"Look somewhere else!": The use of PALM-UP as proxy for propositions

In Danish Sign Language (DTS) palm-up is part of the signs hvad ‘what’ and hvor ‘where’. Hvad is made with finger wiggling, hvor with repeated sideways movements. But many instances of palm-up in signing are made only with transition movements, i.e., the hands are held in the palm up position with +hold. +hold can be analysed as a meaningful unit in depicting signs (Engberg-Pedersen 1993). Contrary to other movement units in depicting signs, +hold does not signify motion or location. It maintains the idea of the referent while bringing the addressee’s attention to a sign made by the other hand or the signer’s facial expression. 

In my talk I shall pursue the idea that palm-up is a pronoun referring to a proposition when signers wish to focus on something else. I shall compare instances of palm-up with both depicting signs with +hold and with indices as pronouns referring to entities.

What can text comparison tell us about PALM-UP and its functions?

Joint work with Rose Stamp, Shirit Cohen-Koka & Bracha Nir

PALM-UP is one of most pervasive discourse-oriented multifunctional expression in sign languages, yet its specific functions are usually described as illusive and obscure. Previous studies have suggested a range of idiosyncratic PALM-UP functions, ranging from gestural expressions of uncertainty (Cooperrider et al. 2018) or obviousness (Maresse et al. 2021) to highly grammatical functions of interrogativity and epistemic modality in signed languages (see Gabarró-López 2024 for a recent overview). Here we present a series of our recent studies, which has focused on PALM-UP in Israeli Sign Language with the aim to shed light on its functions in the context of monologic text production.

The ultimate goal of the study series is to acquire both the “panoramic” and the “micro” view on the functions of PALM-UP, by gradually zooming-in onto both global and specific features of PALM-UP. The studies use a unique combination of data analysis methods to elucidate how the interpretation, scope and the formational features of PALM-UP are constrained by the type of text and by its structural discourse units.

Through the application of contrastive discourse analysis (Nir 2015), Study 1 shows that the specific text type (narrative or expository) help us determine the function of each PALM-UP token. The study demonstrates that although PALM-UP serves the same structural functions in both text types – demarcating text structure boundaries of different scopes, the frequency of these distributions is different for each text type. For example, while PALM-UP appears at the boundaries of minor discourse units almost exclusively in the narrative texts, it appears at the boundaries of discourse structure segments (intermediate discourse units) more frequently in the expository texts.

Study 2 switches the focus of our investigation from the macro- to the micro-level of analysis. Using innovative clustering methods, the study manages to define 3 distinct types of PALM-UP variants (Fig. 1), distinguishable mostly by specific phonetic and prosodic features. For instance, one variant of PALM-UP is typically accompanied by an open addressee-oriented palm-up handshape, and highly expressive facial and body movements, whereas another variant of PALM-UP is more likely to be accompanied by a more closed handshape, and more neutral face and body expression.

Both studies complement each other by demonstrating that the global, argumentative, function of PALM-UP manifests differently in different discourse contexts of the two text types. Moreover, the specific clustering of PALM-UP multi-modal features illuminates its function as a textual discourse marker (Maschler & Schiffrin, 2015) impacted by both macro- and micro- discourse features.

Usage of Palm Up gestures in Italian children’s narratives

Palm up gestures, recurrent gestural expressions with pragmatic functions, have been described in different discourse types and in speakers of different languages (e.g., Kendon, 2004; Müller 2004). Adopting Kendon’s context-of-use approach, I will illustrate some uses of the Palm Up gestures in narratives of Italian children. I will describe functions that this gestural expression serves in children’s narrations as compared to adults’ narration; and I will argue that the development of such gestural expression is linked to the development of discourse and pragmatic abilities. I will also address some methodological issues in terms of this handshape identification, especially for children data analysis.

Some methodological reflections on the study of palm-up gestures in language production

So-called palm-up gestures are one of Kendon’s most often studied gesture families. In this paper I will discuss some methodological challenges in the study of such gestures in speech or sign language production (leaving comprehension aside). I will touch on the importance of robust form-function distinctions, articulatory and contextual variability, the implications of starting analyses from speech/sign vs. from gesture, and on issues of timing or temporal alignment. I argue that tackling and describing these challenges explicitly is crucial for furthering our understanding of the integrated nature of gesture and language, and of the multimodal nature of human communication.

Cross-modal and cross-linguistic investigation of palm-up's interactive functions: Insights from ASL, American English, LSFB and Belgian French

In this presentation, I will dive into the interactional dimensions of palm-up across four language ecologies and two modalities, drawing on corpus data from ASL-American English and LSFB-Belgian French. While researchers have examined palm-up in many spoken and sign language contexts, they have primarily focused on canonical forms and epistemic variants of palm-up. This talk addresses these gaps by documenting all instances of the palm approaching supination, that push us to consider different configurations (e.g., thumb and index extended upwards), and explores their respective interactive functions cross-linguistically and cross-modally. Capitalizing on existing typologies for interactive gestures, palm-up annotations were conducted using ELAN on a total data sample of 48 participants interacting face-to-face. Preliminary findings highlight the multifunctional nature of palm-up, underscoring its versatility and embeddedness in conversational dynamics not merely supplementary but integral to human interaction.

Methodological issues in the study of palm-up using translated and interpreted data

The palm-up gesture has been extensively studied for the past 20 years in both spoken and signed discourse, employing a variety of data types, including monologic vs. dialogic (semi-) spontaneous data, and diverse data collection procedures, such as elicitation vs. corpus data. Palm-up has not only been investigated from a monolingual perspective but contrastive research has also been carried out, encompassing cross-linguistic accounts (signed vs. signed language) or cross-modal accounts (signed vs. spoken language).

Nevertheless, palm-up has scarcely been analysed in other everyday language practices, including translation and interpreting between a signed and a spoken language. This presentation aims to address some of the methodological issues that can be encountered when describing palm-up using this type of data. Particularly, I will draw on bidirectional LSFB – French interpreted data and on unidirectional LSFB > French translated data to tackle identification, annotation, and categorization issues of this gesture.

Emerging Patterns in Gesture Sequences: Insights from the Palm Up Gesture

Gesture sequences featuring recurrent gestures (Ladewig, 2014), such as the Palm up gesture (e.g., Müller, 2004), are pivotal in communication yet remain underexplored, despite references in studies by Harrison (2018); Kendon (2004) and Seyfeddinipur (2004). This presentation delves into the functional dynamics of these sequences within German televised political discourse, documenting 3,632 gestures –2,734 of which were recurrent. The Slicing gesture was most frequent with 728 occurrences, closely followed by the Palm up gesture with 621 instances. We observed 40 distinct sequences involving the Palm up gesture, with the most common being the Slicing gesture + Palm up gesture (38 occurrences) and the Palm up gesture + Slicing gesture (30 occurrences). These sequences notably function at both the interactional and discourse levels, marking speech acts like approval and counter-arguments, as well as topic-comment structures. The study sheds light on how Palm up gestures contribute to the development of recurrent sequential structures in the manual modality.

References

Harrison, S. (2018). The Impulse to Gesture: Where Language, Minds, and Bodies Intersect. Cambridge University Press. doi.org/DOI: 10.1017/9781108265065

Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture. Visible action as utterance. Cambridge University Press.

Ladewig, S. H. (2014). Recurrent gestures. In C. Müller, A. Cienki, E. Fricke, S. H. Ladewig, D. McNeill, & J. Bressem (Eds.), Body – Language – Communication. An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction (Vol. 38.2, pp. 1558–1575). De Gruyter Mouton.

Müller, C. (2004). Forms and uses of the Palm Up Open Hand. A case of a gesture family? In C. Müller & R. Posner (Eds.), Semantics and Pragmatics of everyday gestures (pp. 234-256). Weidler.

Seyfeddinipur, M. (2004). Meta-discursive gestures from Iran: Some uses of the 'Pistol Hand'. In C. Müller & R. Posner (Eds.), The semantics and pragmatics of everyday gestures (pp. 205-216). Weidler.