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Isaac Torres
Linguistics

Eric Pederson, Mentor

A Linguistic Analysis of Gesture in Second Language Discourse

This is a study of the frequency of metaphoric hand gestures used while speaking about abstract concepts in one’s second language. In this study, the native language of all subjects is Spanish and the second language is English. The increased difficulty of orally articulating abstract concepts in one’s second language should lead to a higher frequency of metaphoric hand gestures to help express the idea. This study follows the gesture classification system of McNeill (1992), and the methodology of Gullberg (1998). The subjects are presented with four hypothetical situations containing moral or ethical dilemmas, two of which are presented and discussed in Spanish and the other two in English. The conversations are videotaped and analyzed for the frequency of metaphoric hand gestures.