(Salle F106)
Norris, Sigrid
University of Mary, Washington
Modal Density and three hierarchical positions of
hand-arm gestures in everyday interactions
Gestures, or hand and arm movements, often co-occur with and are
interdependent upon — and usually have been described as being
subordinated to — the spoken language (McNeill, 1992). However,
not all gestures take on a subordinate position to the co-occurring
language (Norris, 2004).
This paper utilizes the notion of “modal density,” which can either
be created through modal intensity or modal complexity (Norris,
2004), and investigates when gestures are actually subordinate to
language, when gestures take on an equal hierarchical position to
language, and when gestures take on a superordinate position to the
accompanying spoken discourse.
Drawing on real-time video taped examples taken from several studies
in diverse settings such as a music lesson, two web-designers at
work, and a dentist-patient interaction, the paper delineates that
the hierarchical position of a gesture depends upon its modal environment.
While some gestures are clearly subordinated to the concurrent
spoken discourse of the participant ; other gestures may be
part of modal aggregates, in which the gesture takes on an equally
important position as the spoken discourse (such a modally collective
message for example can be a posture-proxemics-head movement-
spoken language-gesture aggregate) ; and again other gestures
may take on the superordinate role, exceeding the accompanying
language of the participant in a hierarchical structure.
In this paper, I exemplify these three hierarchical positions of gestures
in relation to the accompanying spoken discourse... First, I
explicate the notion of modal density, which allows us to distinguish
the hierarchical structures among modes that participants utilize in
an interaction. Then, I show three brief video clips of the moments
in which the gestures (with concurrent spoken discourse) are performed,
and illustrate the hierarchy of each gesture in relation to the
language with a multimodal transcript.
