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GREEBLES Greeble greeb. On reduction in speech and gesture in repeated references.

2011; Wiley; Volume: 33; Issue: 33 Linguagem: Inglês

1551-6709

Marieke Hoetjes, Ruud Koolen, Martijn Goudbeek, Emiel Krahmer, Marc Swerts,

Hearing Impairment and Communication

GREEBLES Greeble greeb On Reduction in Speech and Gesture in Repeated References Marieke Hoetjes (m.w.hoetjes@uvt.nl) Ruud Koolen (r.m.f.koolen@uvt.nl) Martijn Goudbeek (m.b.goudbeek@uvt.nl) Emiel Krahmer (e.j.krahmer@uvt.nl) Marc Swerts (m.g.j.swerts@uvt.nl) Tilburg centre for Cognition and Communication (TiCC), Faculty of Humanities, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands Abstract Previous research has shown that predictable information in speech is often reduced. The present study aims to find out more about reduction with regard to speech but mainly whether reduction also occurs in speech-accompanying gestures. To this end, a director-matcher task was set up in which speakers of Dutch took part. In this task the director had to refer to the same abstract object several times. The repeated references thus obtained were analysed for their reduction in speech and gesture. Speech results show that the number of attributes is reduced and gesture results show that gestures are reduced with regard to the number of hands that are used, their size and their precision. Implications for existing gesture models are discussed. Keywords: speech; gesture; reduction; repeated references Introduction Reduction in repeated references When speaking, people often produce referring expressions to describe objects in the world, mostly in order to identify a target referent to an addressee. For example, a speaker might point out someone to an addressee by saying “that tall guy with the glasses” while producing a pointing gesture. The interaction between the speaker and the addressee is multimodal: the speaker may use both auditory (speech) and visual cues (gestures) to ensure that the addressee knows what he or she is talking about. In a conversation, it is likely that a speaker refers to the same object more than once, leading to the production of repeated referring expressions. From previous research, it is known that these repeated references lead to reduction in speech (e.g. Bard et al., 2000; Brennan & Clark, 1996; Lam & Watson, in press), while reduction in gesture has remained unexplored. The Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis (Frank & Jaeger, 2008; Jaeger, 2010; see also e.g. Aylett & Turk, 2004) states that reduction in language production serves to optimize the interaction between the speaker and the addressee. More specifically, the UID hypothesis predicts that speakers are flexible in the sense that they lengthen the elements of an utterance with a relatively high information density, and shorten the elements with a low information density, which are less important for successful communication. This process makes the amount of information that is transmitted more uniform and optimal for both speaker and addressee. In this way, the UID hypothesis is in line with Grice’s (1975) Maxim of Quantity: “Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purpose of the exchange)”. Arguably, reduction in repeated references follows a similar pattern: it could be the case that when speakers repeatedly refer to an object, they tend to only reproduce those auditory and visual cues of the initial referring expression that help the addressee to easily identify the target referent, while the less informative cues are omitted. In short, this implies that speakers reduce predictable information, but do not reduce important information. Reduction in speech Consistent with the UID hypothesis, previous research has indeed shown that repeated references lead to reduction in speech in at least two ways. Firstly, several studies have found that repeated references contain fewer words than initial references to the same target (e.g. Clark & Wilkes- Gibbs, 1986). Brennan and Clark (1996) explain this in terms of people establishing conceptual pacts, which they define as temporary agreements between speaker and addressee about how a target is conceptualized. These conceptual pacts are usually determined by the common ground between the speaker and the addressee. Since these conceptual pacts are not established all at once, but during a series of successive references, as Brennan and Clark (1996) argue, speakers often shorten their repeated references to simpler and more efficient expressions (e.g. from an initial