Comparison of language and gesture--论文代写范文精选

语言是传统,大多数词汇里有固定的含义。另一方面,除了文化转移可引用的手势，如竖起大拇指,当描述一个有关树的情况。这两个动作会被理解的话语,也会被认为是错误的。下面的essay代写范文进行详述。

Introduction 
As mentioned earlier, language and gesture are intertwined to an extent that bred hypotheses about their common origin (Arbib 2006b, 2006a). Therefore, to enrich our understanding of conceptual processes we must not only focus on how gesture is used in relation to speech, but also find in which circumstances their organization is different, and the ways in which they overlap (Kendon 2000). A number of parallels can be drawn between language and gesture at both extremes of Kendon's continuum. On the other hand, Sweetser (2008) points out a number of contrasts between language and gesture with regard to conventionality of symbols, monitoring of performance, and concreteness. It is clear that there are contrasts between gesture and speech, just as there are contrasts between gesture and sign language. However, to what extent these differences can be accounted for by different modalities (hearing/sight), and to what extent they result from the contrast between language and non-language remains a subject of debate.

Conventionality 
Language is conventional in that most words have fixed meanings unrelated to their form. On the other hand, spontaneous co-speech gesture is non-conventional and flexible. A spontaneous gesture for “ball” may take many different forms. Likewise, a gesture used to denote a ball may mean something else in a different context. Much like spoken languages, sign languages typically have fixed signs for particular words or concepts. With the exception of culturally transferred quotable gestures (emblems) (Kendon 2004) such as “thumbs up”, co-speech gestures denoting particular concepts are not fixed and may even change in the course of one conversation. For instance, when describing a situation involving tree one might make a co-speech gesture of tracing the trunk as if one was grabbing it with the insides of both palms, or represent a tree trunk as a hand, where extended fingers act as branches. Both of these gestures would be understood in the context of the utterance, and neither would be considered “wrong”. However, the former is the sign for tree in Hong Kong Sign Language, while the latter 114 approximates the lexical sign for tree in American Sign Language. In neither language the other gesture for tree is considered correct (Sweetser 2008). When gestures constitute units of language their meaning is quite rigid, while co-speech gestures are more flexible in form and in use.

Conscious monitoring 
In comparison to language gesture seems to be a channel of communication that is less consciously monitored. While we are often unaware of performing co-speech gestures, we rarely speak without knowing about it. However, it remains to be seen whether this depends on the type of medium (auditory or visual) or rather the communicative intent. Sign language users are as unlikely to sign unconsciously as speakers are to use their native language without realising it (Sweetser 2008).

Concreteness 
Language is commonly seen as the “abstract” mode of communication, and gesture as more “concrete.” Gesture is more concrete not only in the sense that there is physical movement involved, but also because it employs object-focused representations. However, gesture analysts are not always clear what it means that gestures are more concrete than language. Both spoken language and sign languages are concrete in that they are sets of muscular movements the results of which are physically experienced by the listeners. Sign language is a set of muscularly performed routines that are visible, whereas spoken language affects hearing (Sweetser 2008: 359). The issue of concreteness might, therefore, be related to the medium of communication. The visual modality in which gestures are meaningful is iconic in nature. It relies heavily on representing concrete objects and relation between them, while abstract meanings are conveyed metonymically or metaphorically. It remains to be seen whether this distinction can be operationalised in empirical studies of conceptual metaphor and objectification.

Complementary modalities or separate systems? 
Another important question regarding the relation between gesture and language is whether they represent two separate systems, or are separate modalities in a common communicative framework. Proponents of the first view cite evidence for a common evolutionary background of language and gesture (Arbib 2006b, 2006a). Although gesture and language rarely express exactly the same information, they are often seen as manifestations of one underlying conceptual system (Cienki 2008; McNeill 2005, 1992; Goldin-Meadow 2005). Spontaneous gesture and speech are often coordinated (Cienki 2008) and their temporal arrangement suggests that language and co-speech gesture participate in the construction of meaning according to a shared plan (Kendon 2000). 

The “two modalities, one system” hypothesis is particularly well backed by studies showing that gesture reveals information that cannot be conveyed in language, yet is complementary to what was said by the respondent (Alibali et al. 1993). The further a gesture type is classified along Kendon's Continuum, the bigger its similarities to language. Sign languages can be classified as languages rather than movements if we follow Saussure’s definition of language, that is as long as we can prove that signs form arbitrary form-meaning pairs organised syntagmatically and paradigmatically (Kendon 2000: 47). Sign languages also tend to be independent of spoken languages, in that speakers usually cannot use the two simultaneously. At the other end of the spectrum is gesticulation, which usually occurs with spoken language communication. Gestures of this type are the least word-like and the most dependent on spoken language. 

It is these spontaneous co-speech gestures that are considered a source of evidence for mental representation complementary to linguistic data. Gestures used in partnership with speech participate in the construction of meaning (Kendon 2000). They serve different but complementary roles. In contrast, in the absence of speech gesture acquires the characteristics of language to serve the primary communicative role (Sweetser 2008). “When gesture is used routinely as the only medium of utterance (…) it rapidly takes on organizational features that are very like those found in spoken language” (Kendon 2000: 61). If gesture can take over the communicative role of language it is logical to assume that they must tap into a common conceptual system rather than 116 be two separate communication frameworks. Therefore, gesture and language provide converging evidence for the structure of mental representation.

Gesture and conceptual metaphors The earlier chapters of this thesis summarised problems in conceptual metaphor research. In general, cognitive structures (specifically conceptual structures) are inferred from metaphoric linguistic expressions. These conceptual structures, called conceptual metaphors, are in turn used to explain linguistic metaphors. A number of researchers found this rather obvious circularity problematic (Müller 2008; Vervaeke and Kennedy 1996; Murphy 1997). Moreover, the use of language data as the primary source of evidence for conceptual representations encounters a number of obstacles, particularly because linguistic performance in a cognitive task is influenced by many of factors. 

Effects of lexical and syntactical priming, tendency to omit those parts of the message that the speaker finds difficult to verbalise (Ericsson and Simon 1993), individual variation in terms of known vocabulary, and limitations on memory capacity introduce noise into the results of psycholinguistic studies. Clearly, language alone is not enough to draw inferences about thought. On the other hand, many limitations of linguistic research do not apply to studies using spontaneous co-speech gesture. Participants will not mimic the text of the task in gesture as they would in speech. Gestures convey visuospatial information simultaneously to speech, becoming a valuable source of evidence about the mental representations of the speaker. Finally, information that is not conveyed in speech may be conveyed in gesture. 

For example, children's gestures show their understanding of a mathematical task before they are able to convey it in words (Alibali et al. 1993). It is clear that speech provides us with only a fraction of information about underlying cognitive processes and is a channel that can be easily influenced by the experimental protocol. Thus, metaphoric gesture is an important source of evidence for Conceptual Metaphor Theory. By demonstrating online metaphorical thinking outside of language, gesture studies support the claim that metaphor is both pervasive in commu- 117 nication and embodied (Chui 2011; Müller 2008; Cienki 2008). Gestures may serve as indicators of metaphorical mappings activated in speech, for instance, when the gestures of a speaker refer to some aspect of the source domain of a metaphorical linguistic expression they are using. When someone talks about an event in the future and simultaneously extends one hand horizontally forward they unwittingly inform us that they are using the TIME is SPACE metaphorical mapping, or conceptualising events ahead in time as objects ahead in space. 

The metaphorical mapping that generated their linguistic expressions manifests itself in gesture, suggesting that it must have been accessible to modalities outside speech (Müller 2008). There are many ways in which gesture is a relevant source of evidence for CMT (cf. Langacker 2008). The prevalence of metaphoric gesture supports the view that metaphor is a fundamental aspect not only of language, but of conceptual organization (Chui 2011). Gestures conveying novel information (not expressed in language) confirm that metaphors do not depend on specific linguistic expressions (Alibali et al. 1993, 1999). The form and use of metaphoric gestures confirms one of the founding hypotheses of CMT, namely the embodiment of meaning in physical experience (Hostetter and Alibali 2008). Finally, co-speech gestures may be used to support or disprove a particular interpretation of linguistic metaphors in terms of their underlying cognitive mappings.(论文代写)

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