Référence multimodale dans les narrations d’enfants : les gestes servent-ils à clarifier les expressions référentielles ambiguës ?

Referential gestures emerge early during children’s development. Growing up, they gradually master several multimodal resources and elaborate more complex discourse, using referring expressions often accompanied by gestures that increasingly correspond to the linguistic context and specificities of...

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Main Authors: Corrado Bellifemine, Camille Dupret
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses universitaires de Caen 2023-06-01
Series:Discours
Subjects:
Online Access:http://journals.openedition.org/discours/12466
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author Corrado Bellifemine
Camille Dupret
author_facet Corrado Bellifemine
Camille Dupret
author_sort Corrado Bellifemine
collection DOAJ
description Referential gestures emerge early during children’s development. Growing up, they gradually master several multimodal resources and elaborate more complex discourse, using referring expressions often accompanied by gestures that increasingly correspond to the linguistic context and specificities of the interactional setting. Narratives are a complex discursive genre in which the management of referential chains remains difficult for the child for a long time, and gestures may be used to clarify ambiguous referring expressions. We collected 16 narratives of French 7-9 year old children in two distinct interactional settings. 8 children produced narratives from a textless set of pictures visually shared with the observer, and 8 children recounted a story to their mother after watching a cartoon. The gestures associated to the mention of entities were analysed according to several parameters: the setting, the type of gesture, the form of the referring expression, the animacy of the referent, and the position on the referential chain. These factors were found to have little effect on the density of gestures produced. At the qualitative level, more iconic gestures were produced in the absence of the shared medium, especially when the referent was maintained, regardless of the animacy of the referent and the linguistic form chosen. On the other hand, in the presence of the set of pictures more deictic gestures were produced, especially with pronominal forms to maintain reference. Our results show that children are sensitive to the interactional setting and the knowledge shared with the interlocutor.
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spelling doaj.art-185c5a678c214ac4b3f08f7bf4cb0a6e2023-07-04T09:13:10ZengPresses universitaires de CaenDiscours1963-17232023-06-013210.4000/discours.12466Référence multimodale dans les narrations d’enfants : les gestes servent-ils à clarifier les expressions référentielles ambiguës ?Corrado BellifemineCamille DupretReferential gestures emerge early during children’s development. Growing up, they gradually master several multimodal resources and elaborate more complex discourse, using referring expressions often accompanied by gestures that increasingly correspond to the linguistic context and specificities of the interactional setting. Narratives are a complex discursive genre in which the management of referential chains remains difficult for the child for a long time, and gestures may be used to clarify ambiguous referring expressions. We collected 16 narratives of French 7-9 year old children in two distinct interactional settings. 8 children produced narratives from a textless set of pictures visually shared with the observer, and 8 children recounted a story to their mother after watching a cartoon. The gestures associated to the mention of entities were analysed according to several parameters: the setting, the type of gesture, the form of the referring expression, the animacy of the referent, and the position on the referential chain. These factors were found to have little effect on the density of gestures produced. At the qualitative level, more iconic gestures were produced in the absence of the shared medium, especially when the referent was maintained, regardless of the animacy of the referent and the linguistic form chosen. On the other hand, in the presence of the set of pictures more deictic gestures were produced, especially with pronominal forms to maintain reference. Our results show that children are sensitive to the interactional setting and the knowledge shared with the interlocutor.http://journals.openedition.org/discours/12466referring expressionsgesturesnarrativeschildrenmultimodality
spellingShingle Corrado Bellifemine
Camille Dupret
Référence multimodale dans les narrations d’enfants : les gestes servent-ils à clarifier les expressions référentielles ambiguës ?
Discours
referring expressions
gestures
narratives
children
multimodality
title Référence multimodale dans les narrations d’enfants : les gestes servent-ils à clarifier les expressions référentielles ambiguës ?
title_full Référence multimodale dans les narrations d’enfants : les gestes servent-ils à clarifier les expressions référentielles ambiguës ?
title_fullStr Référence multimodale dans les narrations d’enfants : les gestes servent-ils à clarifier les expressions référentielles ambiguës ?
title_full_unstemmed Référence multimodale dans les narrations d’enfants : les gestes servent-ils à clarifier les expressions référentielles ambiguës ?
title_short Référence multimodale dans les narrations d’enfants : les gestes servent-ils à clarifier les expressions référentielles ambiguës ?
title_sort reference multimodale dans les narrations d enfants les gestes servent ils a clarifier les expressions referentielles ambigues
topic referring expressions
gestures
narratives
children
multimodality
url http://journals.openedition.org/discours/12466
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