally, an annotation and analysis of the gestures. For the prosodic analysis, the audio signal was extracted from the videos using the AVC software (at http://www.any-video-converter.com/) and then imported in Praat (www.praat.org). The following were annotated on textgrids: a) words; b) respiratory pauses; c) silent pauses; d) disfluencies (distinguished between filled pauses, repetitions and corrections). A measure of global pitch variation was also taken, the Pitch Variation Quotient, (PVQ), following a procedure indicated in Hincks (2005). In the gesture analysis, the speakers’ gestures were divided into: Depictive, Discursive-Metaphorical and Emblems. Gesture rate was calculated for each gesture type, following a procedure used in Nicoladis et al. (2007), so as to verify if there exists any relation between the variation in the speakers’ PVQ and their use of gestures. The results suggest that: (1) in the L2 speakers increase their pitch variation as they get more familiar with a task; (2) with the increased familiarity with the task, speakers produce stretches of speech with less pauses and/or hesitations, and make more gestures. Depictive gestures seem to increase proportionally more than discursive-metaphorical gestures. This study will constitute the basis for further analyses on the interaction between gestures and pitch range in L1 and L2.