Gestural strategies in questions during monological discourse

This study identifies regular gestural correlates to questions produced in TED Talks. In dialogue, questions have been linked with eyebrow movement, head nods, beats, and palm-up gestures. However, it is not clear whether the same cues are found in monological discourse, where audience role and participation are constrained. We hypothesized that speakers would use gesture differently depending on question type (e.g., fronted item; declarative; verbless), syntactic status (direct; embedded; appositive), and localization in the talk (beginning; middle; end). We used videos in the TED repository, which were transcribed and annotated using ELAN for gestures and question type, syntactic status, and localization (6 h and 4 min, 1,108 questions, 17 speakers, variety: General American). We used chi-square tests to examine the relation between the proportion of gestures and question type, syntactic status, and localization. The results show that hand and head gestures are regularly produced as part of questions, but not eyebrow movement. The amount and nature of hand gestures are impacted by two variables (question type and localization), while head gestures are impacted by only one of them (syntactic status). Eyebrow movement is not impacted overall. We discuss how these gestural features map out the different discursive functions at play.