A multi-dimensional analysis of gesture employment among native Cantonese speakers

Abstract

Non-verbal behaviors are used together with spoken language in human communication. According to Knapp and Hall (2010), co-verbal gestures are often used to supplement verbal communications, maintain and establish attention of conversations, and add emphasis to speech. This investigation aims to develop a multi-dimensional classification framework that codes and quantifies gesture forms and functions employed during spontaneous speech tasks. The development of this system was motivated by the lack of a distinction between forms and functions in most previous works. Specifically, we explored the relationship between gesture forms and functions. How linguistic proficiency and age affected the use of gestures was also examined. METHODS: ...