Hurry up!, Be quiet! and I promise! A contrastive analysis of emblematic gestures of German and Polish schoolchildren

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2196-8403.2024.10

Keywords:

gestures, emblems, nonverbal communication, videos, schoolchildren

Abstract

The article aims to present the formal repertoire of selected emblematic gestures. The study was conducted within “Borderlandˮ – a project related to intercultural communication in the borderland region of Frankfurt Oder (Germany) and Słubice (Poland). Some basic questions that are taken into consideration include whether similar or different gestures appear on the border of languages and cultures. The study focuses on gestures of 47 children between the ages 13 and 15 who were videotaped and subjected to a variety of tasks (including gestures related to three utterances Be quiet!, Hurry up! and I promise!). The findings of the corpus-based analysis demonstrate that the realisation of gestures used by Polish and German speakers are to some extent similar, how-ever, the repertoire of forms is also in some cases different.

Author Biography

  • Violetta Frankowska, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu

    Dr., arbeitet seit der Promotion 2013 als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Lehrstuhl für deutsche Sprache am Institut für Germanistik der Adam-Mickiewicz-Universität in Poznań. Forschungs- und Interesseschwerpunkte: Pragmalinguistik (insbesondere Höflichkeit im deutsch-polnischen Vergleich), Gestenforschung, Übersetzung, Textlinguistik (Internet-Memes).

References

ANTAS, JOLANTA / KRAŚNICKA-WILK, IZABELA (2013): Funkcje emblematów w strukturze dialogu. [Funktionen von Emblemen in der Dialogstruktur]. In: LingVaria ROK VIII 2 (16):5-42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.12797/LV.08.2013.16.02

BARAKAT, ROBERT A. (1973): Arabic gestures. In: The Journal of Popular Culture 4 (6):749-793. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1973.00749.x

EFRON, DAVID (1941): Gesture and Environment. New York.

EFRON, DAVID (1972): Gesture, race and culture: a tentative study of some of the spatio-temporal and „linguistic” aspects of the gestural behavior of Eastern Jewsand Southern Italians in New York City, living under similar as well as different environmental conditions. The Hague.

EKMAN, PAUL (2004): Emotional and conversational nonverbal signals. In: LARRAZABAL, JESÚS M. / PÉREZ MIRANDA, LUIS A. (eds.): Language, Knowledge, and Representation. Dordrecht, 39-55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2783-3_3

EKMAN, PAUL / FRIESEN, WALLACE V. (1969): The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behavior Categories, origins, usage, and coding. In: Semiotica 1:49-98. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1969.1.1.49

FRANKOWSKA, VIOLETTA (2020): Gesten an der deutsch-polnischen Grenze. Eine Analyse des Emblems ‚Sieg‘. In: tekst i dyskurs – text und diskurs 14:75-93.

HÖING, BENEDIKT MARKUS (2014): Die zerebrale Verarbeitung emotionaler Gesichter und emblematischer Gesten – eine fMRT-Studie: https://d-nb.info/1079971653/34 (21.08.2019).

JARMOŁOWICZ-NOWIKOW, EWA (2018): Gesty emblematyczne młodzieży polskiej i niemieckiej. Metoda badawcza oraz analiza wybranych emblematów. [Emblematische Gesten der polnischen und deutschen Jugend. Forschungsmethode und Analyse von ausgewählten Emblemen]. In: WINIARSKA, JUSTYNA / ZAŁAZIŃSKA, ANETA (eds.): Multimodalność komunikacji. [Multimodalität der Kommunikation]. Kraków, 19-45.

JARZĄBEK KRYSTYNA (2016): Słownik mowy ciała Polaków. [Körpersprache-Wörterbuch von Pol:innen]. Katowice.

JOHNSON, HAROLD G. / EKMAN, PAUL / FRIESEN, WALLACE V. (1975): Communicative body movements: American emblems. In: Semiotica 15 (4):335-353. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1975.15.4.335

KENDON, ADAM (1983): Gesture and speech: How they interact. In: WIEMANN, JOHN M. / HARRISON, RANDALL P. (eds.): Nonverbal interaction. Beverly Hills, CA, 13-45.

KENDON, ADAM (1990): Gesticulation, quotable gestures, and signs. In: MOERMAN, MICHAEL / NOMURA, MASAICHI (eds.): Culture Embodied. Osaka, 53-77.

KRAUSS, ROBERT M. / CHEN, YIHSIU / CHAWLA, PURNIMA (1996): Nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication. What do conversational hand gestures tell us? In: Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 28:389-450. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60241-5

MATSUMOTO, DAVID / HWANG, HYISUNG C. (2013): Cultural Similarities and differences in emblematic gestures. In: Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 37 (1):1-27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-012-0143-8

MORRIS, DESMOND (1994): Bodytalk. A Worldguide to Gestures. London.

POGGI, ISABELLA (2002): Symbolic gestures: the case of the Italian gestionary. In: Gesture 2:71-98. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.2.1.05pog

POORTINGA, YPE H. / SCHOOTS, NETTY H. / VAN DE KOPPEL, JAN M. H. (1993): The understanding of Chinese and Kurdish emblematic gestures by Dutch sucjects. In: International Journal of Psychology 28 (1):31-44. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00207599308246916

POYATOS, FERNANDO (2002): Nonverbal Communication across Disciplines. Bd. I: Culture, sensory interaction, speech, conversation. Amsterdam, Philadelphia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/z.ncad1

SAITZ, ROBERT L. / CERVENKA, EDWARD J. (1972): Handbook of gestures: Colombia and the United States. The Hague. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110810325

WIENER, MORTON / DEVOE, SHANNON / RUBINOW, STUART und GELLER, JESE (1972): Nonverbal behavior and nonverbal communication. In: Psychological Review 79:185-214. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/h0032710

Downloads

Published

2024-12-31

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Frankowska, Violetta. 2024. “Hurry up!, Be Quiet! And I Promise! A Contrastive Analysis of Emblematic Gestures of German and Polish Schoolchildren”. Convivium. Germanistisches Jahrbuch Polen, December, 209-28. https://doi.org/10.18778/2196-8403.2024.10.