(Salle F106)
Brookes, Heather
Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa
What Gestures Do : Some Communicative Functions of Quotable Gestures in Conversations among
Black Urban South Africans
Using video-recordings of spontaneous conversations among black
urban South Africans, the use of three quotable gestures/emblems is
analyzed. Characteristics of their use in relation to speech are established
showing that quotable gestures are multifunctional fulfi lling
substantive, interactive, and discourse functions simultaneously.
Implications for theories on the relationship between gesture and
speech and processes of speech-gesture production are discussed.
Data presented suggest that the Growth Point model of speechgesture
production has the most explanatory power, but needs to
extend the central notion of context to fully explain the nature of
gestural behavior. Questions related to the emergence of quotable
gestures in terms of origin, conventionalization, and detachability
from speech, the relationship of quotable gestures to other forms of
gesture, and the categorization of gestures into gestural typologies
are also addressed.
