A Case of Co-Speech Gestures

A wonderfull new video on YouTube of two guys (programmers, it says) talking and 'co-speech-gesturing' (is that a verb?). "Real programmers use sign language" (by ekabanov) I think it is safe to assume that it is for real. Their whole behaviour looks too natural and wacky to be scripted. I also think this is a great case study to spend some time on while discussing some of the ideas of David McNeill. Because what we have here is what his theories and ideas are concerned with. There is (of course) no sign language nor did I spot any other 'emblematic gesture' (those vulgar things you get fined or jailed for or the goofy ones that seem to be must-haves for ad campaigns). I also do not see any pantomime. No, this is the stuff they like in Chicago: Co-speech gestures. An episode full of deictics, beats, iconic and metaphoric gestures, right?

From the McNeill lab: A misconception has arisen about the nature of the gesture categories described in Hand and Mind, to wit, that they are mutually exclusive bins into which gestures should be dumped. In fact, pretty much any gesture is going to involve more than one category. Take a classic upward path gesture of the sort that many speakers produce when they describe the event of the cat climbing up the pipe in our cartoon stimulus. This gesture involves an iconic path-for-path mapping, but is also deictic, in that the gesture is made with respect to an origo --that is, it is situated within a deictic field. Even "simple" beats are often made in a particular location which the speaker has given further structure (e.g. by setting up an entity there and repeatedly referring to it in that spatial location). Metaphoric gestures are de facto iconic gestures, given that metaphor entails iconicity. The notion of a type, therefore, should be considered as a continuum --with a given gesture having more or less iconicity, metaphoricity, etc.

Wrong! Apparently the main problems of McNeill's typology of gestures, that has sent many an engineer on a wild goose hunt for iconic gestures, are now even recognized at the source (McNeill, 1992). It is not mutually exclusive but rather an index of the functioning of a gesture ('as a beat' - 'through spatial reference (deictic)' - 'referring thorugh iconicity to something concrete' - 'referring via iconicity first to something concrete and second through metaphor to something abstract'). Good. I never liked 'beats' for example. I don't think I ever saw one. But to say that it was a misconception... I vaguely recall an annotation procedure called the 'beat filter' that begs to differ. Anyway, at least this clears up the discussions regarding 'metaphoric gestures' considerably [they are de facto also iconic, the metaphor functions on another level]. And it also clears the way for an annotation of this video. Any volunteers? Well, you would have to get a decent file of the movie instead of the YouTube flash stuff anyway, so let's forget about it. McNeill wrote a new book recently (2005) which is mostly about growth points. But before you read the summary by McNeill you might want to check Kendon's brilliant poem called 'The Growth Point', which he delivered at McNeill's festen. I find it neatly captures my feelings towards growth points (and more that is beyond my grasp). I am at once awed, baffled, and stupefied when I read about growth points and catchments. And so it goes. Again I tried to get it. Again I failed to learn anything from reading about growth points. One thing only. If David McNeill (or Susan Duncan) is right, then annotating gestures in episodes like this will be eternal hell :-) And without the speech it will not work. Thank God. I can go to bed with a clear conscience. Books: McNeill, D. (Fall 2005) Gesture and Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McNeill, D. (2000) (Ed.). Language and Gesture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gesture Definitions

I am going to try and coin some definitions regarding gestures.

A gesture is any act, except speech, by which we intend to communicate something beyond the act itself

This definition includes all normal gestures, that have meaning (the message that was communicated intentionally) because of cultural conventions (including languages) or iconicity, and all such acts (like giving flowers) that serve, mostly through context, as bearers of an additional meaning (like an apology). Speech is viewed as basically the same type of behavior (it fits the definition), but speech is given an exceptional status because of its importance and because it has certain characteristics that set it apart from other gestures. Excluded are all acts which either do not communicate anything (for example because the actor is not aware of an observer) or which only communicate themselves to an observer (”[look at me,] I am fishing/reading/sleeping/walking”).

I further wish to emphase the difference between normal, straightforward gestures and those acts that serve some other purpose in the first instance and only serve as gestures (or rather ‘gestures of something‘) in the second instance like the example of giving flowers to apologize. If I wish to distinguish between these different gestures I will add the term ’simple’ to the first category and ‘complex’ to the second category.

A gesture-simple is a gesture where the (sole) purpose of the act is to communicate

A gesture-complex is first some action but communicates an additional message in the second instance

I tried to find better words to express what I mean, but it’s the best I could come up with so far (it has been brewing for about a year, see one of my first posts).

Note that any gesture-simple may also be a gesture-complex (even a speech act can be a gesture-complex). I tried to explain this with this example of Pee Wee Reese standing by Jackie Robinson in the face of racist fan-abuse. The shoulder embrace was both a gesture-simple and a gesture-complex.

The gesture that touched a nation (source)

There are important reasons for making these distinctions (but I forgot them ). Well, at least it will allow me (and maybe you) to better analyze observations of gesture. And perhaps it is necessary to be precise if you want to make statements about gestures. For example, I think that people can typically see that a movement is a gesture-simple from just its appearance but this is not true for a gesture-complex. I think that people easily miss that an action was intended as a gesture-complex or, vice versa, see/read too much in what was just some action, for example in this cartoon from Garfield:

Jon mistakes Garfield’s intentions (source)

Let us see how far these definitions can take us. Or does anyone have better suggestions?

And a final wild speculation: Women are not able to see a man’s action as just that action but are always convinced it is some gesture-complex (if we do not bring flowers we do not care, if we do bring flowers we have something to apologize for [but we just thought they would be nice on the table]). Men conversely tend to miss most of the complex gestures made by women (when they wear something nice and new to show their appreciation of some event for example). Any takers?

In memoriam: Marcel Marceau, silent yet eloquent

Hero of the ‘once nearly lost art of pantomime’, Marcel Marceau (images), has recently died at the age of 84. Pop-out
A nice tribute (proceed to many others at YouTube at your leisure) Mime Marceau was born as Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg, France. He died on September 22 this year. From what I gather of the many tributes and obituaries he was an exceptional mime artist. He is often said to have revitalized the art (even singlehandedly ). That he enjoyed world wide recognition is illustrated by an older movie from a trip to Japan, where he is warmly received. Or possibly the Japanese are simply very fond of pantomime? It is strange how this art, which is so cherished and admired by some, is unappreciated by others. The wikipedia says: “Of [Marceau’s] summation of the ages of man in the famous Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death, one critic said: “He accomplishes in less than two minutes what most novelists cannot do in volumes.”. But if you read research on gesture or sign language, pantomime is often what the writers set themselves off against. It is often used to make distinctions between that which is studied (linguistic or at least semiotic systems) and that which is not studied (mere pantomime). There are also those who seek to distinguish different gestural mechanism in signed discourse (where signers may alternate pantomimic and lexical/grammatical strategies to convey meaning) who talk about ‘gesture versus sign’. To me that is a strange distinction, for even ‘frozen’ (in the sense of Cuxac and Sallandre) lexical signs are gestures in my definition. What would be more appropriate is to label it ‘pantomime versus sign language’, if you wish to indicate a difference in level of conventionality. I think it could be very productive to study the mechanisms by which mime artists create meaning or express themselves. In countless gesture studies the iconic nature of gesture has been treated (from Tyler (1870) to Mueller (1998)). Each time the same mechanism emerge: meaning is created through imitation of acts, through embodiment, and through molding and sketching in the air. The same appears to be true of pantomime. At least those strategies are certainly used. But there may be more. Poetry pushes the boundaries of what can be done with spoken or written language. Perhaps mime as an art form pushes the boundaries of what can be done with gesture? I believe sign language poetry and pantomime are brothers in arms. Not only is beauty thus created, but people are shown new ways to express themselves more eloquently in gesture. Obituaries (among many others) in The Times, and on BBC News. Update October 2: There is a hilarious Dutch parody of a meeting between Marceau and Ivo Niehe, from Koefnoen (video).

Buckingham Palace Plonker

There is a funny little gesture story in the news these days. It is about a guard who is making little gestures (and doing a little dance) while he is supposed to be standing very still. The peak of the stroke of a wanker gesture? (source)

On the YouTube: Buckingham Palace Plonker. "Shocking behavior by one of the Queen's Guards in front of Buckingham Palace. Exclusive footage never seen before in front of Buckingham Palace." (little dance - checking time)

Elsewhere the Telegraph reports: "The video clip shows him turning his head - apparently to catch the attention of a colleague - before shaking his right fist up and down. Perhaps realizing that he is being watched, he quickly morphs the gesture into a more typical if slightly camp wave, before resuming his sentry duty." That is a nice and detailed analysis of the gesture that the Foot Guard is making. A wanker gesture that is camouflaged by morphing it into a wave. I concur. And whoever made the analysis, please keep up the good work. Update 1 hour later: It could also be a combination of 'wanker' and 'hurry up', possibly sending a message like 'hey wanker, hurry up". Maybe his colleague was slow on his routine? (see the comments in the Sun)

Evolution according to Tomas Persson & Co

[email] Hi Jeroen, Happened upon your blog. Thought you might enjoy this paper on a proposed iconic-gestural origin of language. Or perhaps another of the publications [from SEDSU]. All the best, Tomas Persson

Frontpage illustration from the paper. Well, I checked it out and for all those interested in evolution it might be nice to do the same. The paper's full title is 'Bodily mimesis as “the missing link” in human cognitive evolution', by Jordan Zlatev, Tomas Persson and Peter Gärdenfors. First impression: Strange how people tend to think that the topic of their study (in Lund's case it is a workpackage on 'imitation and mimesis') is the one decisive factor in human evolution. And I never have a shred of evidence to prove them wrong. But it will be interesting to read their case in more detail. {I, for one, believe that it is our ability to blog that sets us apart from other animals. And, of course, I mean blogging in a broad sense. For what is blogging if it is not the continual provision of unelicited non-information on how we feel about things and about what we know. Humans have always 'blogged', even before the internet and before the alphabet. We filled the world with our own thoughts and listened to ourselves, not to anyone else. This constant egoistic reflection created an evolutionary pressure whereby only individuals who could sustain this confrontation with the inner blogger, were still confident enough to reproduce. Since then, most of the strains of humanity who had any shame or humility left have died out in (relative) silence. What is left is what we are now: wanderers of the web, captains of comments, and slaves to our next posting}

[SEDSU's main hypothesis:] There remains, despite centuries of debate, no consensus about what makes human beings intellectually and culturally different from other species, and even less so concerning the underlying sources of these differences. The main hypothesis of the project Stages in the Evolution and Development of Sign Use (SEDSU) is that it is not language per se, but an advanced ability to engage in sign use that constitutes the characteristic feature of human beings; in particular the ability to differentiate between the sign itself, be it gesture, picture, word or abstract symbol, and what it represents, i.e. the “semiotic function” (Piaget 1945).

Substantial work has of course been done on gesture (or sign language) with primates (see this entire issue of Gesture). In some cases chimpansees or gorillas were taught to use gestures or pictures as signs (with a semiotic function). How does that fit into SEDSU's picture? By intuition, I would sooner propose that it is our ability to create 'systems of systems' of signs that sets us apart. Or maybe our ability to create and remember such large quantities and varieties of signs. I think even most animals and perhaps (what the hell) plants can be argued to 'gesture'. Do they differentiate between a signal and that which it represents? I think they do. Any animal that warns his group against predators is sending out a signal. The group members see the signal, not the predator, right? Or perhaps they can only communicate about what is actually present and not refer to things in other times and places? Enough speculation. It is time to read. I expect your reactions to the paper within this week... ps. Did you wonder about the semiotic function of the {curly brackets} as used above? Then you must be human. The answer: I signaled a humorous intermezzo.

Air Guitar Toy by Mannak

Ronald Mannak, a former colleague, is now developing toys at his own 1uptoys. His toys at hand are the SilverLit V-Beat AirDrums, AirGuitar and BoomBox. This week our university's 'newspaper' has an interview with him: Luchtgitaar met Geluid. And here he is in a video demonstrating his AirGuitar: Still a long way to go before he can try for world champion airguitar, I think. But the product is interesting to consider. At first I thought it looked quite nice and cool. But then I wondered: why would anyone want to actually have an AirGuitar? Isn't the point of playing air guitar that you don't have to have the damn thing? If I am going to buy something to play guitar I might as well, or even better, buy a real (toy) guitar, right? Is this going to be cheaper than a real guitar? I would guess that the additional electronics will not be cheaper than the bits of extra wood, metal or plastic needed for a physical guitar. But then again, microelectronics can be cheap if they are sold in large quantities. So, is this going to provide a better experience? I think that by definition that is impossible. The point of playing air guitar is to imitate the actual playing, to go thorugh the motions and almost 'feel like' you are really playing. In other words, it can never be better than the real thing, or can it? Maybe it can. Maybe it can help people who can not play guitar 'feel more like' they are playing guitar. Maybe the AirGuitar can take care of the difficult stuff like putting your fingers in the right position on the strings and remembering the chords and licks, and leave the exciting stuff to you, like strumming wildly, creating vibrato or smashing it. That would be neat, Ronald if you read this, can you make it so it can be smashed?

Art of Gesture on Stage

Here is nice article on the art of gesture in theatre: Music students help revive the art of Baroque gesture. Reviving an ancient art: students from the University’s Faculty of Music worked with theatre director Helga Hill to present a fully-staged and gestured season of Eccles’ The Judgment of Paris: Above, Paul Bentley as Paris and Janelle Hopman as Venus. [Photo: Mark Wilson] (source) Johann Jakob Engel (DE) wrote in a very interesting way about gestures, especially in Ideen zu einer Mimik. From the perspective of actors on stage, he analyzed how gestures function. I read only the paper by Sara Fortuna (2003) in Gesture: Gestural expression, perception and language. A discussion of the ideas of Johan Jakob Engel. It is intriguing reading material. A bit difficult to summarize in a few sentences here, so I will not try. An open mind, keen on philosophical musings is a good companion while chewing on Engel's thoughts. If we go further back in time, the work of Quintillian (and Cicero) is related. They wrote for orators, which were actors as much as they were politicians and lawyers. Wittgenstein is also referenced a lot.

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft is making a big deal out of their Surface. Basically, it is a regular computer with some fancy software that works together with a new type of table sized touchscreen. It enables people to work with the ten fingers of two hands or with artefacts (multi-touch) and it is sensitive to pressure. This idea was most eloquently presented by Jeff Han earlier, maybe Microsoft bought the idea? Anyway, here it is, one of the most expensive tables you will ever desire: Microsoft Surface parody (source) See also Ianus' Cabinet and Palette, the Studiolab Surface.

Deafblind Haptic Sign Language

A Dutch local newspaper, Leidsch Dagblad, has written a good report of the annual holiday gathering organized by the national foundation for the Deafblind (De Nederlandse Stichting voor Doofblinden). About 70 deafblind people (and their interpreters) apparently had a good time there. Impressions of the gathering (source) I previously wrote about their four hands sign language (vierhandengebarentaal): 'signs that made a life worth living'. I think this is a language that is not very well known or understood. So, wouldn't it be great to set up some research on this haptic sign language. There are plenty of people who are interested in sign language because it provides insight in the human language capacity. They compare how people listen and talk (and gesture) to how they watch and sign (and gesture). General human language processing must be separated from modality dependant processing stuff (though it is actually more like oral/auditory+visual/gestural vs. visual/gestural). Very interesting nevertheless. Lots of brain research with fMRI scanners... Just imagine what we could learn by studying deafblind people while letting them 'talk' or 'listen' in haptic sign language. They should probably go two-by-two? Or else, what would be the stimulus material to which to must respond? Prepared haptic sign language material? Hmm, maybe some observations should be the first step, or recordings using video or perhaps datagloves? Anyway, I would love to see more of it. Investigate how deafblind people manage to defy the odds and together create a language of their own. They are apparently already telling jokes. When shall we see/feel the first haptic sign language poem? And how can it be captured, transcribed or annotated? What sort of grammar does it have? Does iconicity play a role in sign formation and language use? Is iconicity achieved using similar strategies as in gesture and sign language? An ambitious man could write a research proposal for a nice post-doc position about it. Sometimes you don't have to go to small villages in Africa or the Middle East to find interesting languages. Sometimes you just need to hold out your hand. A professor in Utrecht who does haptic research: Astrid Kappers Professors in Nijmegen who study language: Levinson - Hagoort

In Love with SiSi

A wonderful bit of news has been hitting the headlines:

BBC News: Technique links words to signing: Technology that translates spoken or written words into British Sign Language (BSL) has been developed by researchers at IBM. The system, called SiSi (Say It Sign It) was created by a group of students in the UK. SiSi will enable deaf people to have simultaneous sign language interpretations of meetings and presentations. It uses speech recognition to animate a digital character or avatar. IBM says its technology will allow for interpretation in situations where a human interpreter is not available. It could also be used to provide automatic signing for television, radio and telephone calls.

Read the full story at IBM: IBM Research Demonstrates Innovative 'Speech to Sign Language' Translation System Demo or scripted scenario? Serendipity. Just this week a man called Thomas Stone inquired whether he could get access to the signing avatars of the eSign project. I passed him on to Inge Zwitserlood. She first passed him on to the eSign coordinator at Hamburg University, which was a dead end. Finally, he was pointed to the University of East Anglia, to John Glauert. And who is the man behind the sign synthesis in SiSi? From the press release from IBM:

John Glauert, Professor of Computing Sciences, UEA, said: "SiSi is an exciting application of UEA's avatar signing technology that promises to give deaf people access to sign language services in many new circumstances." This project is an example of IBM's collaboration with non-commercial organisations on worthy social and business projects. The signing avatars and the award-winning technology for animating sign language from a special gesture notation were developed by the University of East Anglia and the database of signs was developed by RNID (Royal National Institute for Deaf People).

Well done professor Glauert, thank you for keeping the dream alive. Now for some criticism: the technology is not very advanced yet. It is not at a level where I think it is wise to make promises about useful applications. The signing is not very natural and I think much still needs to be done to achieve of basic level of acceptability for users. But it is good to see that the RNID is on board, although they choose their words of praise carefully. It is amazing how a nice technology story gets so much media attention so quickly. Essentially these students have just linked a speech recognition module to a sign synthesis module. The inherent problems with machine translation (between any two languages) is not even discussed. And speech recognition only works under very limited conditions and produces limited results.

IBM says: "This type of solution has the potential in the future to enable a person giving a presentation in business or education to have a digital character projected behind them signing what they are saying. This would complement the existing provision, allowing for situations where a sign language interpreter is not available in person".

First, speech recognition is incredibly poor in a live event like a business presentation (just think of interruptions, sentences being rephrased, all the gesturing that is linked to the speech, etc.) and second, the idea that it will be (almost) as good as an interpreter is ludicrous for at least the next 50 years. The suggestion alone will probably be enough to put off some Deaf people. They might (rightly?) see it as a way for hearing people to try to avoid the costs of good interpreters. I think the media just fell in love at first sight with the signing avatar and the promises it makes. I also love SiSi, but as I would like to say to her and to all the avatars I've loved before: My love is not unconditional. If you hear what I say, will you show me a sign?