Easy Italian Gestures 

A short undergraduate study researching Italian gestures 

Gestures are the 'manner of carrying the body; bearing, carriage and deportment' according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). In this definition, the OED fails to define the key relationship between gestures and speech. This relationship is known as speech-gesture production. McNeil (1992) states that ‘speech and gesture have a common origin,’ in that gestures and speech are normally synchronised. Previous studies of language and gesture have focused on how gestures aid language learning (Kita, 2007; Sueyoshi and Hardison, 2005), who benefits from gestures (the speaker or the listener) (Alibali et al; Alibali, Flevares, & Goldin-Meadow,1997; Beattie & Shovelton, 1999; Graham & Argyle, 1975; Kelly & Church, 1998), whether gestures correlate to the fluency of language, and the relationship between gestures and lying.


This present study, focuses on a different topic, the relationship between gestures and perception. The primary focus will be on emblematic Italian gestures and whether or not they are understandable for non-native Italian speakers. This study evolved from my own experiences of living in Italy and having to decipher the meaning Italian gestures, whilst simultaneously trying to match them to specific speech elements.

Moreover, as a monolingual speaker of English, I became transfixed by the use of gesture. Many of my peers were already bilingual, and not as transfixed by the use of gestures (potentially because their second language (L2) ability was higher than mine). These curiosities led to the present study of emblematic Italian gestures.

My study focuses on two important research questions;  
 
Are bilingual speakers able to understand emblematic Italian gestures easier than monolinguals? 

  Are emblematic Italian gestures used for the benefit of the speaker or the listener?

Justification

It is widely agreed that bilingual speakers have better metacognitive abilities (Bialystok 2001), use measurably more complex sentences (Kesckes and Papp, 2000), read English better, and during a reading task are better at ignoring distractions (Cook, 2003). Moreover, it is clear to see that bilingual individuals have heightened abilities in many linguistic areas. However, how do bilingual speakers fare within the study of gestures, compared to their monolingual counterparts?

The study of gestures primarily falls into two camps. The psychological approach, comprising of an emotional state, and psycholinguistic approach where gesture becomes an additional channel, gestures are a mechanism for language production, they accompany the spoken language (Warren, 2013, P.86). Clark (1996) also states that gestures within the psycholinguistic approach have two main functions: subject matter and discourse management.

As well as being divided into two 'camps', gestures are also grouped under a taxonomy of five different types; iconic, metaphoric, deictic, beat and emblematic. Iconic gestures depict concrete objects or motions, reflecting the semantic content of speech. These gestures are temporally aligned with speech, however, they are not identical to speech and instead supply additional information (Warren, 2013, p.89, Beattie, 1999). Metaphoric gestures produce a metaphor. Metaphoric and iconic gestures are also known as representational gestures. Beat gestures follow the rhythm of speech (Leonard and Cummins, 2011). Deictic gestures are in their essence pointing gestures, an example of this would be pointing towards a board or a sign.


Emblems (sometimes referred to as symbols) are gestures that are culturally significant, and as such culturally different. These gestures are also different within languages, as well as across them. Emblematic gestures, are the gestures relevant to this study. Furthermore, the gestures I am analysing are culturally dependent on the region of Puglia, Italy.

Despite emblematic gestures being culturally significant, different languages still categorise gestures differently. Satellite framed languages (English and German) and verb framed languages (Japanese, Turkish and Spanish) use verbs differently (Talmy, 2000). Satellite languages have the manner in which and object, person or thing travelled comprised within the verb, where as in verb framed languages, the manner is not an obligatory element. These are termed motion event gestures across languages, due to the different lexicalisation patterns, speakers of these languages will gesture differently.

Lexicalisation patterns are not the only area of difference, the syntactical structure of these languages varies also. In satellite languages the phrase, 'he rolled down the hill,' is only one clause. On the other hand, in verb framed languages, ‘he descended as he rolled,’ is two clauses (Kita, 2007). Warren (2013, p, 96) also demonstrates these differences, ‘the bottle floated into the cave,’ (in English), and a translation from Spanish, ‘the bottle entered the cave floating.’ Due to the change in the speech production the gestures change accordingly to correspond with the grammatical units used to plan speech units (Levelt, 1989), as well as the processing units (Kita and Ozyuerk 2003; Mol and Kita 2013). Other studies have looked at the different gestural patterns used by different speakers (Alien et al 2007, p.31). The majority of the focus of these studies is on native speakers of the language, and not L2 speakers.

Gesturing for L2 speakers can be difficult, as there are many gestures which are culturally specific. The ability to gesture in a L2 does not have a direct correlation to the language proficiency of L2. For example, even highly proficient L2 speakers can be spotted by their use or lack of use of gestures (Kellerman and Van Hoof, 2003). Furthermore, Fritz et al (2015) conducted a study, which analysed German and English speaker's use of gestures in main and subordinate clauses. The results of which can be found below:


Fig 1.1 – Graph taken from Fritz’s 2015 study

Fritz (2015) found that in German gestures increased with regards to the main clause, where as in English the use of gestures stayed relatively the same, demonstrating the difference a L2 has.

So far, gesturing has been viewed as a one person process. However, many studies focus on the relationship between the speaker and the listener, thus focusing on a multi person process. Co-speech gestures and speech as an integrated system gestures are reliant on the language perception in the Broca's area. The Broca’s area is the part of the brain, which links language and gestures. Evidence for this can be found via the use of special recording equipment is used to measure brain activity (Kelly et al 2004, p256; Churchland, 1999).


Moreover, equipment like this is vital for measuring communicative functions. Studies using this equipment have demonstrated that gestures are used to aid the listener (Alibali and Heath 2001), and that gestures are seen as common ground (Jacobs and Graham, 2007). Alibali et al (2001) asked participants to retell cartoons. Retellings were giving in two conditions, a face-to-face condition and a screen condition (where a screen divided the participants). The study measured the rates of gestures per 100 words. The results found that more gestures were used in the face-to-face condition. However, beat gestures did not differ significantly between the two conditions. This demonstrates the multi-functionality of gestures, as well as, influence of seeing a speaker face-to-face.

Furthermore, gestures also have cognitive functions. For example, when blind people use gestures, or gesturing on the phone (De Ruiter, 1995), as well as preventing speakers from gesturing (Hostetter et al 2007), and the use of gestures in vocabulary learning.

Furthermore, the study of gesture is a broad and diversified field. However, few studies have looked at whether or not non-native speakers understand different cultural emblematic gestures.

Methodology



The methodology for my study started out in the form of; Youtube videos, News Articles and blogs. Two Youtube videos in particular were of interest.

The first video (Dolce & Gabbana, 2014) uses male models to perform the gesture, whilst text explains the gesture's meaning. The other video (Marco in a Box, 2014), is a native Italian Youtuber who performs the gesture and then explains the meaning with an English voice over. These two videos have over 1 million views demonstrating the popularity of Italian gestures within the public.

Furthermore, the press too have also covered Italian gestures. Articles on popular websites such as: CNN (Marchetti, 2015) and the Guardian (Cocozza, 2013) also feature Italian gestures. Popular bloggers (Mattana, 2013) have also written posts about Italy's most well-known gestures. Scholars have also discussed the popularity and the distinctiveness of Italian gestures (Kendon, 1995, Morris et al 1979, McNeil, 2000).

Moreover, there are over 250 gestures in Italian (Roberts, 2013). It would have been highly ambitious to account for all 250 gestures, record them and then expect participants to answer questions about them. As such, I chose to base my study around a total of 10 gestures, this seemed like a more achievable goal.

The gestures originally had a particular focus, a semantic field if you will, centred on food. However, the native Italian, who had agreed to be filmed, did not feel comfortable showing their face on camera (most Italian gestures that refer to food involve contact with the face).

Due to this restraint, the gestures were changed accordingly to adopt a new semantic field of ordering, including commands, requests and responses. Thus, the video focuses solely on the gesticulators hands. The hands are set in an empty white box, as a result of this no indication of context was given. This meant that gestures either ranged from being emblematic of Italian culture or highly opaque and their meanings seemingly non apparent. The video was also recorded without a voice over. These aspects made the questionnaire harder, as with a voice over logical steps could have been taken to understand the gestures meaning. However, this is a possible opportunity for further research, which means future studies will be able to adapt this methodology accordingly.

The questionnaire is comprised of 10 questions to match the 10 gestures in the video. Below is an example of the type pf question participants were asked (a full questionnaire can be found in appendix one, with correct answers highlighted).

The participants were given multiple choice answers. This prevented participants from giving wild guesses, and would also aid later analysis. The incorrect answers were reliant on long term memory schemas. The long term memory schemas consist of declarative and procedural knowledge (Anderson and Tulving), responsible for long term memory storage, organisation and information, as well as relating new and existing knowledge. The features are; implicit, unconscious, and effortless, with a fairly unlimited capacity. They demonstrate that words are not neatly bundled packages as the dictionaries view them, instead they important access points to repositories of knowledge that is known as the encyclopaedic view.


Moreover, the OED defines Italian as 'of or pertaining to Italy or its people; native to or produced in Italy.' However, for many associations such as: pizza, food, the catholic church, holidays, travel, architecture, football, art, family and politics are accessed through the association of that one word.

Furthermore, my study was reliant on participant's long term memory schemas of Italy, thus enabling me to think of incorrect answers that could be seen as plausible to some participants

The biographic information was asked at the end of the questionnaire. This was to prevent participants from understanding what aspects of their background were being brought into question.

All participants (N=16) responded to the same questionnaire. The results were collected and then split into the two groups, monolinguals (G1, N=8) and bilinguals (G2, N=8). The participants had to assign themselves as bilingual or not. To do this I used an outline taken from Gulberg’s 2003 study questionnaire.

Only one participant identified themselves as a non-native English speaker, they were instead native Finnish. Here, I believe is another interesting opportunity for research, as it would be interesting to do this study on a wider cultural level, seeing which nationality was able to identify Italian gestures easier.

Results and Discussion 

 At the beginning of this paper, I explained my hypothesis, I assumed that G2 will perform better than their G1 counterparts.

However, the results proved my hypothesis wrong, as they are statistically insignificant (p= 0.779) (see appendix 2 for SPSS tables). The results found that there was no significance between the two groups. However, I conducted further tests as the raw data was already highlighting several differences.

The following tests are all descriptive tests. First, I analysed the overall results as a collective group. This acted as a midway point for data analysis. The mean (M) score was (M=5.20). This means that in general participants answered half of the questions correctly. The reason for the M score being 5.20 could be due to the more opaque nature of some gestures compared to the emblematic nature of others. Moreover, this also demonstrates that in 50% of instances gestures are used for the speaker rather than the listener, particularly if the conversation is between a native and non-native speaker.

I then compared theses scores to the two separate groups. The G1's M was lower than the average above (M=5.13), whereas G2’s score was higher (M=5.29). The difference of the M score demonstrates that overall that G2 scored fractionally higher, demonstrating that on average they were more correct than G1.

The Standard Deviation (SD), however, provides for a rather interesting comparison. The SD for all participants was (SD=1.52), G1 scored a SD of (SD= 1.25), on the other hand, G2 scored (SD=1.89). This difference demonstrates that G1 participants were more consistent with their answers. The G1 participants answered between 4-7 questions correctly whereas, G2 had a bigger spread answering 2-8 questions correctly. Therefore, demonstrating the consistency of the G1 group compared to G2 who varied more in their aptitude, despite the difference in M scores.

I will now discuss the answers to the questionnaire in further detail. I will begin with the more emblematic gestures and finish with a discussion of the opaque gestures.

Questionnaire Analysis

Despite the fact that participants only answered on average half of the questions correctly, participant answers still provided levels of discrepancies between the G1 and G2 groups. Question 3 was answered correctly by 15/16 of the participants. All 8 of the G1 participants answered correctly, and 7 of the G2 participants also answered correctly. Qualitative reasons for their answering are as follows: 'he was motioning away from himself,' ‘it looked like a shooing gesture,’ ‘gesturing away,’ and ‘the forwards and back motion of the fingers is emblematic for go away.’ The one G2 participant who answered incorrectly stated their reason behind it was their ‘Japanese background,’ as the gestures of go and come are opposite in Japan. Many sources support this claim that the gestures for go away and come in the West are reversed in Japanese (Seifi, Abdullah, p.6, 2015). Moreover, question three is an example of where a G2’s language background interfered with their question response.

Furthermore, question 3 was paired with question 4, where 14/16 participants answered correctly. Qualitative reasons stated 'motioning towards himself,' ‘it was the opposite to number three,’ ‘the gesture beckons towards.’ The two participants who were incorrect, (1 from G1 and 1 from G2), both gave valid qualitative reasons. The G2 participant again stated their ‘Japanese background,’ as the gestures are once again reversed. The G1 participant answered with the option ‘cleaning,’ stating that it ‘looks like a cleaning motion of sweeping a broom.’ The results so far demonstrate that for some G2 participants their L2 language interferes with their understanding of the gesture. However, I doubt that if the participants in question were in Italy, they would allow their L2 to interfere this drastically.

Question seven was also answered correctly by 14/16 participants. Again all 8 participants in G1 answered correctly, whereas only 6 G2 participants did. Qualitative reasons behind the correct answer include 'I think I know that from being in Italy/around Italians,' ‘seems to indicate impatience,’ and ‘seen it somewhere.’ The two participants who answered incorrectly, gave justified qualitative reasons, one stated ‘TV shows e.g. family guy,’ and ‘used by footballers to plead with the referees.’ This demonstrates that some participants allow media to inform their opinions about other cultures and other cultural gestures.

The Qualitative reason of football was used again in response to question six, this time stating 'that footballers use this gesture to plead with referees.' Whilst, the participant’s previous judgment was wrong, with regards to question 6, said participant was right. ‘Madonna Mia,’ in Italian translates as help me. Over half of the participants answered this question correctly (10/16). Many participants citied that it was used a lot in Italian culture and therefore is emblematic of the culture. For the 6/16 who answered incorrectly (4 from G1 and 2 from G2), only two gave qualitative reasons, one asked a question, ‘is it an asking gesture?’ and the other thought it was ‘putting their hands together like praying.’

Furthermore, as the gestures grow more opaque, answers from participants become more interesting. This appears in question 5, here participants were largely split down the middle, 9/16 participants answered correctly, whilst 7/16 answered incorrectly (2 from G1 and 5 from G2). The incorrect reason stated by participants was 'That's nonsense.’ Moreover, over half of participants were able to understand this gesture, ‘it looks like a hurry up gesture, like hurry up what you are saying it’s boring,’ ‘hand seems not bothered,’ ‘indicates impatience and boredom.’ The 7 other participants thought it meant ‘nonsense,’ as the gesture appeared to represent ‘nonsensing,’ and that ‘it looks like someone struggling with something, and to me that signifies nonsense.’ Moreover, this demonstrates the power of the listener’s interpretation and reinforces again how G1 and G2 participants are performing fairly equally.

Furthermore, question 10 was more opaque, only 5/16 participants answered correctly, whilst 11/16 answered incorrectly (6 from G1 and 5 from G2). Those who did answer correctly thought the motion was 'looks like I'm going to grab your stuff,’ and that ‘the fingers look like they’re itching to take something.’ Incorrect answers mainly answered with ‘it’s strange,’ as the gesture itself was strange. Only 1 participant answered with hide.

Moreover, question 8 was another surprising response. The gesture in question 8, perfetto (perfect in English) is very similar to the universal ok sign. For this question, 6/16 participants answered correctly, whilst 10/16 answered incorrectly. Of the 6 participants who answered correctly, many citied that is 'too obvious to be ok,' ‘it looks like an English gesture,’ and another participant said they had ‘seen it one a pizza box,’ and a final participant stated that the fingers are actually in a P shape. Furthermore, the 10 participants who answered incorrectly all thought it meant Ok (5 from G1 and 5 from G2, a very even split). This demonstrates that even though the participants had universal knowledge of the OK gesture, they were still under the impression that the Italian culture had derived its own.

The gesture used in question 9 is 'niente,' (nothing in English). Only 3/16 participants answered correctly, 1 participant stated ‘the movement looks like he wants to stop talking about something by signalling nothing.’ The other 13 participants (6 from G1 and 7 from G2) thought it was turn around, as the arm twists. Here all the participants are giving logical responses, and this question in particular is an example where the use of context could have changed the results. The word Niente itself is very similar to the German word for no ‘Nien,’ if information like this would have been supplied G2 speakers could have fared slightly better.

Furthermore, question 2 was also surprising. Again, 3/16 participants answered correctly, whilst 13/16 answered incorrectly, none of the participants from G1 answered correctly. Those who did answer correctly stated that they were influenced by the media and that it was similar to an English gesture for drink. The 13 participants who answered incorrectly thought it was a phone call, perhaps influenced by the modern world, and modern technologies.

Finally question 1, here only 1 participant answered correctly, stating that 'it is reminiscent of Italian culture,' this participant was from the G2 group, demonstrating how some G2 participants were able to adapt their cultural knowledge to that of Italy. The other 15/16 participants were split between together and let’s eat, as they felt that these gestures are emblematic of Italian culture.

Conclusion 

 To conclude, some of the above gestures are decipherable for non-native Italians. However, none of the questions were answered either correctly or incorrectly demonstrating that many participants' views and assumptions were split.

Moreover, on the whole there was not much difference between the G1 and G2 participants, there M scores were virtually identical. However, the SD demonstrates how G2 speakers were more spread in their answers. Furthermore, 50% of the time gestures are used for the speaker alone, as opposed to the listener also, particularly in an environment where a non-native speaker is communicating with a native speaker.