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Article published In: Gesture
Vol. 23:1/2 (2024) ► pp.160–192

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Environmentally coupled depictive gestures in tea ceremony lessons

ORCiD logo with link | University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
Published online: 11 July 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.24029.che
Abstract
This study examines depictive gestures in naturally occurring instructional activities of chadō (tea ceremony). The participants include a trained chadō instructor and beginning-level students. Drawing on praxeological work on depictive gestures and the notion of environmentally coupled gesture (ECG), I focus on a subset of ECG: environmentally coupled depictive gesture (ECDG). This study adopts a multimodal conversation analysis framework and shows how ECDGs are integrated to various degrees with language and spatial and material features to facilitate correction and demonstration in chadō. Findings also show that the sequential context and participants’ shared experience of the chadō procedure play a pivotal role in the instructional efficacy of ECDGs. This paper concludes by discussing the role of gestures, objects, and language across instructional settings.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Background
    • Depictive gestures
    • Environmentally coupled gestures
  • Data and methods
    • Data and participants
    • Setting and activity
    • The collection
    • Transcription
  • Analysis
    • Retrospective depiction of object handling
    • Prospective depiction of object handling
  • Concluding discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (48)
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