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Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée
No 117, 2023, 81-104• ISSN 1023-2044
The interplay of designedly incomplete
utterances and representational gestures in
Chinese as a second language classrooms
Xiaoyun WANG
University of Alberta
Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E6
xiaoyun@ualberta.ca
ORCID: 0000-0001-6429-5117
Diese Studie analysiert einen Datensatz von Interaktionen im Unterricht von Chinesisch als
Zweitsprache. Der Fokus der Studie liegt auf den Fällen, in denen Lehrkräfte die Antworten der
Studierenden hervorrufen, indem sie ihre Äußerungen bewusst (designedly incomplete utterances)
unvollständig lassen und die Studierenden auffordern, diese Äußerungen zu vervollständigen. Es wurde
beobachtet, dass bei diesen bewusst unvollständigen Äußerungen Gesten eingesetzt werden, um auf
die nicht ausgedrückten Elemente hinzuweisen. In diesem Beitrag soll untersucht werden, wie und
warum Gesten und bewusst unvollständige Äußerungen in Kombination verwendet werden. Die
Untersuchung der Daten zeigt, dass Lehrkäfte mithilfe der darstellenden Gesten Bewegungen und
Veränderungsprozesse nachahmen und verbildlichen, um so Handlungsergebnisse zu
veranschaulichen. Diese darstellenden Gesten vermitteln visuell die semantische Bedeutung oder die
Merkmale der ausgelassenen linguistischen Elemente. Um einen Kontext für den Ausdruck von
Bewegungen und Veränderungen zu schaffen, werden die unvollständigen Äußerungen typischerweise
unter Verwendung verschiedener syntaktischer Konstruktionen formuliert, wie z. B. dispositive,
progressive, komparative und kausale Konstruktionen. Der systematische Gebrauch darstellender
Gesten zusammen mit bewusst unvolltändigen Äußerungen spiegelt dabei den pädagogischen Ansatz
wider, den Lehrkräfte von dem Erlernen von Wortschatz in einer Zweitsprache haben. Der vorliegende
Artikel trägt damit zu einem besseren Verständnis des Zusammenspiels von multimodalen Ressourcen
bei und wie diese das Unterrichten einer Zweitsprache fördern können.
Keywords:
designedly incomplete utterances, representational gestures, multimodal resources, Chinese-as-a-
second-language, classroom interaction.
1. Introduction
Studies have overwhelmingly suggested that co-speech gestures (i.e. the
gestures that are made concurrently with utterances) can facilitate language
comprehension (e.g., Dahl & Ludvigsen 2014; Arbona et al. 2022) and language
acquisition (e.g., Gullberg 2006; Stam 2013; Stam & Buescher 2018) in both
first language (L1) and second language (L2). Several researchers have argued
that teacher's gestures, as one of the multimodal resources, facilitate L2
vocabulary learning in experimental settings (e.g., Allen 1995; Tellier 2008; Kelly
et al. 2009; Macedonia et al. 2011; Lewis & Kirkhart 2020). Among co-speech
hand gestures, those that exhibit a semantic connection to their concurrent
utterances are known as representational gestures (Kendon 2004). These
gestures are instrumental in reinforcing and creating non-arbitrary links between
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L2 words and familiar concepts, which in turn enhances long-term memory
retention (Kelly et al. 2009). Additionally, representational gestures that
incorporate specific handshapes to represent objects are utilized to express the
meanings of placement verbs and to depict placement events (Gullberg 2009).
It has been noted that the effectiveness of representational gestures varies
significantly when teaching nouns, verbs, and adjectives (Lewis & Kirkhart 2020).
In L2 classrooms, research has argued that hand gestures can be used to
facilitate learning of grammar concepts and corrective feedback in L2 (Sime
2008; Hudson 2011; Rosborough 2011; Nakatsukasa 2013; Smotrova & Lantolf
2013; van Compernolle & Smotrova 2014), setting up and developing the
process of learning (Majlesi & Broth 2012), and achieving intersubjectivity
(Belhiah 2013). Others have analyzed and documented how L2 is taught and
practiced through gestures in classroom interaction (Lazaraton 2004; Taleghani-
Nikazm 2008; Gullberg 2009; Inceoglu 2015; Matsumoto & Dobs 2017).
The aim of this study is to bridge this gap and enhance our understanding of
"how learning is constructed by the use of interactional resources" (Seedhouse
2005: 177). The present study draws on Conversation Analysis, Interactional
Linguistics, and Multimodal Analysis, focusing on cases where teachers use
designedly incomplete utterances (DIUs, Koshik 2002) in vocabulary-relevant
tasks in Chinese as a second language (CSL) classrooms. In these cases, the
teachers halt their utterances, leaving them syntactically unfinished for students
to co-complete. It has been observed that teachers frequently utilize a range of
bodily-visual resources (such as displaying images, Chinese characters, and
employing facial and hand gestures) to convey the semantic information of
unproduced elements. These bodily-visual resources are interpreted by
students as hints towards the answers. This study particularly focuses on cases
where representational gestures are used. Excerpt 1, provided below, offers a
glimpse into this phenomenon. In this excerpt, the teacher elicits the students to
describe how one has gotten drenched by the rain.
Excerpt 1 Moist
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When producing the DIU (line 1), the teacher raises both arms from the sides of
her body, positioning her hands slightly higher than her shoulders (Figure 1.1).
She straightens her fingers and keeps her palms partially facing backward and
downward. The stroke involves relaxing her fingers and wrists (Figure 1.2). The
gestural phrase is displayed on the last two syllables of the DIU. Given the hand
shape, movement, and temporary relationship with the utterance, it seems that
this gesture is meant to enact something light and feathery, such as raindrops,
gently falling onto her body. The pause (line 2) shows that the teacher designs
her utterance as being unfinished. Then the student, Kai, responds to the DIU
by completing it with shilulu 'moist', which semantically and syntactically fits into
the slot following the end of the DIU (line 3).
The research questions addressed in this paper are as follows: How and why
are DIUs and representational gestures used together in CSL classrooms?
What features of the unproduced elements shape the syntactic structure of a
teacher's DIU and the concurrent representational gestures? To address these
questions, I analyze the teachers' choices of multimodal resources and the
temporal relationships between these resources. To my knowledge, there has
been a lack of systematic research into the use of representational gestures
specifically within the context of vocabulary-relevant activities in CSL
classrooms. My research aims to explore this gap, focusing on the interplays of
the multimodal resources. The goal is to contribute new, case-based insights
into the employment of representational gestures in a language classroom
setting that has been largely overlooked in previous studies, namely Mandarin
Chinese. This research not only seeks to enhance our understanding of CSL but
also aims to broaden the scope of our knowledge regarding L2 classroom
interactions in a more general sense.
2. Background
2.1 Representational gestures
Numerous studies have proposed different ways to categorize gestures (e.g.,
Ekman & Friesen 1969; McNeill 1992; Kendon 2004). These studies have
established criteria to classify gestures based on how they relate to speech,
whether they are conventionalized, how their meanings are conveyed, etc. The
gestures that exhibit a semantic connection with their concurrent utterances
have been explored from various perspectives and have been termed differently
in the field. Ekman and Friesen (1969) focused on emblems, which are
nonverbal acts with direct verbal translations, and illustrators, which they define
as "movements directly tied to speech that serve to illustrate the verbal
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message" (Ekman & Friesen 1969: 68). In McNeill's (1992) classification,
gestures that depict objects, actions, and movements are termed imagistic
gestures. These are further subdivided into iconic gestures, which display
concrete scenes, and metaphoric gestures, representing abstract concepts.
McNeill's classification of gestures shows the role of gestures in reflecting one's
thoughts and memories.
Among these different criteria and types of gestures, the categories of
representational gestures proposed by Kendon (2004) are pertinent to my
analyses from an interactional perspective. Kendon (2004) approaches gesture
classification from the angle of their referential and pragmatic functions in
conversational contexts. For these gestures that perform referential functions,
they can either represent an aspect of the content in an utterance or point to the
object of reference. According to Kendon (2004), representational gesture is a
sub-type of gesture with a referential function. Kendon further classifies
representational gestures based on their representational techniques, which are
modelling, depiction, and enactment. When using the technique of enactment,
a part of the body illustrates the common feature of the referred action. In
depiction, a handshape is created to show a movement pattern of the referred
object. Since representational gestures can be recognized as the represented
actions or objects, Kendon (2004) thus concludes that representational gestures
contribute to meaning making and display the producer's semantic aims,
experience, and knowledge (see also Streeck 2008, 2009). Thereby, displaying
representational gestures enriches co-participants' understanding by providing
a vivid illustration of how the represented objects or actions look from the
producer's point of view.
2.2 Teachers' gestures and L2 vocabulary teaching
Various studies have analyzed the role of teacher's gestures in vocabulary
teaching in L2 classroom interactional data. Lazaraton (2004) investigates
teachers' gestures and utterances during vocabulary explanation in English as
a second language classrooms. She found that in the explanations for past and
past progressive forms of verbs, gestures are the primary way to convey
meanings. Smotrova and Lantolf (2013) investigate the mediational function of
gestures in aiding student comprehension of L2 lexical concepts. They argue
that while stable meanings of L2 words are accessible, such as those found in
dictionaries, they often fall short in ensuring full comprehension. Thereby,
gestures play a vital role in providing a contextualized understanding of
unfamiliar words, thus enhancing student learning. Moreover, van Compernolle
and Smotrova (2017) examine the teachers' understanding of the meaning and
sense connections of words in English as a second language classrooms
through their gestures. Their findings suggest that the selection of multimodal
resources mirrors teachers' personal experiences and their perceptions of
students' background knowledge. By analyzing the forms of vocabulary teaching
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activities in English as a second language classrooms, Waring et al. (2013)
introduce the concept of the animated approach. Through contextualizing
vocabulary with gestures or acting out scenes, this approach allows teachers to
create situational contexts and engage learners. Particularly suited for
explaining verbs involving complex physical procedures, this approach offers
vivid imagery, background knowledge, and experiential context, providing
learners with detailed contextual descriptions.
Other studies have explored a potential relationship between gestures that
convey imagistic meanings and various lexical categories. Hudson (2011) and
Smotrova (2014) investigated both teacher and learner gestures in presenting
L2 meanings during both planned and spontaneous vocabulary explanations.
Their research underscores the crucial role of representational gestures (termed
as iconic gestures by them) in depicting the literal meanings of L2 vocabulary,
particularly in the case of verbs, prepositions, and occasionally nouns. Smotrova
(2014) argues that gestures are essential in displaying figurative meanings and
transforming abstract L2 concepts into tangible and visible forms. By examining
German and Persian language classes, Taleghani-Nikazm (2008) reports a use
of embodied completion, in which the teacher replaces a verb with a
representational gesture to provide the students a visual illustration and thereby
elicit a self-correction. Inceoglu (2015) examines the use of gestures by a
French language teacher during lexical form-focused episodes. The findings
reveal a significant difference in gesture use depending on the type of word
being addressed: 83.3% of cases addressing verbs are accompanied by
gestures, compared to just 39.4% of cases addressing nouns. She argues that
this disparity is due to the inherent semantic potential of verbs, which contains
imagistic information that can be demonstrated through representational
gestures. In contrast, the use of gestures with nouns in her data appears to be
more sporadic. These studies show that teachers' gestures can serve as an
imagistic expression of vocabulary. The analyses presented in this study aim to
contribute to the emerging literature on the role of teachers' representational
gestures during vocabulary-relevant activities in CSL classroom interaction.
2.3 Designedly incomplete utterances and embodied completion
The notions of designedly incomplete utterances and embodied completion are
relevant to the data focused on here. In classroom interaction, Lerner (1995)
describes how teachers use an incomplete turn-constructional unit to invite a
response from students and to create an opportunity for students to participate
in the instructional activities. The well-known term "designedly incomplete
utterance" (DIU) was proposed by Koshik (2002). In her paper, Koshik (2002)
analyzes one-on-one tutors' incomplete utterances used to elicit students' repair.
Both Lerner (1995) and Koshik (2002) highlight a particular characteristic of
DIUs: They are syntactically incomplete utterances that are intentionally left to
be completed by students. Previous research has studied the incompleteness
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of DIUs and indicated that the missing components can encompass various
types of syntactic units, such as words, phrases, clauses, or sentences (Margutti
2010; Netz 2016). The syntactic forms of DIUs have been categorized based on
the accessibility of their answers, a concept referred to as transparency by Netz
(2016). According to Netz (2016), the transparency of DIUs influence the
students' participation, successfulness, and length of their answers. Margutti
(2010) also notes that DIUs embedded within main clauses (referred to as main-
clause DIUs) with high transparency provide students with information
necessary to arrive at the answer, often prompting them to repeat a newly
learned key concept mentioned earlier. While these previous studies have
examined the syntactic features of DIUs in L1 classrooms, the syntactic form
features of DIUs, as well as their co-occurring gestures and the overall
pedagogical goals in L2 classrooms, have not been fully studied.
Embodied completion is defined as "launching a turn at talk, and then at a point
where some trajectory of the turn is projectable, ceasing to talk and completing
the action that had been initiated by the partial turn through gesture or embodied
display" (Olsher 2004: 221). Through analyzing second language data, Olsher
(2004) investigates the interplay between gestures and verbal utterances in
conveying meaning and achieving actions. By documenting how a participant
performs the motion of scooping paste out and flicking it onto the table, the
author describes that the participant uses body positioning and motion to
represent the texture of paste. The author argues that the use of embodied
display reflects that representational gestures can interpret specific meaning
associated with an object. By analyzing the interaction between L1 and L2
speakers, Mori and Hayashi (2006) report that native speakers use embodied
completions at the end of their verbal turns when the previous conversation has
caused linguistic difficulties between them and L2 speakers. They argue that
embodied completion contributes to facilitating intersubjectivity, and may also
provide L2 speakers an opportunity to learn the target language. Skogmyr
Marian (2021) documents L2 participants' use of depiction gesture as embodied
completion in complaint stories. The author also reports that the syntactically
incomplete complaints show different tendencies in their lexical-syntactic format
when occurring in complaint initiations and summary assessments. The findings
suggest that the underspecified information and stance may influence the
syntactic forms of incomplete utterances.
3. Data and Methods
The data for the study are 18.5 hours of video recordings collected from 12 CSL
classrooms. They were collected at a university in Beijing, China, in 2019. The
12 classes are of various levels and types, including 3 advanced classes, 5
intermediate classes, and 4 beginner classes. The language skills involved
include reading, listening, and speaking. The participants in this study are 12
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Mandarin native speaker teachers and 150 Chinese language learners from
various native language backgrounds. The corpus of this study consists of 238
cases of DIUs that are produced by teachers. Nineteen cases have been
identified as using representational gestures with DIUs, which are the focus of
this study. In the remaining instances in this dataset, teachers may provide other
visual resources to hint at possible responses, such as images and Chinese
characters. These representational gestures are used to enact motions or
processes of changes caused by actions. In addition to the excerpts I will
analyze in Section 4, the table below offers additional simple and clear examples
from the data, accompanied by a brief description of each representational
gesture.
Example
No.
Unproduced
element(s) of
the DIUs
Descriptions of the
representational gestures
Images of the gestures
1
moca 'to rub'
Rubs palms together to
enact the process of friction
between objects.
2
shilulu 'moist'
Lifts both hands above the
shoulders and gently
wiggles the fingers,
enacting something light
and feathery, such as
raindrops, gently falling
onto her body.
3
fang 'to place'
Moves the hand with the
palm facing up from one
side of the body to the
other, then flips the palm
downwards, enacting the
process of placing an
object in another location.
4
reng 'to throw'
Raises the hand with
pinched fingertips, then
moves the hand from low to
high and releases the
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fingers, enacting the action
of throwing an object.
5
wo 'to grip'
Brings the spread fingers
forcefully together, enacting
the action of gripping
something with the hand.
Table 1: Examples of the representational gestures and DIUs in my data.
The analyses in this study use Conversation Analysis, Interactional Linguistics,
and Multimodal Analysis (Stivers & Sidnell 2005; Couper-Kuhlen & Selting 2018).
I study the design of the teachers' DIUs by analyzing their morphosyntactic and
bodily-visual conducts, as well as teachers' and students' orientations. The data
in this study were transcribed using two transcription systems, the GAT-2
(Selting et al. 2009) conventions modified according to Li (2019) (see Appendix)
for the verbal utterances for Mandarin, and a gestural transcription system
based on Kendon (2004).
4. Using representational gestures with DIUs
In my data, the representational gestures are employed by teachers to enact
motions or processes of changes resulting from actions, representing the
meanings of the unproduced elements of the DIUs. Specifically, I have identified
three particular syntactic constructions used in DIUs, which are concurrently
accompanied by representational gestures: the ba construction, expressing the
disposal of objects (Excerpt 2); the yuelaiyue construction, expressing changes
in intensity (Excerpt 3); and the rang causative construction, indicating results
caused by actions (Excerpt 4). These syntactic resources, utilized in the DIUs
and working jointly with the representational gestures, serve to hint to students
about the unproduced elements.
Excerpt 2 is taken from an intermediate spoken Chinese class, in which the
teacher is leading students to review previously learned words by producing
DIUs and leaving the reviewed words to be filled in by the students. In this
excerpt, the teacher creates a context of "it is too crowded in the classroom"
(line 1) and enacts a request of "can you move your chair to the other side" by
leaving the action verb "move" unproduced (line 2). This DIU (line 2) is in the
form of a ba construction, which is a disposal form that constrains a verb placed
after a direct object. In the ba construction, the order of a sentence should be
formulated as [subject + ba + object + verb]. As shown in this excerpt, the
teacher leaves the verb unproduced (line 2). After Ann provides the expected
answer in line 3, the teacher confirms the student's answer by repeating it (lines
4 and 5).
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Excerpt 2 Move
The syntactic resources used in the DIU (line 2) have the affordance to project
an action verb at the (possible) end of the sentence. To teach an action verb
(nuo 'to move (an object)') with a strong sense of disposal, the teacher re-enacts
an imperative that requests a listener to do something by using the ba
construction. The ba construction used in this DIU is a disposal form that
constrains a verb placed after ba and a direct object (referred as yizi 'chair' in
this DIU). In Chinese grammar, "(t)he disposal form states how a person is
handled, manipulated, or dealt with; how something is disposed of; or how an
affair is conducted" (translation of Wang Li by Li (1974: 200-201) (see Li &
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Thompson 1981 Chapter 15 for more on disposal form)). The primary function
of the ba construction is to indicate "a change of state resulting from some
activity" (Sun 2005: 213). Designing the DIU in the form of a ba construction not
only hints at the type of the verb (i.e., an action verb that can change the state
of a chair), but also leaves the slot open to be produced under a strong syntactic
constrain (Auer 2005). The syntactic construction projects that the student's
answer must be a verb placed after the object yizi 'chair'. This DIU displays the
teacher's orientation to the ba construction as it naturally fits her task at hand.
When producing her utterance, the teacher employs multiple hand gestures.
While producing the context (line 1), the teacher makes a representational
gesture by moving her two arms with both hands facing each other (Figure 2.1).
Aligning with the object yizi 'chair' (in line 2), this representational gesture
depicts the virtual object "chair" in the crowded classroom (Kendon 2004). When
approaching the possible closure of the DIU, on the syllable wang 'to', the
teacher makes a representational gesture by moving her hands from the front
of her body to her right side (Figure 2.2). This conventional gesture enacts the
action of moving something somewhere else. The stock of this representational
gesture begins two syllables before the end of the DIU, which makes it a pre-
positioned gesture that can project its affiliated lexical element (Schegloff 1984).
This pre-positioned representational gesture provides a hint to the unproduced
element of the DIU when it is still underway (Iwasaki 2009). This gesture works
with the syntactic resource together to allow the students to anticipate the
expected answer.
Excerpt 3 is another case demonstrating how a teacher uses representational
gestures along with syntactic resources in a DIU to check the students'
understanding about an action verb, tie 'to stick'. This excerpt is taken from an
advanced Chinese reading class. Prior to this excerpt, the teacher was teaching
a word tie 'stick' by giving an example of tie youpiao 'to stick/glue stamps'. In
this excerpt, the teacher draws the students' attention to her hands (line 2) and
asks them the result of sticking two items together (line 4). She demonstrates
the motion of bringing two items closer using her hands and employs a DIU to
prompt the students to describe the change in physical distance between the
items (line 4). She confirms the students' answer of "(to get) closer" (line 6).
Excerpt 3 Stick
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The DIU (in line 4) ends with the phrase yuelaiyue… 'more and more…' which
projects that a modifier should be produced by the students. This phrase
expresses a growing intensity in a changing progress (Xiandai hanyu cidian
2005: 1685). By selecting this phrase at the end of the DIU, the teacher elicits
students to express the result of the movement of two items when they stick
together. The use of the DIU to check the students' understanding about the
word tie 'stick' demonstrates the teacher's professional knowledge regarding
how to teach an action verb (Goodwin 1994).
Prior to the DIU, the teacher makes a representational gesture in line 1 when
producing the lengthened tie 'stick'. She vertically raises her palms with the
palms facing each other and brings the two palms close together (Figure 3.1).
Through displaying this representational gesture while producing the action verb,
the teacher temporarily establishes a semantic connection between the
displayed gesture and the action verb (Kelly et al. 2009). In lines 2 and 4, the
teacher repeats her "moving two palms together" gesture twice when directly
requests students to pay attention to her hands. When she is producing zhe
liangge 'this two-CL', the teacher shakes her hands by horizontally rotating her
palms three times. Co-occurring with the demonstrative zhe 'this', this gesture
can be understood as establishing a representative connection between her two
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hands and "the two things" (Streeck 2008). From the syllable dong, the teacher
starts to make her representational gesture of "moving two palms closer" that
has been displayed in line 2 and the beginning of line 4. However, on the last
syllable of line 4, the teacher holds her two palms very close together without
touching them, which is a response-pursuing device that signals a response is
expected (Kendon 1995). Concurrent with the student's answer (line 5), the
teacher completes her gesture phrase by putting her two palms together. In this
excerpt, the representational gesture of "moving two things closer" is a pre-
positioned gesture that allows the students a projection space (Schegloff 1984).
This representational gesture visualizes the movement of tie 'to stick', and
thereby, semantically shows the unproduced lexical item of the DIU.
The previous two excerpts have demonstrated how representational gestures,
used in conjunction with DIUs, convey the semantic information of the
unproduced elements. In my dataset, the use of representational gestures
concurrently with DIUs display the teachers' understanding about how the
unproduced elements can be represented. When displayed before the
completion of DIUs, the teachers create a projection space for students to
anticipate the content of the expected answer. As shown in Excerpts 2 and 3,
the students successfully co-complete the DIUs. However, the position of
representational gestures is not restricted to being pre-positioned in my data;
they can also follow DIUs completion. Excerpt 4 provides a case in point. It
showcases the use of a representational gesture concurrently with a DIU, which
occurs as the first-post insert expansion. In this excerpt, the teacher reminds
students to use the word faner 'instead of' to retell an opinion mentioned in the
textbook, that is, "skipping breakfast would not make you lose weight, but would
make you get plumper." The DIU (line 6) is used after a teacher's telling question
(line 4), which does not receive a response from the students after a short pause
(line 5). Immediately after the completion of the DIU, the teacher makes a
representational gesture by raising her two arms from both sides of her body.
The students' response is incorrect (line 8). While producing her correction (line
9), the teacher iterates the representational gesture twice.
Excerpt 4 Getting plumper
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The sequence initiation question asks students to indicate the counter-result of
skipping breakfast (line 4). The teacher leans forward slightly at the beginning
of her initiation question and holds this posture, which is used as a response
pursuing device (Figure 4.1, Chazal 2015). After noticing that students may have
difficulties in providing an answer (line 5), the teacher initiates a DIU (line 6).
This DIU is a causative construction that expresses how the topic "not eating
breakfast" leads to another action or result affecting the direct object "you" (Li &
Thompson 1981: 602). By lengthening the last syllable ni 'you' in line 7, the
teacher leaves her utterance unfinished, thereby inviting the students to co-
complete it (Koshik 2002). Immediately after the DIU, the teacher performs a
representational gesture by raising her elbows and indicating an increase in
body size (line 7, Figures 4.2 and 4.3). This representational gesture enacts the
concrete meaning of "getting plumper" (Kendon 2004), which is the unproduced
element of the DIU. Producing this representational gesture demonstrates the
teacher's orientation to providing a semantic reference to help students answer
the question. After the initial performance of the gesture phrase, she iterates it
twice, starting from the pause (line 7) to the beginning of her correction (line 9,
Figures 4.5 and 4.6). These iterations keep the reference consistently visible to
the students, signifying the teacher's orientation. While the teacher performs her
iterations, Bee looks at her (Figure 4.4). However, his answer in line 8 is not the
expected answer that the teacher provides in line 9.
In this excerpt, the positions of these representational gestures differ from the
previous two excerpts: they are post-positioned. The students are observed to
have difficulties in responding. The DIU, used as a first-post insert expansion,
follows a lack of response to a telling question (line 4). This indicates that the
students are either disengaged or struggling to generate responses.
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Furthermore, the students do not produce an immediate response after the
potential closure of the DIU, as indicated by the 0.6-second pause (line 7). Bee's
answer (line 8) is also marked as incorrect by the teacher. What he produced,
geng aichi 'love to eat more', does not represent the meaning conveyed by the
teacher's representational gestures. Therefore, while performing a
representational gesture may increase the transparency of the expected answer,
the absence of a pre-positioned projection space for anticipatory processing
may (or may not) still hinder students from comprehending and expressing the
meaning conveyed by the representational gestures.
The previous three excerpts demonstrated how representational gestures are
utilized to convey the semantic meanings of unproduced elements. They
visualize a motion or a process of change, treating these unproduced elements
as enactable or depictable. In my data, there is no rigid word category that
corresponds directly to these unproduced elements. The unproduced elements
that are represented by representational gestures can be adjectives, verbs, and
nouns. The determining factor of whether an unproduced element is enactable
or depictable, or how its meaning can be conveyed through representational
gestures, is not the linguistic categories of the words, but the teachers'
orientation to how they should be represented. Teachers establish contexts
where representational gestures align with their teaching objectives. In these
contexts, motions and changes are involved and represented by these gestures.
Nonetheless, there are notable similarities in the situational contexts established
by teachers, as well as in the syntactic constructions involved in the DIUs. When
combined with representational gestures, the unproduced elements of the DIUs
typically encompass meanings and features related to motion or change.
Conversely, for unproduced elements that do not align with these features –
such as abstract objects, affections, feelings, or non-action verbs –
representational gestures are typically not used. Instead, other linguistic
resources are employed in these instances. The following excerpt serves as a
counterexample to this observation. Excerpt 5 is taken from a media-assisted
intermediate level class where all of the course materials are developed based
on a sitcom titled "Home with Kids." Prior to the sequence in Excerpt 5, the
teacher has shown a clip of the sitcom, where the actor's line is "this parent-
teacher conference, I must attend". In the excerpt, the teacher first reminds the
students that the actor said a very difficult word1 (line 1). Then the teacher elicits
the students to co-complete her utterance by producing the sentence wo bixu 'I
must' segmentally (lines 5 and 6). After the students display difficulties in
completing the target sentence, the teacher provides a synonym of the unsaid
1 Here, the teacher is referring to the word of canjia 'attend'. The word canjia might be considered
more advanced or difficult compared to qu (provided in line 9 as a synonym). Canjia has a
complexity of meaning of "to participate" or "to join," which is a more complex action as it implies
involvement in an event, activity, or organization. While qu simply means "to go," representing a
basic, straightforward action and is one of the basic verbs learners typically encounter.
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word, that is, qu 'go' (lines 9 and 10), and inquires about the verb for "going to
this parent-teacher conference" (line 11). Then the teacher provides multiple
opportunities in lines 12, 15, and 16 for the students to co-complete her
utterance again. In line 17, she finally produces the target word canjia 'attend'
by herself.
Excerpt 5 Attend
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To elicit the students to produce "the very difficult word" canjia 'attend', the
teacher uses various interactional resources. She re-enacts the actor's line
(lines 5 and 6) to create opportunities for the students to complete her
utterances. Additionally, the teacher hints that the word is a verb ("to do
something", in line 8) and is synonymous with "go" (lines 9 and 10). After
increasing the answer's transparency, she recycles her DIU (line 12, Netz 2016).
After 1.2-seconds waiting time which seem to indicate that the students still have
difficulty retelling the unproduced element (Ingram & Elliott 2015), the teacher
produces the first syllable of the target word (lines 15 and 16) and ultimately
completes the DIU herself (line 17).
The unproduced element canjia 'attend' conveys abstract concepts such as
attending an event or being part of a group (Xiandai Hanyu Cidian 2005: 128).
It expresses not just a physical movement from one place to another but also
the state of becoming a member through participation. In this excerpt, the
teacher is seated, with her body obscured by the screen. This physical position
indicates that she does not orient to demonstrating bodily-movement being
relevant to the students. Instead, the interactional resources she employs to hint
at the unproduced element are verbal. This excerpt serves as a counterexample,
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showing that representational gestures are not utilized by the teacher when the
unproduced element is difficult to enact or depict.
5. Discussion and Conclusion
By analyzing how representational gestures are used concurrently with DIUs,
this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how multimodal resources
are used together in L2 classrooms. When eliciting the expression involving
observable motions or changes in physical position (Excerpt 2), distance
(Excerpt 3) and shape (Excerpt 4), the teachers create situational contexts that
reflect the motion or change, utilizing both representational gestures and DIUs.
The DIUs identified in this study typically consist of syntactic constructions such
as disposal ba construction, progressive, comparative, and causative
constructions. These constructions inherently possess the syntactic affordances
necessary for expressing motion and change. The representational gestures
accompanying these DIUs serve to enact or depict the motion or change,
conveying the semantic meanings or features of the elements left unproduced
after the DIUs. This co-occurrence of representational gestures and DIUs
underlines the dynamic nature of multimodal teaching practices in complex
linguistic concepts in L2 classrooms.
Several previous pedagogical studies have contributed discussions about the
types of lexical categories typically associated with gestures (Lazaraton 2004;
Taleghani-Nikazm 2008; Hudson 2011; Inceoglu 2015) and how meanings are
conveyed by gestures in L2 classrooms (Smotrova 2014; van Compernolle &
Smotrova 2017). The employment of gestures for teaching different word
categories, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, differ considerably, as noted
in studies highlighting varying effectiveness (Lewis & Kirkhart 2020) and
disparate frequencies (Taleghani-Nikazm 2008; Inceoglu 2015). A plausible
explanation for these differences might be that establishing a direct and
imagistic connection between the gesture and the utterance is crucial for
comprehension (Arbona et al. 2022; Gullberg 2009), and these imagery
connections can vary significantly from word to word. The analyses in this study
deepen our observation of how and why representational gestures are used with
DIUs from a multimodal perspective. The use of linguistic and non-linguistic
resources reflects the teacher's perspective, while their choice of these
resources reflects their perspectives and interactional purposes (Tomasello
1999). When employing multimodal resources, the teachers take into account
the dynamic nature of the interaction, the students' background knowledge, and
their pedagogical objectives. Therefore, while my data show a higher
occurrence of verbs associated with representational gestures, adjectives and
nouns are also identified as unproduced elements in DIUs and represented
through representational gestures.
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While pervious studies have argued that gestures play a positive role in L2
processing and learning (e.g., Allen 1995, 2000; Gullberg 2006; Stam 2013),
this study contributes to the interactional perspective of gesture use in L2
classrooms. That is, the temporal relationship between gesture and utterance.
In my data, all instances of DIUs accompanied by pre-positioned
representational gestures received successful responses from the students. In
these cases (n=16), the meaning of the answer is visually presented almost at
the beginning of the DIU, thereby providing students with a larger projection
space (Schegloff 1984). However, as exemplified in Excerpt 4, when
representational gestures are post-positioned, students may still struggle to
grasp the intended meaning, leading to responses that deviate from the
teacher's expectation. Thus, it is not only the utilization of multimodal resources
that matters but also the precise timing of their display, which may (or may not)
influence the interactional consequence in a moment-by-moment unfolded
interaction. Nonetheless, given the limited sample size of this study, a more
comprehensive analysis of the temporal relationship between teachers'
multimodal resources and students' responses is warranted. This observation
reminds us of the importance of an interactional and multimodal perspective.
Using resources from different modalities to organize a pedagogical event
reflects teachers' professional vision on how to teach a second language
(Goodwin 1994). Each resource has its own affordance to convey meanings and
make senses (Goodman 1968). Using representational gestures to hint to the
unproduced elements of the DIUs displays the teachers' professional ability, that
is, to select the resources that can help them achieve their temporary
interactional-pedagogical goals. By documenting these practices, the findings
of this study also contribute to the question of what counts as Classroom
Interactional Competences (CIC). It has been argued that the ability to adapt
linguistic and bodily-visual practices to achieve pedagogical goals is a part of
teachers' CIC (Walsh 2006; Sert 2015). The teachers in this study skillfully
organize both verbal and bodily-visual resources, showing how they, as a
professional individual from the SL teaching community, manage the interaction
at a micro-level.
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Appendix
Transcription conventions
Symbol
Meaning
(0.4)
Pause duration in seconds and tenth seconds
(.)
Micro-pause
:, ::, :::
Lengthening of 0.2-0.8 seconds
,
Rising pitch movement of intonation unit
-
Level pitch movement of intonation unit
;
Falling pitch movement of intonation unit
.
Low falling pitch movement of intonation unit
ACcent
Extract strong accent
~
Preparation of gesticulation
*
Stock of gesticulation
|
Boundary of gesture unit
￤
Boundary of gesture phrase
h-->
Hold of gesture
-.-.
Retraction of gesticulation
Glossing conventions
ASSOC
Associative (-de)
BA
Ba-construction
CL
Classifier
COP
Copula verb (shi)
NOM
Nominalizer (de)
sg
person singular pronoun
PFV
Perfective aspect
NEG
Negative form
<<SYB>>
Untranslatable syllables due to the incomplete produce of
word
