Learning through gesture: embodied repetitions in tandem interactions (2024)

Abstract: Grounded in an interactional approach, this corpus-based study presents an analysis of multimodal tandem interactions held in English between tandem partners (L1 and L2 speakers) to study other-repetitions across different levels and modalities. In particular, I investigate cases of embodied repetitions in contexts of co-construction and repair whereby tandem partners negotiate meaning. Based on careful micro-analyses of data fragments, analyses reveal different types of temporal coordination between the repetition of the target item and/or of the gesture, addressing specific issues at different linguistic levels. While repetitions typically occur in linguistic-oriented contexts, emerging gestures may further contribute to mutual understanding and alignment.

## introduction research in second language acquisition (sla) has increasingly gained an interest in the study of gesture in l2 learning. gestures are said to provide a window onto cognition @xcite , and a series of perception experiments have highlighted the facilitative role of gesture for vocabulary @xcite , phoneme acquisition @xcite , or l2 pronunciation more generally @xcite . in particular, the present study is grounded in an interactional approach to language learning, drawing on conversation-analytic (ca) methods, and thus considers learning processes at the heart of face-to-face interactions. the study of ca-for-sla @xcite @xcite , for instance, has highlighted the socially situated dimension of l2 learning captured in actual language use in its natural ecology. in this respect, tandem settings @xcite are a particularly relevant context to study situated language learning, since they rely on a friendly and lowhierarchy relationship between tandem partners, as opposed to more institutional teacher-student relations, during which the interactants also engage in authentic conversations, rather than artificial perception or production tasks in experimental tasks. the present study is conducted on a selection of the sitaf corpus @xcite which comprises english interactions between tandem partners at university (english l1 speakers and french l2 speakers) during a narrative task. previous work on the same data has highlighted the multimodal dimension of tandem interactions, with a focus on the role of gesture in corrective feedback, communication breakdowns, fluency mechanisms, and chains of reference @xcite and the aim of the present study is to explore the role of gesture in l2 learning and understanding at different linguistic levels, through embodied repetitions. ## repetitions in linteraction: from speech to gesture speech repetition is a key aspect of l2 acquisition and has been used successfully in l2 teaching and learning, including repetitions and imitations of words and sentences (ghazi-saidi and @xcite . repetition has been regarded as a way of "providing learners greater access to language forms […] as a means of enabling learners to develop automaticity in the target language" @xcite . while the present work does not dwell on classroom interactions, it is relevant to note that some studies have also highlighted the collaborative and intersubjective nature of utterance repetitions during students' joint writing assignments (e.g. dicamilla and anton, 1997). in ## data and method the data under study is based on the sitaf corpus @xcite which comprises 24 videotaped dyadic interactions between l1 and l2 speakers in english and french. the dyads were paired through a tandem program at university, and the participants regularly met outside the recording sessions to exchange in their respective l1 and l2. the selected sample comprises eight pairs (selected randomly) from the corpus, during which the participants performed a narrative task called "liar liar" in english. the aim of the task was for one of the participants to retell a story in which they had to insert three lies that their partner later had to identify. in this case, the stories were told in the french speaker's l2 (english). the selected sample, including the duration of the exchanges, are reported in ## overview of the data results show a total of 77 repetitions across the 8 pairs, with a majority of speech repetitions (@xmath0, (@xmath1, including gesture and speech-gesture repetitions). analyses further show the different functions of these repetitions, based on the modality, as reported in while a majority of the repetitions occur in corrective feedback sequences (@xmath2, including 'uptake'), it is interesting to note that 25 instances are used to display alignment and understanding, with a majority being in the visual-gestural modality (through gesture and speech-gesture repetitions). these quantitative results are further illustrated in the following data fragments, which are based on three pairs of the corpus (pairs 8, 10, and 11). they focus on cases of embodied repetitions more specifically, as well as the linguistic levels involved (lexical, syntactic, phonological and morphological) looking more closely at the relationship between gesture and speech. ## illustrative cases: gesture or speech only repetition these examples have shown cases of both gesture and speech repetitions in contexts of coconstruction to highlight several linguistic aspects of the target language (lexical, syntactic, and phonological). the next examples illustrate cases in which the repeated elements are either speech or gesture only, following the repair initiated by the l1 speaker. ## conclusion the aim of this preliminary corpus-based study was to highlight the role of gesture in l2 interactions in contexts of repair and coconstruction during other-repetitions. even though repetitions tend to be mostly verbal and relate to linguistic content, several cases of embodied repetitions have shown that gestures may further contribute to mutual understanding and alignment. as the literature has suggested, matching gestures can be used to serve several functions, both interactional-and pedagogical-oriented to display alignment, understanding, and recipiency, or to gain access to a linguistic feature in the l2, using repetition as a way for the l2 speaker to perhaps better memorize the target words all the while being engaged in the interaction. embodied repetitions were shown to emerge across three different types of linguistic issues, at the lexical, syntactic, morphological and phonological levels. in addition, the analyses illustrated different types of temporal coordination between the repeated elements with cases of speech-or gesture-only repetition, following the repair initiated by the l1 speaker, highlighting different types of orientations towards the learning sequence. in some cases, the gestures epitomized the pedagogical-oriented sequence initiated by the l1 speaker, leading to a joint instructional focus, while in other cases it was mostly used to display more interaction-oriented features, such as intersubjectivity, alignment, and mutual understanding. however, the number of occurrences in the data under study remains relatively limited, so more work should be done on the rest of the corpus to complement these preliminary findings.