Availability and making significant co-speech gestures in L2 classrooms

Abstract

The study describes the English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ recurrent hand gestures and the design of co-speech hand gestures with gaze immediately in IRE and repair sequences. The primary aim is to examine the hand gestures at the TRP and co-speech hand gestures along with other semiotic resources (such as gaze, body postures, locations, movement in space, moving his head around different students) that teachers draw on when they address students to answer questions and in and after repair initiation in various classroom contexts. The study adopts the methodological framework of Conversation Analysis to investigate the teachers’ hand gestures and co-speech hand gestures. The database consists of 30 video-recorded Saudi different EFL lessons from which 35 instances have been identified for the analysis. The study focuses on two embodied phenomena that are relevant to classroom participation. At first, the analysis of these hand gestures is combined with all other multimodal resources deployed by themselves and students to show their functions. One recurrent hand gesture is that the teachers insert their hands inside their pockets as they select the next speaker students for a turn and after they initiate other repairs designed for selected students. The hold of this gesture can elicit the students’ next action and encourage self-selection without being in a mutual orientation with the teachers. The second recurrent hand gesture is that teachers put one hand on their chin after they ask questions and after they initiate repair. It is found that the teachers circulate while sustaining such a hand gesture to select the next speaker. The hold of this gesture can elicit the students’ next action. These hand gestures pragmatically represent the teachers’ availability actions as the recipient of the students’ next actions which can be held until the students accomplish the next suitable interactional move. In addition, the analysis of these two hand gestures reveals that the pockets and chin are two temporary positions where another can perform various co-speech hand gestures that are deployed in a way that makes their gesture salient. Second, the study sheds light on the teachers’ gaze and co-speech hand gestures as they initiate other repairs for pursuing the students’ corrections/responses. The findings show that teachers are intelligible actors who can make value for their gesticulation.