summary: A new study confirms that Italians gesture more than Swedes, but more importantly, it reveals the diverse functions and frequencies of gestures across cultures. By analyzing storytelling styles, the study found that Italians prefer realistic gestures to guide the flow of narrative, while Swedes prefer representational gestures to depict actions and events.
This difference suggests that cultural differences in storytelling and rhetorical styles significantly influence gestural communication, suggesting deeper conceptual differences in narrative construction across cultures.
Key facts:
- Cultural gesture frequency: Italians use twice as many gestures as Swedes when telling a story, with an average of 22 gestures per 100 words compared to Swedes who use 11 gestures.
- The functions of gestures vary depending on culture: Italians mostly use realistic gestures in storytelling, while Swedes use representational gestures, indicating distinct narrative and rhetorical preferences.
- Implications of the study: These findings challenge stereotypes and emphasize gestures as an integral part of communication, reflecting diverse cultural approaches to storytelling and information exchange.
source: the border
When we speak, we often use our hands in addition to words. Gesture is a phenomenon that has been observed across languages and cultures. It is commonly believed that some cultures use more gestures than others.
To see if the deep-rooted stereotype of Italians gesturing more than other cultures was true, researchers in Sweden examined differences in gesture rate and function between Italians and Swedes who were telling a story to a friend.
“We showed that Italians gesture more than Swedes, which was expected,” said Dr. Maria Graziano, first author of the study. Frontiers in communication Article and associate professor at the Humanities Laboratory at Lund University.
“Most interestingly, we show that people from different cultures use gestures differently, due to different rhetorical styles and different ways of constructing a story.”
Talking hands
In collaboration with Professor Marianne Gollberg, a psycholinguist in the same laboratory, Graziano asked 12 Italian and 12 Swedish participants to retell the story of a 90-second clip from the cartoon “Pingu” to a friend who had not watched the cartoon.
Researchers who study gestures typically use cartoons because the characters often do not speak, and viewers can retell the story using their own words without input from the source.
As expected, the results showed that Italian speakers made gestures more frequently overall. For every 100 words, Italians used an average of 22 gestures, while Swedes used only 11 gestures.
In addition to the frequency of gestures, the researchers noted who used the gestures and for what purpose.
“When we tell stories, we combine several types of information: we introduce characters and events, describe actions, and explain why. We check that the listener understands what we are saying. If we are telling a story based on animation, we refer to the act of watching as well,” Graziano explained. .
“When we describe an action, we are more likely to produce a gesture that represents that action; whereas if we talk about characters or settings, we are more likely to produce a gesture that ‘presents’ that information to the listener.”
Italians tended to use more realistic gestures – those that mainly commented on the story and introduced new parts of it to the listener. Instead, Swedes tended to use more histrionic gestures, often representing the events and actions of the story.
“This suggests that Italians and Swedes adopt different rhetorical methods in telling the story and that they conceive of it differently,” Graziano noted.
How cultures think about stories
At present, it is unclear why Swedes and Italians might conceive of narratives differently. One possible explanation is that some cultures attribute different values to narrative than others, which may lead to different ways of organizing speech content and influencing gestures. The researchers pointed out that this needs to be confirmed through further studies.
Future studies should also include a larger number of participants, including pairs of participants who do not know each other, because familiarity may influence the rhetorical choices speakers make. An approach that looks more closely at the content of speech and the function of gestures could also help understand why cultures differ in narrative production, the researchers said.
“I hope this study will help people look at gestures from a different perspective and go beyond stereotypical and folkloric views. Gestures are produced in all languages and cultures, and they are not just an embellishment of speech; they are closely linked to what we say and how we want to say it,” Graziano concluded. “.
About Communication Research News and Social Neuroscience
author: Deborah Birchner
source: the border
communication: Deborah Birchner – Frontier
picture: Image credited to Neuroscience News
Original search: Open access.
“Providing evidence of an outdated stereotype: Italians and Swedes gesture differently” by Maria Graziano et al. Frontiers in communication
a summary
Providing evidence of an outdated stereotype: Italians and Swedes gesture differently
Across cultures and languages, spontaneous speech is often accompanied by gestures. There is a common belief that people in Italy gesture more than people in Northern Europe, such as in Sweden. Despite this general assumption, few studies empirically investigate cultural differences in gesture frequency and gesture function under similar conditions.
This study compares the spoken and gestural behaviors of speakers of Italian and Swedish, which are assumed to represent gesture-rich versus gesture-poor cultures. We examine the gestural behavior of groups in terms of frequency, and in terms of potential differences in rhetorical style that explores the distribution of gestural functions (referential vs. pragmatic) across narrative levels (narrative, metanarrative, and metanarrative).
The results show that (1) Italians generally gesture more than Swedes; (2) Italians produce more realistic gestures than Swedes who produce more referential gestures; (3) Both groups show sensitivity to the narrative level: referential gestures occur mainly with narrative sentences, and pragmatic gestures with descriptive and narrative sentences. However, overall group preferences for different jobs still lead to different patterns.
These results indicate that the two groups differed in their rate of gestures and, more interestingly, in their rhetorical styles, with one focusing on events and actions in speech and gesture (Swedish), and the other alternating between events in speech and gesture, highlighting prosody. Of new information by gesture only (Italian).
We suggest that the results indicate that the two groups conceptualize narrative production in different ways reflected in two different rhetorical styles revealed more by gesture production than speech.
