Consolation Gestures as Non-Verbal Markers of Stress when Discussing an Acute Social Issue

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issue of identifying non-verbal stress markers in oral discourse on an acute social topic. The relevance of the research is due to: 1) the growing interest of linguists in the study of linguistic manifestations of emotions and the identification of markers of various psycho-emotional states with the subsequent possibility of developing algorithms for their automatic detection; 2) the severity of the problem of stress in modern society. The novelty of the study is predetermined by the fact that it is focused on a specific type of communicative behavior (discussion of an acute social issue) studied from the perspective of multimodal linguistics postulating an inextricable link between understanding and generating messages in natural language and body actions. The goal of the paper is to identify and describe non-verbal stress markers that we call consolation gestures, allowing us to identify this psychoemotional state in the course of spontaneous oral communication. The research material is represented by 4 hours of structured interview video recordings with 11 French and 11 Russian respondents (average age – 21) on the topic of radical body positivity. The leading research method is multimodal analysis, implemented using multi-layer markup in the ELAN program. In the process of marking, the following types of layers were used: gestures, eye movements, facial expressions, verbal component, intonation. The statistical analysis of frequency and distribution of annotations have revealed the following consolation gestures: 1) stroking different parts of the body; 2) scratching different parts of the body, 3) interacting with other objects, 4) facial markers. Consolation gestures are regarded by us as a kind of body-oriented repetitive behavior disorders, which allows us to differentiate them from gestures that are hesitation/silence fillers. Thus, the following constitutive features are determined: 1) repetition of the action, 2) focus on the body, 3) features conditioned by a sense of tension or anxiety rather than by preoccupation with appearance, 4) a subsequent sense of relief and emotional discharge. The prospect of further research is seen in the expansion of experimental material through interviews with representatives of other linguocultures, followed by interpreting the results in the cross-cultural perspective.