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Article published In: Applying Embodied Cognition and Cognitive Linguistics to language teaching:
Edited by Paolo Della Putta and Ferran Suñer
[Review of Cognitive Linguistics 21:1] 2023
► pp. 9–34

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Special issue articles

Evolution is an arc along a timeline

Metaphors embodied in teachers’ gesture support abstract conceptualization and academic lexicon acquisition at primary school

 | University of Turin
Published online: 31 January 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00125.and
Abstract
Growing evidence shows the role of teachers gestures not only in L2 learning (Stam, G., & Tellier, M. (2021). Gesture Helps Second and Foreign Language Learning and Teaching. In A. Morgenstern & S. Goldin-Meadow (Eds.), Gesture in Language: Development Across the Lifespan (p. 30). Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) but also in supporting learning in the L1 classroom (Alibali, Martha W., Nathan, M. J., Wolfgram, M. S., Church, R. B., Jacobs, S. A., Johnson Martinez, C., & Knuth, E. J. (2014). How teachers link ideas in mathematics instruction using speech and gesture: A corpus analysis. Cognition and Instruction, 32(1), 65–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Crowder, E. M. (1996). Gestures at work in sense-making science talk. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 5(3), 173–208. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Wilson, A. A., Boatright, M. D., & Landon-Hays, M. (2014). Middle School Teachers’ Discipline-Specific Use of Gestures and Implications for Disciplinary Literacy Instruction. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(2), 234–262. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The current study aims at contributing to this last perspective. Based on data from a 3rd grade plurilingual classroom in an Italian school, it observes the ‘catchments’ (McNeill, D. (2000). Catchments and contexts: Non-modular factors in speech and gesture production. In D. Mcneill (Ed.), Language and Gesture (pp. 312–328). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) in teacher’s gesticulation during a cycle of lessons on “The origin of life”. The analysis identifies conceptual components based on the time is space metaphor associated with gestures, and observes their alignment with lexical items – either technical or common words (evolution, ages, ancestors, archaic; change, back, old) – in speech. The gesture-word association supports both the conceptualization of the notions and the acquisition of the related lexicon: gestures connect recurring concepts to their different verbalisations, ensuring a conceptually coherent representation over the lesson; they establish synonimic relations between technical and common words; and they can also work as memory triggers towards and between concepts and lexical units.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The study
  • 3.Data analysis and discussion
    • 3.1Catchments and their relation with the lessons’ key concepts
    • 3.2Semantic relations between the catchments and their lexical affiliates
    • 3.3Catchments in the interaction between teacher and students
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
References (55)
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Suñer, Ferran & Barbara De Cock
2024. The role of reticence in the comprehension of metaphorical taboo expressions in the foreign language. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 34:2 ► pp. 746 ff. DOI logo

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