Language And Gesture In Chinese Conversation

Language and Gesture in Chinese Conversation is a study of the semantic and temporal relationships between the speech and the gesture in the context of discourse interaction in Mandarin Chinese spoken in Taiwan. The cross-modal representation of ideas in natural discourse reveals the nature of BĬSHŎU-SHUŌHUÀ in the communication of meaning. The study addresses two central issues: • How do language and gesture represent the semantic information of various types of ideas? • How do the linguistic representation and gestural depiction pattern temporally in the communication of cross-modal information? The intended audience of this book are scholars in many academic fields, including linguistics, language and gesture, human communication, cognition, cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, sociology, linguistic anthropology, speech pathology, and speech therapy.

This book meets the demands of scholars of Chinese linguistics as well as researchers on multimodality from a cross-linguistic and comparative perspective. It sheds new light on the traditional study of Chinese discourse and grammar. The volume brings together leading scholars working on the state-of-the-art research on this topic from all over the world, contributing to the understanding of the multimodal nature of human interaction at large.

This book meets the demands of scholars of Chinese linguistics as well as researchers on multimodality from a cross-linguistic and comparative perspective. It sheds new light on the traditional study of Chinese discourse and grammar. The volume brings together leading scholars working on the state-of-the-art research on this topic from all over the world, contributing to the understanding of the multimodal nature of human interaction at large.

Volume II of the handbook offers the state of the art on how body movements are used for communication around the world. Topics include the functions of body movements, their contexts of occurrence, their forms and meanings, their integration with speech, and how bodily motion can function as language. An interdisciplinary chapter on ‘embodiment’ explores the body and its role in the grounding of language from current theoretical perspectives.

One major feature of conversation is that people take turns to speak. Based on audio and video recordings of naturally-occurring Mandarin conversation, this book explores the role of syntax, prosody, body movements as well as their interplay in turn organization in the temporal unfolding of action and interaction. Adopting the methodology of interactional linguistics, this book offers a fine-grained analysis of the three multimodal resources and the sequential environments in which they appear. It demonstrates that syntax, prosody and body movements not only converge but also diverge in projecting possible turn completion. As one of the few systematic studies of multimodality in Mandarin interaction, this book will be of interest to researchers in Chinese linguistics, interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, and multimodal analysis.

The Language of Asian Gestures explores Asian gestures as a non-verbal language within the context of films and dramas. This book provides a cross-cultural Asian perspective on a range of important common gestures and their meanings, covering a range of Asian regions including Korea, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, and Pakistan. While most studies focus on text-based communication, gestures find themselves overshadowed by text and speech. Asian gestures, too, often reside in the shadow of Eurocentric viewpoints. This book will shift this dynamic and amplify the voices that have typically been marginalised within 20th-century Eurocentric discussions. The book will be informative for students and researchers interested in Asian languages, cultures, film studies, and pragmatics. It bridges the gap between words and gestures, unveiling a world of concealed meanings and enriching our understanding of diverse forms of expression.

Chinese is a discourse-oriented language and the underlying mechanisms of the language involve encoding and decoding so the language can be correctly delivered and understood. To date, there has been a lack of consolidation at the discourse level such that a reference framework for understanding the language in a top-down fashion is still underdeveloped. The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Discourse Analysis is the first to showcase the latest research in the field of Chinese discourse analysis to consolidate existing findings, put the language in both theoretical and socio-functional perspectives, offer guidance and insights for further research and inspire innovative ideas for exploring the Chinese language in the discourse domain. The book is aimed at both students and scholars researching in the areas of Chinese linguistics and discourse analysis.