A context-of-use study is reported of the ‘head shake’. A large number of examples are described and compared, drawn from video recordings of naturally occasioned interactions in the circumstances of everyday life, made in Campania, Italy, central England and the Eastern United States. Eight different kinds of uses for the head shake are illustrated. It is concluded that the head shake is not to be understood simply as the kinesic equivalent of a unit of verbal expression. It appears as an expression in its own right which, furthermore, the speaker uses as a component in the construction of an utterance which, it seems, is so often a multimodal construction in which the different modalities of expression available are deployed by the speaker in the course of building a unit of expression according to the rhetorical needs of the interactive moment.
2025. On stance-taking with one-sided vs. two-sided shoulder lifts in German talk-in-interaction. Frontiers in Psychology 16
Cavents, Dries, July De Wilde & Jelena Vranjes
2025. Towards a multimodal approach for analysing interpreter's management of rapport challenge in onsite and video remote interpreting. Journal of Pragmatics 235 ► pp. 220 ff.
De Felice, Sara, Francesco Di Ciò, Danny Tompkins, Uzair Hakim, Paola Pinti, Gabriella Vigliocco & Antonia F de C Hamilton
2025. Learning with others: teacher–learner brain synchrony depends on mutual gaze and joint attention. Cerebral Cortex 35:12
Lee, Honguk & Sowon Hahn
2025. Effect of Robot Head Movement and its Timing on Human-Robot Interaction. International Journal of Social Robotics 17:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Mohr, Susanne, Anastasia Bauer & Liona Paulus
2025. Cultural Aspects of Sign Languages. In Reference Module in Social Sciences,
2025. Eye closures in spoken Hebrew. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 35:4 ► pp. 604 ff.
Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina & John Heritage
2025. Concordant assertoric nods: Embodiment of epistemic insistence. Journal of Pragmatics 246 ► pp. 203 ff.
Wu, Ruey-Jiuan Regina & John Heritage
2025. The Assertoric Nod: Non-concordant uses in responses to polar questions in English conversation. Discourse Studies 27:5 ► pp. 866 ff.
Didoni, Elena & Claudia Roberta Combei
2024. Beyond “I Didn’t Do It”: A Linguistic Analysis of Denial in US Legal Settings. Languages 9:11 ► pp. 351 ff.
Kamiya, Masaaki & Zhaosen Guo
2024. Scope of Negation, Gestures, and Prosody: The English Negative Quantifier as a Case in Point. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 53:4
Küttner, Uwe-A. & Beatrice Szczepek Reed
2024. Request for confirmation sequences in British and American English. Open Linguistics 10:1
Lehmann, Claudia
2024. Multimodal constructions revisited. Testing the strength of association between spoken and non-spoken features of Tell me about it
. Cognitive Linguistics 35:3 ► pp. 407 ff.
Higgins, Nathan C., Daniel A. Pupo, Erol J. Ozmeral & David A. Eddins
2023. Head movement and its relation to hearing. Frontiers in Psychology 14
Lücking, Andy & Jonathan Ginzburg
2023. Leading voices: dialogue semantics, cognitive science and the polyphonic structure of multimodal interaction. Language and Cognition 15:1 ► pp. 148 ff.
Panda, Payod, Molly Jane Nicholas, David Nguyen, Eyal Ofek, Michel Pahud, Sean Rintel, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Ken Hinckley & Jaron Lanier
2023. Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, ► pp. 904 ff.
van Boven, Cindy, Marloes Oomen, Roland Pfau & Lotte Rusch
Feyaerts, Kurt, Christian Rominger, Helmut Karl Lackner, Geert Brône, Annelies Jehoul, Bert Oben & Ilona Papousek
2022. In your face? Exploring multimodal response patterns involving facial responses to verbal and gestural stance-taking expressions. Journal of Pragmatics 190 ► pp. 6 ff.
Graham, Kirsty E., Gal Badihi, Alexandra Safryghin, Charlotte Grund & Catherine Hobaiter
2022. A socio-ecological perspective on the gestural communication of great ape species, individuals, and social units. Ethology Ecology & Evolution 34:3 ► pp. 235 ff.
Lutzenberger, Hannah, Roland Pfau & Connie de Vos
2022. Emergence or Grammaticalization? The Case of Negation in Kata Kolok. Languages 7:1 ► pp. 23 ff.
Pavlidou, Theodossia-Soula, Lena Gialabouki, Angeliki Alvanoudi & Christos Ananiadis
2022. On the recipients’ part: Responding with m/mm (and nods) in Greek conversations. Journal of Pragmatics 199 ► pp. 105 ff.
Rouchitsas, Alexandros & Håkan Alm
2022. Ghost on the Windshield: Employing a Virtual Human Character to Communicate Pedestrian Acknowledgement and Vehicle Intention. Information 13:9 ► pp. 420 ff.
Rouchitsas, Alexandros & Håkan Alm
2023. Smiles and Angry Faces vs. Nods and Head Shakes: Facial Expressions at the Service of Autonomous Vehicles. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 7:2 ► pp. 10 ff.
Shen, Qian & Shuangyun Yao
2022. Syntactically incomplete turns as delicate actions— A way to manage interpersonal relationships. Journal of Pragmatics 197 ► pp. 27 ff.
Sze, Felix
2022. From gestures to grammatical non-manuals in sign language: A case study of polar questions and negation in Hong Kong Sign Language. Lingua 267 ► pp. 103188 ff.
2022. Multimodal signals of high commitment in expert-to-expert contexts. Discourse & Communication 16:6 ► pp. 693 ff.
Almeida, Luiz Gustavo Paulino de & André Nogueira Xavier
2021. A negação nas línguas sinalizadas. Revista da ABRALIN► pp. 1 ff.
Li, Xiaoting
2021. Multimodal practices for negative assessments as delicate matters: Incomplete syntax, facial expressions, and head movements. Open Linguistics 7:1 ► pp. 549 ff.
Drewes, V, N Neumann, I Konstantinidis & I Helmich
2020. Spontaneous head movements characterize losing athletes during competition. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching 15:5-6 ► pp. 669 ff.
Ginzburg, Jonathan, Chiara Mazzocconi & Ye Tian
2020. Laughter as language. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5:1
Moretti, Stefania & Alberto Greco
2020. Nodding and shaking of the head as simulated approach and avoidance responses. Acta Psychologica 203 ► pp. 102988 ff.
Otsuka, Kazuhiro & Masahiro Tsumori
2020. Analyzing Multifunctionality of Head Movements in Face-to-Face Conversations Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks. IEEE Access 8 ► pp. 217169 ff.
Park, Innhwa & Jacob Kline
2020. Incomplete utterances as critical assessments. Discourse Studies 22:4 ► pp. 441 ff.
Brown, Amanda & Masaaki Kamiya
2019. Gesture in contexts of scopal ambiguity: Negation and quantification in English. Applied Psycholinguistics 40:05 ► pp. 1141 ff.
2019. Encouraging engineering undergraduates to voice their ideas worth sharing. Multidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences 6:1 ► pp. 25 ff.
Hübscher, Iris & Pilar Prieto
2019. Gestural and Prosodic Development Act as Sister Systems and Jointly Pave the Way for Children’s Sociopragmatic Development. Frontiers in Psychology 10
Puupponen, Anna
2019. Towards understanding nonmanuality: A semiotic treatment of signers’ head movements. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 4:1
Valeiras-Jurado, Julia & Noelia Ruiz-Madrid
2019. Multimodal enactment of characters in conference presentations. Discourse Studies 21:5 ► pp. 561 ff.
Valeiras-Jurado, Julia & Noelia Ruiz-Madrid
2020. When pointing becomes more than pointing: Multimodal evaluation in product pitches. Language & Communication 74 ► pp. 74 ff.
Cooperrider, Kensy, Natasha Abner & Susan Goldin-Meadow
2018. The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign. Frontiers in Communication 3
Johnston, Trevor
2018. A corpus-based study of the role of headshaking in negation in Auslan (Australian Sign Language): Implications for signed language typology. Linguistic Typology 22:2 ► pp. 185 ff.
Lopez-Ozieblo, Renia
2018. Disagreeing without a ‘no’: How teachers indicate disagreement in a Hong Kong classroom. Journal of Pragmatics 137 ► pp. 1 ff.
2024. Contributions to the Study of Visible Action as Utterance: A Fifty-Year Retrospective. In The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies, ► pp. 133 ff.
Oomen, Marloes & Roland Pfau
2017. Signing not (or not): A typological perspective on standard negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Linguistic Typology 21:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Schoonjans, Steven
2017. On the relation between (verbal and kinesic) downtoning and illocution type. Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting 3:1 ► pp. 25 ff.
Schoonjans, Steven
2017. Nonmanual downtoning in German co-speech gesture and in German Sign Language. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 5:1
2016. A Child’s Multimodal Negations from 1 to 4: The Interplay Between Modalities. In Negation and Polarity: Experimental Perspectives [Language, Cognition, and Mind, 1], ► pp. 95 ff.
Benitez-Quiroz, C. Fabian, Ronnie B. Wilbur & Aleix M. Martinez
2016. The not face: A grammaticalization of facial expressions of emotion. Cognition 150 ► pp. 77 ff.
Ginzburg, Jonathan & Massimo Poesio
2016. Grammar Is a System That Characterizes Talk in Interaction. Frontiers in Psychology 7
Harrison, Simon & Pierre Larrivée
2016. Morphosyntactic Correlates of Gestures: A Gesture Associated with Negation in French and Its Organisation with Speech. In Negation and Polarity: Experimental Perspectives [Language, Cognition, and Mind, 1], ► pp. 75 ff.
Schoonjans, Steven, Paul Sambre, Geert Brône & Kurt Feyaerts
2016. Vers une analyse multimodale du sens. Perspectives constructionnelles sur la gestualité co-grammaticale. Langages N° 201:1 ► pp. 33 ff.
Voigt, Rob, Penelope Eckert, Dan Jurafsky & Robert J. Podesva
2016. Cans and cants: Computational potentials for multimodality with a case study in head position. Journal of Sociolinguistics 20:5 ► pp. 677 ff.
이정은, 박영은, 권익수 & Jeon, Jinree
2016. On metaphoric gestures of candidates in the U.S. presidential debate.. Discourse and Cognition 23:2 ► pp. 53 ff.
Abner, Natasha, Kensy Cooperrider & Susan Goldin‐Meadow
2015. Gesture for Linguists: A Handy Primer. Language and Linguistics Compass 9:11 ► pp. 437 ff.
Jurado, Julia Valeiras & Ma Noelia Ruiz-Madrid
2015. A Multimodal Approach to Product Presentations. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 173 ► pp. 252 ff.
2016. A Featural Approach to Sign Language Negation. In Negation and Polarity: Experimental Perspectives [Language, Cognition, and Mind, 1], ► pp. 45 ff.
2014. Formes et fonctions du discours d’expert dans des discussions sur l’environnement entre étudiants britanniques : une étude multimodale de la prise de position en interaction. ASp 65 ► pp. 45 ff.
2018. Petits et grands corpus en analyse linguistique des gestes. Corpus :18
Debras, Camille
2021. How to prepare the video component of the Diachronic Corpus of Political Speeches for multimodal analysis. Research in Corpus Linguistics 9:1 ► pp. 132 ff.
Debras, Camille
2021. Multimodal profiles of je (ne) sais pas in spoken French. Journal of Pragmatics 182 ► pp. 42 ff.
2024. On Grammar–Gesture Relations: Gestures Associated with Negation. In The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies, ► pp. 446 ff.
Wagner, Petra, Zofia Malisz & Stefan Kopp
2014. Gesture and speech in interaction: An overview. Speech Communication 57 ► pp. 209 ff.
Bousmalis, Konstantinos, Marc Mehu & Maja Pantic
2013. Towards the automatic detection of spontaneous agreement and disagreement based on nonverbal behaviour: A survey of related cues, databases, and tools. Image and Vision Computing 31:2 ► pp. 203 ff.
2011. Non-verbal Persuasion and Communication in an Affective Agent. In Emotion-Oriented Systems [Cognitive Technologies, ], ► pp. 585 ff.
Bousmalis, Konstantinos, Louis-Philippe Morency & Maja Pantic
2011. Face and Gesture 2011, ► pp. 746 ff.
Franklin, Amy, Anastasia Giannakidou & Susan Goldin-Meadow
2011. Negation, questions, and structure building in a homesign system. Cognition 118:3 ► pp. 398 ff.
Poggi, Isabella & Francesca D’Errico
2011. Social Signals: A Psychological Perspective. In Computer Analysis of Human Behavior, ► pp. 185 ff.
Enfield, N.J., Tanya Stivers & Stephen C. Levinson
2010. Question–response sequences in conversation across ten languages: An introduction. Journal of Pragmatics 42:10 ► pp. 2615 ff.
Graziano, Maria
2010. Le développement des gestes pragmatiques et leur relation avec le développement de la compétence textuelle chez l’enfant âgé de 4 à 10 ans. Lidil :42 ► pp. 113 ff.
Gráczi, Tekla & Sarolta Bata
2010. The effect of familiarization on temporal aspects of turn-taking: A pilot study. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 57:2-3 ► pp. 307 ff.
Lee, Jina & Stacy C. Marsella
2010. Predicting Speaker Head Nods and the Effects of Affective Information. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia 12:6 ► pp. 552 ff.
Schneider, Christel, Josep Call & Katja Liebal
2010. Do bonobos say NO by shaking their head?. Primates 51:3 ► pp. 199 ff.
Stivers, Tanya
2010. An overview of the question–response system in American English conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 42:10 ► pp. 2772 ff.
Lee, Jina, Helmut Prendinger, Alena Neviarouskaya & Stacy Marsella
2009. 2009 3rd International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction and Workshops, ► pp. 1 ff.
Calbris, Geneviève
2008. La tête de Nicolas Sarkozy, ou les fonctions des gestes de la tête durant l’énonciation. Mots :86 ► pp. 99 ff.
Heylen, Dirk
2008. Listening Heads. In Modeling Communication with Robots and Virtual Humans [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4930], ► pp. 241 ff.
Matoesian, Greg
2008. Role conflict as an interactional resource in the multimodal emergence of expert identity. Semiotica 2008:171
Heylen, Dirk, Anton Nijholt & Mannes Poel
2007. Generating Nonverbal Signals for a Sensitive Artificial Listener. In Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Behaviours [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4775], ► pp. 264 ff.
Lee, Jina & Stacy Marsella
2006. Nonverbal Behavior Generator for Embodied Conversational Agents. In Intelligent Virtual Agents [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 4133], ► pp. 243 ff.
Matoesian, Gregory
2005. Nailing down an answer: participations of power in trial talk. Discourse Studies 7:6 ► pp. 733 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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