Abstract While recurrent manual gestures have been extensively studied, nonmanual actions such as head movements remain less explored, especially in naturalistic interaction. This study investigates whether head nods and head shakes serve communicative functions comparable to those of recurrent manual gestures. Drawing on corpus data from spoken German and DGS (German Sign Language), we analyze approximately 1 h of interaction per language with 16 participants. More than 2,500 head movements produced by speakers/signers and their addressees were manually identified and annotated. The findings reveal a largely shared functional repertoire of head nods and head shakes across spoken and signed interaction, with no qualitative differences in the range of functions. In both languages, head movements fulfill discursive, stance-taking, illocutionary, and interactive functions, as well as affirmation and negation, closely paralleling patterns described for recurrent manual gestures. At the same time, cross-linguistic differences emerge in the relative prominence and degree of grammaticalization of specific functions, most notably in the use of head shakes for negation in DGS and for stance-taking in spoken German. Extending a functional framework for recurrent manual gestures to nonmanual actions, this study shows that head nods and head shakes exhibit the defining properties of recurrency: stable form–function pairings that recur systematically across speakers, signers, and interactional context. These findings support an embodied view of language and highlight the role of head movements as key semiotic resources in spoken and signed interaction.
Bauer et al. (2026) studied this question.