Transcript of “Getting a Grip on Why We Gesture While Talking”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. And I have my hands placed firmly on this table, and I’m going to try to keep them there while I go on talking. But, you know, Grant, I’m already noticing that it’s really hard for me to carry on a conversation without moving my hands.
That sounds like trying to win a horse race with two jockeys. It’s a handicap, Martha. You can’t do it.
Yeah, yeah, it’s really difficult for me. But I’ve been thinking about gestures after reading a wonderful new book on the topic by linguist Lauren Gaughan. And we’ll talk about it more later in the show. But for now, let me just mention one study in this book.
Researchers asked participants to learn the rules of a game and then explain those rules to other people that they were going to play the game with. So they had to explain the rules to someone they were told would be their future teammate, and they had to explain the rules to someone who was going to be a future competitor.
And each time, the people giving the instructions used pretty much the same words and made about the same number of gestures. But when they were explaining rules to their opponent, their gestures were smaller.
Oh, that’s so interesting. So the illocutionary force was diminished because they didn’t want to fully inform the future competitors. And they felt like they were giving information away. Isn’t that amazing?
Or they were holding information back by holding their hands back.
Yeah, somehow. Yeah. Somehow. It’s a fascinating topic.
Oh, so fascinating. I’m going to a board game night this weekend and I’m going to be watching other people and myself. I just never thought about this until I read this wonderful book, Gesture, by linguist Lauren Gaughan.
We’ll talk more about Lauren Gaughan’s book later in the show, but we’ll also talk with you. You can call or text toll-free 877-929-9673 or find lots of ways to reach us on our website at waywordradio.org.
