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Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)

superlinguo.com

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Re: Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)

#11

Post by taneq »

keanebean86 wrote: post #5
jrockway wrote: post #2

I went to high school in Japan for a year. Something that tripped me up for a while is the gesture for "come here". It's equivalent to the English gesture for "go away". (Try gesturing "go away" like you're shooing a bug away and "come here" like you want to tell someone a secret. Your hand flips 180 degrees, but it's basically the same gesture.)

My Indian coworkers shake their head side to side for yes and no. When I first starting working with them I was always a little mad that they never agreed with me until I realized what was going on. You can tell if it's yes or no depending on speed but thanks to covid WFH for months I've forgotten which is which. Going back to the office is going to be an adjustment.

There are something like four distinct head-waggle motions with different meanings.

Re: Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)

#12

Post by totetsu »

jrockway wrote: post #2

I went to high school in Japan for a year. Something that tripped me up for a while is the gesture for "come here". It's equivalent to the English gesture for "go away". (Try gesturing "go away" like you're shooing a bug away and "come here" like you want to tell someone a secret. Your hand flips 180 degrees, but it's basically the same gesture.)

I've had a few confusing moments with train conductors shooing me off a train, but actually telling me to hurry up and get on.

Re: Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)

#14

Post by frequentnapper »

jrockway wrote: post #2

I went to high school in Japan for a year. Something that tripped me up for a while is the gesture for "come here". It's equivalent to the English gesture for "go away". (Try gesturing "go away" like you're shooing a bug away and "come here" like you want to tell someone a secret. Your hand flips 180 degrees, but it's basically the same gesture.)

Not exactly sure what tripped you up. The palm is facing downwards, but the hand motion is opposite and easy to tell even if you're a foreigner. Source: am foreigner living in Japan

Re: Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)

#15

Post by bryanrasmussen »

It would be interesting to know if there is any difference in the types of gestures employed https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/a-primer-on-communica...

http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/body_languag...

I tend to use metaphoric gestures a lot by splitting complicated subjects up into groups, and then using gestures to illustrate the group I am discussing at the moment.

Re: Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)

#16

Post by rhyzomatic »

dang wrote: post #8

Url changed from https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/150001033323/blind-peop... , which points to this. A related article is https://www.thecut.com/2016/09/blind-people-gesture-like-sig...

Thank you dang, I originally read the first link on my phone and didn't notice that it was quoting another blog.

Re: Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)

#17

Post by monoideism »

jrockway wrote: post #2

I went to high school in Japan for a year. Something that tripped me up for a while is the gesture for "come here". It's equivalent to the English gesture for "go away". (Try gesturing "go away" like you're shooing a bug away and "come here" like you want to tell someone a secret. Your hand flips 180 degrees, but it's basically the same gesture.)

Sounds similar to the gesture for "come here" in Turkey and other Turkic countries. Which is interesting, given the putative shared origin of Japanese and Turkic languages (although the hypothesized membership of Japanese in an Altaic language superfamily is still very controversial).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages#Korean_and_Ja...

Re: Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)

#19

Post by NoodleIncident »

ardit33 wrote: post #4

1. We are born with the ability to gesture, and not something that is learned directly. So it is a in-born trait. You get the ability of speech, and gesturing tags along. (but most likely, evolutionary speaking, gesturing came first). 2. Gesturing is linked to speech/language. Different languages will have different gestures, not because they learned them, but by the grammatical structure/intonation of the language.…

I wonder what it is about Italian that leads to the stereotype, then?

Re: Blind speakers gesture like their sighted counterparts: study (2016)

#20

Post by edmundsauto »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #19
ardit33 wrote: post #4

1. We are born with the ability to gesture, and not something that is learned directly. So it is a in-born trait. You get the ability of speech, and gesturing tags along. (but most likely, evolutionary speaking, gesturing came first). 2. Gesturing is linked to speech/language. Different languages will have different gestures, not because they learned them, but by the grammatical structure/intonation of the language.…

I wonder what it is about Italian that leads to the stereotype, then?

Could be frequency, could be magnitude of the gestures, could be the gestures are more prominent/memorable/not subtle. Probably a combo, or, it's possible that the stereotype was centered around a few prominent individuals and is not actually a trait of that languages speakers.
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