Talk and gesture in storytelling sequences in Mandarin conversation

Abstract

Abstract This study examines the coordination of talk and gesture in storytelling. The focus is on the different ways iconic gestures may contribute to the organization of TCUs and Turns in an on-going story. It is found that brief gestures produced within single TCUs may make visible situated meanings of deictic expressions, or may even stand in the place of a syntactic slot in constructing a multimodal TCU. Either way, what is depicted through the gestural modality is crucial in bringing out the meaning of a story scene or the high point of a telling. It is also found that gestures may continue across multiple TCUs. Such coordination of verbal and gestural modalities serves to make visible the organization of narration and re-enactment in telling sequences. Recurrent gesture patterns may also coordinate with recurrent narrative patterns in organizing sequenced multiple story events.