Temporal gestures in Afrikaans

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigated how first language Afrikaans speakers gesture about time, deliberately and spontaneously. This research aims to provide insight into what axis is referred to when thinking and speaking about time, and therefore further add research to the concept of the mental timeline. The main research questions for this study are 'What axis do L1 Afrikaans speakers predominantly use when deliberately and spontaneously gesturing about time to indicate where the future and the past lies?, and 'Concerning sagittal gestures, do L1 Afrikaans speakers spontaneously refer to an implicit temporal axis, which is reflected in the usage of hands when referring to time?. Both main questions have one main sub question. For the first one, is the sub question is 'Do L1 Afrikaans speakers rely on the same spatial axis to talk about and spontaneously gesture about time? For the second main question, the sub question goes as follows: 'Is the lateral axis reflected in the right hand used for the future and the left hand used for the past?. It is further analysed how the deliberate and spontaneous gestures differ.This study consisted of 96 Afrikaans first language speakers, of which 64 took part in the deliberate gestures experiment and 32 in the spontaneous gesture experiment. Overall, there were two types of conditions, the deictic and sequence temporal reference, and the spatial language and non-spatial language condition. These conditions were compared and analysed, and what affect they might have on the temporal gestures produced.The results of this study reproduce and build on previous studies done on temporal gestures which have shown that the flow of time on either cultural artefacts (such as orthography and graphs) or spatio-temporal metaphors in a specific language influence how speakers anchor their temporal gestures on a certain axis. Findings showed that in these experiments, spatio-temporal language was the main influence amongst Afrikaans speakers. Further analysis also lead to the assumption that there is an implicit timeline, shown through the use of hands for the future and the past.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University