Towards a speech–gesture profile of pragmatic markers: The case of “you know”

Chen, Yaoyao; Adolphs, Svenja

Abstract

Our study introduces a novel approach for examining the functional relationship between the pragmatic marker “you know” and its co-occurring gestures. It draws on 401 instances of “you know” identified in the Nottingham Multimodal Corpus. Based on the speech patterns in the data, a framework of six functions of “you know” was established (i.e., ‘editing’, ‘introducing’, ‘inviting inferences’, ‘elaborating’, ‘marking reported speech’, ‘approximating’). 74 gestures that primarily co-occur with “you know” were selected for analysis based on a functional framework mainly adopted from Kendon (2004): pragmatic, referential, beat and deictic gestures. The main results show that three of the functions (i.e., ‘editing’, ‘introducing’ and ‘elaborating’) account for 81% of the whole dataset, and share a similar function of emphasizing the intention of presenting further information. In addition, they tend to co-occur with the pragmatic gestures that embody a similar pragmatic function. The results illustrate the functional coordination between pragmatic markers and gestures, and demonstrate the value of using a multimodal corpus pragmatic approach for exploring the patterns of speech and gesture, and for developing a more nuanced profile of pragmatic markers that, in the history of pragmatics, have largely been described on the sole basis of their speech instantiation.

Citation

Chen, Y., & Adolphs, S. (2023). Towards a speech–gesture profile of pragmatic markers: The case of “you know”. Journal of Pragmatics, 210, 36-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2023.03.004

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 4, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Apr 5, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023-06
• Deposit Date: Apr 14, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 27, 2023
• Journal: Journal of Pragmatics
• Print ISSN: 0378-2166
• Electronic ISSN: 1879-1387
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 210
• Pages: 36-51
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2023.03.004
• Keywords: Corpus pragmatics; Pragmatic markers; “You know”; Speech functions; Gesture functions; Speech-gesture profile
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/19464301
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216623000590?via%3Dihub