Handling talk

Abstract

Abstract This paper discusses how a particular type of recurrent gesture, the holding away gesture, highlights and structures spoken utterances in German and Savosavo, a Papuan language spoken in Solomon Islands in the Southwest Pacific. In particular, the paper poses the following questions: What kinds of discursive functions of this gesture are observable in these speech communities? How do they map onto the two speech communities? Are there cross-linguistic similarities and differences detectable? What motivates similarity and variation across speech communities? Utilizing Fraser’s (1999) pragmatic classification of discourse markers, it is shown that the holding away gesture shows the connection of topics and messages. For both languages, we explore the functional diversity of the gesture. Some functions are found in both data sets, though the proportions differ, while others are exclusively found in one or the other. Finally, we discuss how differences in discourse type and interactional setting may facilitate specific forms and uses of the holding away gesture.