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had completely different prosodic contours in another context. Then,
because of the overlapping speech, it means that speaker B is copying
prosodic information while speaker A is still speaking and this exactly
matches the pattern we have for gesture since there was also a gesture
overlap in between the model and the copy.
5.2 Repetition as a hedge
Just before the extract below, two male participants were discussing
a school experience one of them had. His teacher was very strict
and forbade the children to leave class. Once, he needed to go to the
bathroom, didn't dare to ask the teacher and messed himself. As his
mother actually worked in the school as a teacher, he went to see her.
In the example, speaker A, after acknowledging the narrative with a
backchannel, asks if the mess showed in a verbally elliptical utterance
(“parce que t'étais tout”, because you were all ). The question is, however,
not exactly elliptical as it is completed by a gesture, which is repeated
by speaker B in his answer.
Example 2
1 A: parce ce que t'étais tout (0.075) because you were all
{gesture 1 ———————}
2 B: non ça se voyait peut être /non/ je me rappelle plus trop /
ouais/ mais je crois pas que ça se voyait mais bon euh @ ça
ça devait sentir tu vois @ and then, no perhaps it didn't show /
no/, I don't quite remember /yeah/, but I think it didn't show, but
uh it must have smelt you see
{gesture 2 —}{gesture 3 —————————————}{gesture
4 —————————————————————————-}
Figure 4a illustrates the metaphoric gesture produced by speaker
A who starts with both hands slightly rising from his lap and places
them in the lower periphery, palms oriented towards his body. He then
extends his hands away from his body thus representing the extent of
the mess. The whole gesture from the beginning of the preparation
phase to the end of the retraction lasts 0.96 s. One frame before the
end of the retraction of Gesture 1, speaker B initiates a repetition of the
gesture (Figure 4b), yet the two gesture strokes are not in overlap. The
difference between the two gestures as illustrated in the fi gures is that
Gesture 2 is much shorter (0.60 s) than Gesture 1, the movement is not
as ample and the fi ngers are much more relaxed than those of Gesture 1.
What is interesting, however, is that immediately after Gesture 2,
B produces an emblem (Gesture 3)—which is of no particular interest
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