Gesture and Speech in Topic Organization in English as L1 and L2

International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 70 Gesture and Speech in Topic Organization in English as L1 and L2 Isabel Mª Iñigo-Mora Gloria Álvarez-Benito Universidad de Sevilla C/Palos de la Frontera, s/n 41004-Sevilla Spain Abstract The goal of this paper is to study the speech-gesture relation in topic organization in English as L1 and as L2. Twenty subjects (ten Spanish, ten American) aged 19-21 participated in this experiment. They were asked to watch a 7-minute-long animated cartoon and then they were asked to narrate what they had seen to a partner. We analyzed the following features, both in English as L1 and in English as L2: (1) average of gestures per informant; (2) percentage of gestures with new and old topics; (3) rate of pictograms with gestured new and old topics; and (4) rate of gestured new and old topics with action and state verbs. Then, we compared the Spanish speakers’ behaviour in English as L2 with their behaviour in L1, in order to discern whether they use the same gestures and topic organisation in both languages or they don’t. The results showed important verbal and nonverbal differences in topic organization in English as L1 and as L2. INTRODUCTION The goal of this paper is to study the role of the speech-gesture relationship and synchronization in topic organization in English as L1 and as L2. In order to analyze subjects‟ behavior in relation to topicality, it is important that we make some points clear. As Schlobinski and Schutze-Coburn (1992, p. 89) point out “‟Topic‟ is a commonly used term for a variety of approaches to a range of functional concepts. Few terms in linguistics, however, are so widely used without proper justification.” Schlobinski and Schutze-Coburn (1992, p. 90) name four main approaches to topic: (1) topic as given and/or known information, (2) topic as point of departure of the sentence, (3) topic as the constituent expressing what the sentence is about, (4) topic as the basis of “communication dynamism” (Firbas, 1964). The underlying assumption to the first approach is that “Topic, then, is equated with the sentential element (or elements) which refers to a fact or facts already known from the preceding context or to facts that may be taken for granted.” (Schlobinski and Schutze-Coburn, 1992, p. 91). Those who define topic as the point of departure in a sentence (the Prague School) divide the sentence into “theme” (i.e. the main issue) and “rheme” (i.e. the rest of the sentence)1. Halliday (1985, p. 36) defines the theme as follows: “the Theme is a function of the CLAUSE AS A MESSAGE. It is what the message is concerned with: the point of departure for what the speaker is going to say”. Other definitions are more structurally and syntactically-oriented. So, Chomsky (1965, p. 211) argues: “we might define the Topic of the Sentence as the leftmost NP immediately dominated by S in the surface structure.” But the two notions of grammatical subject and topic may or may not coincide; as Lambrecht explains (1994, p. 118): “Topics are not necessarily grammatical subjects, and grammatical subjects are not necessarily topics, at least in languages like English. For example non-subjects may act as topics in such accent-initial sentences as (1.1) (My CAR broke down)”2. In fact, the term “topicalisation” is used to refer to the construction in which one constituent is moved to the front of the sentence, to initial position (“The money I‟ll give you in a minute”). A different construction is the one commonly known as “left dislocation” where one constituent is moved to the front of the sentence (to the left) and its canonical position is filled with a pronoun or a full lexical noun phrase (“Mary, I gave her the money”) (Gregory and Michaelis,2001). The Special Issue on Behavioral and Social Science © Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 71 The third approach is closely linked with the previous one. Schlobinski and Schutze-Coburn (1992, p. 99) explain that “…the topic provides the tie to which the rest of the sentence is connected”. But the problem with this approach is that this notion of „aboutness‟ is closely related to the „grammatical subject‟ of a sentence and, as we have already said, they may not always coincide. Take for example the case of languages such as Mandarin, where subject and topic are more distinct3. Example 1. Topic in Mandarin. shu, wo mai le yi ben [Mandarin] book I buy (+ verbal particle) one (+classifier) „I bought a book.‟ Since there is a tendency for the topic in Mandarin to appear at the beginning of a sentence, it is common to find sentences with the following structure: „dui-yu‟ (=regarding) + topic + rest of the sentence Finally, the last approach is concerned with the communicative load of the topic. According to Firbas (1964), the topic (“theme” for Firbas) has a low communicative value because known information shows low degrees of communicative dynamism. Apart from these four main approaches to topic, we have to highlight the distinction between discourse topic and sentence topic (Van Dijk, 1977a, 1977b; Kehler, 2004 and Lotscher, 1987). The former makes reference to the informational content of a message (Keenan and Schieffelin, 1976), whereas the latter refers to the old information or theme in a sentence, in contrast to the new information or rheme (Givon, 1983). According to Keenan and Schieffelin (1976, p. 338), discourse topic is “the proposition (or set of propositions) about which the speaker is either providing or requesting new information.” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976; Van Kuppevelt, 1995; Asher, 2004; Stede, 2004 and Oberlander, 2004). This definition differs significantly from the one offered by Lambrecht (1994, p. 118), where there is a sentence-based approach to topic: “The topic of a sentence is the thing which the proposition expressed by the sentence is about.” (Chafe, 1976; Reinhart, 1982; Barnes, 1985, Büring, 1997, 1998 and Gundel 1997). So, they are similar because both of them try to answer the question: “What is this sentence/discourse about?” but they are different in relation to their level of analysis because „sentence topic‟ is constrained to clause or sentence-level constituents and „discourse topic‟ is generally based on propositions. According to Van Dijk (1977b), “Discourse topics are made explicit in terms of macro-structures. They globally organize the information of a passage, whereas sentence topics linearly link pieces of information”. As we have just seen, topic has been studied from a very wide variety of perspectives: psychological, syntactic, semantic, etc. Since we are interested in second language acquisition, we have decided to follow an integrative perspective of topic analysis where we take into account different criteria included in the approaches presented above. These criteria will be basically syntactic, semantic and gestural, and will be explained in detail in the method section. At this stage, a definition of gesture becomes necessary. The term has been defined form different perspectives. Some scholars define gestures in a very broad sense, considering them to be any kind of nonverbal behavior (facial gestures, eye movements, body posture, hand and body movements, raising eyebrow, foot tapping, etc.). In this perspective, they are interested in the meaning gestures convey by themselves, without taking into account the speech-gesture relation (Poyatos, 1994 and 2001). This perspective differs notably from the new approach, which focuses on the way gestures combine with speech to create meaning (McNeill, 1992 and 2000). According to McNeill, gestures are defined with regard to their relation to language as unconventionalized movements that occur together with speech. Kendon (1972, 1980) showed that there is a consistent patterning in how gesture phrases are structured in relation to speech phrases. Kendon (1980, 1990, 1994) and McNeill (1992, 2000) agree that gestures cannot be regarded as redundant elements additional to speech. Instead, they consider that gestures should be taken as part of the same system. In this article, we adopt this definition of gesture proposed above and so, the communicative process is viewed as one in which both verbal (speech) and non-verbal (gestures) signals co-occur. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 72 Kendon (1990, p. 15) states “the participants draw from repertoires of behavioral practices (units of language, gesture, orientation, posture and spacing, and the like) that are widely shared and follow certain organizing principles that are commonly adhered to, within any given communication community”. According to Kendon (2000:49) “There is, to be sure, no hard-and-fast line between what is „gesture‟ and what is not, but there is, nonetheless, little difficulty with agreeing what it includes: hand wavings or gesticulations that accompany talk and various kinds of more or less conventionalized actions which have a symbolic or semiotic function, as well as so-called gesture systems, alternate sign languages, and primary sign languages, all of which are fashioned from the same material, so to speak, and have certain features in common in consequence, but which, at the same time, may show very different kinds of organization”. In this paper, we will use the second definition of gesture in order to analyze the organization of topic. That is to say, we are interested in examining the way gestures are co-structured with speech to organize information. This does not mean that gestures necessarilyhave to co-occur with speech. In the following picture (Figure 1) we can see how our subject (SpMan02L2) is moving his hands from left to right as balancing. He is a native speaker of Spanish and is narrating the story in English. It seems that he does not know how to say “swinging” and this verb is substituted by this gesture. Example 2. SpMan02L2. “… we see a bird[Ø]Gesture= moving hands as balancing that is singing he tells …” FIGURE 1 SpMan02L2 However, any type of gesture will be taken into account in the general counting shown in the results section below. In other words, the total amount of gestures includes both gestures that accompany speech and gestures that appear as the only communicative elements, that is to say, gestures that appear in isolation but with a communicative function. The reason for this general counting in each subject‟s narration was to compare the number of gestures produced by native speakers of English and native speakers of Spanish in their L1 (Spanish are said to produce more gestures when speaking Spanish than Americans when speaking English). Besides, we also wanted to discover whether Spanish and American speakers use more gestures when using an L2, as a possible mechanism to compensate for their lack of speech fluency. Then, we can compare these results with the number of gestures used in the organization of topic and we will examine whether the same amount is maintained in gesture-speech structures in topic organization. In the following picture (Figure 2) our subject (SpWoman03L2) is introducing a topic (“jail”) and she shows the shape of a jail with her hands in order to make clear to the other subject the exact meaning of that word. She is a native speaker of Spanish and is narrating the story in English (L2): Example 3. SpWoman03L2. “ … where Tweety is in his little [JAIL]Gesture= shape of a jail with her hands singing …” The Special Issue on Behavioral and Social Science © Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 73 FIGURE 2 SpWoman03L2 There are two main reasons for gestures to be included in our study of topic: 1) As stated by some linguists (Berman and Slobin, 1994; Graham and Argyle, 1975; Graham and Heywood, 1975; Rauscher, Krauss and Chen, 1996; Ríme and Schiaratura, 1991; Ríme, Schiaratura, Hupet and Ghysselinckx, 1984; Slobin, 1991, 1996a, 1996b; Slobin and Hoiting, 1994), gestures play an important role in the way speakers organize their ideas, what some scholars call patterns of thinking (McNeill, 2000; McNeill and Duncan, 2000). Topic, on the other hand, is closely related to information structure (Halliday, 1967). Consequently, gestures are supposed to be connected with topic organization. In the picture below (Figure 3) we can see how SpWoman01L2 starts the narration of the story. She is remembering what she has seen and she is also organizing her ideas. She is a native speaker of Spanish and she has to pay special attention to the language because she is expected to narrate the story in English. She is moving all the time: touching her ring, moving on the chair, looking downwards, etc. Example 4. SpWoman01L2. “E:::m [Ø]Gesture= touches her ring It is a story[Ø]Gesture= moving on the chair about the:: [Ø]Gesture= looking downwards the:: Tweety Bird …” 2) It is already known that sentence structure in English and Spanish is quite dissimilar (Stockwell, Bowen and Martin, 1965; Whitley, 1986; Fisiak, 1990; Hill and Bradford, 1991) and, for that reason, it would also be interesting to see if those differences carry over into the organization of information and in the gestures used in topic organization as well. Examples 5 and 6 below illustrate different syntactic constructions in English and Spanish: Example 5. AmWoman07L1. The cat rolls [down]gesture expressing directionthe street International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 74 FIGURE 4 AmWoman07L1 Example 6. SpWoman03L1. Y entonces el gato baja la calle [rodando] gesture indicating manner of movement In the previous examples we can notice how English expresses manner of movement in the predicate (rolls) and direction in an adjunct (the preposition down). In Spanish, manner of movement is not expressed in the predicate but in an adjunct (rodando), whereas the predicate expresses direction or path (baja). This clearly shows the two languages have different syntactic structures. Some scholars (Talmy 1985, 1991, Slobin 1996b, Aske 1989, Sebastian and Slobin 1994) have argued that the languages of the world can be classified into two groups: those which encode the path or trajectory of the movement inside the verb (i.e. Spanish), and those which encode it as a satellite to the verb (i.e. English). Amores and Mora (1998:194) state: “Spanish will tend to express in the main verb the trajectory the object has followed in the movement. … English, on the other hand, will encode in the verb the manner of the cause of the movement.” But the differences between English and Spanish carry over into the gesture structure as well. In example 5 above, the American subject performs a gesture indicating direction and coinciding with the adjunct “down”. In example 6 the Spanish subject performs a gesture indicating manner of movement but also coinciding with the adjunct “rodando”. But what about the relationship between gestures and the topicality of utterances in English discourse? How do native and non-native speakers of English gesture while uttering topics in an utterance? (Chui, 2004). There is extensive literature on the relationship between gestures and discourse: Bavelas, Chovil, Lawrie and Wade (1992), Kendon (1983 and 1995), Levy and McNeill (1992), McNeill and Levy (1993), McNeill (1985, 1992, 1993). In a study carried out by McNeill and Levy (1993, p. 363) the data showed “… the joint contribution made by speech and gesture to the process of creating and maintaining discourse topics”. As Bavelas, Chovil, Lawrie and Wade (1992) point out, gestures should not be treated as …physical movements but rather as referential acts; they convey meaning, depict events, and represent ideas. They specify and often clarify verbal references, and they can denote meanings that may not be in the accompanying words (e.g. when they occur in the pause before the speaker finds the appropriate word). (p. 470) In this paper, we will study the way in which gestures and speech cooperate in creating new topics or continuing old or given ones. We will first examine the similarities and differences between English as L1 (American speakers) and English as L2 (Spanish speakers). If we compare Figure 5 and Figure 6, we can see that it does not matter if the subject is using his native language (AmMan05L1 in Figure 5 is using English as L1) or not (SpMan02L2 in Figure 6 is using English as L2). The subject will generally use some gestures (ie. both hands and fingers as looking through the binoculars) when introducing a new topic (“binoculars”) both in L1 and L2. But there is a very important difference: in Figure 5 these gestures are co-occurring with the word (“binoculars”) but in Figure 6 the gestures are substituting the word. So, the function of gestures in nonnative speakers is twofold: (1) to support the introduction of a new topic (as for native speakers) and (2) to make up for lack of vocabulary. The Special Issue on Behavioral and Social Science © Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 75 Example 7. AmMan05L1. “… and he has uh the [binoculars]Gesture= both hands as looking through the binoculars.” FIGURE 5 AmMan05L1 Example 8. SpMan02L2. “… in another windowthere is a::we can see the cat[Ø]Gesture= moving fingers as looking through a pair of binocularslooking through the:: through [his]Gesture= noddingI don‟t know how to:: and…” FIGURE 6 SpMan02L2 Similarly, when the subject is introducing an old topic (“drain pipe” in Figures 7 and 8) he/she also uses some gestures. AmWoman06L1 (native speaker of English speaking in English) in Figure 7 moves her hands as if she were climbing the pipe and SpWoman03L2 (native speaker of Spanish speaking in English) in Figure 8 is pointing upwards with her right hand. Example 9. AmWoman06L1. “… so then he tries to climb the gutter, the [drain pipe]Gesture= as climbing the pipe, um granny …” FIGURE 7 AmWoman06L1 Example 10. SpWoman03L2. “…and actually he enters in the hotel and he climbs the [tube]Gesture= pointing upwardshe gets inside …” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 76 FIGURE 8 SpWoman03L2 Then, we will compare the Spanish speakers‟ behavior (speech and gesture) in English as L2 with their behavior in their mother tongue. In this way, we will be able to discern whether they use the same gestures and topic organization in both languages or, on the contrary, they deploy different gestures and topic organization in Spanish as L1 and in English as L2. As we can see in examples 11, 12 and 13, the new topic may occur with some gestures, it does not matter if the subject is using his/her L1 or L2. Nevertheless, there are some differences. If we compare examples 11 and 12, we can see that the same subject (SpWoman01, native speaker of Spanish) used her fingers to indicate the size of something very small when introducing Tweety bird for the first time in her English narration (see Example 11) but she used no gestures at all when she did the same in her Spanish storytelling (see Example 12). But SpWoman01 also uses some gestures in her L1 when introducing a new topic: “canalejas” in example 13. In Figure 10 we can see how SpWoman01 moves her hands as indicating the flow of the water. Example 11. SpWoman01L2. “It is a story about the:: the:: [Tweety bird]Gesture= indicates the size of sthg very small with her fingersand Sylvester the cat.” FIGURE 9 SpWoman01L2 Example 12. SpWoman01L1. “Pue::s la historia: es que[Piolín]No gesture at allestá e::n en la casa en u::n apartamento en un bloque de edificios y:: …” Example 13. SpWoman01L1. “… por la::s las[canalejas]Gesture= moves her hands indicating the flow of the waterde:: donde cae el agua de la lluvia …” FIGURE 10 SpWoman01L1 The Special Issue on Behavioral and Social Science © Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 77 The same is true when the subject is introducing an old topic. In Figures 11 and 12 we can see how SpMan02 (native speaker of Spanish) makes the same gesture for “cat” in both English and Spanish: he raises his left hand and does as if he were hitting something. But, again, there is an important difference: when SpMan02 is talking in his L1 the gestures are co-occurring with the speech “pega en la cabeza con el paraguas” (in this case what the cat is undergoing) but when he is speaking in English the gestures are substituting these words. Again, we can see an example in which gestures are making up for lack of vocabulary). Example 14. SpMan02L2. “… but the:: the old lady that the owner the owner of the:: of the bird e:::h see the [cat]Gesture= raises his left hand and does as if he were hitting sthga::nd and he goesoutside the:: the building …” FIGURE 11 SpMan02L2 Example 15. SpMan02L1. “… y cuando sube va: va a coger el pájaro pero sale: eh una señora mayor y: [le]Gesture= raises his left hand and does as if he were hitting sthgpega en la cabeza con el paraguas …” FIGURE 12 SpMan02L1 Over the last few years, little attention has been paid to nonverbal communication in second language teaching and learning. Communication is more than just what we say, it is also how we say it, and how we move when we say it. If native speakers use not only verbal, but also non verbal mechanisms when communicating in their mother tongue, then, the two levels should be accounted for in second language teaching (Álvarez-Benito, 2002). Our hypothesis is that we will find important differences between L1 and L2 speakers of English regarding topic organization. There are several reasons for us to support this hypothesis: 1) L2 speakers of English are not so fluent4 as L1 speakers and, consequently, they will make use of different strategies to compensate their lack of fluency (Vandergrift, 1997). One typical strategy may be using structures and patterns from their mother tongue. For example, if we have a construction of a verb and a single argument, the expected sentence structure in English would be “Argument (subject) + verb” (“My father has arrived”). This sentence structure can also be used in Spanish (“Mi padre ha llegado”) but an additional word order is also possible: “verb + argument (subject)” (“Ha llegado mi padre”). Besides, the second construction is preferred in Spanish when the argument is new information. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 78 Example 16. SpWoman04L2. English as L2 with structure typical of Spanish. “It appears a little bird” (It + verb + NP) In narrations in Spanish as L2, we also find structures typical of English. One common mistake we find in Spanish is the use of the negative particle “no” following the verb “ser” instead of preceeding it. The reason is again the difference between English and Spanish structures. A sentence like “It was not a good idea” would be translated into Spanish as “No era una buena idea” (tr. “No was a good idea”). As we can see, the negative particle follows the verb “to be” in English, whereas in Spanish it precedes the verb “ser”. This can be noticed in the example below. Example 17. AmWoman06L2. Spanish as L2 with structure typical of English. “… pero era no la idea de Sylverter”. 2) If verbal structure is different in English and Spanish, we have to think that the speech-gesture structure must also be different. We are interested in examining the following questions: Do English and Spanish speakers use the same amount of gestures in English as L1 and as L2? If not, do Spanish speakers use the same amount of gestures in Spanish (L1) and in English (L2)? We are also interested in examining the speech-gesture structure of different topic organizations in English and Spanish. Do we find a different speech-gesture structure in English and Spanish? If different, do non-native speakers of English make use of the same speech-gesture structure in Spanish as L1 and in English as L2? Does the analysis of the speech-gesture relationship give us any information about topic organization that analysis of speech alone would not? We will try to give an answer to all these questions in the discussion section below and we expect our findings may shed new light on second language acquisition and, more specifically, on the teaching and learning of the speech-gesture structure in topic organization. METHOD Participants Ten Spanish and ten American subjects aged 19-21 participated in this experiment. Spanish subjects were all undergraduate students at the University of Seville, and American subjects were undergraduate students who were spending one academic year at the University of Seville. In order to assess the overall level of the language competence of our subjects (Canale, 1987; Hymes, 1972 and Halliday, 1978), we used one type of test method widely used by language testers called “performance test”. In this type of test, the test takers are expected to replicate the subjects‟ language performance in non-test situations (for example, Jones 1985a, 1985b; Wesche 1985). The oral interview and essay writing are typical examples of the procedures normally used in this type of performance tests. For that reason, we interviewed all our subjects and, subsequently, we asked them to write an essay about a film they have recently watched. The interview consisted of personal and academic questions which helped us to have an overall idea of their level of fluency and the courses and exams they had already taken in English/Spanish as a foreign language. During this oral interview, they had to do both: answer yes-no questions and offer supported opinions. In relation to the essay, we decided to ask them to write a summary of a film they had previously seen because the task they were expected to fulfil in our experiment was to narrate a cartoon they had already watched (or another subject had already told him/her). This could help us to better determine his/her future skills in this type of task. Finally, it has to be highlighted that we have used a criterion-referenced language test (in contrast to a norm-referenced language test). The goal of this type of test is not to maximize differences in performance among examinees -this is the aim of norm-referenced language testsbut to determine only the extent to which a given subject can or cannot perform a specific set of tasks. For our experiment, we first selected those subjects which had successfully fulfilled these two tasks and then we limited the number to ten in each group. Materials and Procedure Participants were asked to watch a 7 minute long animated cartoon about Sylvester the Cat and the Tweety Bird entitled Canary Row (Warner Brothers, 1950), whose recurrent theme is the cat‟s continuous and unsuccessful attempts to catch the little bird. Then the participants were asked to narrate what they had seen to a partner, who is also a native speaker of the subject‟s language. The Special Issue on Behavioral and Social Science © Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 85 Regarding the amount of new topics in the narrations, there were no statistically significant differences between Americans L1 and Spanish L2 (Mann-Whitney U test, P = 0.240) but the differences were statistically significant between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (Mann-Whitney U test, P = 0.010) and between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.034). As far as gestured new topics are concerned, there were statistically significant differences between Americans L1 and Spanish L2 (P = 0.004) and between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.008), but there were no statistically significant differences between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.384). Concerning the use of pictograms (i.e. symbols which represent an object or a concept by illustration) with new topics, the differences were statistically significant between Americans L1 and Spanish L2 (P = 0.002) and between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.002), but not between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.375). Figure 19 shows the media per subject of new topics in the narrations, gestured new topics and pictograms with new topics. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 86 Concerning the amount of old topics in the narrations, there were no statistically significant differences between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (Mann-Whitney U test, P = 0.059) but the differences were statistically significant between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (Mann-Whitney U test, P = 0.007) and between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.016). Regarding gestured old topics, there were statistically significant differences between Americans L1 and Spanish L2 (P = 0.000) and between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.001), but there were no statistically significant differences between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.240). As for the use of pictograms with new topics, the differences were statistically significant between Americans L1 and Spanish L2 (P = 0.001) and between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.028), but not between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.066). Figure 20 shows the media per subject of old topics in the narrations, gestured old topics and pictograms with old topics. It is evident that the amount of pictograms10 with new topics is higher than the amount of pictograms with old topics in the three groups, English as L1, English as L2 and Spanish as L1. At the same time, we can also notice that the amount of pictograms with gestured new topics in English as L2 is also higher than in English as L1 and in Spanish as L1 (11 in front of 4.1 and 4.7 per informant, respectively). In contrast, when informants, native and nonnative, introduce an old topic, the percentage of pictograms decreases significantly: 0.5 per subject in the group of Americans L1, 3.8 per subject in the group of Spanish L2, and 2 per subject in the group of Spanish L1. With regardto the use of gestured new topics with state verbs, the differences were statistically significant between Americans L1 and Spanish L2 (Mann-Whitney U test, P = 0.000), and between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.001) but they were not found to be statistically significant between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.059). As for the use of gestured new topics with action verbs, the differences were found to be statistically significant between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.002) and between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.004) but not between Americans L1 and Spanish L2 (P = 0.195). Figure 21 below shows the media amount of gestured new topics with state verbs and with action verbs in the three groups of subjects. As can be observed in Figure 21, American and Spanish subjects tend to use more gestured new topics with action verbs than with state verbs in their L1. In contrast, the group of Spanish subjects speaking English as L2 tends to use more gestured new topics with state verbs than with action verbs. The Special Issue on Behavioral and Social Science © Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 87 In relation to the use of gestured old topics with state verbs, the differences were statistically significant between Americans L1 and Spanish L2 (Mann-Whitney U test, P = 0.000), and between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.002) but not between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.676). As for the use of gestured old topics with action verbs, the differences were found to be statistically significant between Americans L1 and Spanish L2 (P = 0.000) and between Americans L1 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.000) but not between Spanish L2 and Spanish L1 (P = 0.095). Figure 22 below shows the media amount of gestured old topics with state verbs and with action verbs in the three groups of subjects. Table 1 shown below gives statistical information about all the variables that have entered our analysis. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 88 DISCUSSION As we mentioned above in the methodology section, our subjects‟ narrations follow the structure: opening discourse (OD) + topic discourse (TD) + closing discourse (CD). In general, as has been observed in the results in the previous section, the average of gestures per informant in English as L1 is manifestly lower than the average of gestures per informant in English as L2 (37.3 vs. 102.4). This was expected to be so, since the use of gestures is generally associated to a lack of fluency of non-native speakers (see Álvarez-Benito and Íñigo-Mora, 2005). When a subject does not have the linguistic strategies necessary to express his/her ideas in a foreign language, he/she has to substitute them for nonverbal strategies. Despite that, we also have to consider cultural reasons because Spanish speakers also used more gestures in their L1 (96.7) than American subjects in their L1 (37.3). Still, we have to take into account both factors (i.e. lack of fluency and cultural reasons) because Spanish speakers used more gestures in their L2 than in their L1 (102.4 vs. 96.7). As regards opening discourse, it is interesting to note that the way in which Spanish subjects started their narrations is completely different from the American style. Whereas the first ones started with the word “story” in their English narrations and “historia” in their Spanish ones, American subjects began directly with the names of the main characters (i.e. Tweetie Bird and Sylvester). Spanish subjects used the following expressions in their English opening discourse: Example 20. SpMan02L2. The Special Issue on Behavioral and Social Science © Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 89 “… eh first eh when the story [beganAct]Gesture= opens his arms and touches his nose …” FIGURE 23 SpMan02L2 Example 21. SpWoman01L2. “… e::m it is a [story]Gesture= sits comfortably about …” Example 22. SpWoman02L2. “… the story is about a [bird] Gesture= puts her left hand on her left leg …” FIGURE 24 SpWoman02L2 Example 23. SpWoman03L2. “… the story [startsAct] Gesture= she shakes when …” And in their Spanish narrations they used expressions like: Example 24. SpMan02L1. “… voy a conta:r la [historia] Gesture= raises his left hand de los dibujos animados que …” (tr. “I‟m going to tell the story of the cartoons that”). FIGURE 25 SpMan02L1 International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 90 Example 25. SpWoman01L1. “… pue::s la [historia:] Gesture= looks upwards es que …” (tr. “So the story is that”). FIGURE 26SpWoman01L1 Example 2. SpWoman02L1. “… e::hm bueno la historia esSt sobre [un:] Gesture= looks to the left …” (tr. “e::hm well the story is about”). So, we can say that there is a clear transfer of style in the case of Spanish subjects. In fact, they copied not only the verbal but also the nonverbal style from their mother tongue. Even though the type of gesture varies (ie. some of them moved his/her hands, others the whole body, others averted the gaze, etc.), there is a common feature: all of them were still (even when introducing themselves) until they had to start their narrations. Contrarily to that, American subjects started in the following way: Example 27. AmMan05L1. “… so [Sylvester] Gesture= looks to the left is uh lookingAct …” FIGURE 27 AmMan05L1 Example 28. AmWoman06L1. “… um, well, [Twee] Gesture= pointing to the leftand to the right yeah Tweetie is in …” The Special Issue on Behavioral and Social Science © Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 91 FIGURE 28 AmWoman06L1 Example 29. AmWoman08L1. “… it is a, a [Tweety bird] Gesture= looks upwards and moves fingers and he saw …” In relation to their movements, they do not differ considerably from the Spanish subjects‟ gestures. They were also still untilthey started their narrations. The only difference is that whereas most Spanish subjects‟ gestures accompanied the word “story”, these gestures were co-articulated with the names of the main characters of the story in the American subjects‟ narrations. The differences between the group of Spanish subjects speaking English as L2 and Spanish as L1 were statistically insignificant regarding the “Gestures in Opening Discourse” variable. But when we compare American subjects speaking English with Spanish subjects speaking either English or Spanish (it does not matter), the differences are statistically significant regarding this variable (i.e. “Gestures in Opening Discourse”). Therefore, verbal and nonverbal strategies go hand in hand: American and Spanish styles did not only differ verbally but also nonverbally. It is also important to point out that none of our subjects made use of nonverbal signals in isolation in opening discourse. So, when gestures in opening discourse are present, they always appear together with speech. When a subject starts a description, he/she has to do two things at the same time: on the one hand, he/she has to organize his/her thoughts and, on the other hand, he/she has to coordinate his/her linguistic resources. Gestures play an important role in organizing ideas (McNeill, 2005) and, in this sense, we can say that many of them are not addressee-directed but speaker-directed11. As mentioned above, Spanish speakers used more gestures in their opening discourse both in English and in Spanish and this could be due to the fact that they also deployed a more elaborate way to start their narrations. Regarding the conclusion of the subjects‟ narrations, some of them did not use any verbal strategy in their closing discourse, they only used gestures. American subjects used no words at all (only gestures), or expressions such as “… that‟s it” or “… and then it ends”. For example, subject AmWoman07L1 only raised her left hand and laughed but used no concluding words at all: FIGURE 29 AmWoman07L1 International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 92 Spanish subjects uttered phrases such as “… eso es todo” (tr. “that‟s all”) or “… y ahí termina” (tr. “and there it finishes”) or no verbal strategy at all (only gestures). In their English narrations all of them used the expression: “… that‟s all” or no words at all (only gestures). For instance, SpWoman01L1 only joins her hands and laughs but utters no words: FIGURE 30 SpWoman01L1 Similarly, SpWoman02L2 only balances her left leg and smiles when she concludes her story: FIGURE 31 SpWoman02L2 Again, American subjects used less gestures than Spanish subjects (either in L1 or in L2) in closing discourse and that is why: (1) the differences between the groups of American Subjects speaking English as L1 and Spanish subjects speaking English as L2 or Spanish as L1 were statistically significant regarding the “Gestures in Closing Discourse” variable and (2) the differences between Spanish subjects speaking English as L2 or Spanish as L1 were statistically insignificant regarding the “Gestures in Closing Discourse” variable. Nevertheless, it is very important to point out that the difference in number of gestures used by Spanish speakers (in L1 and L2) decreased considerably in closing discourse (in contrast to opening discourse). This is highly related to the type of expressions used. In opening discourse, Spanish speakers (in L1 and L2) used a more elaborate speech than American speakers (in L1) but now all of them deploy very similar phrases. As a matter of fact, one Spanish speaker used the words “… that‟s all” in her Spanish narration (an example of code-switching). So, as the complexity of linguistic expressions decreases, the number of gestures also decreases and so the differences between the closings of American (in L1) and Spanish (in L1 and L2) subjects also decrease. The way in which somebody closes a narration is somehow formulaic. The Special Issue on Behavioral and Social Science © Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijhssnet.com 93 At the syntactic level of our analysis, we tried to discover the typicalsyntactic construction of a specific information structure. When all elements are new to the discourse, we have observed how Spanish speakers are more likely to use VS constructions (verb + subject) when they speak Spanish. So, we find sentences like: Example 30. SpWoman04L1. “… aparece un músico callejero …” (VS) (tr. “appears a street musician”) Example 31. SpWoman06L1. “…y llega el:: conserje …” (VS) (tr. “and arrives the receptionist”) Example 32. SpWoman01L1. “… está bailando un monoen la calle …” (VSA) (tr. “is dancing a monkey in the street”) This kind of constructions is commonly known as “all-new” constructions (Wehr, 1984). We have also noticed how the construction differs completely when the topic has already been introduced and so it becomes known or old information. In this sense, it is common that the same subject who had previously used a VS construction of the type “y aparece la dueña del pajarito” uses now an SV construction like: Example 33. SpWoman01L1. “… y la dueña del pajarito aparece otra vez y …” (SVA) (tr. “and the bird‟s owner appears again and”). Example 34. SpMan02L1. “… y la abuelitallega y …” (SV) (tr. “and the old lady arrives and”) The gesture structure found in this kind of “all-new” constructions varies depending on the semantics of the verb. When the verb of the VS construction is an action verb, the gesture is commonly associated to the action expressed by the verb: Example 35. SpWoman05L1. “… [está bailando]Gesture= subject dancing un mono en la calle…” is dancing a monkey in the street However, when the verb of the VS construction is an existential verb or a verb of appearance, the gesture, if any, is commonly associated and co-occurring with the subject, which is a new topic: Example 36. SpWoman06L1. “… había [un mono]Gesture=imitating a monkey en la calle …” there was a monkey in the street The same applies to those constructions in which we have any state verb. In these cases, the gesture, if any, refers also to the new topic subject. VS structures are not only usual in Spanish in those cases in which both verb and subject are new information but also when only the subject is a new topic. In these cases, the verb is, in a way, predictable. According to Bolinger (1954a, 1954b) the reason for inverted subjects is that the verb is more predictable and less informative than the subject, and that is why it is placed first. For example, in the following sentences the verbs “estar” (“to be”) and “aparecer” (“to show up”) are very predictable and semantically weak: Example 37. SpWoman02L1. “… para entrar en la habitación donde están la abuelay el canario y …” (tr. “ in order to get into the room where are the granny and the canary and”). Example 38. SpWoman04L1. “… a continuación hay un:: aparece un músico callejero…” (tr. “after that there is a:: shows up a street musician”). But Spanish subjects also used SV structures to introduce new topics, although not very frequently. In these structures, the gesture is associated to the verb because it is generally an action verb: International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 2 No. 6 [Special Issue – March 2012] 94 Example 39. SpMan02L2. “… he first go [climbing] Gesture= subject climbing with his hands by the pipe but the …” FIGURE 32 SpMan02L2 Example 40. SpMan02L2. “… and take a bowling ball and [throw] Gesture= subject throwing something the bowling ball …” FIGURE 33 SpMan02L2 In contrast, English speakers prefer the canonical structure SV (subject + verb) when introducing a new topic. So, we find sentences like: Example 41. AmMan05L1. “… Sylvester is uh looking at a birdwatcher society building …” Example 42. AmWoman06L1. “… Twee yeah Tweety is in his cage in his apartment and Sylvester‟s across the street in the birdwatcher‟s society …” Example 43. 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But apart from perceiving the action from the point of view of the ergative element, the action can also be seen from the point of view of the affected element, which is the original object of the sentence. 3 Mandarin is a topic-prominent language (as opposed to subject-prominent). This means the topic, which may be any noun phrase in the sentence, is always in initial position and does not necessarily coincide with the syntactic function of subject. Moreover, that is one of the reasons why the passive is a marginal construction in Mandarin, but not in subjectprominent languages (Chao, 1968; Li and Thompson, 1976; Pan and Hu, 2000). 4 By saying L2 speakers are not so fluent as L1 speakers, we mean their knowledge of the rules (lexical, morphological, syntactic, semantic, etc.) of the L2 is not complete and, consequently, they are not fully competent. 5 See Álvarez-Benito and Íñigo-Mora (2005) and Íñigo-Mora and Álvarez-Benito (2006) for a more detailed analysis of the experiment in relation to the use of discursive-kinesic strategies by native and non-native (i.e. Spanish) speakers of English. 6 This experiment was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología) under the project titled “Nonverbal communication in the teaching of English and Spanish as L2” (La Comunicación no verbal en la enseñanza de ingles y español como L2) (BFF2002-00131). 7 A detailed description of McNeill‟s procedures for “eliciting, coding, and experimenting with gestures” is included in an appendix in McNeill (1992:365-391). 8 It is extremely important that informants do not know the real purpose of our research (namely, nonverbal communication). Otherwise, their behaviour could be biased. 9 We have calculated the Mann-Whitney U test, which is a nonparametric test for assessing whether two samples of observations (English as L1/English as L2, English as L1/Spanish as L1, English as L2/Spanish L1) come from the same distribution. The U test has been calculated using this formula: We have chosen this nonparametric test as an alternative to the t-test because of the number of subjects of samples (10 subjects per group = 30 subjects). 10 For more information about pictograms see Álvarez Benito et al. (2003). 11 In fact, people do not only use gestures when communicating in visual interaction, but also in non visual interaction (i.e. telephone conversations). For a more detailed study on the function of gestures see Krauss et al. (1996 and 2000), Rime and Schiaratura (1991) and Özyürek (2002). 12 For more information about pictograms see Álvarez Benito et al. (2003).