Gesture Multifunctionality in Face-to-Face Dialogue
Gesture Multifunctionality in Face-to-Face Dialogue

Summary/Abstract: Although there exists a number of gesture typologies and classifications, gestures tend to escape definite categorisation. The present paper concerns the gestures which accompany spontaneous speech during face-to-face dialogue. The alternation of conversational roles, the dynamics of dialogue, the cooperative principle, in a way dictating combined effort, spontaneous meaning negotiation and tuning in with one’s interlocutor semantically and pragmatically, produce gestures of a particularly multifunctional character. Dialogue involves a constant interplay of its spaces: ideational, modal, interactional and interpersonal. A clear-cut separation of these spaces or delineating uncrossable borders between them is not possible. Hence, gestures (signs) representing these spaces must simultaneously belong to and constitute signs of all four of them. The examples described in the paper show that gestures are intrinsically multifunctional: they fulfil several dialogue functions (representation of the ideational space, modalisation, interaction and interpersonal relations) at a time. These functions, though, are visible to different extents. Just as in Roman Jakobson’s model of communicative functions, usually one functions is foregrounded and can be easily recognised, while the other ones remain unprofiled. In reality, however, a gesture is always “opalescent” with different functions.

• Details
• Contents